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Why, hello there, Crunchianistas!
Today, Haje is waltzing around the house, candle in hand, celebrating Saint Lucia. Honestly, not because he’s that excited about the traditional Scandinavian celebration or the excitement about candlelight and saffron buns, but because he’s visiting his parents and there’s a power cut. Which means all manner of excitement in the cold, frozen European, –7°C December. Christine, meanwhile, is chillin’ like a villain in 80-degree heat. Luckily, that’s in Fahrenheit, or we’d be looking at pretty severe discomfort.
Okay, that’s enough about the weather outside. Let’s take a look at which way the wind is blowing elsewhere, such as in the world of tech. — Christine and Haje
After being bootstrapped for seven years, Ngrok today announced that it raised $50 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Coatue. Shreve tells Kyle that with the fresh capital, Ngrok will grow operations and “make continued investments” to improve its core product offering.
The trillion-dollar construction industry isn’t known for its efficiency, accused of failing to move with the times and ignoring digitization in favor of legacy tools, Paul reports. There is plenty of evidence that things are changing, with countless startups raising large sums of cash to help the construction industry modernize. It’s against that backdrop that German VC firm Foundamental today unveiled its new fund, targeting $85 million at early-stage construction tech startups globally and building on the early success it has seen from its inaugural $65 million fund, which closed back in 2019.
And we have five more for you:
The Berkus method, scorecard valuation and venture capital are the most-commonly used frameworks for costing pre-revenue startups, but when it comes to AI, are traditional yardsticks still useful?
“AI can scale much faster than other technologies, so what works at the beta or minimum viable product stage may not work when an AI product scales to millions of users,” says Ryan E. Long, principal attorney of Long & Associates.
Long identifies some of the limitations of using traditional means to value premoney “prototype or novel AI startups” in an article that identifies regulatory issues and shares tactics designed to “minimize the number of uncertain variables.”
Now three more from the TC+ team:
TechCrunch+ is our membership program that helps founders and startup teams get ahead of the pack. You can sign up here. Use code “DC” for a 15% discount on an annual subscription!
Apple’s iOS 16.2 update is now available for all users, along with iPadOS 16.2 and macOS Ventura 13.1, Ivan writes. He has a look at all of the top features of the update, including improved encryption for iCloud data, Live Activities on the home screen, a karaoke feature for Apple Music and the new collaborative whiteboard app Freeform.
Speaking of Apple, Zack spent some time tracking down information from the consumer tech giant, writing that it confirmed “that an iPhone software update it released two weeks ago fixed a zero-day security vulnerability that it now says was actively exploited.”
And we have five more for you:
Source @TechCrunch
