Industry Ventures raises a $900M fund for investing in small, early-stage VCs and their breakout startups

The venture fundraising trend in 2024 is fairly clear by now: Large, established VC firms are continuing to attract capital from limited partners, while smaller, newer funds are finding it more difficult to raise.  But Industry Ventures’ latest fundraise should offer a dash of good news for emerging managers. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old firm announced […]

Beauty tech startup Boldhue raises capital to ship its at-home custom makeup dispenser

Have you ever wanted a personalized makeup dispenser? Well, Boldhue‘s co-founder and CTO Karin Layton has built just that: A device that aims to be the “Keurig for makeup.” Boldhue’s device essentially scans your face and dispenses a customized foundation formula that matches your skin tone. The beauty tech startup on Tuesday said it had […]

Indian edtech Unacademy cuts another 250 jobs

Indian edtech giant Unacademy is laying off about 250 employees, the latest in a series of layoffs since the reopening of schools across the country after the pandemic. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $3.4 billion in its last funding in 2021, is cutting 100 jobs in core roles (marketing, business and product) and 150 in […]

Anthropic looks to fund a new, more comprehensive generation of AI benchmarks

Anthropic is launching a program to fund the development of new types of benchmarks capable of evaluating the performance and impact of AI models, including generative models like its own Claude. Unveiled on Monday, Anthropic’s program will dole out grants to third-party organizations that can, as the company puts it in a blog post, “effectively […]

Senators urge Synapse’s owners, partners, and VC backers to restore customers’ access to their money

A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S. […]

TechCrunch Space: Star spangled | TechCrunch

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. I hope everyone has a fantastic July 4 this week. Go eat a hot dog. Read my story from last week on the causes of Starliner’s additional delay and what it might mean for Boeing’s Starliner program. Want to reach out with a tip? Email Aria at aria.techcrunch@gmail.com […]

Spotify tests emergency alerts in Sweden

Music, podcasts, audiobooks
emergency alerts? Spotify’s latest test has the streaming app venturing into new territory with a test of an emergency alerts system in its home market of Sweden. According to code references found within the Spotify app, the company is considering a system that would help distribute public announcements related to things like “accidents, […]