Author: TechCrunch News

India’s ePlane Company has raised $14 million in a Series B round as it plans to commercialize its air taxi in 2026. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

Startup inspiration can strike anywhere. But for Atlas.co*, a freemium browser-based, real-time mapping tool that’s being built by an Oslo, Norway-based team of (initially student) engineers, the realization that there might be a business opportunity in competing with expensive legacy mapping software hit the founders during class…

AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’ll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week. The site will start showing ads in the U.S. to start, and they’ll be formatted as “sponsored follow-up questions.” (E.g., “How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my job search?”) These ads will be positioned to the side of…

Shares of Swiggy surged 7% to ₹440 on Wednesday as the food-delivery and quick-commerce startup concluded India’s second-largest IPO this year. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

Qwant, France’s privacy-focused search engine, and Ecosia, a Berlin-based not-for-profit search engine that uses ad revenue to fund tree planting and other climate-focused initiatives, are joining forces on a joint venture to develop their own European search index. The pair hopes this move will help drive innovation in their respective search engines — including and…

Equal, an Indian startup founded by Keshav Reddy, has raised $10M in its maiden funding round led by Prosus Ventures to scale identity verification and financial data sharing. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

The PRESS Act would protect a journalist’s sources, and gained unanimous bipartisan support when passed by the House in January. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

OpenAI’s next flagship model might not represent as big a leap forward as its predecessors, according to a new report in The Information. Employees who tested the new model, code-named Orion, reportedly found that even though its performance exceeds OpenAI’s existing models, there was less improvement than they’d seen in the jump from GPT-3 to…

New code introduced in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system could make it more difficult for both police and thieves to unlock iPhones. 404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that phones being stored for forensic examination seemed to be rebooting themselves — something that security experts confirmed…

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re unpacking the latest layoffs at Mozilla, Perplexity offering to cross a picket line, and Apple warning investors that it might never top the iPhone. Let’s get into it. The Mozilla Foundation laid off 30% of its employees in the second round of layoffs for the Firefox…