PQShield secures $37M more for ‘quantum resistant’ cryptography

December 19, 2024

Accelerating AI innovation through application modernization

Business applications powered by AI are revolutionizing customer experiences, accelerating the speed of business, and driving employee productivity. In fact, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan’s 2024 Global State of AI report, 89% of organizations believe AI and machine learning will help them grow revenue, boost operational efficiency, and improve customer experience. Take for…

June 20, 2024

Malicious hacking is getting increasingly sophisticated, and that’s leading to a very clear trend in security technology. To keep people and organizations safe, security also has to continue advancing its own complexity. Security startup PQShield has gotten an early start on that concept with a focus on “post-quantum” cryptography: software and hardware solutions that, in […]

Hero wants to save the day for companies facing a working capital crunch

June 20, 2024

Hero, a new fintech startup based in Paris, is announcing an €11.3 million all-equity funding round led by Valar Ventures ($12.2 million at today’s exchange rate). For the past couple of years, the company has been quietly building an ambitious banking product for small companies that can essentially replace everything you’d expect from a traditional […]

‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees

June 20, 2024

Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. This way, anyone in the company can solicit help with legal […]

General Catalyst makes India push with Venture Highway merger

June 20, 2024

General Catalyst, a Silicon Valley venture capital group, is expanding its presence in India by joining forces with a local venture firm and earmarking more than $500 million for investments in the world’s most populous nation. The U.S. venture capital group is merging with Venture Highway, an India-based firm whose investments include social commerce startup […]

France leads the pack for Generative AI funding in Europe, London has 3X the number of GenAI startups

June 19, 2024

Like it or hate it, artificial intelligence – especially generative AI – is the technology story of 2024. OpenAI, with its rollouts of viral services like ChatGPT and billions in funding, may have gobbled up the lion’s share of attention and money so far. But according to a new report out from top VC Accel […]

C12, the French quantum computing startup founded by two twin brothers, raises $19.4 million

June 19, 2024

C12 is announcing that it recently raised an €18 million funding round ($19.4 million at today’s exchange rate). Originally founded in 2020 as a spin-off from the Physics Laboratory of the École Normale Supérieure, the company has been working on a unique process to create quantum computers based on carbon nanotubes. While the concept of […]

Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI’s former chief scientist, launches new AI company

June 19, 2024

Ilya Sutskever, one of OpenAI’s co-founders, launches Safe Superintelligence (SSI), just a month after leaving OpenAI.

Internal SpaceX documents show the sweet stock deals offered to investors like a16z, Gigafund

June 19, 2024

Like many highly valued startups, SpaceX sometimes allows its employees to cash out some of their shares by selling to company-authorized outside investors. TechCrunch has gotten a peek at an internal SpaceX document about such a tender offer from May 2022. Musk posted on X last month that SpaceX holds such sales for employees about […]

This Week in AI: Generative AI is spamming up academic journals

June 19, 2024

Hiya, folks, and welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. This week in AI, generative AI is beginning to spam up academic publishing — a discouraging new development on the disinformation front. In a post on Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks recent retractions of academic studies, assistant professors of philosophy Tomasz Żuradzk and Leszek Wroński […]

In spite of hype, many companies are moving cautiously when it comes to generative AI

June 19, 2024

Companies are extremely interested in generative AI as vendors push potential benefits, but turning that desire from a proof of concept into a working product is proving much more challenging.

Accelerating AI innovation through application modernization