Twilio might actually deserve activist investor attention
Twilio by most accounts would be considered a startup success story. But after peaking at $400 a share in September 2021, when everyone was riding fantasy...
With iMessage thanks to Beeper Mini, the OnePlus Open is my new favorite phone
Multi-platform messaging startup Beeper, founded by YC and Pebble alum Eric Migicovsky, delivered an iMessage experience for Android that doesn’t use any intermediaries and as-such, should...
Goldman Sachs-backed ZestMoney, once valued at $450M, to shut down
ZestMoney, a buy now pay later startup whose ability to underwrite small ticket loans to first-time internet customers attracted many high-profile investors including Goldman Sachs, is...
Another blow for self-driving trucks as former industry leader abandons the U.S.
When TuSimple went public in 2021 it was flying high as the leading self-driving trucks developer in the United States. Now — after a string of...
Today’s AI funding rush reminds me of the fintech investing hype of 2021
It turns out that the massive $642 million round that U.S.-based GPU compute provider CoreWeave just closed was a secondary transaction. I can’t summon a better...
Git platform AllSpice now curries favor with enterprises
We last wrote about AllSpice, a git platform for developers, in 2022, when it was just starting out with $3.2 million in new funding. At that...
Vancouver’s Fantuan raises $40M to deliver real Chinese food at your doorstep
For those who move abroad from China, one thing they miss dearly is the convenience of food delivery apps. Fantuan, a Vancouver-based company, has been working...
EnCharge raises $22.6M to commercialize its AI-accerating chips
Around a year ago, TechCrunch wrote about a little-known company developing AI-accelerating chips to face off against hardware from titans of industry — e.g. Nvidia, AMD,...
Foretellix raises $85M to build and test scenarios for self-driving systems
On their way to building fully-autonomous vehicles, self-driving car makers are facing a tall task: training their AIs to be able to respond reliably to any...
Meta set to discontinue cross-messaging between Instagram and Facebook
Meta has silently updated its support pages to indicate that the company won’t let users on Instagram message their Facebook contacts anymore.
The company, as pointed out...