Latest news with #TCSessions:AI
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Apple says its App Store helped generate $1.3T in billings and sales, most without a commission
Ahead of its Worldwide Developer Conference on June 9, Apple on Thursday offered a new update on its global App Store business, sharing that developers generated $1.3 trillion in billings and sales in 2024. The company stressed that 90% of those billings and sales did not involve paying Apple a commission. The study also noted that developer billings and sales for digital goods and services in 2024 totaled $131 billion, driven by mobile games, photo and video editing apps, and other enterprise tools. Physical goods and services, meanwhile, topped $1 trillion, thanks to increased demand for online food delivery and pickup, and online grocery apps. In-app advertising revenue was $150 billion last year. Spending across digital goods and services, physical goods and services, and in-app advertising has more than doubled since 2019, with physical goods and services seeing the strongest growth at more than 2.6 times, Apple said. The numbers are intended to highlight how the App Store creates financial opportunities for mobile developers that extend beyond sales from in-app purchases. The storefront provides a place for developers to have their apps discovered by consumers, and Apple provides the technical infrastructure required to run an app business. This position ignores the fact that the App Store is now a mature ecosystem, and apps are a selling point for the iPhone itself. Developers today have a number of tools at their disposal to host, distribute, and manage their own applications, if they choose, but Apple's policies prevent this. That's starting to change, however. In a recent court ruling in favor of Epic Games in the U.S., Apple was required to let developers link to their own websites for processing in-app purchases without having to pay Apple a commission. In Europe, the tech giant is fighting against the rules proposed by the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which, among other things, directs Apple to give developers the right to inform their customers about alternative payment mechanisms. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW The new data comes from an Apple-funded study by economists Professor Andrey Fradkin from the Boston University Questrom School of Business, and Dr. Jessica Burley from Analysis Group. The latter has been working with Apple for years throughout its antitrust legal battles to document the App Store's success in a more positive light for the company. The study highlights other regional growth trends, like how the billings and sales facilitated by the App Store more than doubled over the past five years in the U.S., China and Europe. Digital payment spending, meanwhile, also grew by more than 7 times in the U.S. since 2019, thanks to the broad adoption of mobile payments. The report also reiterated other metrics, like how the App Store attracts 813 million average weekly visitors worldwide, and pointed to the various investments Apple has made in tools and technologies to support developers, like coding and distribution platforms, frameworks, analytics, anti-fraud systems, developer support, and more.
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
The founder of DeviantArt is making a $22,000 display for digital art
Angelo Sotira started the online digital art platform DeviantArt when he was just a teenager, growing a formative community for millions of artists in the 2000s. Twenty-five years later, Sotira wants to change digital art again, but with a focus on the way it's displayed. On Thursday, Sotira revealed his new venture, Layer, a screen specifically designed to showcase digital art in the best quality possible. 'The way that the canvas needs to perform and behave in your life is quite different than other types of displays,' Sotira told TechCrunch. 'It needs to blend into beautiful environments.' The closest point of reference that the average consumer would have for a product like this is Samsung's The Frame TV, which looks like a painting hung on the wall when it's not turned on. But Layer takes that kind of feel to an even more premium level — unlike The Frame, Layer is not a consumer product, and it's not trying to emulate static paintings or photographs. 'They're $22,000, so that kind of tells you a lot about who that's for,' Sotira said. 'We spared no expense and we spared no effort. We made no compromise in producing what is actually, in our opinion, the very best way to display digital art on a wall.' Image Credits:Layer When Sotira talks about digital art, he isn't talking about digital photography or videos. Layer is working with hundreds of artists like Casey Reas, who makes generative AI art — no, not the kind of generative art you get from ChatGPT, which is created with LLMs that use other artists' work without their consent. Instead, many of these artists are writing their own software to create digital AI artworks that change over time according to what the code says. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW But these artworks, like most AI software, require a lot of computing power to execute. That's part of why Layer is so pricey — it needs the technological capacity to display these new kinds of works. 'You're looking at an over 35-year history of extraordinary artists developing the medium of code-based art and essentially, the pixels on the display are being governed by the code that's been written that runs live on that GPU, rendering it in full resolution,' Sotira said. 'It's actually controlling every pixel, so it's not going through any compression algorithms.' Sotira is well aware that he's not the first entrepreneur to try to create a better way to display digital art — when he was at DeviantArt, he was pitched on products like Layer all the time. But because of this, he knows what was missing from the products that were pitched to him in the past. 'One of the driving principles is that you can plug it in, turn it on, and leave it alone, and it should know how to sequence art for you,' he said. In his experience, he enjoys tinkering with these devices for a few weeks, but then it becomes tedious to continue updating the display, so he wanted his own canvas to be more self-sustaining. 'It's going to be on your wall for five years, so it has to play really, really well in your life.' Image Credits:Layer Layer seems like a highly expensive and very niche product, but some venture capitalists and entrepreneurs are betting on it. While in stealth, the startup raised $5.7 million in funding from Expa Ventures, Human Ventures, and Slauson & Co., plus angels like Twitter co-founder Evan Williams and Behance co-founder Scott Belsky. The company's ambitions extend beyond selling hardware to display art. With a Layer canvas, owners get subscription access to a collection of art from the digital artists that Layer partners with. Then, those artists are paid royalties based on the amount of time their works are on view. 'We put artists first, and that's kind of the core mission and philosophy of Layer,' Sotira said.
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Automotive
- TechCrunch
Toma's AI voice agents have taken off at car dealerships – and attracted funding from a16z
When Monik Pamecha co-founded AI voice startup Toma in early 2024, he hadn't anticipated spending the summer months sweating in Bible Belt car dealerships. He and co-founder Anthony Krivonos were still focused on banking and healthcare customers when the dealers came knocking. 'They just called us up and said 'we are drowning in phone calls,'' Pamecha described that initial contact in an interview with TechCrunch. Seeing an opportunity to pivot into a far less-regulated space than banking or healthcare, Pamecha and Krivonos set up a test: They decided to have their voice agent call essentially every car dealership in the country multiple times. Over the span of a few weeks they found those calls were only picked up 45% of the time. The co-founders packed their bags. And like some sort of modern reinterpretation of the movie Tommy Boy, they set out to tour a dozen car dealerships in Oklahoma and Mississippi to get a better understanding of how these businesses work. They got their hands dirty both figuratively and literally; Pamecha said his wife was surprised by the grease stains on his clothes when he returned home. That commitment paid off. Not only did they win customers, they got the dealers' full charm offensive. The founders shared home-cooked meals – a sometimes awkward-but-funny affair given Pamecha's vegetarianism, he said – and were invited to tour the Corvette Museum. At least one dealer even asked the Toma founders to tag along to a shooting range. Seema Amble, a partner at a16z who led the $17 million that Toma has raised to date, said the pair were 'effectively living at these dealerships, going to these dealers' family barbecues, really understanding how they operate.' 'We invest in a lot of the next-generation of vertical AI companies, a lot of the best founders have just lived and breathed with these customers to understand what's going on under the hood,' she told TechCrunch. 'No pun intended.' Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW The insights from that trip helped Pamecha and Krivonos sharpen the Toma voice agent into a tool that is already in use at more than 100 dealerships around the country. The AI helps customers schedule service appointments, handle parts orders, answer sales questions, and more. Along with a16z, Pamecha and Krivonos attracted investment from Y Combinator (they created Toma at YC in January 2024), the Scale Angels fund, and auto industry influencer Yossi Levi, also known as the Car Dealership Guy. Levi told TechCrunch that dealerships struggle with phone calls in part because it's hard to predict volume. 'It ebbs and flows. Sometimes you're overwhelmed with demand. Other times there's not enough demand, and matching staffing and properly training that staff for a consistent experience is just not an easy thing to do,' Levi said. AI has 'provided an opportunity for dealers to really standardize that process, and deliver a richer customer experience that is consistent.' Pamecha said Toma's onboarding process involves training on a dealers' customer calls for a week or two to give the AI some context. This is important because while dealerships broadly do the same things, there can be a lot of variance in the details. Some dealers might service more diesel engines, for example. Dealerships also run lots of custom promotions for both sales and service. After that initial burst of training, the Toma AI starts taking calls, handing off to human employees if and when it gets stumped. Those handoff calls get analyzed, too, in order to reinforce the AI model to better help that specific dealership. On the business side, Toma operates a subscription model. As the AI agents can handle more parts of a dealership's operations, those dealers will have to pay up for those extra capabilities. The Series A 'comes at a great time' for Toma, according to Pamecha. The startup only hired its first true sales employee within the last few weeks. Before that, it was still largely Pamecha and Krivonos hustling like they did across the country last summer. Without that trip, though, Pamecha said he's not sure Toma would have reached this point. 'It has been one of the best experiences of my life,' he said. 'I feel like we've all become friends, and I think it all comes from a place of like, feeling their pain. I think they see that we feel the pain, too.'
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Collibra acquires data access startup Raito
Collibra, a data governance platform based in Brussels, is the latest enterprise to acquire a data company in order to expand its offerings in the age of AI. On Thursday, Collibra announced its acquisition Raito, a data access startup founded in 2021. Raito, also located in Brussels, helps companies manage which employees and customers have access to internal data. Collibra declined to comment on the terms of the deal. Raito previously raised $4 million in venture funding from investors, including Dawn Capital, Crane Venture Partners, and Collibra itself. Collibra founder and CEO Felix Van de Maele told TechCrunch that while managing data access is not a new problem for enterprises, it is becoming a bigger headache for data teams as more departments seek access for AI agents and workflow automation. 'We heard from our customers and large organizations that managing data access at scale has become a really big problem,' Van de Maele said. 'That's why the traditional approaches just don't scale anymore. They're too brittle. They're manual workflows, [based on] static policies.' Van de Maele added that Collibra already has a similar product, Collibra Protect, that touches on these access controls but is primarily focused on keeping data private. Raito's tech will help Collibra bolster and automate that offering. Raito isn't the only company focused on data access. Legacy enterprises like SailPoint and SecureAuth are just a few of the companies also offering data access tools. Van de Maele said buying Raito was the right choice for the company, as opposed to partnering with a legacy player, because Raito is cloud-native and built for the current AI moment. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW That Raito was founded by former Collibra employees didn't hurt either. 'We also [were] looking for teams that want to continue to build, right? It's not the end for this,' Van de Maele said. 'It is just really the beginning of this journey.' This is just the latest acquisition of a data company aimed at addressing a data governance void as companies look to shore up their stack to adapt to AI innovation. Last week, Salesforce announced its intent to acquire Informatica for the same reason. Earlier in May, both Alation and ServiceNow made similar acquisitions. Van de Maele added that advancements in AI have made people realize just how fragmented their data stacks have become, as many players had flooded the market over the last decade with single-point data solutions. 'That fragmentation of governance . . .has really become a big problem, and so that's why we were excited to kind of acquire Raito and really make it part of Collibra, our unified governance platform for data and AI,' Van de Maele said. Collibra was founded in 2008 as an early player to the data governance sector. The company has since raised nearly $600 million in venture capital from firms including Index Ventures, Sequoia and Tiger Global, among others. The company works with enterprises that include Heineken, Credit Suisse, and SAP.
TechCrunch
05-06-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
TC Sessions: AI launches in Berkeley today
Today's the day! TechCrunch Sessions: AI is lighting up UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall at 8 a.m. PT on the dot. The stage is set, the speakers are ready, and the AI community is gathering for one powerful day of insight, innovation, and momentum. Local to Berkeley and passionate about AI? There's still time to join us — grab a pass and immerse yourself in the conversations driving the next wave of innovation, and make the connections to fuel your AI passion and success. Don't miss a moment — secure your spot at the heart of today's AI action. What's in store for today We've got a powerhouse lineup of AI heavyweights ready to deliver hard-hitting insights to an audience that lives and breathes AI — plus intentional, high-impact networking happening all day long. Check out the agenda for full session details and explore the speaker page to get to know the experts behind the ideas. Or better yet, join us in person today and experience it all firsthand. Main stage AI panels and fireside chats Image Credits:Max Morse The Frontier of AI: A Fireside Chat with Anthropic Co-Founder Jared Kaplan Jared Kaplan explores the future of AI-human interaction, AGI predictions, and Anthropic's approach to building superintelligent systems. He'll also discuss upcoming breakthroughs and how society should prepare. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW From Seed to Series C: What VCs Want to See from Founders Jill Chase (CapitalG), Kanu Gulati (Khosla Ventures), and Sara Ittelson (Accel) These three VC leaders share what it takes to raise AI funding at every stage — from seed to Series C — and what they're really looking for as the hype shifts to real-world use cases and scalable business models. Your Next Co-Founder Will Be AI Kisson Lin (Tanka) Founders face mounting demands — from updates to product execution — but AI can help. Lin shares how AI co-founders can handle tasks, scale solo founders, and reshape startup dynamics for a new era. A Focus on AI Ethics and Safety Artemis Seaford (ElevenLabs) and Ion Stoica (UC Berkeley) A candid discussion on deepfakes, responsible AI deployment, and how the tech community can address the growing risks around ethics and safety. So You Think You Can Pitch? Early-stage founders pitch live to top VCs who offer real-time feedback — a must-see for anyone looking to sharpen their pitch and learn what investors really listen for. This session's investor panel includes Astasia Myers (Felicis), Itamar Novick (Recursive Ventures), and Iana Dimkova (Initiate Ventures). How Founders Can Build on Existing Foundational Models Logan Kilpatrick (DeepMind, Jae Lee (TwelveLabs), and Danielle Perszyk (Amazon) Learn how startups can leverage fast-evolving foundation models to build differentiated products — and keep pace with the rapid evolution of AI. How Toyota Repair Technicians Leverage AI with NLX Andrei Papancea (NLX) and Kordel France (Toyota) Learn how NLX and Toyota built an AI-powered tool that helps technicians access millions of repair documents through a conversational interface — boosting productivity and dealership efficiency. Get practical advice on scaling real-world AI solutions, from executive buy-in to integration. Democratizing AI and Building Collaborative Systems with AI Agents Iliana Quinonez (Google Cloud) Explore how organizations can empower teams to build intelligent agents that collaborate with humans and other AIs. This session breaks down the future of AI-driven teamwork and how to make agent development accessible to all. How to Launch a Product Against Entrenched Incumbents Oliver Cameron (Odyssey) and Ann Bordetsky (NEA) Cameron and Bordetsky reveal how to compete and win against big players — sharing strategies for differentiation, execution, and gaining market traction. Breakout Sessions primed for Q&As and deep dives Building Your AI Engine: How OpenAI Works with Startups Hao Sang (OpenAI) Learn how OpenAI supports startups with advanced model access, technical guidance, and a feedback loop that shapes its roadmap — giving founders a competitive edge in the AI race. Behind Your Firewall: Secure Generative AI for Regulated Enterprises Yann Stoneman and Betsy Groves (Cohere) Discover how to safely deploy generative AI in regulated industries using on-prem infrastructure. Cohere shares real-world use cases, compliance tips, and demos — no external cloud required. The AI Policy Playbook: What Global Startups Need to Know Hua Wang (Global Innovation Forum), Gerard de Graaf (European Union Delegation to the U.S.), and Matthew Caron (UK Department for Business and Trade) Explore how startups can navigate AI policy and regulation to scale globally. Learn how to leverage AI tools for trade, compliance, and international growth in today's shifting regulatory landscape. Building Richer and More Scalable GenAI Applications for Startups and Developers Nipun Agarwal, Sandeep Agrawal, and Luke Kowalski (Oracle / MySQL) Discover how MySQL HeatWave simplifies generative AI app development with built-in LLMs, real-time data integration, and scalable architecture — reducing complexity and accelerating innovation. Suite AI: How SAP Is Bringing AI to the Enterprise Rob Seifert and Max McPhee (SAP) See how SAP is embedding AI across its business suite with tools like Joule and custom development capabilities — helping enterprises streamline operations and drive efficiency with intelligent automation. The stage isn't where the AI conversations end — it's where they begin The main stage and breakout sessions are just the beginning — the real conversations happen in the Expo Hall, networking lounge, and through the Braindate app. Whether you're troubleshooting a product issue, looking for pitch feedback from a VC, or hoping to connect with a mentor, today's the day to make it happen. Use Braindate to set up 1:1 and small-group meetings by posting your own topic or joining others — then meet in person at the networking lounge. And don't forget the after-hours Side Events happening around Berkeley — hosted by fellow attendees and sponsors to keep the AI momentum going and help you build meaningful new connections long after the main event ends. There's still time to join today's AI epicenter It's not too late to join us at TechCrunch Sessions: AI! Grab your ticket now and join us — along with the rest of the AI community — at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall. The event wraps at 4:30 p.m. PT, so don't miss your chance!
