Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures (VKAV) plans to back up to 21 growth-stage companies across the continent after closing its first fund at $60 million. The pan-African VC hit the milestone following fresh backing from new investors including Nigeria’s SCM Capital (formerly Sterling Capital Markets Limited), Taiyo Holdings and C2C Global EducationContinue Reading
Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter. The Mumbai-based firm, backed by U.S. private equity giant KKR, has established itself as the top financial advisor in India, working withContinue Reading
Amazon has quietly introduced a “special store” called Bazaar in India, featuring affordable and trendy fashion and lifestyle products, as it ramps up efforts against Walmart-owned Flipkart and Reliance’s Ajio, which have made deeper inroads in the Indian fast-fashion market. The world’s largest e-commerce firm has rolled out the newContinue Reading
Queerie is a dating app aimed specifically at LGBTQIA+ folks. It’s a very early-stage company that’s raising just $300,000 — a round size that typically falls into the “friends and family” category. Dating is a fiercely competitive space, and there’s been a fair amount of M&A activity over the years,Continue Reading
Tucked into Rubrik’s IPO filing this week — between the parts about employee count and cost statements — was a nugget that reveals how the data management company is thinking about generative AI and the risks that accompany the new tech: Rubrik has quietly set up a governance committee toContinue Reading
Two years ago, Jobs for the Future (JFF), a nonprofit dedicated to helping low-wage workers attain upward mobility, established a venture arm, JFFVentures, to back innovative employment tech. In a move implying that the launch went well, JFFVentures today unveiled its second fund, JFFVentures Fund II, with a target ofContinue Reading
OpenAI captivated the tech world a few months back with a generative AI model, Sora, that turns scene descriptions into original videos — no cameras or film crews required. But Sora has so far been tightly gated, and the firm seems to be aiming it toward well-funded creatives like HollywoodContinue Reading
Meetings are time-consuming, and there’s no way around it. According to a 2022 poll from Deputy.com, many U.S. workers spend up to around eight hours in meetings every week, depending on the industry and locale. The productivity hit explains the growing popularity of AI-powered summarization tools. In a recent surveyContinue Reading
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that oftenContinue Reading
As deepfakes proliferate, OpenAI is refining the tech used to clone voices — but the company insists it’s doing so responsibly. Today marks the preview debut of OpenAI’s Voice Engine, an expansion of the company’s existing text-to-speech API. Under development for about two years, Voice Engine allows users to uploadContinue Reading
