Author: GT

Urban Company, India’s largest home services platform, stormed onto the public markets on Wednesday, opening 58% above its issue price after delivering the country’s most subscribed IPO of the year. The Gurugram-based startup, which connects users to at-home services ranging from beauty treatments to appliance repair, debuted on the Mumbai-based National Stock Exchange at ₹162.25 per share (approximately $1.84), up from its IPO issue price of ₹103. The offering, which opened last week, was subscribed over 100 times, meaning investors placed orders for 100 times more shares than were available, signaling robust demand from both institutional and retail investors. Urban…

American maritime technology company Mythos AI has completed the installation of its Advanced Pilot Assistance System (APAS) aboard the vessel CB Pacific, a chemical cargo ship owned by CB Tankers.The APAS project is designed to manage navigation at sea. Unlike most traditional systems in this space that depend largely on machine vision, APAS uses a radar-first approach, in combination with other sensing technologies. It connects directly to a ship’s radar and streamlines data so it can be used to alert a ship’s human crew if necessary during a journey. APAS is designed to support mariners, reduce cognitive load, and improve…

Kayak co-founder Paul English is back with a new venture—this time, he’s taking on Calendly. The entrepreneur has launched Supercal, a free scheduling platform that’s designed to make booking meetings more efficient and simple. Supercal was born out of English’s personal experience with the challenges of booking meetings. As a member of eight boards of directors, English says he and others often struggled to coordinate schedules. He then set out to create an email system for booking group meetings and to challenge Calendly by building a similar tool that offered similar functionality, but for free. “Instead of having the limited…

Y Combinator-alum Rulebase is betting that the next wave of automation in financial services won’t be about flashy AI interfaces but rather the unglamorous back-office tasks like compliance. The startup, founded in 2024 by Gideon Ebose and Chidi Williams, two Nigerian engineers who met in London, just raised a $2.1 million pre-seed round led by Bowery Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Commerce Ventures, Transpose Platform VC, and several angels. Financial services firms spend enormous amounts of effort on support tickets, resolving disputes, ensuring quality assurance, and regulatory compliance. Rulebase’s software, which it calls an agent co-worker, replaces much of…

While many robotics companies are building human-sized robots, or working to automate entire factories, MicroFactory is instead trying to think big by building small.   San Francisco-based MicroFactory built a general-purpose, tabletop manufacturing kit that’s about the size of my Siberian husky’s dog crate. This compact factory includes two robotic arms and can be trained by human demonstration, as well as through AI.   “General purpose robots are good, but it’s not necessary [to] be humanoid,” said Igor Kulakov, the co-founder and CEO of MicroFactory, in an interview with TechCrunch. “We decided to design robots from scratch that will still be general…

On Tuesday, Google announced a new open protocol for purchases initiated by AI agents — automated software programs that can shop and make decisions on behalf of users — with backing from more than 60 merchants and financial institutions. Called the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2), the system is meant to be interoperable between AI platforms, payment systems and vendors, providing a traceable paper trail for each transaction. In a post announcing the protocol, Google executives emphasized their commitment to openness. “We are committed to evolving this protocol in an open, collaborative process, including through standards bodies, and  invite the entire…

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAmazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday that he’s working to root out bureaucracy from within the company’s ranks as part of an effort to reset its culture.Speaking at Amazon’s annual conference for third-party sellers in Seattle, Jassy said the changes are necessary for the company to be able to innovate faster.”I would say bureaucracy is really anathema to startups and to entrepreneurial organizations,” Jassy said. “As you get larger, it’s really easy to accumulate bureaucracy, a lot of…

Calm is launching a new stand-alone app for more personalized sleep support, the company announced on Tuesday. The new Calm Sleep app is available on iOS and is designed to help people wind down, sleep better, and wake up refreshed, Calm says. The app features Calm’s content with new features designed to help users reach their sleep goals. Calm Sleep starts by getting people to complete a short onboarding questionnaire. The app then creates a personalized sleep plan, including recommended content and daily tasks designed to improve sleep, focusing on areas such as digital hygiene, exercise, stress reduction, and sleep…

Salesforce is increasing its focus on national security. The customer relationship management giant announced the creation of a new business unit called Missionforce on Tuesday. It will be focused on incorporating AI into defense workflows in three main areas: personnel, logistics, and decision-making, according to a company press release.  Missionforce will be helmed by Kendall Collins, the CEO of Government Cloud. Collins joined Salesforce in 2023 and was previously the chief business officer and chief of staff to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.   “With Missionforce, we’ll now bring the best of AI, cloud, and platform technology from the private sector…

The StubHub logo is seen at its headquarters in San Francisco.Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty ImagesOnline ticket platform StubHub is pricing its IPO at $23.50, CNBC’s Leslie Picker confirmed on Tuesday.The pricing comes at the midpoint of the expected range that the company gave last week. At $23.50, the pricing gives StubHub a valuation of $8.6 billion. StubHub confirmed the IPO pricing in a release late Tuesday. The company said its shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the symbol “STUB.”The San Francisco-based company was co-founded by Eric Baker in…