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South Loop Ventures closes $21M fund in Houston to build up local tech ecosystem

Venture /

South Loop Ventures, a Houston-based venture firm, announced a $21 million Fund I, with Rice Management Company and Chevron Technology Ventures serving as anchor investors.  The firm, which launched in 2022, focuses on seed and pre-seed companies, with $400,000 as the average check size. It also primarily hopes to focus on backing founders of color.  […]

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Affiniti’s 20- and 22-year-old founders raise $17M led by SignalFire just 6 months after an $11M seed

Fundraising /

Affiniti founders Aaron Bai, 20, and Sahil Phadnis, 22, are building the kind of expense management software for main street small businesses that tech startups have enjoyed for years. Their growth has been so impressive that six months after raising an $11 million seed round, they raised a $17 million Series A, led by Signal

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Cocospy stalkerware apps go offline after data breach

Security /

A trio of phone surveillance apps, which was caught spying on millions of people’s phones earlier this year, has gone offline. Cocospy, Spyic, and Spyzie were three near-identical but differently branded stalkerware apps that allowed the person planting one of the apps on a target’s phone access to their personal data — including their messages,

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Deel wants Rippling to hand over any agreements involving paying the alleged spy

Startups /

Deel has lobbed a new volley in the ongoing legal battle with rival HR tech startup Rippling. Deel filed a motion, containing a series of letters, asking the Irish court to make Rippling hand over information. In one letter, Deel wants unredacted versions of witness affidavits, including the famed one by former Rippling employee, Keith

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Laser-powered fusion experiment more than doubles its power output

Government & Policy /

The world’s only net-positive fusion experiment has been steadily ramping up the amount of power it produces, TechCrunch has learned. In recent attempts, the team at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) increased the yield of the experiment, first to 5.2 megajoules and then again to 8.6 megajoules, according to a source

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Y Combinator startup Firecrawl is ready to pay $1M to hire three AI agents as employees

AI /

Y Combinator-backed startup Firecrawl is back on the hunt for AI agent employees. As we reported back in February, its first attempt didn’t yield an AI worth hiring. But it’s now placed three new ads on YC’s job board for “AI agents only” and has set aside a $1 million budget total to make it

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The Nuclear Company raises $51M to develop massive reactor sites

Climate /

The Nuclear Company is taking an old approach to building new nuclear reactors. Rather than gin up a new design or try to mass manufacture smaller reactors, it wants to develop a series of reactors using existing designs. The two-year-old startup announced a Series A last month that included investments from CIV, Goldcrest Capital, MCJ

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The Nuclear Company raises $46M to develop massive reactor sites

Fundraising /

The Nuclear Company is taking an old approach to building new nuclear reactors. Rather than gin up a new design or try to mass manufacture smaller reactors, it wants to develop a series of reactors using existing designs. The two-year-old startup announced a Series A last month that included investments from CIV, Goldcrest Capital, MCJ

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Fake fired Twitter worker ‘Rahul Ligma’ is a real engineer with an AI data startup used by Harvard

Startups /

The morning after Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter (now X), reporters encountered two men with boxes outside the company’s headquarters. One introduced himself as recently laid-off Twitter engineer “Rahul Ligma.”  His real name is Rahul Sonwalkar but the prank went viral. He piled on his character’s notoriety when he went to the Bahamas to

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