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WordPress vs. WP Engine on the Disrupt stage
The drama between WP Engine and WordPress reached center stage at Disrupt, with Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg confirming that the departures of staff following his decision to call out WP engine for being a “cancer to WordPress” are leaving the company “very short-staffed.” In an interview with our Editor-in-Chief and GM Connie Loizos, Mullenweg held fast in his belief that the significant community backlash to the public feud was influenced by WP Engine’s messaging, and that several tech execs have expressed support for his decision.
Our full rundown of Mullenweg’s interview, and the recording, will be available soon — but in the meantime, catch up on the latest developments on WordPress vs. WP Engine here.
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Get into the groove at TechCrunch Disrupt
Day 3 of Disrupt has kicked off and attendees are being welcomed into Moscone West today with a musical trio. It may be the final day of Disrupt but the energy is just as strong as the first!
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Watch a Startup Battlefield 200 live demo
Calling all Silicon Valley HBO fans: Startup Battlefield 200 (SB200) contestant HILOS gave us serious deja vu for Pied Piper’s Middle Out demo.
Watch as HILOS displays its generative AI tech “for an on demand future” as they team up with Steve Madden to compete for the $100,000 SB200 prize.
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The five Startup Battlefield finalists have been announced
From a pool of 200 companies, chosen out of thousands of applicants, Startup Battlefield’s five finalists have been selected for the opportunity to pitch once more on the Disrupt Stage at 11:30am PT. Based on that pitch, one will be chosen as the Battlefield winner and recipient of a $100,000 equity-free prize and the Disrupt Cup.
For a full rundown of the five winners, you can head here, but here’s a quick TL;DR on each of the companies.
Gecko Materials: Inspired by the way real-life geckos’ feet grip surfaces, Gecko’s adhesive is like a new Velcro — except it only needs one side, leaves no residue, and can detach as quickly as it attaches.
Luna: A health and well-being app for teen girls that is designed to help them navigate teenhood. The app lets teens ask questions about their health and wellness and get responses from experts.
MabLab: For anyone who parties or goes out dancing, the risk of accidentally taking adulterated drugs is real. MabLab has created a testing strip that detects the five most common and dangerous additives in minutes.
Salva: Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world, so she and her two best friends decided to create a theoretical portable device that would detect breast cancer early.
Stitch3D: U.S. Army Veteran realized that the massive three-dimensional files created with lidar are unwieldy for most use cases, prompting the launch of Strict3D a browser-based platform that lets you view, share, annotate, interact with, and manage your large 3D files. -
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024’s final day has begun!
Disrupt’s third and final day is gearing up. Programming at the Disrupt Stage starts off at 10am PT and features another impressive lineup of sessions and speakers, including…
- 10:30 am PT: Matt Mullenweg, CEO and co-founder of WordPress
- 3:10 pm PT: Perplexity co-founder and CEO Aravind Srinivas
- 3:30 pm PT: Lumi CEO and founder Colin Kaepernick
- 4:05 pm PT: The Startup Battlefield competition finale!
You can keep up with all of that through our livestream on YouTube. But for those attending in-person, there are even more panels to experience at the Moscone Center you can catch in person.
On the AI Industry Stage, you can explore topics such as…
- How generative AI floods the web with disinformation
- The advantages of “Open” AI with the Head of Global Policy at Hugging Face
- AI on wheels with Zoox CTO and co-founder Jesse Levinson
- What AI governance actually looks like
And on the Builders Stage:
- A look into what you’ll need to do to raise capital in 2025
- How to pick a unicorn
- Making smartphones fun again with Nothing’s CEO
You can check out the full agenda for Disrupt right here, and stay glued here for more updates as the event progresses.
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Salesforce’s former CEO on the future of customer experience AI agents
Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor has embarked on a new journey as the co-founder of Sierra, a startup building customer experience AI agents, which Taylor thinks have the potential to transform enterprise software.
Taylor also chatted about what it’s like going from a big company like Salesforce to a brand new startup — and his life as a mover and shaker in Silicon Valley, including being board chair of several high-profile companies including Twitter and OpenAI.
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Haptic’s touch-based navigation helps blind and sighted alike get around without looking
Smartphones and navigation apps have become second nature these days. But for those with blindness and low vision, it’s not quite so convenient. Haptic Works has been building a non-visual, non-verbal way of telling people where to go and presented it onstage today as part of the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. The advance Haptic has made is a way of using vibration and other tactile sensations to communicate the simple, intuitive idea that the user is going in the right direction.
Image Credits:Haptic -
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ForceField helps detect deepfakes and digital deception by verifying source data
A new startup setting out to combat the scourge of deepfakes and spoofed evidence in the age of AI is showing off its wares on the Startup Battlefield stage this week. ForceField is building a set of “patent-pending” APIs dubbed MARQ, the first of which is designed to authenticate content algorithmically. ForceField, for its part, is focusing on the device level rather than the content — this means any data stream, on any device, where ForceField’s technology is present. This could be a mobile app with ForceField’s API integrated, or a surveillance camera’s video-management system or drone’s hardware — it can “sign and hash for verification” in real-time.
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024: Tony Fadell, Mary Barra, Colin Kaepernick, and a new Startup Battlefield winner
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 has begun, with hundreds of speakers, hundreds of startups and exhibitors, plus thousands of attendees meeting in San Francisco’s Moscone Center to experience three days of expertise, industry insights, and networking opportunities. In this live blog, you’ll get the rundown on the highlights from TechCrunch Disrupt’s panels, news from the show floor, and updates on the competition leading up to the winner of Startup Battlefield 200.
