Startups are getting fined, or sometimes banned, by individual states

In 2022, Carta’s business license was revoked in Illinois for failing to pay franchise tax, a tax on national corporations doing business in the state, according to state records seen by technewss. In 2024, Washington state terminated cap table software Pulley’s business license, accor

For security, stop picking up the phone

How do you know that the person on the other end of a phone call is really who they say they are?  Earlier in July, a Ferrari executive was flooded with a barrage of WhatsApp messages that appeared to come from his boss, the carmaker’s CEO, Benedetto Vigna. But the Ferrari executive did

How a viral AI image catapulted a Mexican startup to a major Adidas contract

Antonio Nuño, Fatima Alvarez, and Enrique Rodriguez have been friends since they were five years old. As teenagers, they became volunteers helping indigenous communities — first in Mexico, then in other countries — and saw that many of the women were artisans.  The trio came to r

Second Byju’s auditor exits in a year amid bankruptcy proceedings

BDO, the auditor for Indian edtech startup Byju’s, has resigned with immediate effect, marking the second auditor departure for the embattled startup in about a year and further intensifying concerns about its financial health and governance. In a scathing resignation letter, BDO subsidiary

The maiden voyage of Blue Origin’s massive new rocket won’t be for NASA

The world will have to wait a little longer to see Blue Origin’s massive New Glenn rocket fly for the first time. That rocket had been scheduled to launch two spacecraft to Mars for NASA during an eight-day window that opens on October 13. But NASA announced on Friday that it was pushing the

How a cold email to a VC helped salon software startup Mangomint raise $35M

Back in 2017, Daniel Lang, Dan Poineau and Sandra Huber came together to build Mangomint, a startup that makes salon and spa operations software. Lang said they realized that software providers were trying to build their own booking platforms, à la OpenTable. “We fundamentally didn't believ

C-Zero is raising $18M to make emission-free hydrogen using natural gas, filings reveal

Hydrogen startup C-Zero has raised $5 million of an $18 million funding round, according to an SEC filing. The company is developing a way to strip hydrogen from methane without emitting carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen can be used in a range of industries today, including ammonia and petro

Roblox introduces new earning opportunities for creators, teases generative AI project

At the annual Roblox Developers Conference, the company announced on Friday a series of changes coming to the platform in the next few months and years. Most notably, Roblox is adding more ways for creators to earn money through their experiences, and the company is unveiling a project that will po

Startups have to be clever when fighting larger rivals

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can't miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. You won’t find any Founder Mode discourse in this week’s newsletter, although the memes keep coming. Instead, here’s you

NFL kicks off in Brazil for the first time, but reporters and fans can’t post on X due to nationwide ban

The Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers will face off tonight in their first game of the NFL season. But this season opener is a bit different. As the league seeks to expand into international markets, the two football teams have traveled to Brazil to make history by playing the first-eve

VC pitch show ‘Meet the Drapers’ partners with TikTok

Venture capitalist Tim Draper’s international pitch competition, “Meet the Drapers,” is partnering up with TikTok as it heads into its seventh season. Under the new tie-up, entrepreneurs will pitch their startups to the public through the short-form video app for one of the show&#

Public EV startup with an indicted CEO is looking to raise an additional $100 million

It’s tempting to think the trend of EV startups merging with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) to go public has ended, seeing how many of them are struggling or defunct. But that’s not quite true. A startup called Thunder Power Holdings went public on the Nasdaq exchange in

Transport for London outages drag into weekend after cyberattack

Transport for London, the government body overseeing the U.K. capital’s public transit system, said it is experiencing online outages due to an “ongoing cyber security incident” set to drag into the weekend.  TfL, which runs the London Underground (known as the Tube), buses

Instagram jazzes up its DMs with stickers, photo editing, and themes

Meta-owned Instagram is jazzing up the inbox by adding new features for photo editing, sticker creation and themes. The company is trying to make Instagram more appealing as a messaging app with features to make conversations more engaging. While some of these features might not sound new, it’