Author: TechCrunch News

SolarSquare has raised $40 million in a round led by Lightspeed in what is the largest venture round in India’s solar sector. The Mumbai-based startup bootstrapped and was profitable selling to corporate customers for five years before switching to residential solar in 2021. Now it has scaled to powering over 20,000 homes and 200 housing…

OpenAI has never revealed exactly which data it used to train Sora, its video-generating AI. But from the looks of it, at least some of the data might’ve come from Twitch streams and walkthroughs of games. Sora launched on Monday, and I’ve been playing around with it for a bit (to the extent the capacity…

University endowments could be taxed much higher under Trump. That may harm VCs, an investor warns. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

Andrew Ferguson, one of two Republican FTC commissioners appointed by U.S. President Joe Biden, will be the country’s next FTC chair, incoming president Donald Trump Tuesday on social media. The news is being met with relief in some circles. Current FTC Chair Lina Khan was blamed by many in Silicon Valley for a dearth of…

Electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle startup Joby Aviation has launched a public offering to sell up to $300 million of its shares of common stock, per a regulatory filing. Separately, Joby raised $222 million in October from underwriters. This latest filing adds to that offering and would give Joby the chance to raise a…

Generative AI has a plethora of well-documented misuses, and now, it appears to be cropping up in state influence operations. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

The OpenAI Startup Fund discloses its biggest SPV yet, but is staying quiet on what it’s for. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

Amazon says that it’s establishing a new R&D lab in San Francisco, the Amazon AGI SF Lab, to focus on building “foundational” capabilities for AI agents. The Amazon AGI SF Lab, which will be led by David Luan, the co-founder of AI startup Adept, will seek to build agents that can “take actions in the…

Mitchell Green worked variously in investment banking, as an analyst with Bessemer Venture Partners, and for a hedge fund backed by Tiger Management before striking out on his own in 2011. Going it alone was seemingly the right move. Green now manages money for more than 700 individuals who have committed $5 billion to his…

Age assurance, an umbrella term that refers to technologies for verifying, estimating, or inferring an internet user’s age, is being thrust into the global spotlight thanks to a blanket ban on social media use for people under 16 in Australia. The law, which is expected to come into force in Australia in November 2025…