India’s open commerce network expands into digital lending

Since its launch in 2022, India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) — a government-funded nonprofit that provides a set of APIs for tech companies and others to build new financial services for shoppers and businesses — has grown to enable 12 million monthly transactions in

Under DMA probe, Apple tweaks design of EU browser choice screens, expands app default settings

Apple continues to adjust its approach to compliance with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA): Announcing another batch of changes Thursday, the iPhone maker showed off redesigned browser choice screens it said would be coming to iOS and iPadOS “later this year,” with v

Threads spotted exploring ads, but says ‘no immediate timeline’ toward monetization

Instagram says it’s not testing ads in Threads and has no immediate plans to monetize after multiple developers and reverse engineers uncovered references to ad products in the app’s code, including the word “ads” itself, as well as references to sponsored items and ads conf

Cruise recalls robotaxi fleet to resolve federal safety probe

General Motors’ AV company, Cruise, has recalled its fleet of 1,194 self-driving cars to resolve long-standing trouble with unexpected braking. Cruise has shipped software updates to those vehicles that should mitigate the braking problems, and as such, the National Highway Traffic Safety Adm

Cache Energy’s mysterious white pellets could help kill coal and natural gas

Wind and solar power have become so cheap to install, and at times so abundant, that utilities don't know what to do with it all. Sometimes they'll even pay the owners of other power plants not to generate electricity. In response, scientists and engineers have been racing to find inexpens

Creatopy, which automates ad creation using AI, raises a $10M Series A

When advertising agencies create ads for clients, they don't just make one advert, but potentially hundreds of iterations for a ream of platforms, and that can be pretty manually intensive. Creatopy, which automates ad creation using AI, has now raised a $10 million Series A co-led by European

Tilt raises $18M Series A to build on its real-time shopping app’s success

Live-shopping has grown into a massive sector in Asia, but the phenomenon is yet to see similar uptake in Western markets. But two tech founders are hoping the growth-hacking skills they learned at Revolt will power up their startup in the U.K. live-shopping arena, and now they have the confidence

Former Expedia exec’s startup uses AI to help smaller companies book travel

Small businesses and startups often lack a dedicated travel desk, forcing executives and founders to rely on human assistants or consuming and cumbersome travel apps. Expedia’s former SVP of consumer product, Michael Gulmann, is betting on AI to bridge the gap. His company, Otto, emerges fro

China autonomous vehicle startup WeRide delays US IPO

WeRide is delaying plans to go public, according to CNBC. The self-driving tech company aimed to hit the Nasdaq this week, but now says it needs more time to complete the necessary IPO documents.  The firm, which develops autonomous vehicle technology for robotaxis, mini-buses and street sweepers

Trace Machina is building a simulation testing platform to update safety-critical applications

When a faulty CrowdStrike update brought down airports, 911 call centers and hospitals last month, it showed how a defective update could impact critical infrastructure. Now imagine that this update was for something like an autonomous vehicle or a warehouse robot, and the implications of a bad upd

Meta lets you cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads. Here's how to do it.

Meta for months has been experimenting with letting people cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads, its social networking platform competing with X (formally known as Twitter). Meta confirmed to technewss that the feature has officially rolled out globally to all countries where Thr

Harmonyze wants to build AI agents to help franchisors make sense of unstructured data

For some businesses, there is a clear path to growth that doesn't involve acquiring other companies or expanding organically: franchising. The U.S. has more than 800,000 franchise businesses, according to Statista, and that number is predicted to keep growing year over year. But franchising a b

Lux Capital made its first investment in Brazil, a $4M seed for AI fintech Magie

Brazil fintech Magie raised $4 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital, marking the firm's first investment in Brazil. The company, which has raised $5.1 million in total, is creating an AI-powered financial assistant. The current product allows people to send money and pay bills through Wha

Dropbox acquires Index Ventures-backed AI scheduling tool Reclaim.ai

Dropbox has acquired AI-powered scheduling tool Reclaim.ai, which counts Calendly and Index Ventures among its backers. The development was revealed in a blog post on Reclaim.ai’s website Tuesday. Dropbox hasn’t disclosed the terms of the deal. Reclaim.ai, which was founded in 2019 by