TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

U.S. laws regulating AI prove elusive, but there may be hope

AI /

Can the U.S. meaningfully regulate AI? It’s not at all clear yet. Policymakers have achieved progress in recent months, but they’ve also had setbacks, illustrating the challenging nature of laws imposing guardrails on the technology. In March, Tennessee became the first state to protect voice artists from unauthorized AI cloning. This summer, Colorado adopted a tiered, risk-based […]

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Founders should seek sector alignment when looking for a family office investor

Startups /

Family offices invest a substantial amount of capital in startups each year. In the first half of 2023, 27% of overall startup deal value came from deals that included a family office investor, according to a recent report from PwC. Despite their prevalence in startup deals, family offices can be a mysterious class of investors

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‘If you actually are solving a problem, you don’t talk about any of the hype,’ investor says

Venture /

The hype is palpable: As tech folks from near and far converge for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Fransisco — one of the only places where Waymo is available to the public — there’s ample chatter about the autonomous vehicle service. “If you think about AI hype and all, everyone gets excited about what 10

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Wesley Chan on what he looks for as he’s shopping for potential unicorns

Venture /

Investor Wesley Chan has shown a knack for making very early investments into multi-billion-dollar unicorns, such as Plaid, Gusto, Flexport, and, most recently, Canva. Chan comes from an unconventional background — he grew up in an immigrant family and had only middling grades in high school. But he landed a job washing test tubes in

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GenAI suffers from data overload, so companies should focus on smaller, specific goals

AI /

“There is no AI without data, there is no AI without unstructured data, and there is no AI without unstructured data at scale,” said Chet Kapoor, chairman and CEO of data management company DataStax. Kapoor was kicking off a conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 about “new data pipelines” in the context of modern AI applications,

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Can you build a startup without sacrificing your mental health? Bonobos founder Andy Dunn thinks so

Apps /

Bonobos founder Andy Dunn is back in the builder’s seat, working on an in-person social media platform called Pie. But the biggest lessons he learned from his $310 million Bonobos exit don’t have as much to do with entrepreneurship as they do with staying sane. When Dunn was in college, he was diagnosed with bipolar

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CoffeeSpace is a Hinge-like app that wants to help you find your co-founder

Startups /

CoffeeSpace is on a mission to help people find partners for their startup ideas online. The startup, which exhibited as part of the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, has launched a social networking app that matches people exploring startup ideas and looking for co-founders.  The startup’s algorithm only matches candidates who meet each

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CareYaya is enabling affordable home care by connecting healthcare students with elders

Startups /

CareYaya, a platform that matches people who need caregivers with healthcare students, is working to disrupt the caregiving industry. The startup, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to enhance affordable in-home support, while also helping students prepare for their future healthcare careers. The startup was founded in 2022

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What can we do about the spread of AI-generated disinformation?

Government & Policy /

Disinformation is spreading at an alarming pace, thanks largely to openly available AI tools. In a recent survey, 85% of people said that they worry about online disinformation, and the World Economic Forum has named disinformation from AI as a top global risk. Some high-profile examples of disinformation campaigns this year include a bot network

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