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India’s BluSmart is testing its ride-hailing service in Dubai

Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operating in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with its executive. The move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help counter the likes of Careem, Uber and Hala in the United Arab Emirates’ most populous city. The Gurugram-based startup quietly enabled the new Dubai service

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Peter Thiel-founded Valar Ventures raised a $300 million fund, half the size of its last one

The perception in Silicon Valley is that every investor would love to be in business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital fundraising environment has become so difficult, that even Valar Ventures, one of the VC firms he helped found, has raised a much smaller fund this year compared to previous ones.  Thiel set up

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Bill Gates-backed wind startup AirLoom is raising $12M, filings reveal

It started with a drawing on a napkin. Now AirLoom Energy is raising $12.7 million in fresh funding, TechCrunch has learned. The funding came from 21 investors, according to a regulatory filing that does not list the names of the backers. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Wyoming-based startup

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VinFast crash that killed family of four now under federal investigation

The top vehicle safety regulator in the U.S. has launched a formal probe into an April crash involving the all-electric VinFast VF8 SUV that claimed the lives of a family of four, TechCrunch has learned. The crash happened in Pleasanton, California at about 9 p.m. on April 24. Police told local news outlets at the

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SeekOut, a recruiting startup last valued at $1.2 billion, lays off 30% of its workforce

SeekOut, an 8-year-old recruiting startup that uses AI to find candidates, has cut about 30% of its workforce on Thursday, TechCrunch has learned. “Lately, we have been spending roughly $2 to earn $1, and this last fiscal year, we incurred significant cash burn,” SeekOut’s CEO Anoop Gupta and CTO Aravind Bala wrote in a letter

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Two students uncover security bug that could let millions do their laundry for free

A pair of university students say they found and reported earlier this year a security flaw allowing anyone to avoid paying for laundry provided by over a million internet-connected laundry machines in residences and college campuses around the world. Months later, the vulnerability remains open after the vendor, CSC ServiceWorks, repeatedly ignored requests to fix

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Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build, Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive VP of the Microsoft Cloud and AI group, directly compared Cobalt to AWS’s Graviton chips, which have been available to developers

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GrubMarket buys Butter to give its food distribution tech an AI boost

Much of how people buy food has moved online — restaurants often replace menus with QR codes that let you order with your smartphones, and grocery shopping has been revolutionized with delivery services like Instacart. But until recently, the other side of the food supply chain — how small restaurants and neighborhood groceries procured food

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Hacker claims theft of India’s Samco account data

A hacker claims to be selling user records associated with Indian online brokerage firm Samco Securities, one of the widely-used platforms offering discount broking trading accounts for the country’s stock exchanges. The pseudonymous hacker listed the data allegedly breached from Samco on a known cybercrime forum, which they are selling for an undisclosed amount. TechCrunch

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