July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

Technology

You.com takes aim at Google and Microsoft with multimodal chat search

February 15, 2023

You.com founder Richard Socher knows that his company has always been a David going after the Goliath in search, Google, and to a lesser extent Microsoft. He likes to point out that his company built search based on generative AI in December, several months before the other giant search players made their announcements. Today, the […]

You.com takes aim at Google and Microsoft with multimodal chat search by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch

The Download: mitigating methane emissions, and testing AI-developed drugs

February 15, 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. These startups hope to spray iron particles above the ocean to fight climate change A Palo Alto–based startup wants to begin releasing iron particles into the exhaust stream of a shipping vessel crossing…

Passwordless authentication startup Descope lands whopping $53M seed round

February 15, 2023

Capital might be harder to come by than it once was in startup land, but some firms are bucking the trend — hard. Take Descope, for example, which today announced that it raised a whopping $53 million in seed funding for its “developer-first” authentication and user management platform. The money came from Lightspeed Venture Partners […]

Passwordless authentication startup Descope lands whopping $53M seed round by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Yext hops on the generative AI train with Yext Chat, an enterprise-focused chatbot

February 15, 2023

Looking to cash in on the generative AI craze, Yext, the platform for online brand management, today announced an AI-powered chatbot called Yext Chat. Taking inspiration from OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Yext Chat is designed for enterprise use cases — and differentiated, Yext claims, by a partly proprietary back end. “ChatGPT has shown the world that large […]

Yext hops on the generative AI train with Yext Chat, an enterprise-focused chatbot by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Oligo raises $28M to secure open-source libraries at runtime

February 15, 2023

Oligo Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that focuses on runtime application security and observability to detect and prevent open-source vulnerabilities, is coming out of stealth today and announcing that it has raised a total of $28 million in seed and Series A funding. The company’s investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ballistic Ventures and TLV Partners, […]

Oligo raises $28M to secure open-source libraries at runtime by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Inside the ChatGPT race in China

February 15, 2023
Every once in a while, there’s one thing that gets everybody obsessed. In the Chinese tech world last week, it was ChatGPT. Maybe it was because of the holiday season, or maybe it was because ChatGPT is not currently available in China, but it took more than two months for the natural-language-processing chatbot to finally…

These startups hope to spray iron particles above the ocean to fight climate change

February 15, 2023
Within the next 18 months, a Palo Alto–based startup wants to begin releasing a small quantity of iron-rich particles into the exhaust stream of a shipping vessel crossing the open ocean.  Blue Dot Change hopes to determine whether the particles will accelerate the destruction of methane, one of the most powerful greenhouse gases in the…

Costanoa Ventures and Norrsken22 back Smile Identity in $20M Series B round

February 15, 2023

The importance of KYC and identity verification in an increasing fintech landscape like Africa’s cannot be overemphasized. As thousands of financial institutions serve millions of Africans, stringent regulatory requirements are needed to keep hackers and fraudsters at bay, which is why investor interest in startups offering KYC and identity verification services is intensifying. Smile Identity, […]

Costanoa Ventures and Norrsken22 back Smile Identity in $20M Series B round by Tage Kene-Okafor originally published on TechCrunch

Salesforce yields to activist pressure with harsh new policies for engineers, sales people

February 14, 2023

Salesforce is looking at new ways to cut costs as activist investors continue to put pressure on the company. Today Insider was reporting that the company is implementing much stricter performance measurements for engineering with some sales people being put under pressure to quit or succumb to harsh performance policies of their own. This is […]

Salesforce yields to activist pressure with harsh new policies for engineers, sales people by Ron Miller originally published on TechCrunch