Non-sexy industries can appeal to investors too

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! This week, we’re looking at some hot fintech startups in Africa, how Mint’s closure has been Copilot’s gain and why VCs have doubled down on a particular expense management startup. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday … Read more

Atomic Industries closes $17M seed to exascale America’s industrial base

In 2014, investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel infamously posed the distinction between companies that deal in “atoms” versus those that deal in “bits.” In its crudest terms, the former category includes businesses focused on things like hardware and manufacturing; the latter, software and financial services. Just shy of 10 years on, the distinction now strikes … Read more

Artists across industries are strategizing together around AI concerns

As creative industries grapple with AI’s explosion into every artistic medium at once, separate calls from artists warning the world to take action before it’s too late are starting to converge. From fake Drake songs to stylized Instagram profile pictures, art conjured with newly sophisticated AI tools is suddenly ubiquitous — and so are conversations … Read more

Sarah Stusek’s ‘Three Rivers’ Dropped After TikTok Backlash

Indignant readers flooded TikTok and the GoodReads web page of an writer’s forthcoming e book with one-star evaluations after the writer attacked one explicit reviewer for score the novel 4 out of 5 stars. GoodReads appears to have paused evaluations of the e book in response, freezing the web page because it was on Wednesday. … Read more