Author: TechCrunch News

Early Thursday morning, excited AfroTech attendees shuffled into a conference room to see one thing: Hannah Bronfman, a noted angel investor who has more than 1 million followers on social media, in conversation with Blavity founder and CEO Morgan DeBaun.  Bronfman is a wellness content creator…

Many startups and larger tech companies have taken a crack at building artificial intelligence to code software. Now, another new player is coming out of the shadows to throw its hat into the ring, with a mission to fix the many problems that will arise when humans and all those AIs are all writing code…

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…