TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Former Disney star Bridgit Mendler talks scaling connectivity and resilience for space

Startups /

Former Disney Channel star and singer Bridgit Mendler took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Monday to detail how her startup, Northwood Space, is investing in a forgotten part of the space industry: ground infrastructure. Ground stations are the critical communication points for satellites to communicate with Earth. Northwood aims to mass produce ground stations, as […]

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Solideon wants to decentralize rocket manufacturing through 3D printing

Government & Policy /

Nearly five years after COVID-19 ground the world to a halt, the global supply chain still hasn’t fully recovered. Specialty industries like space travel were particularly hard hit, given the impossibility of heading down to the corner to pick up spare rocket parts. Industries began taking a long, hard look at 3D printing as a

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Lessons in tackling incumbents in crowded markets every founder should know

Hardware /

Founders seldom have the luxury of entering a completely empty market, but what happens when the incumbents are unusually entrenched? What does it take to start a company in an industry dominated by big players and technologies that have barely changed? Watch as Quilt Founder & CEO Paul Lambert, Fumo Materials CEO Gurinder Nagra, and

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Level Zero Health is working on a potentially life-changing device for hormone health

Biotech & Health /

Level Zero Health’s co-founders Ula Rustamova and Irene Jia are swinging for the fences. They are attempting to invent a never-achieved technology that could help millions of people. If they succeed — and there are some positive early indicators — they will create a continuous hormone monitoring medical device. Such a device could do for

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SpiralWave’s pulsing plasma towers transform carbon dioxide into liquid fuel

Startups /

If there’s anything that came from one of the worlds that was promised to us in “Back to the Future” or “The Jetsons” or innumerable other sci-fi franchises, it’s what SpiralWave co-founder and CEO Abed Bukhari showed me on a video call. Purple-tinged waves of white plasma rhythmically rose and vanished within a metal-screened column,

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ForestGuard is building the ‘Internet of Trees’ to detect fires even earlier

Climate /

Many startups have taken aim at the problem of early wildfire detection and prevention, but Turkey-based ForestGuard’s space-based system could give it an edge over competitors. ForestGuard, which presented onstage today as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt, was founded by trained architects Muhammed Ali Örnek and Suat Batuhan Esirger, who witnessed the need for early

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Wiz CEO says company was targeted with deepfake attack that used his voice

Security /

Even cybersecurity companies aren’t safe from deepfake attacks. Speaking on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, Wiz’s CEO and co-founder Assaf Rappaport, who recently turned down a $23 billion acquisition offer from Google, noted that his employees had been targeted by a deepfake attack just two weeks ago. “Dozens of my employees got a

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Why AI regulation is every startup’s business, with Andreessen Horowitz Martin Casado

AI /

Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Martin Casado has lived the experience that every founder dreams about. He invented a new technology that radically altered the way computer networks are built and sold his startup for $1.26 billion when it was barely out of stealth (the second startup he sold). He’s since gone on to have an

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NitroFix wants to use electricity to make ammonia without the pollution

Climate /

Ammonia may conjure thoughts of off odors, but the world is entirely dependent on the smelly stuff as a fertilizer and for use in myriad other industries. Problem is, nearly all the ammonia produced today is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Making the compound releases more than 450 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every

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