Charles Hudson, managing partner of Precursor Ventures, told an audience at AfroTech the basics of knowing when to invest: A company should have product-market fit and some form of traction. But the next thing he said garnered some surprised looks from the audience: Founders should test investors with a small issue to see how they […]
Precursor’s Charles Hudson believes founders should test their investors Read More »
A startup is training an AI model that it claims will enable creators to generate cinematic worlds, with complete control over the scenery, characters, lighting, and motion. How? By having humans strap cameras to their backs and hike around the world. Odyssey, founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke (Cameron was previously the
This generative AI startup is strapping cameras to people’s backs Read More »
Yelp, which made a name for itself giving restaurant recs, just bought an auto services website. In the company’s quarterly earnings report today, Yelp revealed that it agreed to buy RepairPal, a site for car repair estimates, for $80 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, subject
Yelp just spent $80M on a site for car repair estimates Read More »
Sierra, the AI startup co-founded by OpenAI chairman Bret Taylor, has raised $175 million in a funding round that values the startup at $4.5 billion. Sierra, founded by Taylor and longtime Google exec Clay Bavor, focuses on selling AI-powered customer service chatbots to brands like WeightWatchers and Sirius XM. There’s an “agent” component, as well.
Bret Taylor’s customer service AI startup just raised $175M Read More »
Enterprises have a data inventory problem. The amount of data they’re collecting and storing is increasing, and that data is being spread across disparate storage buckets. Yet many organizations rely on processes that essentially amount to pencil-and-paper methods for tracking data provenance. According to one survey, more than 50% of companies use Excel spreadsheets in
Concentric helps companies keep track of their sensitive data Read More »
Each year, supply chain disruptions cost the global economy trillions of dollars. In a recent McKinsey poll, nine in ten businesses said they had encountered logistics challenges over the past 12 months. Headwinds have only grown stronger as chaos reigns in key shipping corridors. Attacks on freighters continue in the Red Sea. Flooding is disrupting
Supply chain startup Interos lands new customers, cash Read More »
Matt Peters has spent more than a decade working for cybersecurity vendors. He was a team lead at Check Point, climbed the corporate ladder to VP of worldwide operations at FireEye, and spent over four years at Expel, a managed detection and response firm, as chief product officer. Peters says a surprising common thread ran
Fixify blends automation and human analysts to tackle IT problems Read More »
Interface.ai, a customer automation platform for banks and other financial institutions, today announced that it closed a $30 million funding round led by Avataar Venture Partners. $20 million of the round was equity, while the remaining $10 million was in the form of debt. It’s Interface’s first outside capital; the startup had been completely bootstrapped.
Interface.ai raises $30M to help banks field customer requests Read More »
The software supply chain, which comprises the components and processes used to develop software, has become precarious. According to one recent survey, 88% of companies believe poor software supply chain security presents an “enterprise-wide risk” to their organizations. Open source supply chain components are especially fraught, thanks to the logistical hurdles in keeping each component well-maintained.
Socket lands a fresh $40M to scan software for security flaws Read More »
David Karandish has been busy. Capacity, his support automation company, was planning a $5 million “bridge round” to help the company reach the break-even point. But TVC Capital, Toloka.vc, and the venture’s other backers had something grander in mind. So they threw in an additional $21 million for what became Capacity’s $26 million Series D.
Support automation firm Capacity grows with new cash and acquisitions Read More »
