Startups

Jess Murrey isn't your typical founder. After 10 years working in nonprofits to train young activists, Murrey and behavioral change researcher Alicia Clifton decided that mobile gaming could be an unexpected way to broaden their reach. And so, Wicked Saints was born. “American teens care very

Having a great founder/market fit is one of the key elements a potential investor will look at to choose whether or not to back a startup. Until AI-powered virtual travel agent app Mindtrip, I'd never met a company that seemed to be covering all of the bases in terms of founder team skills, so

The earth has seen a 69% decline in wildlife populations over the last 50 years. In the same amount of time, carbon emissions have increased by 90%. And while many venture firms have been created to fund the startups tackling the rise in carbon, the same couldn’t be said about biodiversity. U

Port's founders decided to build a developer portal, a central place for developers to find all the information about their development projects, at a good time. Companies have been recognizing the need for this tool, pushed in part by Spotify Backstage, an open source project released several

A year ago, Stabity AI, the London-based startup behind the open source image-generating AI model Stable Diffusion, quietly released Dance Diffusion, a model that can generate songs and sound effects given a text description of the songs and sound effects in question. Dance Diffusion was Stabity AI

Kolors, a Mexico City-based startup that connects intercity bus riders with bus drivers, is acquiring B2B van pooling provider Urbvan for $12 million cash, the company shared Wednesday. Kolors CEO and co-founder Rodrigo Martínez has said his service is like “if Uber and Southwest Airlines ha

As the IPO market slowly comes back to life, it’s becoming easier to understand just how far off the mark some startup valuations were back in 2021. Instacart had an impossible $39 billion valuation during the heyday of startup investments, but the delivery company is now nibbling its way tow

So many companies are using low-code and no-code tools these days to create apps and workflows. These tools are by design likely in the hands of non-technical end users, but the problem is that these folks might not know about basic rules around security and governance. Zenity, an early-stage Israe

CertifID, a startup developing fraud prevention tech for the real estate market, today announced that it raised $20 million in a funding round led by Arthur Ventures at “over double” its previous valuation. CertifID primarily develops products to fight wire fraud. The startup’s co

Like in many industries, there's an acute shortage of security guards. This means guards still on the job have to pull extra hours and are more likely to make mistakes because of fatigue. Ascento is stepping into the gap with autonomous security patrolling robots called Ascento Guards. Distingu

FunNow, the Taiwan-based app that lets users book activities on-demand in five Asian countries, is growing its reach in Southeast Asia through a merger with restaurant booking app Eatigo. Terms of the deal were undisclosed, but FunNow CEO TK Chen says it is the largest post-COVID O2O M&A deal i

Venture funding for battery recycling startups is popping off lately, and the latest to see the IRA-driven upside is Ascend Elements, which announced a massive $542 million in Series D funding on top of $480 million in earlier DoE grants. The eight-year-old company recycles lithium batteries into

Divvy Homes, the rent-to-own startup that gained attention and investment from Tiger Global and other high-profile investors, is laying off 94 employees. The layoffs — its third round in the past year — represents the latest blow to the real estate tech company, as mortgage interest rates have

"">Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here's a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn't cover on their own. This week in AI, d-Matrix, an AI chip s