Vecna Robotics raises $14.5M and taps former Motional CEO to lead startup

Karl Iagnemma, an early pioneer in the autonomous vehicle industry who recently stepped down as president and CEO from Hyundai-backed Motional, is back in the AV and robotics game. Vecna Robotics, a Massachusetts-based startup that uses robots to handle materials in warehouses, has hired Iagnemma a

Patreon gets gift subscriptions in time for the holidays

Creator subscription platform Patreon is making it a bit easier for fans to support their favorite creators this holiday season. The creator membership platform announced on Wednesday that it will roll out gift subscriptions, as well as functionality for creators to offer discounts for membership s

Prosus eyes PayU IPO in 2025 after stellar Swiggy listing

Prosus aims to list fintech firm PayU in 2025 as the Dutch investor looks to shift more focus to India. On Wednesday it described the market as a pillar for its investment business after the stellar listing of food delivery and quick commerce firm Swiggy netted it gains of $2 billion.  PayU,

Fitbit's kids' smartwatch gets family group chats

Fitbit's Ace LTE, the smartwatch designed for ages 7+, is introducing new features to help families stay connected and get active together.  On Wednesday, Fitbit announced a slew of new features, including group chats, family quests, a new mini-game, and two new watch faces. There's also

DeepL launches DeepL Voice, real-time, text-based translations from voices and videos

DeepL has made a name for itself with online text translation it claims is more nuanced and precise than services from the likes of Google — a pitch that has catapulted the German startup to a valuation of $2 billion and more than 100,000 paying customers. Now, as the hype for AI services contin

After spending three years working on SMS verification at Zenly, Prelude founders want to fix SMS onboarding

Prelude is a relatively new French startup that focuses on SMS verification; it’s announcing new funding from Singular and Seedcamp on Wednesday. The two founders met when they were working for Zenly, a popular location-sharing app with tens of millions of users that was acquired by Snap (and

Just Eat Takeaway finally offloads Grubhub, sells to Wonder for $650M

Netherlands-based food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com said on Wednesday that it is selling its U.S. business Grubhub to New York-based Wonder Group in a deal valued at $650 million — a stark 91% less than the $7.3 billion Just Eat Takeaway paid for the company just four years ag

YouTube is testing a feature that lets select creators remix songs using AI

YouTube last year started letting select creators in the U.S. create AI-generated songs with prompts using the vocals of artists like Charlie Puth, Charli XCX, Demi Lovato, John Legend, Sia, T-Pain, and Troye Sivan. Now, the company is adding a feature to its Dream Track toolset that lets creators

India’s Swiggy defies weak market in largest 2024 tech IPO globally

Shares of Swiggy ended debut day up 10.67% at ?455.95 ($5.4) on Wednesday as the food-delivery and quick-commerce startup concluded India’s second-largest IPO this year. The closely watched listing makes the company a direct comparable for what analysts have long considered the benchmark In

Perplexity brings ads to its platform

AI-powered search engine Perplexity says it’ll begin experimenting with ads on its platform starting this week. The site will be showing ads in the U.S. to start, and they’ll be formatted as “sponsored follow-up questions,” (e.g. “How can I use LinkedIn to enhance my

Donald Trump announces Elon Musk will co-lead Department of Government Efficiency

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that Elon Musk will co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency, the acronym of which spells out DOGE, Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency. The CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and owner of X, Neuralink, and The Boring Company will lead the departmen

23andMe cuts 40% of staff in restructuring

23andMe announced on Monday it would cut 40% of its workforce, representing more than 200 employees, as part of a restructuring at the company. The genetic testing company is also discontinuing its therapeutics business and winding down its clinical trials; it expects these changes to save $35 mill

Anysphere acquires Supermaven to beef up Cursor

Anysphere, the company behind AI-powered code editor Cursor, has acquired AI coding assistant Supermaven for an undisclosed sum. Anysphere CEO Michael Truell announced the deal in a post on Cursor’s blog. Supermaven, he said, will enable Anysphere to launch a new version of its Tab AI m

Bluesky is benefitting from an exodus of unhappy X users following the election

X, formerly Twitter, is no longer the “digital town square” it once promised to be. Following the results of the U.S. presidential election, floods of users unhappy with the app’s latest direction are moving over to a competing app, Bluesky. Bluesky’s decentralized social m