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Aerleum plans to turn CO2 directly into fuel for cargo ships and, eventually, airplanes

Fundraising /

It only took four phone calls for Sébastien Fiedorow to quit his job as a venture capitalist. The first one came from Marble, a startup studio based in Paris. They had a scientist looking for help founding a company that would remove carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere — what experts call direct air capture, or […]

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Silicon Valley is debating if AI weapons should be allowed to decide to kill

AI /

In late September, Shield AI cofounder Brandon Tseng swore that weapons in the U.S. would never be fully autonomous — meaning an AI algorithm would make the final decision to kill someone. “Congress doesn’t want that,” the defense tech founder told TechCrunch. “No one wants that.”  But Tseng spoke too soon. Five days later, Anduril

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Amazon team in charge of Just Walk Out loses three execs, gains one

Enterprise /

Three Amazon executives in charge of developing new technologies for checking out of physical stores – including Just Walk Out, Dash Carts, and Amazon One – are leaving or have left the division, TechCrunch has learned. In addition, a former high-ranking advertising executive at Amazon, Colleen Aubrey, was recently put in charge of Just Walk

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SpaceX alums are working to raise a hefty $550M first deep tech fund

Startups /

Interlagos, the venture capital firm started by former senior SpaceX leaders, is looking to raise $550 million for its first venture fund, according to regulatory filings and a confidential deck sent to prospective LPs and viewed by TechCrunch.  The existence of the firm was first reported by TechCrunch in April, but almost nothing has been

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LinkedIn says 10M people have signed up as freelancers on its Services Marketplace

Social /

More than 100,000 people have been laid off in the technology industry alone this year, and — either by circumstance or choice — at least some of them are not heading back into exclusively full-time work. LinkedIn launched a freelancer marketplace in 2021 to capture some of that activity. Now, at a time when other

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Numeric grabs $28M Series A to automate accounting using AI

Enterprise /

Accountants typically dread month-end and quarter-end closings. That’s because finalizing financial records for a specific period is generally a manual, error-prone and time-consuming endeavor.  In 2020, Parker Gilbert (pictured above; middle) was so fed up with the tedium of managing finance and accounting at an early-stage startup that he decided to co-found Numeric, an accounting

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Relyance lands $32M to help companies comply with data regulations

Fundraising /

As the demand for AI surges, AI vendors are devoting greater bandwidth to data security issues. Not only are they being compelled to comply with emerging data privacy regulations (e.g. the EU Data Act), but they’re finding themselves under the microscope of clients skeptical about how their data is being used and processed. The trouble

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Health insurtech startup Qantev raises €30 million to outperform LLMs with small AI models

Startups /

Health and life insurance providers face a rising volume of claims due to chronic disease and aging populations, but their processes lack scalability. AI automation can help, but it takes more tailoring than for other insurance types. Automating property and casualty insurance, for instance, gave rise to public company Guidewire decades ago, but health insurance

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