Snap has introduced ray tracing technology to its AR Lens Studio for developers around the world, the company announced on Wednesday. Ray tracing is a technical capability that allows for realistic renderings of light and shine on AR artifacts. Snap has partnered with Tiffany & Co to launch the first Lens built with ray tracing. The Lens lets users try-on Tiffany Lock bracelets using AR and … [Read more...]

Manufacturers face a dizzying array of potential problems around the machines they produce, and it’s challenging to track down issues. This isn’t just nice to know. It’s crucial information, often tracked manually today by human auditors in spreadsheets. In some cases, failing to understand when there is a faulty part could result in costly recalls, and in the most extreme cases, deaths and … [Read more...]

Janky and Guggimon, ‘synthetic’ celebrities conceived in a studio and big on social platforms like TikTok and Instagram, where they exist as influencers with millions of followers, hyping up other brands, music acts and themselves, are soon coming to a streaming screen, and maybe a Whole Foods, near you. Superplastic, the startup that created and develops the characters, has raised $20 million led … [Read more...]

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed Elana Berkowitz, founding partner at Springbank Collective and an early-stage investor working to close the gender … [Read more...]

Alongside, a crypto index-focused platform, has closed an $11 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), the company exclusively told TechCrunch. “At a high level, we’re building what I describe as an on-chain Vanguard,” Austin Diamond, CEO and co-founder of Alongside, said to TechCrunch. “The goal is low-fee index products designed to enable total market exposure to crypto as a … [Read more...]

Layoffs. They’re everywhere throughout Silicon Valley. While it seems like every company is cutting, some industries are on an upward swing including cybersecurity. I’m excited to have Vanta CEO Christina Cacioppo, and Sequoia partner, Andrew Reed to speak on Vanta’s growth, particularly around hiring when everyone else is firing. Christina Cacioppo started Vanta in 2016 and raised $202.95 million … [Read more...]

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 company is announcing it’s taking that head start and building on … [Read more...]

Naked, a South African insurtech company that helps consumers to insure their cars, homes, and valuables, has raised $17 million in Series B funding led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The round welcomed participation from the German Development Finance Institution (DEG), and earlier investors, Yellowwoods and Hollard. The news follows the Naspers-led $11 million Series A round … [Read more...]

Getting a subscription service going and keeping it, complete with fulfillment and delivery, is complicated. Brands use technologies that can cause them to end up with double billing and delivery that the customer is then left to manage. Subscriptions are big business: The direct-to-consumer subscription market is forecasted to reach $478 billion by 2025. Companies like Upscribe and Rebill are … [Read more...]

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 and GGV Capital with additional funds contributed by Dell … [Read more...]

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 language models can hold incredibly coherent, … [Read more...]

Marvel’s top boss Kevin Feige thinks that the company might adjust its plans when it comes to releasing shows on Disney+ and space them out for better consumption. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Feige said that there is too much content on the internet and he wants Marvel stuff to stand out. “I do think one of the powerful aspects of being at Marvel Studios is having these films and … [Read more...]

Adobe’s proposed plan to snap up digital design rival Figma for $5 billion has attracted the attentions of the European Commission (EC), which announced today that the proposed merger “threatens to significantly affect competition in the market for interactive product design and whiteboarding software.” While the EC acknowledged that the transaction doesn’t meet the turnover thresholds set out in … [Read more...]

Ali Ahmed Contributor Ali Ahmed is a serial tech entrepreneur with expertise in on-demand delivery and robotics. More posts by this contributor How to win in the autonomous taxi space In the crypto world, there’s a popular maxim called the Blockchain Trilemma, which refers to the difficulty of simultaneously achieving three desirable properties … [Read more...]

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, as well as angel investors … [Read more...]

Customer experience firm Sprinklr has laid off roughly 4% of its global workforce — or more than 100 employees — as it realigns its headcount amid the ongoing economic slowdown. Sprinklr started the layoff drive last week and is cutting its workforce in India, U.S. and other regions, TechCrunch learned from people familiar with the matter and confirmed with the company through an email. A Sprinklr … [Read more...]

There are as many link-in-bio tools available for creators as the number of links they typically display on their pages. But there is one more addition to it. Sequoia-backed startup Bento is launching its tool to let users display their work in an elegant way across both desktop and mobile. Bento, which has been under closed beta for the last few months, is now accepting all users. Currently, the … [Read more...]

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, a … [Read more...]

It would appear that OpenAI’s Chat GPT allying with Bing will not going to be the only threat to Google’s search business model in the future. With its release of WhatsApp Business app (WAB), Meta are effectively building a sort of rival search engine to Google to keep us all inside the app. While this may not trouble US businesses too much – where iMessage retains the lion-share of messaging … [Read more...]

In 2024, a number of new EU regulations are expected to come into force, which will tighten the obligation of electric vehicle manufacturers and resellers to recycle batteries at the end of their natural lifespan. German battery recycling startup Cylib leapt at the opportunity, raising a total of €11.6 million ($12.6 million) to build a recycling factory. “For too long, battery recycling hasn’t … [Read more...]