Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech!
One thing that stood out to me was just how much fintech representation in their cohorts is shrinking.
So there was one-third the percentage of fintech companies this year compared to two years ago.
Analysis of the weekFintech funding slid by 16% quarter-over-quarter during the three-month period ended March 31, according to CB Insights’ Q1 2024 State of Venture Report.
During the three-month period, 904 investments were made into fintech startups, which was higher than 786 in the previous quarter, signaling smaller deal sizes.
Working from home isn’t going away, even if some CEOs wish it would Most workers crave flexibility and work-life balanceWhen I started working from home in the late 1980s as a freelance technical writer, I was clearly an outlier.
Today, 14% of U.S. workers work at home full time (including me), and that number is expected to increase to 20% by next year, according to data published by USA Today.
Wayfair, the Boston-based online furniture company, concentrated on remote workers over in-office folks in a layoff earlier this year, according to a WSJ report.
Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg suggested remote workers weren’t actually working, but playing golf (which honestly sounds like projecting to me).
That’s a lot of executive energy being directed against working from home and toward working in the office.
In its previous price list, published in 2019, the highest payouts that Crowdfense was offering were $3 million for Android and iOS zero-days.
In a report last month, Google said it saw hackers use 97 zero-day vulnerabilities in the wild in 2023.
Spyware vendors, which often work with zero-day brokers, were responsible for 75 percent of zero-days targeting Google products and Android, according to the company.
Zero-day brokers, as well as spyware companies like NSO Group and Hacking Team have often been criticized for selling its products to unsavory governments.
“All the companies and governments directly sanctioned by the USA are excluded.”At least one company, spyware consortium Intellexa, is on Crowdfense’s particular blocklist.
Was the fundraising process any more or less difficult this time given the market?
If you really rewind the clock, back in 2018 when we raised our sixteenth fund, it was a “normal” environment.
There’s obviously a valuation reset going on for every company seemingly that’s not a large language model company, which is a lot of companies.
I’d guess that gives you easier access to top companies, but also hurts some of your existing portfolio companies.
I don’t think anyone has ever reached a great venture outcome feeling like, ‘Man, I got a steal on that deal.’ You always feel slightly uncomfortable.
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According to the Form S-1, the new AI governance committee includes managers from Rubrik’s engineering, product, legal and information security teams.
Here’s why having AI governance could become the new normal.
“Aside from its strategic role to devise and oversee an AI governance program, from an operational perspective, AI governance committees are a key tool in addressing and minimizing risks,” he said.
The EU AI Act has teeth, and “the penalties for non-compliance with the AI Act are significant,” British-American law firm Norton Rose Fulbright noted.
Establishing AI governance committees likely will be at least one way to try to help on the trust front.
If such a deal were to happen, the cost would likely be pretty substantial, involving some significant premium over the current value.
While Google/Alphabet has been extremely acquisitive over the years, the largest deal that it’s ever made was spending $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility in 2011.
More recently the largest deal involved spending $5.4 billion for security intelligence platform Mandiant in 2022.
Google usually stays under $3 billion, so a deal of this scope would be very much out of character for the company.
Another issue the company could face in trying to buy HubSpot is a hostile regulatory environment for large deals.
IBM has pledged to skill 2 million people in AI by 2030; Intel has said it’ll upskill over 30 million with AI in the same timeframe.
Yet it’s not clear how many AI roles will be available then.
According to a recent analysis by Lightcast, a labor market analytics firm, the demand for AI roles is decreasing, not increasing.
“Consortium members commit to developing worker pathways particularly in job sectors that will increasingly integrate artificial intelligence technology,” the spokesperson said.
Big Tech has big promises to keep, particularly where it concerns the future of work and the tech industry’s role in shaping it.
India, grappling with election misinfo, weighs up labels and its own AI safety coalition An Adobe-backed association wants to help organizations in the country with an AI standardIndia, long in the tooth when it comes to co-opting tech to persuade the public, has become a global hotspot when it comes to how AI is being used, and abused, in political discourse, and specifically the democratic process.
Tech companies, who built the tools in the first place, are making trips to the country to push solutions.
Using its open standard, the C2PA has developed a digital nutrition label for content called Content Credentials.
It also automatically attaches to AI content generated by Adobe’s AI model Firefly.
“That’s a little ‘CR’… it’s two western letters like most Adobe tools, but this indicates there’s more context to be shown,” he said.
Paris-based startup Pigment has raised a $145 million funding round just five years after its inception.
This funding round comes as a bit of a surprise as large rounds have been few and far between in France.
Before Pigment, Crespo worked for VC firm Index Ventures and Google.
We’ve developed a lot of modules that enable us to serve HR teams, supply chain teams and sales teams,” Crespo said.
Like many software companies, Pigment has also added AI features.
