Agriculture is a thirsty industry, consuming 70% of all fresh water used worldwide. In some countries, like India or Chile, it can be more than 90%. For Mario Bustamante, who lives in Chile, the problem hits close to home. “Lack of water is a big issue here,” he told TechCrunch. Bustamante is betting that AI…
On Wednesday evening, I had a profound sense of déjà vu. When I watched Mark Zuckerberg open his Meta Connect keynote by giving the world a live backstage tour from his new glasses, I was transported back to 2012. I was in the live audience at Google I/O when Sergey Brin introduced the world to…
Y Combinator hosted its Summer 2025 Demo Day last week, showcasing the latest batch of over 160 startups. As with recent batches, the majority of startups presented AI-centric solutions. However, a clear evolution was evident. Instead of “AI-powered” products, many companies are now building AI agents or the infrastructure and tools needed to develop them….
Brett Adcock, co-founder and CEO of the humanoid robotics startup Figure AI, made a rare public appearance at the Bloomberg Tech conference on Thursday. Figure has recently been the subject of a couple news articles that questioned its progress with marquee customer BMW. Figure objected so strenuously to at least one of these reports that…
Microsoft has released a browser-based, playable level of the classic video game Quake II. This functions as a tech demo for the gaming capabilities of Microsoft’s Copilot AI platform — though by the company’s own admission, the experience isn’t quite the same as playing a well-made game. You can try it out for yourself, using…
Pear VC, a prominent pre-seed and seed-focused venture firm, has been running an accelerator for about a decade with about 10 startups in each batch. Over those years, the small but mighty program has helped launch numerous companies like Viz.ai, whose FDA-approved AI can diagnose strokes (and was valued at $1.2 billion in 2022), relationship…
Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator held the second Demo Day for its Summer 2024 cohort on Thursday, and just like we saw on Day 1, AI remains the focus of most startups in this cohort. However, we did also find a few interesting startups that are working on cool tech like drones that can’t be…