Technology

The Download: heat-storing bricks, and using AI to understand history

April 11, 2023
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The hottest new climate technology is bricks Heavy industries generate about a quarter of worldwide emissions, and alternative power sources can’t consistently generate the amount of heat that factories need to create their…

How AI is helping historians better understand our past

April 11, 2023
It’s an evening in 1531, in the city of Venice. In a printer’s workshop, an apprentice labors over the layout of a page that’s destined for an astronomy textbook—a dense line of type and a woodblock illustration of a cherubic head observing shapes moving through the cosmos, representing a lunar eclipse.  Like all aspects of…

Ex-Twitter CEO Agrawal, other execs sue firm over unpaid legal bills

April 11, 2023

Former Twitter employees, including ex-CEO Parag Agrawal, ex-legal head Vijaya Gadde, and ex-CFO Ned Segal, have sued the social network over alleged unpaid legal reimbursements. The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Chancery Court, alleged that Twitter has to pay over $1 million to the former executives for legal bills they incurred while at the company to […]

Ex-Twitter CEO Agrawal, other execs sue firm over unpaid legal bills by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Eclipse eclipses previous fundraises with a whopping $1.23 billion across two new funds

April 11, 2023

The market may be be tightening, but not for Eclipse Ventures, a Palo Alto-based venture firm that just raised $1.2 billion across two new funds. One fund, with $720 million in capital commitments will be invested in early-stage outfits, as well as companies that Eclipse itself incubates. The remaining $510 million will be funneled into […]

Eclipse eclipses previous fundraises with a whopping $1.23 billion across two new funds by Connie Loizos originally published on TechCrunch

Lightspeed fuels Indian workspace interiors platform OfficeBanao with 6M funding

April 10, 2023

OfficeBanao, an Indian startup offering a workspace interiors platform to businesses in the country, has raised $6 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed. In India’s competitive workspace interior market, traditional providers have long dominated the landscape, often requiring substantial investment of time and resources for clients to achieve their desired results. Furthermore, many of […]

Lightspeed fuels Indian workspace interiors platform OfficeBanao with 6M funding by Jagmeet Singh originally published on TechCrunch

In edtech, history matters: Reach Capital just closed its largest fund to date

April 10, 2023

Reach Capital, one of the first venture firms to focus exclusively on edtech, closed its last investment vehicle during an unprecedented boom within tech. The San Francisco-based venture firm saw an increase in digital infrastructure, remote learning, and society’s ever fickle attention as an opportunity – and unsurprisingly, those same tailwinds then helped Reach close […]

In edtech, history matters: Reach Capital just closed its largest fund to date by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch

Poe’s AI chatbot app now lets you make your own bots using prompts

April 10, 2023

An app called Poe will now let users make their own chatbot using prompts combined with an existing bot, like ChatGPT, as the base. First launched publicly in February, Poe is the latest product from the Q&A site Quora, which has long provided web searchers with answers to the most Googled questions. With chatbots now […]

Poe’s AI chatbot app now lets you make your own bots using prompts by Sarah Perez originally published on TechCrunch