Author: TechCrunch News

Paytm dropped 20% on Thursday before recovering slightly after the Indian financial services firm announced plans to issue fewer personal loans under 50,000 Indian rupees ($600), a move that has already started to rattle many fintech investors. Shares of Paytm were trading at 678 Indian rupees, down from 812 Indian rupees Wednesday afternoon. It dropped…

You might not be familiar with the name Tomorro, but it is actually not a new startup. Tomorro is a French contract management platform that originally started as Leeway. And today, the company is announcing its new brand and an $11.9 million funding round (€11 million). The reason why Leeway is becoming Tomorro is that…

Sarvam AI has come out of stealth mode and announced it has raised $41 million as the five-month old Indian startup races to build a suite of full-stack generative AI offerings. The $41 million funding raise is across the Seed and Series A financing rounds. Lightspeed led the Series A round, whereas it co-led the…

Navan, an expense management startup once known as TripActions, has laid off 5% of its staff, or 145 people, a spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch today. The Information first broke the news. “Navan has recorded strong growth over the past three years despite the challenges affecting our industry,” the spokesperson wrote via email, describing the cuts…

Elon Musk is looking to raise 1/44 of a Twitter for his AI company, xAI. In other words, the man behind Tesla, SpaceX and X is seeking $1 billion in funding for his next venture. According to an SEC filing, Musk has raised about $135 million so far from four unnamed investors, with the first…

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch. A source sent me a photo of a peculiar notebook received by someone who attended Google’s K&I Black Summit in August but only recently looked through the merchandise from the event. On the front of the Google-branded notebook given to its Black attendees is the summit’s name alongside the…

Mastercard is launching a new generative AI shopping tool called “Shopping Muse” that is designed to help users get personalized product recommendations. The tool is powered by Dynamic Yield, a personalization company that was acquired by Mastercard in April 2022. Mastercard says the idea behind Shopping Muse is to “revolutionize how customers search for and…

As if still-image deepfakes aren’t bad enough, we may soon have to contend with generated videos of anyone who dares to put a photo of themselves online: with Animate Anyone, bad actors can puppeteer people better than ever. The new generative video technique was developed by researchers at Alibaba Group’s Institute for Intelligent Computing. It’s…

Kodiak Robotics has unveiled its first autonomous test vehicle for the U.S. Department of Defense, a Ford F-150 pickup truck that the startup has upfitted with its software and sensor stack. The DOD is using the vehicle to test autonomous surveillance and reconnaissance missions in off-road terrain, diverse operational conditions and GPS-challenged environments. Kodiak won…

The U.K.’s Internet regulator has set out draft guidance for how porn sites will need to meet a newly introduced hard legal requirement to prevent children accessing adult content. So, yep, those years-in-the-making British age checks for porn sites are finally on the way. The watchdog intends this kind of bared flesh to be safety…