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By Rebecca Bellan

Friday, July 5, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch AM! Today, we’re looking at fresh VC funds for emerging and growth tech firms, EU ramping up scrutiny on big tech, a slew of hacks across companies big and small, a marketplace for Gen Z, and Japan’s latest huge robot. To work! — Rebecca

Image Credits: Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto / Getty Images

1. What Threads can learn from its competition: It’s been a year since Threads launched as an alternative to X, and the company already has 175 million monthly active users. Threads has slowly added some features like a web app, multiple profiles, trending topics, and fediverse integration, but it still has lots of room to grow. Here’s a look at what the service can learn from its peers. Read More

2. Necessity spurs innovation: Southern Europe, and Spain in particular, are seeing some of the worst effects of climate change, like extreme heat waves and drought. But Madrid-based VC fund Seaya is counting on that as a tailwind to help find climate change. The firm just closed a €300 million climate tech fund called, Andromeda, and will invest in companies that specialize in energy transition, decarbonization, sustainable food value chains and the circular economy. Read More

3. Amazon gets another RFI from the EC: The regulator wants Amazon to detail how well it’s complying with the EU’s requirements for transparency around recommender systems, ads provisions and risk assessment. Amazon could be forced to pay up to 6% of global annual turnover in fines for noncompliance. Read More

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Image Credits: Fizz

FB Marketplace, but for Gen Z: Gen Z students looking to buy used items won’t go to Craigslist because it’s sketchy, and they say Facebook Marketplace is for old people. But the demand for a local, Gen-Z focused buying and selling platform is still there. That’s why Fizz, an anonymous social media platform operating across 240 colleges and 60 high schools, has added a peer-to-peer marketplace feature. Read More

Emerging tech gets a shot in the arm: Venture firm Forestay has closed its second fund at a hard cap of $220 million. The Swiss VC has risen quickly in Europe, leading rounds in enterprise startups like Scandit, Wasabi, K2view, Nexthink and most recently, Neural Concept. The new fund will invest across Europe and Israel, and aims to lead growth rounds between $10 million and $15 million. Read More

Roll20 rolls a natural 1: Roll20, a popular online tabletop and role-playing game platform, has suffered a data breach. A bad actor apparently gained access to an admin account and was able to access and view all user accounts. While users’ IP addresses were compromised, Roll20 said it didn’t find any evidence that any data was being misused or that passwords or credit card numbers were exposed. Read More

And anotha’ one: Health tech services provider HealthEquity has also suffered a data breach, and hackers have apparently stolen the “protected health information” of some customers. The hack originated from a personal device “belonging to a business partner” whose account was compromised, HealthEquity said, and used to access member information. Read More

Military healthtech gets a boost: It’s easy to forget that the U.S. Department of Defense has long been a patron of new tech before it became popular with civilians, like telemedicine and electronic health records. VC firm J2 Ventures, mostly led by U.S. military veterans, has raised a $150 million fund to invest in companies that are building products to help maintain the well-being of the nearly 3 million people employed by the U.S. military. Think tech that lets you draw blood without needles or wearables that measure blood flow to the brain. Read More

AI comes for consulting: Why pay for a human consultant to show your business how to integrate AI and automate workflows when you can just get an AI to do it? That’s what Chicago-based Quantum Rise is pitching and the company just raised a $15 million seed round to grow its “Consulting 2.0” model. Quantum Rise aims to help companies that can’t afford to enlist the Deloittes of this world to onboard AI processes. Read More

Mobile Suit Public Works: If you like giant robots (who doesn’t?), you’ll most likely have a soft spot for Japan, and here’s yet another reason to go visit that country: The West Japan Railway has unveiled a 40-foot robot that will help with maintenance tasks on train lines, like trimming tree branches and painting metal frames, according to The Guardian. As Japan’s aging population results in more worker shortages, the company hopes to use robots like this for a variety of maintenance operations. Read More 

OpenAI got hacked last year, reports the New York Times, and the hacker reportedly gained access to internal messaging systems and stole details about the design of OpenAI’s tech. While the hacker didn’t get into the systems where OpenAI houses and builds its AI, OpenAI’s own employees are worried: After the breach, an OpenAI program manager reportedly sent a memo to the board, arguing that the company wasn’t doing enough to prevent foreign adversaries like China from stealing AI tech and endangering national security. Read More

The EU has no patience for dangerous content on X: The European Commission is set to serve X with a formal warning for failing to combat dangerous content on the platform, according to Bloomberg. The warning follows X’s allegedly subpar handling of content after the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. The regulator is threatening fines worth up to 6% of annual revenue for failure to comply with its Digital Markets Act. Read More

Image Credits: YouTube

YouTube’s updated eraser tool lets creators easily remove any copyrighted music from their videos without affecting any other audio like dialogues or sound effects. The tool uses a specific AI-powered algorithm to get it right, according to YouTube. Once the video is successfully edited, YouTube will remove the content ID claim. Read More

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