SAP’s chief sustainability officer isn’t interested in getting your company to do the right thing

SAP chief sustainability officer Sophia Mendelsohn has been on the job since September, but her career really goes back to her undergraduate years at Harvard when she studied sustainability. Ever since her first job working in China, she observed the connection between prosperity and sustainability. “I’ve been in sustainability a …...Read More

Tesla’s profitable Supercharger network is in limbo after Musk axed the entire team

At the start of the year, Tesla’s Supercharger team was tasked with the impossible. “We were on an exponential path,” a former team member told TechCrunch, adding that the new targets were “super-duper crazy.” Despite the bottlenecks that such expectations can create, “every time they upped the metric, we met …...Read More

StrictlyVC London welcomes Phoenix Court and WEX

StrictlyVC events deliver exclusive insider content from the Silicon Valley & Global VC scene while creating meaningful connections over cocktails and canapés with leading investors, entrepreneurs and executives. And TechCrunch is excited to join forces with key players in the London investment community at our next StrictlyVC event. We’re pleased …...Read More

Meesho, an Indian social commerce with 150M transacting users, secures $275M in new funding

Meesho, a leading e-commerce startup in India with about 150 million transacting users, has secured $275 million in a new funding round, it disclosed in a securities filing. The new funding is part of a larger financing round, which is likely to include secondary transactions and balloon to over $500 …...Read More

Scammers found planting online betting ads on Indian government websites

Some Indian government websites have allowed scammers to plant advertisements capable of redirecting visitors to online betting platforms. TechCrunch discovered around four dozen “gov.in” website links associated with Indian states, including Bihar, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Mizoram and Telangana that were redirecting to online betting platforms. Some of those websites belong …...Read More

Motional cut about 550 employees, around 40%, in recent restructuring, sources say

Around 550 employees across autonomous vehicle company Motional have been laid off, according to information taken from WARN notice filings and sources at the company. Earlier this week, TechCrunch reported that Motional is pausing commercial operations and delaying plans to launch a robotaxi service with its next-gen Hyundai Ioniq 5 …...Read More

Sample Series A pitch deck: Cloudsmith's $15m deck

Back in September 2021, Cloudsmith raised $15 million in Series A funding for its cloud platform that manages companies’ software supply chains. At the time, that was the largest Series A round for a Northern Ireland company since 2005, so it definitely got something right! I was delighted to look …...Read More

OpenAI's ChatGPT announcement: What we know so far

OpenAI has a livestreamed announcement planned for 10 a.m. PT on Monday — but it’s trying to keep expectations under control. The company is describing the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.” CEO Sam Altman, meanwhile, promoted the event with a the message, “not gpt-5, …...Read More

Anthropic's Claude sees tepid reception on iOS compared with ChatGPT's debut

Consumer demand for mobile AI chatbot apps outside of ChatGPT may be waning. Earlier this month, Anthropic launched its first mobile app on iOS, providing access to its Claude 3 model for both free and paid users. Though the app offers the same functionality as its web version, as well …...Read More

Founders Fund leads financing of composites startup Layup Parts

Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack also participated. The breakneck pace is more than a subtle indication that investors’ appetite for tech-focused solutions to the …...Read More