The investor’s latest “Camp” incubator trained up and funded 9 AI agent startups they hope will take on today’s more tedious tasks.
The use cases for many of these companies sound promising, but AI tends to have trouble keeping its promises.
But are AI agents at that stage?
And it’s well within the capabilities of today’s AI agents, which would primarily be tasked with understanding natural language rather than forms.
A framework for web-based AI agents with a pay-as-you-go model so if your company’s experiment craters, you only owe a few bucks.
The AI boom, love it or find it to be a bit more hype than substance, is here to stay.
That means lots of companies raising oodles of dollars, a healthy dose of regulatory concern, academic work, and corporate jockeying.
For startups, it means a huge opportunity to bring new technology to bear on a host of industries that could use a bit of polish.
But if you read the news, you might notice that men are the far and away most cited, and discussed players in AI today.
So, TechCrunch’s Dominic-Madori Davis and Kyle Wiggers decided to go out and talk to women working in AI to learn more about their work, how they got into the world of artificial intelligence, and more.
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.
Bumble’s new CEO talks about her critical mission: to spice things up at the company Tis the season for turnaround CEOsSince Bumble’s blockbuster IPO at the height of the pandemic, investors’ ardor with the dating service has cooled.
Part of it ties to AI, which Bumble’s rivals are also leaning into more heavily.
But as we approach our 10-year anniversary, it’s a great moment to think about how we best serve our mission.
Historically, what we’ve seen is that a lot of men will come to Bumble who believe in women being empowered.
Bumble has always been great at community-based marketing: hosting events and finding ambassadors who really want to represent the brand.
Two weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that LinkedIn was getting into games, helping users “deepen relationships” through puzzle-based interactions.
And on Wednesday, TechCrunch reported that the Microsoft-owned social network was experimenting with short-form videos.
It’s as if LinkedIn is targeting a whole new “type” of user — one caught in limbo somewhere between two other well-known social networks.
And LinkedIn shouldn’t try to be Twitter or TikTok — it’s aimed at an entirely different audience.
And now with games and short-form videos in the mix, LinkedIn wants even more of the action.
We’ve seen systems that pick apples and berries, kill weeds, plant trees, transport produce and more.
A huge piece of any of these products’ value prop is the amount of actionable information their on-board sensors collect.
In a sense, Orchard Robotics’ system is cutting out the middle man.
The system cameras can capture up to 100 images a second, recording information about every tree its passes.
Then the Orchard OS software utilizes AI to build maps with the data collected.
Blockchain is back and Bitcoin is hot, the Ethereum blockchain seeing price gains, lots of folks are stoked about ETFs.
But one less-mainstream blockchain is perhaps making the biggest waves in crypto lately: Solana.
TechCrunch has reported on Solana’s massive, recent price appreciation, digging into its rapid ascent and the reasons why.
The answer is not something new, but instead a return of something that we’ve seen in the past.
Not that the Dogwifhat folks are worried — they’re probably too busy having a great time.
The long-running dearth of IPOs could be coming to a close, partly due to Reddit’s upcoming public debut.
Expected to list this month, Reddit saw its valuation soar during the pandemic.
If Reddit’s IPO does well, it could wiggle open the public-offering window just a little bit wider than we’ve seen in quarters and quarters.
Of course, the public offering could also fizzle out like an unpopular opinion downvoted to hell on the site.
But with an AI-friendly growth story to tell, Reddit may have timed its ramp towards the public markets just right.
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
This is our interview show, where we sit down with interesting, knowledgeable folks and dive deep into their favorite topics.
For this weekend’s Special Equity Edition, we invited Gené Teare to come back on the podcast.
Longtime listeners will recall that we’ve had Gené on a time or two to chat venture capital data with us, and she’s back to do the same this week!
Yep, we’re back to dig into Q4 2023 venture capital results and what’s coming up this year.
The ousted founder of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors has launched a new company called LandX Motors, that prominently displays the same electric pickup truck he once promised would beat Tesla, Ford and General Motors to market.
While LandX Motors doesn’t explicitly refer to the trucks as the Endurance, a video on the website shows EV trucks that have the Lordstown badge.
A LandX Motors spokesperson responded to an email, but didn’t provide any further information and declined to answer questions.
He founded Lordstown Motors in 2019 after leaving a different struggling EV startup, Workhorse.
Of the 16 employees who list LandX Motors as their employer on LinkedIn, 13 of them used to work at Lordstown Motors.
