Intro

In this week’s Startup Pulse we’re looking at USA vs TikTok, Boston Dynamics new robot they’ve shared with the world, and a few points around AI.

News Pulse

• US House of Representatives passed a bill this week requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or they’ll be banned in the USA. The campaign against TikTok continues and the HoR will persist - though now the Senate needs to approve the bill. If approved, it’ll give ByteDance 9 months to make the sale, and a 90-day extension requiring Presidential approval if needed. TikTok have stated they’ll be looking to challenge the bill in court.

• Boston Dynamics is scaring people. I personally find it fascinating. Their humanoid robot gave us some moves in their video they released this week. The retirement of their famous Atlas draws a line under what many will call their ‘legacy’ robot very soon. I’ll be keeping an eye on if they do a tour, or any museum gets a short stint with them in an exhibition! Goodbye, Atlas.

• We’re seeing the evolution of LLM to web platform quickly with ChatGPT and Gemini. There are a number of very small challenger startups (one you’ll hear more on soon) who are looking at disrupting and improving your experience of the internet. If you take anything away from this newsletter, check out Arc.

Fundraising Pulse

• Wagestream raised a further £17.5m for their financial benefits platform. They’re looking at expanding their offering to include a credit-builder card, discounts on shopping and an AI-powered coach to lower the barrier to entry for financial advice.

• Condoit closed their seed with a $4.5m round, led by The Westly Group. Electricians are able to use the app to capture photos, conduct site walk and remotely log data. They are taking an “electrician-first” approach for electricians of any size to use their app.

• Toronto-based CrashBay have closed their seed round of $1.25m for their digital marketplace providing collision repair solutions. Funds are going straight to product development, ramp up its customer acquisition, and solidify itself as the go-to solution for collision repair needs.

Topic Pulse - Where do you go for your startup news?

I read a lot about tech startups, the tech scene, funding and the ecosystem. But it still feels like the way the information is distributed is still very fragmented. If I want MedTech news, I go to the MedTech spot, if I want funding news, I can set up Google alerts or from a site like FinSMEs.

I’ve been toying with automated my social media to produce the news that I end up trying to find, to my socials, for you to see. Stay tuned on this as I’m also launching my new website for my own business so am juggling the priorities currently!

Spotlight Pulse

Arc, (Arc.net) is a free web browser developed by The Browser Company, available for MacOS and iOS. They have been redefining how we use the internet since 2022.

After completing an initial import from your current web browser, you’ll be ready to go. They have some great cinematic but honest and grounded videos discussing their journey and current plans on YouTube.

I’ve been an avid user for around 3 months and love seeing the changes and growth a small startup makes early on - long may it continue!

Closing

Aside from Tesla, we’ve not had too many big announcements of layoffs which is positive. AI investment is currently showing no sign of slowing down either!

Until next time, keep that entrepreneurial spirit alive, and let's keep the Startup Pulse beating strong.