Just over two years ago, Netflix announced it would enter a new business: gaming. Amid a mobile gaming market dominated by free-to-play and ad-supported business models, Netflix’s plan was to make its games free without ads or in-app purchases. The gambit may now be starting to pay off. In 2023, Netflix Games downloads increased by…
Downpayments, a real estate fintech startup, is emerging from stealth today with the mission of helping investors purchase new properties with interest-free down payments. It’s a lofty claim. The Miami-based startup, which spun out of Australian company Futurerent last October, says it’s able to give investors a way to leverage their existing equity toward making…
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After telegraphing to devs last week that it would do so, OpenAI has launched a store for GPTs, custom chatbot apps powered by its text- and image-generating AI models (e.g. GPT-4 and DALL-E 3). The GPT Store, as it’s called, lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT client on the web, and features a…
Y Combinator alum Shimmer, which offers a coaching platform for adults, has raised $2.2 million in a seed funding round led by Worklife Ventures and Seed to B. The platform aims to help adults with ADHD tackle challenges via personalized 1:1 video coaching, productivity tools and science-backed learning modules. Shimmer matches users to an ADHD coach…
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has banned the data broker X-Mode Social from sharing or selling users’ sensitive location data, the federal regulator said Tuesday. The first of its kind settlement prohibits X-Mode, now known as Outlogic, from sharing and selling users’ sensitive information to others. The settlement will also require the data broker to…
After years of exploding growth and massive funding rounds, it’s time for consolidation in the micromobility industry. Tier and Dott, two leading European companies in the space, have announced that they plan to merge. The transaction is expected to close within two months of today’s news. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, as many free-floating…
Apps that let users take, manipulate and share images have been some of the biggest hits in the world of mobile over the years. Now, the influx of AI is cracking open the market for a new wave of startups to step into the ring. PhotoRoom — a startup out of Paris, France — has…
Seedstars Africa Ventures has received a $30 million capital commitment from EIB Global, an arm of the European Investment Bank, which becomes the first major institutional investment for its first pan-African venture capital fund. The new commitment follows an $8 million investment from the fund’s anchor investor, French private equity firm LBO France. The fund…
Japanese tech giant Fujitsu is facing growing pressure from U.K. political quarters over its role in a scandal that saw hundreds of post office owners prosecuted for accounting discrepancies. But as Fujitsu has emerged as a leading protagonist in a saga that has endured for nearly a quarter-of-a-century, the government has continued to give the…
