FAA gives Joby Aviation OK to start flight-testing its electric air taxis

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Wednesday, June 28, 2023

Today's top stories include Joby Aviation saying it's reached some milestones that will bring the company closer to getting its first electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle — eVTOL for short — into production. We are also much ado about Nothing — well, Carl Pei's Nothing, that is. The smartphone maker now has something in the way of $96 million in new funding to launch the Phone (2). Next, Proton makes its password manager open to all, and we are introduced to Flowie, a new French startup that wants to better manage the way money moves between companies. And China might be seeing some additional restrictions in its effort to get chips from the United States. Image Credits: Joby Aviation

More top stories Everyone loves a new feature: DoorDash introduces a slew of new features for both users and its deliverers, including a new way for delivery people to earn. No SSN, no problem: I'm stealing part of Mary Ann's headline for this intro, but I can't help it. It is too good. Maza, a fintech startup aimed at undocumented immigrants, raised $8 million in new funding. May the (Sales)force be with you: Again, I couldn't do better than Paul's headline on Unaric exiting stealth with $35 million to buy and consolidate Salesforce-ecosystem startups. Work that flow: Back-office functions need some love, too. Enter workflow automation startup Parabola, which secured $24 million. Moving on: Fairphone CEO Eva Gouwens is stepping down from the smartphone company, and the search is on for a new one. Listen up: Today's Equity podcast was a particularly popular one with readers. Perhaps it's because Nubank's CEO explains what the U.S. could learn from LatAm fintech. Reeling it in: Bluu Seafood grabs another $17.5 million in capital to bring its cultivated fish products to market. Let’s hope this gets “addressed”: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office notified filers of years-long address data leak. Managing data: Databricks builds a data mesh with the launch of Lakehouse Federation. Just a Gleamer: French startup Gleamer secured $29.5 million to continue developing AI software for radiologists. Also add these to your reading list: Astrix Security, which uses ML to secure app integrations, raises $25M Slang taps AI to answer phone calls for brick-and-mortar businesses TikTok could soon bring its new e-commerce store to the U.S. PayPal launches support for tap to pay on Android for merchants using Venmo and Zettle in the U.S. Techstars raising $150 million for new accelerator fund Image Credits: Bluu Seafood

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Vertical AI: The next logical iteration of vertical SaaS According to Paris Heymann, a partner at Index Ventures, the current wave of AI-powered products and services can be sorted into three layers: Foundational models AI infrastructure AI applications “Some of these applications will be broadly horizontal,” he writes in TC+, “but many AI applications will also be vertical, or industry-focused.” Two more from the TC+ team: Snowflake and Databricks are putting the data stored in their services to work Legacy automakers suffer another blow as Aston Martin spurns Mercedes-AMG's electrified tech TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription. Read More Image Credits: MirageC / Getty Images

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Meta says WhatsApp Business went from 50M to 200M monthly active users in 3 years

TechCrunch Newsletter

By Christine Hall Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Welcome to your Daily Crunch for Tuesday. I waded through over 60 stories to bring you the best of the best, so please enjoy. Today was a big day for WhatsApp Business. It crossed 200 million monthly active users. Do you think it was the television commercial with the carrier pigeon that made the difference? Or perhaps it's the features — WhatsApp also introduced a personalized messages feature. Sometimes it's the one who spies that gets spied on. That's what happened to LetMeSpy, a phone tracking app known for parental controls and employee monitoring, which now says it was hacked. Speaking of parental controls, Meta is rolling out new parental control tools for Instagram and Messenger that will preemptively block unwanted DMs and tell teens when it's time to put down the phone. Now meet Dust. It's not a startup helping you to clean better; it uses large language models on internal data to improve team productivity. We promised you more on what's going on with Indian edtech giant Byju's, and today it was reported that one of the company's largest shareholders decided to slash Byju's valuation. Image Credits: SOPA Images / Contributor

More top stories Reduce, reuse, recycle: DePoly attracts $13.8 million in new funding to keep hard-to-recycle plastic from ending up in landfills. Threat initiated: We reported earlier this month that Lordstown Motors was threatening to sue Foxconn. Now get the scoop on the actual lawsuit. Lordstown also filed for bankruptcy. How to handle data: Data security startup Cyera lands a $100 million investment to help enterprises manage all of that proprietary data. Shopper's delight: E-commerce enablement company Cart.com's valuation was boosted into unicorn territory after raising $60 million. No "honey do" list for you: Khosla Ventures just doubled down on its investment into Honey Homes, a company that provides handyman-on-demand services for homeowners. Red light, green light: NoTraffic raises $50 million to tackle congestion and enhance road safety. We're hoping traffic lights change for the better with this one. Double the funding, double the fun: After raising capital 16 months ago, Redpanda is back with an even bigger round of funding as its streaming service experiences significant growth. Let's stream: Roku and CBS Sports became besties and announced their first live sports deal. Meanwhile, you can now get Paramount+ with Showtime. Cover girl: Kenyan fashion marketplace Shop Zetu grabs a round of pre-seed funding to add beauty and home decor items to its shopping list along with growth beyond Kenya. Now you're speaking my language: Loora raises $9.25 million to continue developing a generative AI app that uses an audio interface to help users learn English. Add these to your reading list: Dexory nabs $19M to bring visibility to warehouses through analytics and autonomous robots Snowflake-Nvidia partnership could make it easier to build generative AI applications Twitter now allows subscribers to post 25,000-character-long tweets CalypsoAI raises $23M to add guardrails to generative AI models Supply chain startup Baskit supports Indonesia's middlemen Image Credits: Juj Winn / Getty Images

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4 VCs illustrate why there's good reason to be optimistic about the machine learning startup market Training the expansive models that power AI applications is thirsty work: Machine learning startups can charge their clients for anything from optimizing ad campaigns to generating gargantuan datasets. Kyle Wiggers surveyed four investors to get their thoughts on whether "the hype cycle in ML is dying down or going strong," as well as to discuss technical roadblocks holding the industry back and get their advice for founders who are building in the sector: Lonne Jaffe, managing director, Insight Partners Jerry Chen, partner, Greylock Ashish Kakran, principal, Thomvest Janelle Teng, VP, Bessemer Venture Partners Five more from the TC+ team: The quest for better AI recommendation engines As Lordstown immolates, SPAC deals that didn't go to zero feel like the exception Gusto reaches $500M in trailing revenue, teams up with Remote to support international hires How Greenlyte is going from zero to 1,000 metric tons of captured CO2 in a year SignalFire's State of Talent report 2023 TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code "DC" for a 15% discount on an annual subscription. Read More Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

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