ACME Capital, an early-stage venture firm that’s run by industry insiders Scott Stanford and Hany Nada, has just closed two funds totalling $300 million in capital commitments, including a $240 million early-stage fund and a $60 million vehicle for later-stage bets. The money is significant given that the outfit’s last fund closed with $181 million…
Discord will start testing a handful of new features in some of its biggest communities this week. The social audio and chat platform got its start connecting gamers for online play, but it’s grown into one of the main ways to build a thriving online community, complete with custom emoji, live events, topic channels and…
Cloud is the big buzzword these days, with people talking about why it’s a smart move for companies, and lots of venture-backed startups developing easy ways for companies to make the shift. Artisanal Ventures, a Bay Area venture capital firm investing in B2B cloud startups, closed on its first fund, the oversubscribed $62 million Artisanal…
BharatPe co-founder and managing director Ashneer Grover has asked the board for the removal of chief executive Suhail Sameer from the board in the latest of a series of remarkable turn of events at the Tiger Global-backed Indian fintech startup. Grover, who is subject to an ongoing investigation whose preliminary finding has suggested fraud, wrote…
Ford has made cost-cutting a key piece of its EV strategy as the company works to improve profit margins while meeting what CEO Jim Farley has called “incredible demand” of its new electric vehicle models. During the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call on Thursday, Farley said Ford has set up a task force dedicated to…
The exodus of executives at Better.com continues. TechCrunch has learned that Sarah Pierce – who served as executive vice president of customer experience, sales and operations, and Emanuel Santa-Donato – who was senior vice president of capital markets and growth – are no longer with the digital mortgage company. The circumstances around their departures at…
Tesla is once again grappling with large-scale software quality issues. The Associated Press reports Tesla has issued a recall for 817,143 cars over a flaw in seat belt chime functionality. All Model 3 and Model Y cars, as well as 2021 and newer Model S and Model X cars, have a “software error” that prevents…
There are many reasons to think the traditional venture industry may be at a tipping point after a very good run. The most obvious indication are the sizzling returns private investors have made in recent years, while public shareholders haven’t fared so well. Consider data published yesterday by the WSJ, showing that venture-backed darlings to…
Scale AI’s path to becoming a $7.3 billion company was paved in real data from images, text, voice and video. Now, it is using that foundation to get into the synthetic data game, one of the hotter and emerging categories in AI. They announced Wednesday an early access program to Scale Synthetic, a product that…
Graham & Walker, an accelerator and venture fund focused on helping female and non-binary founders, has announced the latest batch of companies to enter its accelerator program. I hopped on a call with G&W founder Leslie Feinzaig to hear what’s new with the program and what these six new companies are up to. If you’re…
