Daily Crunch: In an all-cash transaction, private equity firm buys insurtech startup Duck Creek for $2.6B
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Welcome to the beginning of the week. My thumb got smashed in my standup waffle iron while I was cleaning it this morning, so it can only get better from there, right? […]
A flat year for crowdfunding isn’t a bad sign at all for early-stage startups
The 2022 equity crowdfunding market was unable to top 2021’s record-setting year. But despite seeing lower investment volume, it fared quite a lot better than venture capital did in the same time frame. Founders looking to raise extension or bridge financing should take note. Back in July, it looked like equity crowdfunding — a funding route […]
Anthropic’s Claude improves on ChatGPT, but still suffers from limitations
Anthropic, the startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI employees that’s raised over $700 million in funding to date, has developed an AI system similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT that appears to improve upon the original in key ways. Called Claude, Anthropic’s system is accessible through a Slack integration as part of a closed beta. TechCrunch wasn’t able to […]
These 5 companies bootstrapped their way to big businesses while VCs came knocking
It may come as a surprise to some, but not every startup is clamoring to raise venture capital. The reasons some founders shun the process of raising institutional funding vary based on individual circumstances. There are founders who don’t like the idea of giving up equity. Others don’t want to give up control of their […]
Microsoft acquires Fungible, a maker of data processing units, to bolster Azure
In December, reports suggested that Microsoft had acquired Fungible, a startup fabricating a type of data center hardware known as a data processing unit (DPU), for around $190 million. Today, Microsoft confirmed the acquisition but not the purchase price, saying that it plans to use Fungible’s tech and team to deliver “multiple DPU solutions, network […]
Generative AI’s Magic Leap
Welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Now that the weird “remember how to work” week is over, I’m feeling refreshed and ready to take on the year. My goal for this week is to collaborate more, whether that means asking for […]
Backed by the National Institute on Aging, the a2 Pilot Awards fosters agetech entrepreneurship
There are now more Americans aged 65 and older than at any other point in history and that number is expected to rise, according to the National Institute on Aging (NIA). With longer lifespans come challenges like Alzheimer’s, which about one in nine of Americans aged 65 or older have. The a2 Pilot Awards were […]
Attention uses natural language processing to help sales reps sell faster
Updating CRMs after each call is an important task for sales representatives, but it means a lot of administrative work that takes time away from actually selling. Attention wants to fix that with its sales assistant, which uses AI tech and natural language processing to automatically fill in CRMs after calls and draft follow-up emails. […]
5 cloud trends to track in 2023
Josh Berman Contributor Share on Twitter Josh Berman is president of C2C Global. He is an expert in community building with a long track record of establishing connections between technology companies and their target audiences. In many ways, 2022 was a year of growth for the cloud technology space. Unpredictable macroeconomic developments saw many organizations […]
FLIK’s unified checkout solution gives Southeast Asian sellers more control over data
E-commerce in Southeast Asia is very fragmented, with consumers having their choice of marketplaces, e-commerce sites and social commerce. Many prefer to buy from large marketplaces, says FLIK co-founder Ahmad Gadi, because those platforms offer promotions and cashback deals. But for direct-to-consumer brands, marketplaces aren’t the best way to get consumer data or foster brand […]
