Back in 2019, Microsoft open-sourced Dapr, a new runtime for making building distributed microservice-based applications easier. At the time, nobody was talking about AI agents yet, but as it turns out, Dapr had some of the fundamental building blocks for supporting AI agents built-in from the outset. That’s because one of Dapr’s core features is … Read more
Indian police have arrested the co-founder of Garantex, a Russian cryptocurrency exchange sanctioned by the European Union and the U.S. government, under India’s extradition law, TechCrunch has exclusively learned and confirmed with state authorities. At 4 p.m. local time (3:30 a.m. PT) on Tuesday, the state police of Kerala arrested Lithuanian national Aleksej Besciokov in … Read more
Sometimes the smallest of news items can point to bigger trends lurking beneath the surface. Case in point: Google announced late last month that it has installed 100 million lithium-ion cells across its data centers to provide backup power to its servers. On its own, it’s not earth-shattering news. But it shines a light on … Read more
Strong and smart security operations teams are at the heart of any cybersecurity strategy, and today a startup that builds tooling to help keep them on their toes is announcing some funding on the back of a lot of growth. Pentera — which has built a system that launches simulations of network attacks to stress … Read more
Meta is facing an AI copyright publisher lawsuit in France accusing it of economic “parasitism,” Reuters reports. The French litigation was filed in a Paris court this week by the National Publishing Union (SNE), the National Union of Authors and Composers (SNAC), and the Society of People of Letters (SGDL), which are accusing Meta of … Read more
Scimplify, an Indian startup that helps pharmaceutical and agriculture companies access a range of specialty chemicals, has raised $40 million in a new funding round co-led by Accel and Bertelsmann Investments to widen its footprint in the U.S. and reach new markets. The Series B round pegs Scimplify’s valuation at about $150 million post-money, the … Read more
Salesforce plans to invest $1 billion in Singapore over the next five years as it seeks to fuel the adoption of its AI agent development platform, Agentforce. Salesforce claimed that Agentforce can help alleviate Singapore’s ongoing labor issues and augment the country’s workforce and enterprises by creating “digital workforces” that combine humans with autonomous AI … Read more
Spotify on Tuesday released its annual Loud & Clear report, detailing information about the music streaming service’s royalty payments. While Spotify revealed earlier this year that it paid out $10 billion to the music industry in 2024, the new report offers more in-depth numbers about its payments in an effort to dispel reports that the company … Read more
VC funding into AI tools for healthcare was projected to hit $11 billion last year — a headline figure that speaks to the widespread conviction that artificial intelligence will prove transformative in a critical sector. Many startups applying AI in healthcare are seeking to drive efficiencies by automating some of the administration that orbits and … Read more
Uber Technologies has ended its acquisition of Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda in Taiwan, the Germany-based tech firm said on Tuesday. The announcement comes roughly three months after Taiwan’s antitrust regulator blocked the deal, citing competitive issues. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said that if Uber acquired Foodpanda, its market share in Taiwan would increase to 90%, … Read more
