TechCrunch

India’s HealthKart valued at $500 million in new investment

Manish Singh — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 08:53:09 +0000

Indian omni-channel nutrition startup HealthKart has raised $153 million in one of the country’s largest consumer startup investments this year, valuing the business at about $500 million, according to a source familiar with the matter. The new investment was co-led by private equity firms ChrysCapital and Motilal Oswal, with Avendus Capital serving as financial advisor. […]

Oyo founder seeks new investment at $3.8B valuation

Manish Singh — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 04:44:22 +0000

An investment vehicle backed by Oyo’s founder, Ritesh Agarwal, has proposed to inject another $65.1 million into the Indian hospitality startup, according to notices to shareholders that were reviewed by TechCrunch. The investment, through Redsprig Innovation Partners, would value the SoftBank-backed company at $3.8 billion, according to terms shared in a notice to shareholders. While […]

World of Warcraft turns 20

Anthony Ha — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 22:26:25 +0000

Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game’s influence’s 20 years later. For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a […]

What is Bluesky when it’s not the underdog?

Anthony Ha — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 19:51:11 +0000

Bluesky is having a moment — a moment that’s already stretched on for nearly three months. Over the summer, the social media app saw a wave of new signups in Brazil after X (formerly Twitter) was temporarily banned there. And in the United States, unhappiness with changes at X, and with owner Elon Musk’s close […]

The Exploration Company raises $160M to build Europe’s answer to SpaceX Dragon

Aria Alamalhodaei — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Only two companies currently provide cargo delivery to and from the International Space Station, and both are based in the United States. The Exploration Company, which operates out of Germany, France, and Italy, is looking to change that: It just closed a large funding round to further its mission of building Europe’s first reusable space […]

Norwegian startup Factiverse wants to fight disinformation with AI

Rebecca Bellan — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

In the wake of the U.S. 2024 presidential election, one fact became clear: Disinformation proliferated online at a startling rate, shaping Americans’ views about each candidate as well as a diverse set of topics, including public health, climate change, and immigration. Generative AI – with its ability to produce deepfakes in seconds and its propensity to […]

Precursor’s Charles Hudson believes founders should test their investors

Dominic-Madori Davis — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 16:30:00 +0000

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 […]

Robust AI’s Carter Pro robot is designed to work with, and be moved by, humans

Brian Heater — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Two things are immediately notable when watching the Carter Pro robot navigate the aisles of the demo warehouse inside Robust AI’s San Carlos, California, headquarters. The first is the shelving units: standardized, modular, and off-the-shelf. The wire frames will look familiar to anyone who has spent time in warehouses, and that’s certainly by design. The second […]

A popular technique to make AI more efficient has drawbacks

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:00:00 +0000

One of the most widely used techniques to make AI models more efficient, quantization, has limits — and the industry could be fast approaching them. In the context of AI, quantization refers to lowering the number of bits — the smallest units a computer can process — needed to represent information. Consider this analogy: When […]

The best tech for plant lovers

Brian Heater — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

House plants are great. They can also be hard. All of those stress-reducing self-care qualities they promise tend to fade into the background when they suddenly turn brown for seemingly no reason. Unlike pets and human children, they can’t bug you when something is wrong. They just sort of wither. There’s a reason Reddit is […]

Consumer tech is bouncing back, and consumer founders like Brynn Putnam are bouncing back with it

Connie Loizos — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 01:14:09 +0000

When Brynn Putnam sold her last company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million at the start of the pandemic, it looked to this editor like she’d sold the smart fitness company too soon. Instead, the timing proved brilliant. The home fitness craze crashed nearly as abruptly as it peaked during that first year of lockdowns. […]

Jake Paul vs Mike Tyson fight shows Netflix still struggles with live events

Anthony Ha — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 21:43:24 +0000

Viewers have been talking about Friday evening’s boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul — but probably not for the reasons Netflix was hoping. Yes, the 27-year-old Paul (a YouTuber turned professional boxer) defeated the 58-year-old Tyson (a former heavyweight champion who came out of retirement for this match) in eight rounds, but the […]

Disgruntled X users make the switch to Bluesky

Cody Corrall — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 21:06:00 +0000

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re breaking down Bluesky’s big surge in users, Elon Musk co-leading Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” and Mark Zuckerberg’s latest foray in extreme wife-guy behavior. Let’s go. Bluesky is seeing a major surge as X users unhappy with the platform’s latest policy decisions make the move to […]

Best gifts for frequent travelers

Brian Heater — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000

What’s the best gift you can get someone? Why, the gift of travel, of course. The next best is something to enhance the travel experience. As fun and enlightening as seeing new places is, the whole part of getting there can detract from the overall experience, especially for those who find themselves traveling a lot […]

TikTok parent ByteDance reportedly values itself at $300 billion

Anthony Ha — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 17:26:40 +0000

ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, valued itself at $300 billion in a recent share buyback offer, according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal. That number might sound familiar, as the WSJ previously reported on a ByteDance buyback offer at a $300 billion valuation back in September 2022. But a year […]

Botinkit’s robot wants to cook for you

Brian Heater — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Warehouses aren’t the only places grappling with a labor crunch. Since the start of the pandemic, restaurants around the world have been grappling with staffing shortages. A number of startups have entered the picture with automation solutions, aimed at reducing the number of hands required to keep the lights on and the food warm. There […]

SpaceX Starship: Everything you’ve ever wondered but were afraid to ask

Aria Alamalhodaei — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 16:00:00 +0000

SpaceX’s massive Starship rocket has the potential to transform the commercial space economy, ensure America’s position as the global leaders in the space race, and put humans on Mars for the first time. But first it has to get to orbit. This is becoming much more likely as the Starship test program accelerates and the company […]

T-Mobile hack linked to Chinese breaches of telecom networks

Zack Whittaker — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 15:54:36 +0000

This is the ninth known cyberattack to target T-Mobile in recent years, according to an ongoing count by TechCrunch.

What a second Trump term means for the future of ransomware

Carly Page — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 15:05:00 +0000

The U.S. government has made big strides over the past four years in the ongoing fight against the “scourge of ransomware,” as President Joe Biden described it. At the start of his term, Biden and his administration were quick to declare ransomware a national security threat, unlocking new powers for the military and intelligence agencies. […]

EU AI Act: Everything you need to know

Natasha Lomas — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The European Union’s risk-based rulebook for artificial intelligence — aka the EU AI Act — has been years in the making. But expect to hear a lot more about the regulation in the coming months (and years) as key compliance deadlines kick in. Meanwhile, read on for an overview of the law and its aims. […]