Dominic-Madori Davis

Loop, the car insurance company co-founded by Harlem Capital co-founder John Henry, has laid off staff as the company struggles with fundraising.  Henry took to Instagram to post the email his co-founder Carey Nadeau sent to impacted staff on June 16th. Nadeu also posted the letter to LinkedIn. It stated that this was the “absolute last resort” for the company after it had been unsuccessful in raising additional capital after 20 months of trying. “Our

At first, John Pasmore was excited about ChatGPT.  The serial founder had been in the artificial intelligence space since at least 2008. He recalled the days when experts declared it would take decades before the world saw anything like a ChatGPT. Fast-forward — that day has now come.  But there is a catch.  ChatGPT, one of the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence tools, struggles with cultural nuance. That’s quite annoying for a Black person like Pasmore.

The Great Rollback is here. The phrase refers to Big Tech starting to slash some of the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs that were implemented shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Most recently, Zoom announced that it laid off its DEI team. Google and Meta have started to defund their DEI programs, and funding to Black founders continues to dip. Lawsuits have been filed targeting DEI programs, forcing companies to now hide their inclusion

AI mortgage startup LoanSnap is facing an avalanche of lawsuits from creditors and has been evicted from its headquarters in Southern California, leaving employees worried about the company’s future, TechCrunch has learned. LoanSnap, founded by serial entrepreneurs Karl Jacob (pictured above) and Allan Carroll, has raised around $100 million in funding since its 2017 seed round, $90 million of which was raised between 2021 and 2023, according to PitchBook. Investors include Richard Branson’s Virgin Group,

Sanil Chawla remembers the meetings he had with countless artists in college. Those creatives were looking for one thing: sustainable economic infrastructure that could help them scale rather than drown them in paperwork, filings and tracking down receipts.  Chawla thought he might have a solution and launched a music monetization platform in 2020. During the pandemic, he pivoted the company into what it is today: Slingshot, which helps creatives find the tools they need to

​​Vigile Hoareau is a musician, cognitive psychologist and computer programmer. Jimmy Thomas is a multi-platinum rap producer who has worked with Tupac and Motown Records. Together, they are the founders of Crowdaa, a French company that allows non-developers to easily create and release apps on mobile.  The two were introduced eight years ago and bonded over their desire to give creatives, especially the rising class of content creators, more control over their platforms. At the

Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet announced on LinkedIn that she is leaving the company at the end of the month for health reasons. Starting today, Techstars co-founder and board chairman David Cohen will become CEO.  Gavet became CEO in 2021 and wrote on LinkedIn that she “would not exchange the last 3.5 years of hard work for the world.” She then gave a shoutout to her team, the executive board, the employees, investors, and founders she

Interest in male birth control has increased in the past few years, especially since the U.S. overturned Roe vs. Wade, which protected a woman’s right to have an abortion. Since then, states have tried to make abortion nearly impossible, prompting an increased look at contraceptives to allow both men and women to have more control over family planning. This conversation has led to the topic of male birth control — something doctors haven’t quite mastered

Keeping homes and offices at just the right temperature requires a lot of energy. Buildings generate about a third of the carbon pollution in the U.S., most of which comes from heating and cooling. Bedrock Energy, co-founded by Jocelyn Lai, thinks it has found at least a partial solution. The startup seeks to decarbonize climate control by installing geothermal heating pumps. Today, it’s focused on large commercial buildings, but the core technology could drive nearly

The second half of Y Combinator’s Winter 2024 cohort presented on Thursday, once again bringing dozens and dozens of new startups before a chunk of the venture investing community. As we did on Wednesday, a number of the TechCrunch crew watched the entire run of presentations, picking out a handful of favorites to highlight. Enjoy our favorites from the second round of Y Combintor demos while we go out and buy another few pots of