United States
The latest startup and technology news coming out of the United States.
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…
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…
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…
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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…
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…
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…
Restaurant365 orders in $175M at $1B+ valuation to supersize its food service software stack
Restaurant365, which offers a restaurant management suite, has raised a hot $175M from ICONIQ Growth, KKR and L Catterton.
Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say
Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported…
Apple touts stopping $1.8B in App Store fraud last year in latest pitch to developers
Apple released new data about anti-fraud measures related to its operation of the iOS App Store on Tuesday morning, trumpeting a claim that it stopped over $7 billion in “potentially…
From Miles Grimshaw to Eva Ho, venture capitalists continue to play musical chairs
When Keith Rabois announced he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures in January, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital ecosystem — and…
Infighting among fintech players has caused TabaPay to ‘pull out’ from buying bankrupt Synapse
A dust-up between Evolve Bank & Trust, Mercury and Synapse has led TabaPay to abandon its acquisition plans of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse.
Fika Ventures co-founder Eva Ho will step back from the firm after its current fund is deployed
Eva Ho plans to step away from her position as general partner at Fika Ventures, the Los Angeles-based seed firm she co-founded in 2016. Fika told LPs of Ho’s intention…
Despite recent successes, IPO market still won’t fully open until 2025
Experts say macroeconomic factors including the upcoming election and the current state of the economy will deter too many IPOs this year.
Alliance DAO is attracting fewer US founders amid crypto crackdown
The graduates of Alliance DAO are often useful indicators of investor appetite and user adaption trends within the crypto space. The latest batch of the stage-agnostic crypto accelerator, unveiled today,…
Midi is building a digital platform for an oft-overlooked area of women’s health
When Joanna Strober was around 47, she stopped sleeping. While losing sleep is a common symptom of perimenopause, she first had to go to multiple providers, including driving 45 minutes…
