Biotech startup SynFlora brought an enticing pitch for a new type of skin treatment technology to 4YFN at the MWC tradeshow in Barcelona this week. The Spanish startup, whose three co-founders all have PhDs, is working to improve understanding of the skin’s microbiome and engineer skin microbes with the goal of enabling more targeted and…
At CES 2023 a startup hardware company called Displace launched the 55-inch ‘Display Flex’, a “wireless” $3,000 4K OLED TV which sticks to walls without a traditional mounting. The launch created a sensation at the time, and today at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona I caught up with founder and CEO Balaji Krishna, who told…
Dubai-based early-stage venture capital firm COTU Ventures is announcing that it has raised $54 million for its inaugural fund to support startups in the Middle East from pre-seed to seed stages. With a final close achieved last year, COTU Ventures, which identifies and backs founders from the inception to post-product launch, invests between $500,000 to…
The Federal Aviation Administration has concluded its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the second Starship launch in November, with the regulator saying Monday that it accepted the “root causes and 17 corrective actions” identified by the company. While this means the investigation is now closed, SpaceX must implement all the corrective actions and apply for…
Hot on the heels of the successful completion of its grid-connected geothermal power plant in Nevada, Fervo Energy is raising $221 million per SEC documents, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The Houston-based company is one of several enhanced geothermal startups that are racing to tap heat deep in the Earth’s crust. Previous geothermal plants have only…
Interview Kickstart, a profitable startup helping tech professionals acquire career-advancing skills, has raised $10 million in its maiden funding from Blume Ventures, the companies said on Monday. The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2014, assists engineers learn from employees of top tech companies or their alumni. Though always profitable, 2023 was pivotal for Interview Kickstart…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and I covered…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares and I covered…
The back of your phone is useless. There. I said it. Sure, the cameras are back that, but what about all of that blank real estate monopolizing 90% of the surface area? Honestly, it needs to start carry its weight around here. A fully functioning screen isn’t the answer, however. That’s a lot more battery…
Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, Google launched two new open large language models, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, in its continued bid for generative AI dominance. The company, which describes the LLMs as “inspired by Gemini,” its flagship family of GenAI…
