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Connectly, now backed by Alibaba, taps AI to personalize text messages to customers

Startups /

Stefanos Loukakos, formerly a director at Meta’s business-focused Messenger division and, briefly, the tech giant’s blockchain org, noticed several years ago that online retailers were struggling to connect with potential shoppers. The problem, in his opinion, was that their marketing campaigns weren’t tailored enough. Merchants were sending generic social media, text, and email blasts that failed to […]

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French embedded insurance startup Neat secures $55 million

Fundraising /

It’s not every day that you hear about a large funding round for a French startup in the current funding environment. But Neat, a Paris-based insurtech startup, has managed to raise €50 million (around $55 million at current exchange rates). There is some fine print however. In addition to the traditional equity-for-cash financial transaction, a

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EV warranty startup Amber launches a remote diagnostic service for Teslas

Transportation /

EV warranty startup Amber is expanding nationwide, bringing on new vehicles and offering a new remote diagnostic scan — all signs that the one-year-old company is putting its recent $3.18 million seed round to good use. The startup launched an aftermarket warranty product for Tesla vehicles called AmberCare — which is a suite of warranty

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Spare fixes cities’ outdated transport services for disabled residents

Fundraising /

Cities spend hundreds of millions each year on paratransit services, or public rides for disabled residents, yet those services remain limited and unpredictable. Wheelchair users often face late pickups, hindering them from getting to work or medical appointments on time. As populations age, the strain on these services and city budgets continues to grow.  Vancouver-based

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Hardware companies dominate a list of promising climate tech startups

Climate /

What will it take for a startup to make a dent in climate change? The most promising candidates tend to be hardware startups that have spent years developing and proving their technologies, according to a new report. Oh, and it helps to specialize in energy or raw materials. The report, published by Congruent Ventures and

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Sri Mandir helps Hindus visit sacred temples and offer donations, virtually from their phones

Apps /

While living in the U.S., the Trivedi family was looking for a solution to follow a ritual practice of worshiping at one of India’s Jyotirlingas — a holy representation of the Hindu god Shiva. After searching on YouTube for ways to offer flowers and other items ceremonially at the Indian temple one Sunday in 2023,

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Alpha Partners raises $153M third fund for pro-rata investments

Fundraising /

Steve Brotman started Alpha Partners in 2014 with a novel idea at the time: investing alongside early-stage VCs to help preserve their ownership in promising companies as they transition to later funding rounds. Alpha’s first fund was a mere $10 million. But as startups started staying private for longer, the VC industry invented various mechanisms

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Bug lets anyone bypass WhatsApp’s ‘View Once’ privacy feature

Security /

WhatsApp, the most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app in the world with more than two billion users, allows users to exchange pictures and videos that disappear soon after opening. But a bug in how WhatsApp implements its so-called “View Once” feature in its browser-based web app allows any malicious recipient to display and save the

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Sunamp’s thermal battery uses a chemical found in salt-and-vinegar potato chips

Climate /

Nearly 20 years ago, Andrew Bissell was sitting in the living room of his beachfront home in the Edinburgh area. He and his wife, Susan Lang-Bissell, had just sold their medical imaging startup, and he was pondering his future. “Do we retire or do we go again?” Bissell told TechCrunch. Around that time, he was

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How a viral AI image catapulted a Mexican startup to a major adidas contract

AI /

Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez, and Enrique Rodriguez have been friends since they were five years old. As teenagers, they became volunteers helping indigenous communities — first in Mexico, then in other countries — and saw that many of the women were artisans.  The trio came to realize that these artists “made very beautiful things in

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