NFX-backed Pepper Bio Emerges from stealth with tools to hone in on complex diseases

There's a clear pain point when it comes to drug discovery: Depending on which study you cite, creating an approved drug costs anywhere from $985 million to $2.6 billion. And R&D returns have rebounded to only about 2.5% in 2020, up from a low of 1.6% in 2019. Not to mention the fact that d

Clarifai moves beyond computer vision to manage companies' unstructured data

Clarifai wants to bring artificial intelligence into the lives of developers, business operators and data scientists so they can automate and accelerate their model development. Matt Zeiler founded the New York-based company in 2013 focused on computer vision. Since its $30 million Series B in 2016

3 steps tech innovators can take to create a more equal society

The technology sector is filled with amazing examples of innovation and collaboration coming together to make the world a better, more accessible place for people with disabilities. For example, hearing aids empower millions of people to perceive once-unimaginable sounds, and today's next-gener

Instacart shopper activists are going on strike

On Saturday, some Instacart shoppers will go on strike, protesting the company’s low pay and lack of communication with its laborers. The action is led by the Gig Workers Collective, formed in early 2020, though Instacart shoppers have organized several walk-offs since 2016. At the onset of C

Continuum unveils its on-demand access marketplace for top-tier executive talent

It's difficult for startups on a small budget to attract executives with the knowledge base to propel them forward, but Continuum, a talent marketplace for fractional employees, doesn't think it should be. The remote-first company, which launched today, has been quietly developing a tool th

Tesla debuts new car insurance that uses Texans’ real-time driving behavior

Tesla now offers car insurance in Texas, its new home state, a couple of years after launching the product in California. According to Electrek, though, the insurance available to Texans is quite different than the one owners can get in The Golden State: It calculates for a customer’s insuran

Clubhouse gives musicians a new high-quality audio mode

Clubhouse added a new “music mode” this week, doubling down on its commitment to centering social audio in all its permutations. The new music mode will give musicians who play live on the social network their own special set of tools to optimize sound quality and will hit iOS first bef

The venture bull market is great for founders, but not in the way they might expect

It seems there’s news every day about startup funding reaching record highs, new unicorns being minted and tech firms going public. There’s no question that we are in the middle of a long-running and accelerating venture bull market. All of this impresses upon us that every indicator in

Core might be the Vegas of the metaverse

A self-described “endless arcade,” Core feels like a 90s cyberpunk fever dream come to life. Half playable game library, half no-code game creator, all neon lights, the new platform is a surprisingly well-realized vision of this metaverse thing everyone sure seems to be talking about lately. Bi

Daily Crunch: Citing regulatory restrictions, Microsoft shuts down LinkedIn in China

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 14, 2021. It's Thursday, which means that the news cycle spent the day trying to expend itself before Friday dw

McDonald's will serve Beyond Meat McPlant burgers in select US locations next month

After announcing a deal with Beyond Meat back in February, McDonald's this morning announced that it is set to start selling plant-based Beyond Meat burgers in select locations next month. Starting November 3, the McPlant will be available at eight of the fast food giant's restaurants, incl

Reliable Robotics lifts $100M to take autonomous cargo planes where none have gone before

When flying cargo from one part of the world to another, you typically need a pilot for two parts: The take-off and the landing. As so elegantly outlined in the 1980 Jim Abrahams movie !Airplane — the rest of the time, you’re pretty much on instruments. Reliable Robotics is aiming to so

Female Founders Alliance raises a $10M fund, renames to Graham & Walker

Starting as a Facebook support group for founders, the Female Founders Alliance community has done a lot of evolving and changing since its inception. Today, it announces a name change and the fact that it’s started writing checks out of its inaugural fund. With $10 million to play with, the

Google brings its 3D ‘Pocket Gallery’ art exhibition experiences to the web

Google's Arts & Culture team launched its “Pocket Gallery” experiences in 2018 to allow AR-enabled smartphone users to view artwork from artists like Johannes Vermeer for the first time in history, including pieces that are usually inaccessible publicly. Today, the team announce