Oct 28th
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
San Francisco, CA
The Latest
Yesterday, in a blog post, Grammarly announced that it would be discontinuing the Text Editor SDK, the developer tool that puts the company’s automated editing functionality into any app. The…
Startups
Amit Serper locks up IoT security flaws at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023
8:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
What do doorbells, smart plugs and pet feeders have in common? They’re just some of the billions of Internet of Things (IoT) devices vulnerable to hacks. These popular, often minimally…
Crypto
Crypto lending firm Celsius Network and its former CEO sued by SEC, CFTC, FTC
7:03 am PDT • July 13, 2023
The now-bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius Network and its former CEO and co-founder Alex Mashinsky faced several lawsuits on Thursday morning from three separate American entities: The U.S. Securities and…
Fintech
QED leads $7M round into startup that offers financing to SaaS businesses across US-South Asia corridor
7:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
There are a number of companies in the U.S. that offer revenue-based financing to SaaS companies, including Capchase, Pipe, Founderpath and Arc. But the options for South Asian companies are…
Government & Policy
China unveils provisional rules for generative AI, including a licensing regime
7:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
As the use cases of generative AI see explosive adaption, China has taken a leading role in defining how the rapidly changing technology should be used, including a licensing regime…
Apps
Apple’s password manager is compatible with third-party browsers in latest macOS beta
6:42 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Yesterday, Apple released the first public beta of macOS Sonoma — the next major update for macOS that will be available to everyone this fall. Following this update, Mac users…
Biotech & Health
Causaly, an AI platform for drug discovery and biomedical research, raises $60M
6:07 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Artificial intelligence has been a big theme in the world of health and medical research, and specifically in the area of drug discovery. Today, another hopeful in the space is…
Startups
Spline, a no-code design tool for creating 3D assets, raises $15M
6:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Spline, a no-code design tool for creating 3D assets, today announced that it raised $15 million in a seed round led by Gradient Ventures with participation from First Round Capital,…
Startups
Pearpop’s new ‘Boost Mode’ feature allows brands to turn content from creators into paid ads
6:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, announced today that it’s launching a new product called “Boost Mode.” The new feature allows brands on the platform to turn content posted by…
Hardware
Meet the 19-year-old MIT dropout ‘replacing gunpowder’ for the defense industry
6:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Silicon Valley loves its wunderkinds, but the same cannot be said of Washington, D.C., where the central mandate is not to take risks, but to de-risk. Or that’s how it’s…
Where we’ll be next
Jun 11th
StrictlyVC – Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
May 21st
StrictlyVC – London
London
AI
Google’s Bard and other AI chatbots remain under privacy watch in the EU
5:33 am PDT • July 13, 2023
As we reported earlier, Google’s AI chatbot Bard has finally launched in the European Union. We understand it did so after making some changes to boost transparency and user controls…
Fintech
Mattilda grabs another $19M, this time to expand beyond Mexico’s private schools
5:30 am PDT • July 13, 2023
In the past year, the company formed an exclusive commercial alliance with academic content platform Santillana, which services over 2 million students in Spanish-speaking Latin America.
Startups
Indian upskilling platform Skill-Lync cuts 20% jobs to ‘streamline operations’
5:19 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Skill-Lync, an Indian startup offering upskilling programs, has laid off 20% of its workforce — around 225 employees — to reduce operational costs amid the ongoing global funding crunch for…
Space
HawkEye 360’s new funding reflects ongoing investor appetite for defense-focused tech
5:17 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Virginia-based HawkEye 360 has closed $58 million in new funding, the latest sign that investor appetite for defense-heavy startups is nowhere close to slowing down. HawkEye operates a constellation of…
Featured Article
Ford picks up the pace on hands-off driving with BlueCruise 1.3 release
Ford is on a quest to ensure that its drivers keep their hands off the wheel for as long as possible. Drivers who own BlueCruise-equipped cars, anyway. Today, the company is announcing BlueCruise 1.3, dropping just a few months after the 1.2 release, which added niceties like automatic lane changes. For 1.3, BlueCruise will stay…
5:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Climate
Azolla Ventures hopes its new $239M climate fund will help founders take bigger risks
5:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
For every company that gets funded, dozens more are considered too risky by traditional investors. Azolla wants to change that.
Stability AI, the startup behind the image-generating model Stable Diffusion, is launching a new service that turns sketches into images. The sketch-to-image service, Stable Doodle, leverages the latest Stable Diffusion…
Startups
Secure Code Warrior lands $50M to educate developers on best cyber practices
5:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
In 2015, Pieter Danhieux and Matias Madou, both cybersecurity analysts, came to the realization that they wanted to provide a way to make software more secure by empowering developers with…
Apps
Apple removes AI-powered content generator impersonating Meta’s Threads app after it appeared in top charts
4:49 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Meta’s Twitter competitor Threads has been off to a great start — it gained 100 million sign-ups within five days of the launch. But with its absence in the EU,…
Security
Security flaws in Honeywell devices could be used to disrupt critical industries
4:00 am PDT • July 13, 2023
Security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in Honeywell devices used in critical industries that could, if exploited, allow hackers to cause physical disruption and potentially impact the safety of human…
