Category: Uncategorized

With inflation still stubbornly high in comparison to previous years, and the siren voices of subscription services like Netflix and Spotify continuing to lure, consumers have understandably turned to alternative forms of payment to manage their household bills. As a result, online prepaid payment platforms have benefited.  That’s the bet being laid today by Recharge,… Read more

Google has agreed to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from Indian startup Varaha. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

French startup Hyperline wants to build the next-generation Chargebee. Over the past two years, the startup has built a new billing platform that can be used for recurring subscriptions, one-off purchases, usage-based billing and more. Hyperline raised an initial €4 million funding round from Index Ventures back in 2023 ($4.1 million at today’s exchange rate).… Read more

Amazon has agreed to acquire Indian buy-now, pay-later startup Axio, deepening its push into financial services in one of its fastest-growing markets. The e-commerce group, which has held an equity stake in Axio for six years, signed the acquisition agreement in December after completing due diligence, the Indian startup said in a blog post. Financial… Read more

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appears to have used YouTube and its battle to take down pirated content to defend his own company’s use of a data set containing copyrighted e-books to train AI models, newly released snippets of his deposition reveals.  The deposition, which was part of a complaint submitted to the court by plaintiffs’… Read more

Chinese firms continue to release AI models that rival the capabilities of systems developed by OpenAI and other U.S.-based AI companies. This week, MiniMax, an Alibaba- and Tencent-backed startup that has raised around $850 million in venture capital and is valued at more than $2.5 billion, debuted three new models: MiniMax-Text-01, MiniMax-VL-01, and T2A-01-HD. MiniMax-Text-01… Read more

When Hindenburg Research posts a blog on its website, it often means a company’s final days are near. Today, that company is Hindenburg Research. Nate Anderson announced Wednesday he has shut down short-selling firm Hindenburg Research, after a seven-year run issuing damning reports about high-profile companies, including many of the technology world’s giants and buzzy… Read more

Y Combinator alum Stoke has an ambitious goal to build the first fully reusable rocket and VCs have opened their wallets wide. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

Several governments participated in a meeting on the proliferation of commercial spyware at the United Nations Security Council. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

Younger Gen Zers are embracing OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot, ChatGPT, for schoolwork, according to a new survey by the Pew Research Center. But it’s not clear that they’re fully aware of the tech’s pitfalls. In a follow-up to its 2023 poll on ChatGPT usage among young people, Pew asked ~1,400 U.S.-based teens ages 13 to 17… Read more