December 26, 2024

This international surveillance project aims to protect wheat from deadly diseases

When Dave Hodson walked through wheat fields in Ethiopia in 2010, it seemed as if everything had been painted yellow. A rust fungus was in the process of infecting about one-third of the country’s wheat, and winds had carried its spores far and wide, coating everything in their path. “The fields were completely yellow. You’d…

Bluewhite rakes in $39M for robots-as-a-service that can be retrofitted to drive any tractor

January 23, 2024

Agriculture has a long heritage of being constantly disrupted by technology, an evolution that has continued to play out until today. In one of the latest developments, an Israeli startup called Bluewhite has picked up $39 million in funding to advance its own contribution to the field: autonomous robots that can be retrofitted to any […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Buy, Sell, or Hold These 3 Homebuilder Stocks?

January 23, 2024
The homebuilding industry is poised for substantial expansion, propelled by robust demand for housing properties. Given this backdrop, let’s assess the prospects of homebuilder stocks D.R. Horton (DHI), Hovnanian Enterprises…

How African startups raised funding in 2023

January 23, 2024

After defying the global funding slowdown of 2022, VC investments in African startups dropped considerably last year, mirroring the situation in other regions where capital taps were significantly turned off. The drop, however, was not unexpected as deals had become infrequent, and investors began to pull away in the months preceding the year. Data trackers […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

What’s next for robotaxis in 2024

January 23, 2024
In 2023, it almost felt as if the promise of robotaxis was soon to be fulfilled. Hailing a robotaxi had briefly become the new trendy thing to do in San Francisco, as simple and everyday as ordering a delivery via app. However, that dream crashed and burned in October, when a fatal accident in downtown…

The Ins and Outs of Final Salary Pensions

January 23, 2024
How do you envision your golden years? For many, it means traveling or just relaxing on sun-kissed beaches, free of the daily grind. Financial security, however, is crucial to a…

Sequoia backs Coana to help companies prioritise vulnerabilities using ‘code aware’ software analysi

January 23, 2024

Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) juggernaut Sequoia is backing a fledgling Danish startup to build a next-gen software composition analysis (SCA) tool, one that promises to help companies filter through the noise and identify vulnerabilities that are a genuine threat. For context, most software contains at least some open source components, many of which are […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

This town’s mining battle reveals the contentious path to a cleaner future

January 23, 2024
Minnesota’s Highway 210 threads through the tiny towns of Aitkin County, a poor and sparsely populated stretch of forests, lakes, and wetlands that reaches just into the northeastern corner of the state. A short drive off the highway, due south past the Tamarack Church, delivers you to Jackson’s Hole, the last remaining business in the…

Why does AI being good at math matter?

January 23, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week the AI world was buzzing over a new paper in Nature from Google DeepMind, in which the lab managed to create an AI system that can solve complex geometry problems.…

Open source vector database startup Qdrant raises $28M

January 23, 2024

Qdrant, the company behind the eponymous open source vector database, has raised $28 million in a Series A round of funding led by Spark Capital. Founded in 2021, Berlin-based Qdrant is seeking to capitalize on the burgeoning AI revolution, targeting developers with an open source vector search engine and database — an integral part of […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Byju’s seeks new funding at less than $2 billion valuation, a 90% drop

January 23, 2024

Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is willing to cut its valuation to below $2 billion as it hunts for new funding, a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, once India’s most valuable, is looking to raise $100 million to $300 million in new funding and edtech group’s chief executive Byju […]

© 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.