Pan-African VC Verod-Kepple closes its first fund at $60M
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 Nigeria’s SCM Capital formerly Sterling Capital Markets Limited, Taiyo Holdings and C2C Global Education Japan. The fresh
Read moreMetalab goes from quietly building the internet to investing in it
With Metalab Ventures, the venture arm will play the role of a long-term value investor, essentially “putting our money where our mouth is,” CEO Luke Des Cotes said. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreLucid Motors ekes out a new delivery record as it searches for more EV buyers
Lucid Motors delivered more EVs in the first quarter of 2024 than it has in any other quarter, though it set the record by a very slim margin. The Saudi-backed, California-based electric vehicle company said Tuesday morning that it shipped 1,967 luxury sedans in the quarter. That’s just a few
Read moreSymbolica hopes to head off the AI arms race by betting on symbolic models
In February, Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google‘s DeepMind AI research lab, warned that throwing increasing amounts of compute at the types of AI algorithms in wide use today could lead to diminishing returns. Getting to the “next level” of AI, as it were, Hassabis said, will instead require fundamental
Read moreGravity on Jupiter
I was listening to the latest episode of the Space Rocket History podcast. The show includes some audio from a documentary on Pioneer 11 that mentioned that a man would weigh 500 pounds on Jupiter. My immediate thought was “Is that all?! Is this ‘man’ a 100 pound boy?” The
Read moreGoogle Cloud Next 2024: Everything announced so far
Don’t have time to be in Las Vegas? That’s OK: We’ve summed up the most important parts of this year's Google Cloud Next. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreWatch the Google Cloud Next Keynote live right here
It’s time for Google’s annual look up to the cloud, this time with a big dose of AI. At 9 a.m. PT, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian will kick off the opening keynote for this year’s Google Cloud Next event, and you can watch it live right here. After this
Read moreSprinto raises $20M to bring automation to security compliance management
Sprinto, a startup offering a security compliance and risk platform, has raised $20 million in new investment led by Accel. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreTransferGo raises $10M to expand its remittance business in Asia, doubling valuation
TransferGo, the UK-based fintech best known as a consumer platform for global remittances, has raised a $10 million growth funding round from Taiwan-based investor Taiwania Capital, with a view to expanding in the Asia-Pacific region. It last raised a $50M Series C funding round in 2021. TransferGo claims the new
Read moreIndian ride-hailing giant Ola quits UK, Australia and NZ in international pullback
Indian ride-hailing giant Ola is shutting down its operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, six years after expanding to international markets as it shifts focus to shoring up its domestic business ahead of an initial public offering. An Ola spokesperson told TechCrunch that the SoftBank-backed ride-hailing startup sees
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