Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Apple launches its dedicated Apple Store app in India, allowing customers to purchase products, receive personalized shopping recommendations, and more — Apple launched its dedicated Apple Store app in India on Friday, deepening its retail presence in the world's most populous country …
Brian Heater / TechCrunch: Robotics company Symbotic agrees to take control of Walmart's automation business for $200M in cash and up to $350M in “additional contingent consideration” — Walmart and Symbotic announced a deal Tuesday that would find the Massachusetts robotics firm taking control of the mega-retailer's automation business.
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: Google agreed to buy 100K tons of CO2 removal credits from Indian startup Varaha for an undisclosed sum, marking its first deal with a carbon project in India — Google has agreed to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from Indian startup Varaha, its first such deal …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Mistral announces a content deal with the Agence France-Presse to improve answer accuracy in Le Chat, marking the French AI startup's first such partnership — Just a day after Google inked a deal with The Associated Press, Mistral is also announcing a content deal with the Agence France-Presse …
Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: Berlin-based Nelly, whose SaaS lets medical practices digitally onboard new patients, accept payments, and more, raised a €50M Series B led by Cathay Innovation — Nelly wants to become the biggest fintech startup in the healthcare industry. The Berlin-based startup is already working …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Synthesia, a London-based B2B startup building products around highly realistic AI avatar technology, raised a $180M Series D led by NEA at a $2.1B valuation — As the world continues to work through how to handle the explosion of deepfake content online, it seems that not all AI-created videos are stirring controversy.
Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch: LemFi, a financial and payment services platform designed for immigrants that claims to have over 1M active users, raised a $53M Series B led by Highland Europe — For many emerging market economies, remittances have become a lifeline. Inflows surpassed $669 billion in 2023 …
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Paris-based Bioptimus, which is developing a foundational AI model for biology, raised $41M led by Cathay Innovation, bringing its total raised to $76M — A fledgling French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology. — Just as OpenAI's ChatGPT …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Qventus, which builds AI-based tools to automate health care work, raised a $105M Series D, including $85M in equity and $20M in optional debt — Healthcare is proving to be one of the more lucrative industries for building AI solutions to speed up clinical, research and administrative operations.
TechCrunch: The UK plans to create geographic “AI Growth Zones” to fast-track AI infrastructure planning, says private tech firms have committed £14B for its AI plan — In 2023, the U.K. made a big song and dance about the need to consider the harms of AI, giving itself a leading role in the wider conversation around AI safety.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Sources: Indian investment app Groww plans to file for an IPO within 10-12 months, seeking a $6B-$8B valuation; Groww was last valued at $3B in October 2021 — Groww, India's largest retail stockbroker, is positioning itself to file for an IPO in 10-12 months and is seeking …
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: Matt Mullenweg deactivates the accounts of several WordPress.org members, some of whom have been leading a push to create a new fork of the open-source project — Automattic CEO and WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg has deactivated the accounts of several WordPress.org community members …
Julie Bort / TechCrunch: OpenAI's crawlers took down e-commerce site Triplegangers by relentlessly trying to scrape the entire site, whose robots.txt file was not properly configured — On Saturday, Triplegangers CEO Oleksandr Tomchuk was alerted that his company's e-commerce site was down.
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: The EU approves Synopsys' $35B Ansys acquisition, after the companies offered to divest parts of their businesses; US and China approvals are still pending — The European Commission (EC) has given the green light for Synopsys to acquire Ansys, though the companies must sell off various software products …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India is promoting RuPay, its homegrown card network, to challenge Visa and Mastercard, leveraging UPI, which now handles 13B+ real-time transactions monthly — As digital payments morph into strategic assets, India is offering a template for other nations seeking to reduce dependence on Western payment networks.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: X says it is rolling out labels for parody or satire accounts to differentiate them from others and boost transparency; accounts have to apply for the labels — X said today that it will now label parody or satire profiles to differentiate them from other accounts.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Court docs: Mark Zuckerberg approved the Meta team that trains AI Llama models to use data from LibGen, a “links aggregator” to pirated, copyrighted material — Counsel for plaintiffs in a copyright lawsuit filed against Meta allege that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave the green light …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: NYC-based Captions, an AI-powered video editing app, introduces a free tier with basic video editing tools, while keeping AI features in its $10/month Pro tier — Video editing app Captions is looking to cash in on uncertainty around TikTok and ByteDance's video editing app CapCut's future in the U.S. by turning to a freemium model.
Carly Page / TechCrunch: Ivanti warns that a zero-day in its widely-used Connect Secure VPN service has been exploited to compromise the networks of its corporate customers — U.S. software giant Ivanti has warned that a zero-day vulnerability in its widely-used enterprise VPN appliance has been exploited to compromise the networks of its corporate customers.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: xAI is testing a standalone iOS app for its chatbot Grok in several countries like the US, Australia, and India; Grok was available only to X users until now — Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, is testing out a standalone iOS app for its chatbot, Grok, which was available only to X users until now.
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Istanbul-based gaming startup Grand Games, maker of Magic Sort and Car Match, raised a $30M Series A led by Balderton, after securing a $3M seed in 2024 — Gaming startups, specifically those building casual mobile games, are very hot in Turkey right now, and today, another one is announcing …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Source: Flipkart hires Kabeer Biswas, co-founder of Dunzo, an Indian delivery startup that raised $500M+, to lead its quick commerce business, Flipkart Minutes — Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, the co-founder of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce group expands its quick-commerce business in the country.
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Whatnot, which lets users sell comics and other items through live videos, raised a $265M Series E at a $4.97B valuation, and says its annual GMV passed $3B — Whatnot, the platform that allows users to sell items such as trading cards, comics, and sneakers through live videos …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Dublin-based payments startup NomuPay, formed in 2023 from some of Wirecard's regional payment licenses, raised a $37M Series B at a $200M valuation — Wirecard, a German fintech that raised hundreds of millions of dollars only to collapse in 2020 in a sea of scandal and insolvency …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: Jensen Huang says Nvidia's AI chips are improving faster than Moore's Law, claiming that today's Nvidia AI chips are 1,000x better than those made 10 years ago — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the performance of his company's AI chips is advancing faster than historical rates set by Moore's Law …
Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Meta will lift restrictions on “topics that are part of mainstream discourse”, like immigration and gender, and focus on “illegal and high-severity violations” — Meta, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, today announced a major overhaul …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Avataar releases Velocity, a generative AI tool that creates product videos based on a product link, says HP, Victoria's Secret, and others are using the tool — Generative AI models have reached a baseline capability of producing at least a passable video from a single image or short sentence.
Margaux MacColl / TechCrunch: A profile of headhunter Peterson Conway, who worked with Palantir and other Silicon Valley defense and hard tech firms and is now the talent head at VC firm A* — In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Sam Altman says OpenAI is currently losing money on its ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 per month, because “people use it much more than we expected” — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that the company is currently losing money on its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan because people are using it more than expected
Anthony Ha / TechCrunch: Amit Yoran, the CEO of cybersecurity company Tenable, passed away after a battle with cancer; he previously held a number of roles, including president of RSA — Longtime entrepreneur and cybersecurity executive Amit Yoran passed away Friday after a battle with cancer.
Charles Rollet / TechCrunch: Inside the fall and last-minute revival of accounting startup Bench, which struggled with implementing automation tools and faced tumult in its executive suite — Friday, December 27, was supposed to be the start of a relaxing holiday weekend. — But it was chaos for thousands …
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch: Filing: Dara Khosrowshahi resigns from self-driving truck startup Aurora's board, to focus on his job as Uber CEO and reduce external board commitments — Dara Khosrowshahi is resigning from the board of autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation, citing a desire to focus …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: PitchBook: generative AI companies worldwide raised $56B from VCs in 2024 across 885 deals, up 192% from 2023, with startups outside the US raising just $6.2B — If there was any doubt, the generative AI bubble didn't burst in 2024. — Investments in generative AI, which encompasses …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: Sources: Apple and Google removed over six VPN apps, including Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1, from their Indian app stores after the government issued removal orders — More than half-a-dozen VPN apps, including Cloudflare's widely-used 1.1.1.1, have been pulled from India's Apple App Store …
Lauren Forristal / TechCrunch: Spotify debuts a Partner Program in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, letting popular podcast hosts monetize video content, after announcing it in November — Spotify announced Thursday the launch of its new “Partner Program” that lets popular podcast hosts monetize their video content.
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: In 2024, warning calls about catastrophic AI risks were drowned out by the tech industry's promotion of a practical and prosperous vision of generative AI — For several years now, technologists have rung alarm bells about the potential for advanced AI systems to cause catastrophic damage to the human race.
Connie Loizos / TechCrunch: Q&A with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev about the company's aggressive plans for 2025, including competing with prediction markets like Kalshi — Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has a lot to celebrate this holiday season. After a bumpy few years following Robinhood's 2021 IPO …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: St. Louis-based tech services company World Wide Technology agrees to acquire Canadian IT provider Softchoice in an all-cash deal valuing Softchoice at ~CA$1.8B — One last mega-deal closed out an eventful 2024. — On Tuesday, World Wide Technology (WWT), a tech services company based in St. Louis …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India extends a deadline for implementing a 30% cap on any company's share of transactions on UPI payments network, providing relief to Google Pay and PhonePe — India has once again pushed back a contentious plan to limit big technology companies' control of the nation's digital payments system …
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: India removes a 100M user cap on WhatsApp Pay, letting Meta roll out the mobile payments service to all of its 500M+ users in the country — India has removed restrictions on WhatsApp's mobile payments service in a significant victory for Meta in its largest market by users as it seeks to compete with entrenched fintech rivals.
Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: Letter: the US Treasury says China-backed hackers gained access to some Treasury workstations and unclassified docs; a vendor notified it of the hack on Dec. 8 — The U.S. Treasury told lawmakers in a letter Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack earlier in December, which the department has attributed to Chinese government hackers.
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: DeepSeek-V3 sometimes identifies itself as ChatGPT when asked which model it is; some speculate that its training datasets may contain text generated by ChatGPT — Earlier this week, DeepSeek, a well-funded Chinese AI lab, released an “open” AI model that beats many rivals on popular benchmarks.
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Bluesky launches a Trending Topics feature in beta on its desktop and mobile apps in English, and says users' muted words will transfer to Trending — Social network Bluesky said on Christmas that it is testing a trending topics view. The trending topics are visible both on the desktop …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: OpenAI's o3 performance on benchmarks suggests that test-time compute is the next best way to scale AI models, raising new questions about costs and usage — Last month, AI founders and investors told TechCrunch that we're now in the “second era of scaling laws,” noting how established methods …
Anna Heim / TechCrunch: Balderton Capital and Dealroom: European AI startups attracted 25% of the region's VC funding, or ~$13.7B, in 2024, compared to 15% in 2020 — Venture funding into Europe is heading for a flat year, but this may obfuscate the fact that European AI startups are thriving.
Manish Singh / TechCrunch: X raises US Premium+ prices by 37.5% to $22 per month, starting on December 21, and EU prices from €16 to €21 per month; the basic subscription still costs $3 — X is raising prices for its top-tier subscription service, Premium+, by 37.5% to $22 a month, marking …
Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: OpenAI details “deliberative alignment”, a new method it used to make o1 and o3 “think” about its safety policy before responding, to improve overall alignment — OpenAI announced a new family of AI reasoning models on Friday, o3, which the startup claims to be more advanced …
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Donald Trump announces that Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at a16z, will serve as senior policy advisor for AI at the White House OSTP — Incoming president Donald Trump has confirmed reports that Sriram Krishnan, until recently a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz …
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Bluesky updates its app to include a separate mentions tab in notifications, protections against username squatting, and new controls for replies sorting — Social network Bluesky has released a new update to its app that includes a separate mentions tab in notifications …
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch: Sources: Anysphere, developer of GitHub Copilot rival Cursor, raised a $100M Series B at a $2.6B valuation, up from a $400M valuation in August 2024 — Anysphere, the developer of AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, raised $100 million Series B at a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.