Hoping to stall a ban, TikTok says it generated $14.7B for US small businesses last yearAs U.S. lawmakers weigh a possible TikTok ban, the ByteDance-owned short-form video app released an economic impact report on Thursday.
In it, the company touts the platform generated $14.7 billion for small- to mid-size businesses (SMBs) last year, and a further $24.2 billion in total economic activity, supported through small business’s use of TikTok.
In addition, it says that over 7 million U.S. businesses rely on TikTok and that 224,000 jobs were supported by small business activity on the platform in 2023.
In March, a bill that could ban TikTok passed in the House of Representatives.
The Trump administration had previously sought to ban TikTok, calling it a national security risk, but Trump now opposes a ban, saying that Meta would benefit.
Indian quick-commerce startup Zepto has surpassed the annualised sales milestone of $1 billion within just 29 months of its inception, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note Thursday, citing the Zepto management.
Zepto, which became a unicorn last year, counts YC Continuity, StepStone Group, Glade Brook Capital and Lachy Groom among its backers.
“Overall EBITDA margin for Zepto is at negative single-digit percentage and the company is on track to break even at the EBITDA level within the next quarter.
The company expects steady state contribution margin of 12%, with steady state EBITDA margin of 7%,” the report added.
Zepto believes it can expand into 40-50 cities over time,” the report added.
Weeks before the national elections in India, Elon Musk-owned X said it is rolling out support for posting Community Notes — the company’s crowd-sourced fact-checking program — in the key overseas market.
The first set of contributors from India will start posting notes from today and more will be accepted over time, X said.
Community Notes now active on India!
Over time, the company has allowed members from different countries to start posting Community Notes to provide local context better.
India was one of the last major markets where Community Notes had not previously expanded.
Faraday Future has avoided getting evicted from its Los Angeles headquarters — for the time being.
The resolution comes as Faraday Future is once again strapped for cash.
There, BXP Realty claimed that Faraday Future stopped making lease payments in December and that it owed $127,311.16.
Faraday Future does not appear to have formally responded to the lawsuit, and in early March, a default order was entered.
It’s unclear if Faraday Future still occupies the space.
But it’s unlikely that startups’ fundraising slog will become much easier soon, mostly because of venture capitalists’ own capital-gathering challenges.
In Q1, U.S. VC funds raised only $9.3 billion, according to PitchBook data.
At this pace, VC fundraising will end 2024 at just above $37 billion, the lowest capital raised since 2013 and a 54% decline from last year.
PitchBook estimates that dry powder, the amount of capital VCs still have to invest from previous funds, remains high.
“One low fundraising quarter is not going to make or break the future of VC,” said Kyle Stanford, lead venture capital analyst at PitchBook.
These AI startups stood out the most in Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 batchDespite an overall decline in startup investing, funding for AI surged in the past year.
So it’s not exactly surprising that AI startups dominated at Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 Demo Day.
The Y Combinator Winter 2024 cohort has 86 AI startups, according to YC’s official startup directory — nearly double the number from the Winter 2023 batch and close to triple the number from Winter 2021.
As we did last year, we went through the newest Y Combinator cohort — the cohort presenting during this week’s Demo Day — and picked out some of the more interesting AI startups.
Datacurve hosts a gamified annotation platform that pays engineers to solve coding challenges, which contributes to Datacurve’s for-sale training data sets.
Take, for example, the company’s latest foray into mobile artificial intelligence, the AI Eraser.
Nope, OnePlus went ahead and built its own version in a bid to show the world that it has AI ambitions of its own.
From the sound of its press material, the company went and built this thing ground-up, starting with its own first-party large language models.
“AI Eraser is the result of a substantial R&D investment from OnePlus,” the company notes in its press material.
AI is rolling out to OnePlus devices this month, starting with OnePlus 12, OnePlus 12R, OnePlus 11, OnePlus Open and OnePlus Nord CE 4.
Venture firm Maniv has grown by nearly every measure since it launched eight years ago in Israel — from its investor base and 40-startup portfolio to its geographic focus, footprint and fund size.
There are, however, some notable evolutions that hint at the Maniv’s investment strategy with its third and latest fund known as Maniv III, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
Maniv, once firmly focused on Israeli startups, continues to expand its geographic focus and now has active portfolio companies in nine countries.
The VC firm has also largely stopped using the once trendy umbrella term “mobility,” (often leaving it out of its original name Maniv Mobility) and has opted instead to talk about deep tech, decarbonization and digitization of the transportation sector.
“I thought the trajectory of that term (mobility) was going to continue to clarify overtime, but in fact, I think the opposite has happened for a bunch of reasons,” Granoff explained, adding that while the term mobility might not be used as often, it is still very much central to its mission.
News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday.
Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news.
It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project.
Regardless of whether or not you were an Artifact user — I was for a time — that Yahoo is still feeling acquisitive under its current ownership structure matters.
Artifact is hardly the only startup project in the market today that might be looking for a new home, after all.
Smart ring manufacturer Oura is introducing a new section in its app called Oura Labs to test out new features and get user feedback.
Oura said that Symptom Radar will monitor biometric signals such as body temperature range, respiratory rate, resting heart rate, and heart rate variability.
“Oura Labs is our approach to recreate internal engagement for new features with users in a structured and formal way.
Users will get to see a lot of early-stage ideas in Oura Labs,” Patel said.
Users can provide direct feedback about these experimental features along with general feedback for the product through Oura Labs.
