Startups

In a surprising move, OpenAI today abruptly fired Sam Altman, its CEO and a member of its board of directors, and installed CTO Mira Murati as interim CEO. But who, exactly, is Mira Murati? Murati, who has a degree in mechanical engineering from Dartmouth College, previously worked as an intern at

Welcome to Startups Weekly. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. One of the most interesting stories on the site this week — both to me personally as a hardware and AI nerd and according to our “how many people read this story” tools — is Brian's meeting with the H

Good morning! All signs are pointing to a recovery in 2024, and that’ll be better for some than others. The past few years have seen investors propping up mediocre portfolio companies, hoping that a little boost can help them through a tough fundraising market. Full TechCrunc

AI is an interesting space to be in, especially with a few major players on the market. The name of the game for Fifth Dimension is to find strong points of differentiation from the general purpose AIs on the market and a strong go-to-market story that sets them apart. Does Fifth Dimension have tho

Cozy game, interior decorating app, learn-to-code primer or something in between, the interactive, 3D spaces builder known as Rooms has made its way to the App Store. The startup, which earlier raised $10 million in seed funding led by a16z, offers a way to design 3D spaces — its “rooms

Ehsan Vaghefi, CEO and co-founder of Toku, grew up with a blind father who lost eyesight at the age of four due to congenital glaucoma. As a result of this, his dad was involved with the Blind Foundation in his home country of Iran. Vaghefi says most of his childhood friends were either blind or ha

The founders of IRL, Abraham Shafi and Genrikh Khachatryan, are suing their investors, claiming that they intentionally sabotaged the company. At its peak, IRL was poised to become an event organizing alternative for Gen Z, who are using Facebook less and less. Shafi, the CEO, was s

Menlo Ventures has raised $1.35 billion in new capital that it plans to use in part “to support the forthcoming generation of AI startups,” the venture firm announced today. Notably and unsurprisingly, the firm is today quite bullish on the future of artificial intelligence, noting that it has

Merchants want to give their customers the best experience possible. However, when a delivery doesn't get there on time, or an order is wrong, you have to work with customer service to get a problem resolved. Adding artificial intelligence to the customer service layer enabled merchants to use

The future is going to be electric, but in the air and on the water that transition is proving more difficult than on land. Candela has taken a big step toward electrifying traditionally gas-powered institutions like ferries with its P-12, a hydrofoiling craft now in production that could make pass

The Australian government recently set new packaging regulations after an official review found just 18% of plastic packaging is recycled, falling far short of a 70% target by 2025. Refilled, a Sydney-based startup, wants to help with its smart drink dispensers, which are meant to be used with reus

Sophie Alcorn, attorney, author and founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley, California, is an award-winning Certified Specialist Attorney in Immigration and Nationality Law by the State Bar Board of Legal Specialization. Sophie is passionate about transcending borders, expanding opport

Anthym, a platform for employees to connect through personal memories and music taste, launched its latest product to make the onboarding process feel more personable for new hires. Dubbed “Welcome,” the offering expands Anthym's music-based team connection experience, launched last year at

When public market pressure started to affect venture capital in the spring of 2022, companies and VC firms weren’t prepared. Companies couldn't justify their valuations, and investors had to step in to keep their portfolio businesses afloat. But this focus on triaging wasn’t sustai