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Sales tax automation startup Kintsugi doubled its valuation this year

A 2018 Supreme Court ruling eliminated the requirement that an e-commerce retailer needed a physical location in a state in order for said state to be able to collect sales tax on purchases made by residents. While the decision was a boon for states, it created a headache for e-commerce sellers. Kintsugi is looking to […]

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Stepful raises $31.5M to address healthcare staffing shortage with AI-powered training

Carl Madi spent a chunk of the last decade working for Uber and Handy, an online marketplace for cleaners. “I spent a lot of time convincing drivers, handyman and cleaners, to join the gig economy,” he told TechCrunch. But when the pandemic struck, he saw many people lose their jobs overnight. He noticed that there

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Starfish Space raises $29M to launch satellite-servicing spacecraft missions

Starfish Space has closed a new tranche of funding led by a major defense tech investor as it looks to launch three full-size satellite servicing and inspection spacecraft in 2026.  The Washington-based startup’s Otter spacecraft is designed for two primary missions: extending the operational life of expensive satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO) and disposing of

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TikTok is integrating with influencer shopping app LTK, videos show

An integration with LTK, an app that lets consumers shop from creator and influencers’ recommendations, is rolling out on TikTok, according to videos by select creators viewed by TechCrunch. The collaboration could boost fashion creators’ ability to earn affiliate commissions via LTK, while also making it easier for consumers to locate the clothes and accessories

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NitroVolt is helping farmers make their own fertilizer using renewable power

When Suzanne Zamany Andersen arranged her trip to greenhouse grower Koppert Cress in the Netherlands, she thought she would just be pitching her startup’s device, which turns electricity and air into ammonia, a widely used fertilizer.  Not only did the company agree to test the ammonia production system made by her company — Denmark-based NitroVolt

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ScaleOps aims to take the frustration out of cloud management

Thanks to AI, the appetite for cloud services is growing. Cloud expenditures more than doubled between 2019 and 2023, and are expected to eclipse $2 trillion by 2030, according to Goldman Sachs Research. Poor spend management can put ROI at risk, however. Yodar Shafrir discovered this while working at Run:AI, the workload management startup Nvidia

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Conduktor looks to gatekeep ‘bad data’ out of company’s apps

It was 2020, and Nicolas Orban, Stéphane Derosiaux and Stéphane Maarek were beyond frustrated with Apache Kafka. The tool for handling real-time data streams simply couldn’t keep up with the trio’s engineering needs — particularly during the pandemic, when companies were rushing to embrace cloud services. “Many companies were finding it difficult to scale their

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As demand for lithium explodes, battery recycling startup Tozero sprints to scale with $11.7M seed

Tozero, a Munich-based startup that recovers valuable raw materials from recycled lithium-ion batteries, is gearing up to scale. The startup just closed an oversubscribed €11 million seed round (around $11.7M) to step up production by building its first industrial deployment (A.K.A first-of-a-kind or FOAK) plant. Currently, Tozero’s pilot plant processes nine tonnes of lithium-ion battery

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Lightspeed doubles down on Wheelocity as it pivots to rural India commerce

While India’s urban population is shifting from mom-and-pop stores to quick commerce platforms, its rural side — home to more than 800 million people — still heavily relies on offline businesses for daily consumption. Wheelocity aims to transform that untapped market to let people living beyond the top 200 cities of the country easily shop online.

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