Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Seqiuoa-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website.
The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join Shopify.
It was thrown into the limelight after Meta launched Threads, its Twitter-like social network.
Notably, Meta also had another product named Threads, an Instagram companion app that started in 2019 and was shut down in 2021.
And on Android the app crossed the mark of a million lifetime downloads with just a few downloads prior to Meta launching its Threads social network.
This partly explains why Belgium-based startup Qargo has now raised £11 million ($14 million) in a Series A round led by Balderton Capital.
With the logistics industry facing rising operating costs, decarbonization pressures, hikes in fuel prices and cyber attacks, companies in the space are in tricky times.
There is clear pressure to digitize the industry to introduce cost savings.
While the transport industry does use legacy software platforms like Mcleod Software, Rose Rocket and Dash Doc, many of these platforms are from an earlier era.
In a statement, Rob Moffat, partner at Balderton Capital, said, “Logistics is a $5T market globally but is often overlooked by software companies.
Google’s newest startup program, announced on Wednesday, aims to bring AI technology to the public sector.
The newly launched “Google for Startups AI Academy: American Infrastructure” will offer participants hands-on training from AI experts and other support for companies solving problems in areas like agriculture, energy, education, public safety, healthcare, telecommunications, transportation, urban development, and more.
Over the course of twelve weeks, startups participating in the equity-free program will be guided by an AI curriculum developed by Google’s People + AI Research (PAIR) team and will participate in advanced sales and go-to-market workshops.
They’ll also be able to access industry connections and, of course, tap into Google’s AI tools as they build.
While much focus is on the AI companies building the models, tools, and interfaces for working with AI, a focus on real-world applications of the technology could impact communities at the local, state, and national levels, Google believes.
Lawmakers passed legislation early Saturday reauthorizing and expanding a controversial U.S. surveillance law shortly after the powers expired at midnight, rejecting opposition by privacy advocates and lawmakers.
Critics, including lawmakers who voted against the reauthorization, say FISA also sweeps up the communications of Americans while spying on its foreign targets.
Following the passage in the early hours of today, Senator Mark Warner, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that FISA was “indispensable” to the U.S. intelligence community.
FISA requires the government to seek an annual certification from the secretive FISA Court, which oversees and approves the government’s surveillance programs.
The FISA Court last certified the government’s surveillance program under Section 702 in early April, allowing the government to use its lapsed authority until at least April 2025.
That means there’s a market for a layer between companies and Large Language Models (LLMs) — something companies can use to pick LLMs easily without needing to commit for all time to one platform.
That’s the market Langdock is targeting with its chat interface that sits between LLMs and a company.
“Companies don’t want to have a vendor lock-in on just one of those LLM providers,” Lennard Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Langdock, told TechCrunch.
In addition to the chat interface, the company also offers security, cloud and on-premises solutions.
In contrast, Langdock’s chat interface works for a broader range of use cases and can be used by any kind of staff.
Sources tell us that Lacework — a cloud security startup that was valued at $8.3 billion post-money in its last funding round — is in talks to be acquired by another security player, Wiz, for a price of just $150–$200 million.
Wiz — valued at around $10 billion — is one of them.
The company is positioning itself as a one-stop-shop for all things cloud security en route to its IPO.
Earlier this month Wiz acquired Gem Security for $350 million, and it sounds like the M&A will not end with Laceworks.
We are always exploring compelling M&A opportunities that will enhance both our technological capabilities and business expansion, as we strive to build the world’s leading cloud security platform.”
Hackers are threatening to publish a huge stolen sanctions and financial crimes watchlist The stolen World-Check database contains 5.3 million recordsA financially motivated hacking group says it has stolen a confidential database containing millions of records that companies use for screening potential customers for links to sanctions and financial crime.
The hackers, which call themselves GhostR, said they stole 5.3 million records from the World-Check screening database in March and are threatening to publish the data online.
A portion of the stolen data, which the hackers shared with TechCrunch, includes individuals who were sanctioned as recently as this year.
The incident involves a third party’s data set, which includes a copy of the World-Check data file.
Banking giant HSBC shut down bank accounts belonging to several prominent British Muslims after the World-Check database branded them with “terrorism” tags.
Palo Alto Networks urged companies this week to patch against a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in one of its widely used security products, after malicious hackers began exploiting the bug to break into corporate networks.
Because the vulnerability allows hackers to gain complete control of an affected firewall over the internet without authentication, Palo Alto gave the bug a maximum severity rating.
The ease with which hackers can remotely exploit the bug puts thousands of companies that rely on the firewalls at risk from intrusions.
Adding another complication, Palo Alto initially suggested disabling telemetry to mitigate the vulnerability, but said this week that disabling telemetry does not prevent exploitation.
Security firm Volexity, which first discovered and reported the vulnerability to Palo Alto, said it found evidence of malicious exploitation going back to March 26, some two weeks before Palo Alto released fixes.
Today they are the co-founders of Cherub, a marketplace that pairs angel investors with entrepreneurs.
Johnson likens Los Angeles-based Cherub to Raya, an online membership-based community for dating, in that it matches founders and angel investors based on their preferences.
Or if an entrepreneur’s minimum investment is $25,000 but an angel investor is only investing $10,000 per deal, they can see that and not reach out to connect.
Of those deals, 40% were new angel investors, meaning they were accredited investors that had never written checks before.
Angel investor Allen Orr told TechCrunch that he had used other platforms such as AngelList in the past.
It was while sourcing manufacturing equipment for Tesla factories that Will Drewery drew inspiration for Diagon, a startup that helps manufacturers procure equipment.
Companies in fields like automotive and aerospace can identify qualified suppliers from Diagon’s network of equipment suppliers, system integrators and service providers.
East Coast originsThe journey to Diagon for Drewery, who spent most of his career as an equipment buyer, started in Pittsburgh.
“This is why I felt the market needs a Diagon,” Drewery said.
“Now we are developing tools that help customers find suppliers better or help them interpret and summarize quotes better,” Drewery said.
