Fundraising | TechCrunch

CloudPay, a payroll services provider, lands $120M in new funding

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 22:20:26 +0000

In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several decades, adding workflow automation features to maintain pace with upstart rivals. It’s still growing, CFO Andy Thomson assures TechCrunch. Thomson claims that CloudPay is handling […]

Flint Capital raises a $160M through an unusual fund-raising strategy

Margaux MacColl — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Flint Capital just closed its third fund at $160 million. Its has a unique strategy for finding its limited partner investors.

AI business agent startup Bardeen pulls in strategic investment from Dropbox and HubSpot

Mike Butcher — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 11:05:47 +0000

Bardeen has raised $3M to build its platform that uses a natural language interface to automate repetitive knowledge work.

From Skims to Stripe, here are the startups that are likely — or definitely — not having IPOs this year

Rebecca Szkutak — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 22:05:00 +0000

Last year’s investor dreams of a strong 2024 IPO pipeline have faded, if not fully disappeared, as we settle in to the second half of the year. This year delivered four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April, which made it seem like this year could spur […]

Mechanical Orchard, led by ex-Pivotal CEO, scores $50M round led by Alphabet’s GV

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:43:55 +0000

Digital transformation — the process of transforming outdated apps and processes with cloud technologies and digital workflows — can be a risky undertaking. In 2023, Harvard Business Review reported that while 89% of large companies have a digital and AI transformation underway, they’ve only captured 31% of the expected revenue uplift and 25% of anticipated […]

Napkin turns text into visuals with a bit of generative AI

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Napkin wants to use generative AI to make turning text into visualizations as easy as clicking on a button and customizing the results.

Database startup Neon nabs a Microsoft investment

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In a sign that big tech companies are ready and willing to shell out cash for database tech, Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, on Wednesday announced that Microsoft’s venture arm M12 led a $25 million strategic investment in its business. The capital will go toward R&D, Neon co-founder […]

Ex-Clubhouse employees take another swing at a social networking startup

Dominic-Madori Davis — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

The ex-Clubhouse, Netflix employees raised $1.65M for an app that combines social media, networking, and dating.

Amazon upgrades its AI image generator

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:43:54 +0000

Amazon has released an upgraded version of its in-house image-generating model, Titan Image Generator, for AWS customers using its Bedrock generative AI platform. Simply called Titan Image Generator v2, the new model brings with it several new capabilities, AWS principal developer advocate Channy Yun explains in a blog post. Users can “guide” the images they […]

Who cut the plant-based cheese? Plonts did with microbes, and it’s stinky

Christine Hall — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:05:00 +0000

Plonts’ cheese is made from soybeans, one of the most efficient ways to grow protein. Soybeans themselves are not very flavorful, and that is where fermentation and aging, help Plonts to create flavor versus using natural flavors.

Hyperspace is using ‘domain-specific computing’ to accelerate database searches

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Hyperspace, a Tel Aviv-based startup, says its custom cloud instances for database searches can dramatically speed up queries.

German computer scientists raise $30 million to help companies make sense of their data

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

It’s not easy for organizations to become data-driven, despite the aspirations many have to get there. Even orgs with data analytics teams often struggle to make effective use of their data. According to a recent Gartner survey, fewer than half of data and analytics leaders say their teams are effective in providing value to their […]

UK’s Riverlane scores $75M to correct quantum errors

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 06:21:07 +0000

Quantum computing may still largely be in the theoretical domain, but the money that it’s attracting is very real.

Placer.ai boosts valuation to $1.5B after quietly raising another $75M

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 17:25:47 +0000

A startup developing AI market research based on location data, and backed by a who's who, has quietly raised, TechCrunch has learned.

38 startups have become unicorns so far in 2024: Here’s the full list

Dominic-Madori Davis — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

The list includes Elon Musk’s xAI, which is already valued at a staggering $24 billion, as well as a good number of other AI startups.

AI chip startup Groq lands $640M to challenge Nvidia

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Groq, a startup developing chips to run generative AI models faster than conventional processors, said on Monday that it has raised $640 million in a new funding round led by Blackrock. Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI and Samsung Catalyst Fund also participated. The tranche, which brings Groq’s total raised to over $1 billion […]

Even after $1.6B in VC money, the lab-grown meat industry is facing ‘massive’ issues

Christine Hall — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Any goal that puts cultivated meat in big box grocery stores or on fast food menus in the 2020s is “unrealistic,” according to experts.

Why Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy and other investors are scouring universities for founders

Tim De Chant — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 15:00:00 +0000

Investors are assisting startup founders earlier than ever in an effort to help them bridge the first climate tech valley of death.

Self-driving truck startup Aurora Innovation raises $483M in share sale ahead of commercial launch

Rebecca Bellan — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 23:38:36 +0000

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation was hoping to raise hundreds of millions in additional capital as it races toward a driverless commercial launch by the end of 2024. The company, which had arranged to sell up to $420 million worth of shares, exceeded its goal and raised $483 million. The newly raised funds come a little […]

Adept Materials’ dehumidifying paint was inspired by trees and semiconductors

Tim De Chant — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 17:46:03 +0000

The startup developed a two-material system that helps homes self-regulate their internal humidity.