Investors’ pledge to fight spyware undercut by past investments in US malware maker Cyber investors announced commitments to fighting spyware, but at least one firm previously invested in an exploit maker.
Now, some investors have announced that they too are committed to fighting spyware.
More recently, the government has imposed economic sanctions not only on companies, but also directly on the executive who founded Intellexa.
To hear some of these investors talk, you’d think that spyware has no place in a free and open society.
Gula Tech and Paladin’s investment in Boldend — effectively a U.S.-based exploit and hacking software maker — and the two investment firms’ commitment to not invest in spyware companies might seem at odds.
Earlier this week, the U.S. government announced sanctions against the founder of a controversial government spyware maker, Tal Dilian, and his business associate, Sara Aleksandra Fayssal Hamou.
If the U.S. government thinks someone sold spyware to authoritarians and dictators, or their company’s spyware was used against the wrong targets, it will go directly after the people running those spyware companies.
And people who used to work in the government spyware industry expressed concern.
That’s big,” said a former head of a spyware maker that sold to governments, when TechCrunch shared the news of the sanctions with him.
According to a third person working in the spyware industry, the sanctions against Dilian and his business associate Hamou should make the whole market have a moment of reflection.
Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff.
Inscribe, whose platform works to detect fraud in areas like business underwriting, tenant screening, and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its staff, which equates to dozens of employees.
San Francisco-based Inscribe.ai confirmed the headcount reduction to TechCrunch, noting that the AI advances in the financial services industry necessitated a pivot to a new product and direction for the company.
“2023 was a year of change for our customers and Inscribe,” explained Inscribe CEO and co-founder, Ronan Burke.
At the time, the company forecast it would double its then 50-person workforce over the coming 12 to 18 months.
The guy who founded that – Jim Jannard – became a billionaire after selling a lot of sunnies, then went on to found RED digital cinema, one of the first major digital cinema camera brands.
Today, Nikon announced that Nikon Corporation has announced its agreement to acquire the camera manufacturer, and turning into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Nikon Corporation.
This sensor’s physical size was comparable to analog film, bridging the gap between digital and traditional film production.
This short film convinced director Steven Soderbergh to shoot his film “Che” with Red technology, marking a significant milestone in digital cinema.
The company’s cameras were used to film over 25% of the top 100 grossing films filmed on digital video in the US shot on digital video by 2016.
The U.S. government announced Tuesday sanctions against the founder of the notorious spyware company Intellexa and one of his business partners.
This is the first time the U.S. government has targeted specific people, in addition to companies, with sanctions related to the misuse of commercial spyware.
These sanctions will impact Dilian and Hamou specifically, but they will also send a message to other people involved in the spyware industry.
“If I’m a mercenary spyware company, I should be getting really worried,” added Scott-Railton.
And earlier this year, the U.S. government announced that the State Department could impose visa restrictions to people believed to have been involved or facilitated the abuse of commercial spyware around the world.
Paris-based cybersecurity startup Filigran is capitalizing on the success of OpenCTI to build a suite of open-source threat management products.
The company has already found some early traction with OpenCTI, its open-source threat intelligence platform.
It’s a threat intelligence platform that lets you gather threat data from multiple sources in a single interface.
OpenBAS can be used as a standalone product, but it works better if you’re already using OpenCTI as it can use the threat intelligence data in OpenCTI.
There will be another two products in Filigran’s eXtended Threat Management (XTM) product suite that focus on data-driven risk analysis and crisis management.
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups.
Most interesting startup stories this weekCES 2024 was like a futuristic carnival for transportation geeks, flaunting an array of electric everything — from cars and bikes to scooters and aircraft.
Of course, AI was everywhere, and Cody wrote a round-up detailing how AI tech showed up in the good, the bad, and the weird.
Most interesting fundraises this weekIn the wake of a challenging 2023 and a significant downturn in public offerings, tech startups and high-growth companies are once again turning their sights toward initial public offerings (IPOs).
This trend is also visible in the field of artificial intelligence startups, which continue to attract attention in venture capital circles.
Last year the Commission released some documents relating to its exchanges with the company in question but denied access to others.
But EU legislation is a three way affair — requiring buy in from the Commission and Council, too.
Here’s the statement, attributed to European Commission spokesperson for Home Affairs, Anitta Hipper:The Commission will provide access to documents as appropriate and within our legal framework.
Specifically, as regards the Ombudsman recommendation, the Commission will carefully consider the recommendation of the Ombudsman.
We reached out to Thorn but it did not respond to a request for comment about the ombudsman’s inquiry.
Indian wearable startup Ultrahuman is getting into the smart home game.
By capturing more data-points it can link to its smart ring users, Ultrahuman may be able to improve the accuracy of its algorithms — to give its personalized advice an edge over rivals.
The same is true with the Ultrahuman Home: There’s no subscription required for the service; just a one-off hardware purchase.
Since the launch of the Ultrahuman Ring Air, its sleeker second gen smart ring which we reviewed last summer, momentum has been growing, with sales exceeding 10,000 units last month, per Kumar.
There is also a hardware button on the device that will let users switch off the mic when they wish.
VinFast, Vietnam’s electric vehicle manufacturer, plans to initially invest $500 million to set up an integrated facility in India and break into the world’s third-largest automobile market.
The memorandum of understanding with the state government of Tamil Nadu, unveiled on Saturday, earmarks an investment of up to $2 billion, the company said without giving a concrete timeframe.
“We are delighted that VinFast has chosen to invest in Tamil Nadu to establish its integrated EV facility.
Nonetheless, India has been an attractive market for global EV players as the country aims to have 30% electrification by 2030.
Its India deal announcement follows VinFast naming its founder and biggest backer, Pham Nhat Voung, as CEO earlier on Saturday.