North America
The latest startup and technology news coming out of North America.
Revel to lay off 1,000 staff ride-hail drivers, saying they’d rather be contractors anyway
New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business.…
Google’s updated AI-powered NotebookLM expands to India, UK and over 200 other countries
Google on Thursday said it is rolling out NotebookLM, its AI-powered note-taking assistant, to over 200 new countries, nearly six months after opening its access in the U.S. The platform,…
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Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player
Amazon has agreed to acquire key assets of Indian video streaming service MX Player from the local media powerhouse Times Internet, the latest step by the e-commerce giant to make its services and brand popular in smaller cities and towns in the key overseas market. The two firms reached a…
Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, is bringing its autonomous vehicles to more cities. The self-driving technology company announced Wednesday plans to begin testing in Austin and Miami this summer. The two…
Whizz wants to own the delivery e-bike subscription space, starting with NYC
New York City, home to over 60,000 gig delivery workers, has been cracking down on cheap, uncertified e-bikes that have resulted in battery fires across the city. Some e-bike providers…
When foes become friends: Capital One partners with fintech giants Stripe, Adyen to prevent fraud
The tension between incumbents and fintechs has existed for decades. But every once in a while, the two groups decide to put their competition aside and work together. In an…
Deal Dive: How (Re)vive grew 10x last year by helping retailers recycle and sell returned items
The fashion industry has a huge problem: Despite many returned items being unworn or undamaged, a lot, if not the majority, end up in the trash. An estimated 9.5 billion…
Feds tell Zoox to send more info about autonomous vehicles suddenly braking
U.S. federal regulators have requested more information from Zoox, Amazon’s self-driving unit, as part of an investigation into rear-end crash risks posed by unexpected braking. The National Highway Traffic Safety…
When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on which billboards he could see out the car window.…
Former teen model co-created app Frich to help Gen Z be more realistic about finances
As a teen model, Katrin Kaurov became financially independent at a young age. Aleksandra Medina, whom she met at NYU Abu Dhabi, also learned to manage money early on. The…
Fertility remains a pressing concern around the world — birthrates are down in many countries, and infertility rates (that is, the inability to conceive) are up. Rhea, a Singapore- and…
Iyris makes fresh produce easier to grow in difficult climates, raises $16M
Agritech company Iyris helps growers across eleven countries globally increase crop yields, reduce input costs, and extend growing seasons.
Chinese EV makers, and their connected vehicles, targeted by new House bill
Chinese EV manufacturers face a new challenge in their pursuit of U.S. customers: a new House bill that would limit or ban the introduction of their connected vehicles. The bill,…
The demise of BaaS fintech Synapse could derail the funding prospects for other startups in the space
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re looking at the long-term implications of Synapse’s bankruptcy on the fintech sector, Majority’s impressive ARR milestone, and more! To get a roundup of…
Félix Pago raises $15.5 million to help Latino workers send money home via WhatsApp
Remittances from workers in the U.S. to their families and friends in Latin America amounted to $155 billion in 2023. With such a huge opportunity, banks, money transfer companies, retailers,…
EU’s ChatGPT taskforce offers first look at detangling the AI chatbot’s privacy compliance
A data protection taskforce that’s spent over a year considering how the European Union’s data protection rulebook applies to OpenAI’s viral chatbot, ChatGPT, reported preliminary conclusions Friday. The top-line takeaway…
Here’s a shoutout to LatAm early-stage startup founders! We want YOU to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. But you’d better hurry — time is running…
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Synapse, backed by a16z, has collapsed, and 10M consumers could be hurt
Synapse’s bankruptcy shows just how treacherous things are for the often-interdependent fintech world when one key player hits trouble.
AI tutors are quietly changing how kids in the US study, and the leading apps are from China
Evan, a high school sophomore from Houston, was stuck on a calculus problem. He pulled up Answer AI on his iPhone, snapped a photo of the problem from his Advanced…
Truecaller partners with Microsoft to let its AI respond to calls in your own voice
AI has already started replacing voice agents’ jobs. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace the existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, the widely known…
VCs wanted FarmboxRx to become a meal kit, the company bootstrapped instead
Some startups choose to bootstrap from the beginning while others find themselves forced into self funding by a lack of investor interest or a business model that doesn’t fit traditional…
Contour Venture Partners, an early investor in Datadog and Movable Ink, has raised $42M for its fifth fund
Longtime New York-based seed investor, Contour Venture Partners, is making progress on its latest flagship fund. The firm closed on $42 million, raised from 64 backers, for Contour Venture Partners…
Deal Dive: Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century
When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying…
A US Trustee wants troubled fintech Synapse to be liquidated via Chapter 7 bankruptcy, cites ‘gross mismanagement’
The prospects for troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have gone from bad to worse this week after a United States Trustee filed an emergency motion on Wednesday. The trustee is asking…
Winston Chi, Butter’s founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that “most parties, including our investors and us, are making money” from the exit.
Khosla Ventures, Pear VC triple down on Honey Homes, a smart way to hire a handyman
There’s apparently a lot of demand for an on-demand handyperson. Khosla Ventures and Pear VC have just tripled down on their investment in Honey Homes, which offers up a dedicated…
YC-backed Recall.ai gets $10M Series A to help companies use virtual meeting data
More money for the generative AI boom: Y Combinator-backed developer infrastructure startup Recall.ai announced Thursday it has raised a $10 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to over…
Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms come with an environmental cost as wind turbines can…
Alkira connects with $100M for a solution that connects your clouds
Alkira has raised $100M for its “network infrastructure as a service,” which lets users virtualize and orchestrate hybrid cloud assets, and manage them.
Meet PayHOA, a profitable and once-bootstrapped SaaS startup that just landed a $27.5M Series A
PayHOA, a previously bootstrapped Kentucky-based startup that offers software for self-managed homeowner associations (HOAs), is an example of how real-world problems can translate into opportunity. It just raised a $27.5…
