How many startups shut down last year compared to the year before?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a 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 a guest, think about their work, and unpack the rest.
Lee is an angel investor as well the creator of Layoffs.FYI and co-founder of Comprehensive and Human Interest.
We also talked about:Just how many more companies shut down in 2023 compared to 2022 (spoiler alert, it was a lot!)
We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized.
Sandra Wachter is a professor and senior researcher in data ethics, AI, robotics, algorithms and regulation at the Oxford Internet Institute.
She’s also a former fellow of The Alan Turing Institute, the U.K.’s national institute for data science and AI.
What are some issues AI users should be aware of?
Bad data, bad algorithms and bad design choices lead to worse products.
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution.
Despite the many ways in which women have advanced AI tech, they make up a tiny sliver of the global AI workforce.
According to a 2021 Stanford study, just 16% of tenure-track faculty focused on AI are women.
With any luck, TechCrunch’s humble contribution — a series on accomplished women in AI — will help move the needle in the right direction.
The women we profile share many suggestions for those who wish to grow and evolve the AI field for the better.
If anything, it was the VisionOS 1.1 update that showed me that I still have the capacity to grow.
I can tell you agree from the fact that you’re carrying on a normal FaceTime call without stopping every few seconds to tell me how weird my Apple Vision Pro Persona looks.
The headset made me re-enroll my face to get this new persona – and frankly, it’s for the best.
I’m not saying my new face definitely won’t frighten children, but I don’t think they’re going to lose much sleep over it.
I should mention that even in its 1.1 iteration, the Persona feature is still technically in beta – albeit a beta open to anyone with a Vision Pro.
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.
It has solutions to address blockchain transactions and solutions for data exchange around artificial intelligence training and usage.
It has also built and posted four libraries to carry out that work on GitHub and claims that 3,000 developers are using these.
Zama’s technology is the key to build multiplayer, privacy-preserving applications,” said Kyle Samani, managing partner of Multicoin Capital, in a statement.
That still doesn’t represent useful speeds for most of the world’s transactions, but given that blockchain transactions themselves are typically slow-moving, that presented an opportunity to offer Zama’s solutions to crypto developers.
In the meantime, companies like Zama are continuing to work on algorithms and techniques to compress the work involved to carry out homomorphic encryption on existing infrastructure.
Agility Robotics’ new CEO is ‘focused on the here and now’ The Digit-maker’s current and former CEOs discuss Amazon, Generative AI and last-mile deliveryThere was nothing else like Digit on the ProMat floor last year.
This week, Agility named Microsoft veteran Peggy Johnson its second-ever CEO.
They’re just focused on a handful of use cases that Digit can provide value for.”Perhaps the biggest difference between Agility and the growing army of humanoid robotics startups is its sizable head start.
The firm was founded in 2015 as a spinoff of Hurst’s work on legged robotics at Oregon State University.
While Agility isn’t explicitly looking to raise at the moment, the company says the possibility is always on the table.
As remote work becomes increasingly prevalent, organizations globally are adapting, especially regarding onboarding procedures for new employees and navigating cross-border payment complexities.
RemotePass, one such business out of the UAE, has raised $5.5 million in Series A funding led by New York-based 212 VC.
CEO Kamal Reggad and Karim Nadi founded RemotePass in late 2020 to allow businesses to onboard, manage and pay their talent base in countries where they lack local legal presence.
Several companies are actively facilitating remote work and aiding employees in receiving payments from employers.
“Addressing today’s workforce challenges like talent mobility and remote work, RemotePass stands out as a key enabler.
The market for high-level quantum computer science — which applies quantum principles to manage complex computations in areas like finance and artificial intelligence — appears to be quickening its pace.
In the latest development, a startup out of San Sebastian, Spain, called Multiverse Computing is announcing that it has raised €25 million (or $27 million) in an equity funding round led by Columbus Venture Partners.
The funding, which values the startup at €100 million ($108 million), will be used in two main areas.
“Multiverse’s exceptional team will soon apply their unparalleled capability to deliver quantum and quantum-inspired software solutions also within the life sciences and biotechnology markets, where Columbus Venture Partners will help to identify unmet market needs and high-profile industrial partners,” Javier Garcia, a partner at Columbus Venture Partners, in a statement.
Others competing in the same space include the Alphabet spinout Sandbox AQ, Quantum Motion, and Classiq.
Prior to this, she worked in biotech, using AI to find medical treatments for rare diseases.
She also co-founded a data science consultancy and is a founding trustee of DataKind UK, which helps British charities with data science support.
We ask this question a lot at the Ada Lovelace Institute, which aims to make data AI work for people and society.
How can investors better push for responsible AI?
By asking questions about their investments and their possible futures – for this AI system, what does it look like to work brilliantly and be responsible?
