Productive Use of Renewable Energy (PURE) technologies, especially those in the solar irrigation and cold chain segment, saw increased investor interest last year, despite a 43% funding slump recorded in the global off-grid solar sector. The global association for the off-grid solar energy industry, GOGLA, says PURE technologies raised $65 million in 2023, double the…
Making life better for people with disabilities is a laudable goal, but accessibility tech hasn’t traditionally been popular among VCs. In 2022, disability tech companies attracted around $4 billion in early-stage investments, which was a fraction of fintech’s intake, for example. One reason is that disability tech startups are often considered too niche to attain…
Meta’s Threads social network passed the 150 million monthly users mark recently, but the company is not slowing down its growth engine. To increase engagement, the social media giant is running a limited-time bonus program for Threads. Over the last few days, many accounts have posted about this program. The company confirmed to TechCrunch about…
The European Union will apply its flagship market fairness and contestability rules to Apple’s iPadOS, the Commission said today. The move expands the number of Apple-owned platforms regulated under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to four and amps up regulatory risk for the tech giant by bringing its tablet ecosystem in scope. Apple has six…
The eyes aren’t just a window into the soul; tracking saccades can help doctors pick up a range of brain health issues. That’s why French-Belgian medtech startup neuroClues is building accessible, high-speed eye-tracking technology that incorporates AI-driven analysis. It wants to make it easier for healthcare service providers to use eye tracking to support the…
French startup Carbonfact believes that the best carbon accounting solutions will focus on one vertical. That’s why the company has decided to provide a carbon management and reporting tool for the fashion industry exclusively. Carbonfact recently raised a $15 million funding round led by Alven, a French VC firm that also led the startup’s seed…
We’re off to an AI-heavy start to the week. OpenAI has a new deal with the Financial Times that caught our eye. Sure, it’s another content licensing deal, but there appears to be a bit more in the tie-up than just content flowing one way and money the other. We also dug into the xAI…
True to its business concept, Turkey’s “instant delivery” juggernaut Getir rose quickly. Now, with the quick commerce industry in free fall, it is nosediving just as fast. On Monday, the company — once valued close to $12 billion — announced it would shut down its operations the U.S., the U.K. and Europe to focus solely…
Ola has let go its chief executive, Hemant Bakshi, merely four months after appointing him to the post, and is cutting about 180 additional jobs, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The move from the Indian ride-hailing startup is aimed at “improving profitability,” its founder and chairman, Bhavish Aggarwal, told employees in an…
Is the future of software development an AI-powered IDE? GitHub’s floating the idea. Ahead of its annual GitHub Universe conference in San Francisco early this fall, GitHub announced Copilot Workspace, a dev environment that taps what GitHub describes as “Copilot-powered agents” to help developers brainstorm, plan, build, test and run code in natural language. Jonathan…
