Oct 28th
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
San Francisco, CA
The Latest
Over a year following the inaugural season of “Shark Tank India,” the seven esteemed investors made good on less than half of their investment pledges, according to a new analysis,…
Transportation
Former NHTSA head blasts Cruise’s ‘Humans are terrible drivers’ ad
5:00 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
A former administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has responded to a full-page ad taken out in several major newspapers by Cruise, General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary, that…
Venture
Forerunner Ventures sees a future full of ‘digitally native franchises’
4:56 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
Forerunner Ventures first made its name in the venture world by betting on once-nascent startups like Jet, Bonobos and Glossier when it was far easier to build a digitally native…
Basecamp, one of the widely used project management tools first released in 2004, is now available to users in India with special reduced pricing that is as low as about…
AI
Meta releases Llama 2, a more ‘helpful’ set of text-generating models
4:08 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
The generative AI landscape grows larger by the day. Today, Meta announced a new family of AI models, Llama 2, designed to drive apps such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bing Chat…
Samsung’s never been great with a secret. At some point the company leaned into the unceasing deluge of leaks by teasing out its big products ahead of launch. Since then,…
AI
Maybe showing off an AI-generated fake TV episode during a writers’ strike is a bad idea
3:35 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
The ongoing strike of creatives in TV and film, plus the nascent threat of AI-based writing and effects, make it a complicated time to work in show business. But little…
Social
Threads update adds translation and a flurry of minor improvements
3:30 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
Threads exploded onto the crowded scene of aspiring Twitter rivals earlier this month, but it’s still very early days for the Instagram-adjacent text-first social network. Meta released an update to…
A backer of the Lensa AI app, which sent AI-generated images from Stable Diffusion rocketing into mainstream social media, has just exited a company for a substantial amount of money,…
Apps
TikTok launches its music streaming service in Australia, Mexico and Singapore
3:00 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
TikTok is launching its new subscription-only music streaming service called “TikTok Music” in Australia, Mexico and Singapore. Today’s expansion comes almost two weeks after TikTok debuted the music streaming service…
Where we’ll be next
Jun 11th
StrictlyVC – Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
May 21st
StrictlyVC – London
London
One day after competitor Corsair announced that it acquired mechanical keyboard maker Drop, Logitech has revealed a big purchase of its own. The accessory giant just bought Loupedeck, a Helsinki-based…
Social
AO3 was offline a week ago, but there’s still a fandom brewing in the Downdetector comments
2:17 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
It was an internet nerd’s worst nightmare. On July 10, Archive of Our Own (AO3), a beloved, nonprofit fan-fiction platform, was plagued by DDoS attacks, rendering it inaccessible for over…
Media & Entertainment
Cameo announces more layoffs as celebrity greeting market shrinks
1:36 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
Cameo, a website for ordering video greetings from celebrities, is downsizing again. The Chicago startup, which was valued at more than $1 billion in 2021, intends to lay off 80…
Startups
As growth becomes more elusive, a new set of software product benchmarks emerges
1:00 pm PDT • July 18, 2023
The yardstick for measuring performance has changed, but changing startup performance standards mean that we need a new baseline for ‘fast growth.’
IPOs today are getting outsized attention and interest — and we haven’t even broken the seal with venture-backed tech companies yet.
AI
Meta launches an AI research community but devotes few resources to it
11:29 am PDT • July 18, 2023
Angling to stay relevant in the exploding AI field, Meta is launching a new organization, the Open Innovation AI Research Community, to foster what it describes as “transparency, innovation and…
Crypto
Crypto is known for financial use cases, but how can it grow from there?
11:21 am PDT • July 18, 2023
To help keep track of nonfinancial use cases for crypto, Polygon Labs released The Value Prop, a database of the various ways web3 can be implemented.
Apps
Instagram is making it easier to create Reels with the app’s templates
11:18 am PDT • July 18, 2023
Instagram announced today that it’s introducing updates to its Reels templates to make it even easier for users to create engaging short-form videos, as the social media giant continues to…
Startups
TechCrunch+ Roundup: Firing yourself as CEO, board deck basics, venture debt explained
10:52 am PDT • July 18, 2023
Feeling pretty confident about the marketing slides you’ve prepared for your upcoming board meeting? If so, you may be on the wrong track.
AI
Thousands of authors sign letter urging AI makers to stop stealing books
10:39 am PDT • July 18, 2023
If you ask GPT-4 to do a passage in the style of Carmen Machado or Margaret Atwood or Alexander Chee, it will do a fair job at it, and for…
