When George Avetisov was the founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup HYPR, he spent a lot of time in the trenches with the company’s sales team. He quickly realized that regardless of how good his sales team was, they were consistently pulling in other departments to answer customer questions or fill out technical questionnaires.

“They don’t know the answers to most questions that get asked of them,” Avetisov told TechCrunch. “They have to ask a product person, they have to pull in a sales engineer. It’s a daunting task, and these people are brilliant, like I’ve worked with some amazing sales reps, but the problem with sales is there’s no easy way for them to automate knowledge.”

Avetisov (pictured above in the center) decided that would be his next problem to solve. He left HYPR in 2021 and took a brief interlude from startups to play and beat video game Elden Ring; Avetisov said he wanted a little downtime before being all consumed by another startup. He launched his new company, 1up, in 2022.

1up is an AI-powered knowledge automation platform for sales teams that pulls information from internal company data sources and databases. Sales professionals can turn to 1up to find answers to their product or technical questions, execute requests for proposal and also use it help fill out technical questionnaires.

The company launched publicly in January 2024 and has since amassed nearly 100 customers that range from startups to large enterprise customers including WalkMe and Deliveroo. The company has been able to land a not insignificant portion of these customers through an unorthodox marketing strategy: memes.

“We run one of the biggest sales meme libraries in the community, and we get millions of impressions on LinkedIn,” Avetisov said. “People follow us just from our memes. I know it’s a little weird, but like, one out of three of our leads comes from a meme.”

Now the company is announcing a $5 million funding round led by Upfront Ventures with participation from RRE Ventures, 8-Bit Capital, and individuals like Friendster founder Jonathan Adams, among others. Upfront general partner Kobie Fuller is the lead investor and will take a seat on the company’s board.

Fuller told TechCrunch that he got a cold email from Avetisov just days after one of his portfolio companies mentioned 1up might be a good fit for Fuller’s investment thesis regarding how AI will change enterprise’s approach to knowledge. When talking about this thesis to Avetisov, Fuller said they were speaking the exact same language.

“So much of how we make investment decisions is around the founder and George, a second-time founder, saw the problem and pain point first hand,” Fuller said. “When we talk with George, he can dive in at whatever level or depth in a manor you don’t see all the time with CEOs. You can tell he’s mission driven, he has 1up tattooed on his inner wrist. He’s really, really in it; he’s incredibly scrappy.”

Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI startups building for sales departments have exploded, especially when it comes to building AI tools that help customers generate sales leads and with client outreach. Companies looking to provide knowledge centers for enterprises, many of which popped up prior to 2022, started gaining momentum, too.

Avetisov isn’t deterred, though. He said that 1up provides such a different service than the AI sales lead generators that he doesn’t think 1up is competing for the same line in a company’s budget. He said that he doesn’t think companies need all-encompassing knowledge centers, but 1up’s approach is different because it solves a specific problem.

“When you talk to the enterprise, knowledge management is not a budget item. It’s not a hair on fire problem,” Avetisov said. “Our philosophy on this is that for knowledge automation to succeed and become a billion-dollar company or industry, it needs to be laser-focused on a persona and on a department.”

The next steps for 1up, now that its raised this recent funding, is to scale out the sales team. There will also be some feature upgrades, though Avetisov wasn’t ready to share the details on those quite yet.

“Sales teams get a lot of shit,” Avetisov said. “They have one of the hardest jobs in the company, and their tool set is horrible. They’ve got so many tools for prospecting and CRMs and all that stuff. But when it comes to knowledge management, they have been completely neglected. So that’s our hot take. That’s our laser focus.”

• President Donald Trump has signed a “full and unconditional” pardon for Ross Ulbricht
• The Silk Road operator had received two life sentences and a further 40 years
• Trump said the same “lunatics” were behind the fight against him

President Trump has signed a “full and unconditional” pardon for Silk Road foudner and operator Ross Ulbricht.

Silk Road was a notorious dark web marketplace selling illegal drugs, hacking tools and stolen passports during its operation between 2011 and 2013.

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has a new interim chairman: former Amazon executive Doug Gurr (pictured above).

The announcement comes as the U.K. seeks to position itself as a pro-growth, pro-tech nation by cutting red-tape and bureaucracy, with artificial intelligence (AI) taking center stage. The country is also nearing the end of a long investigation into the domestic cloud services market that had Amazon firmly in the CMA’s crosshairs.

In its announcement on Tuesday, the government leaned into Gurr’s past at Amazon as a means to “boost growth and support the economy,” noting that he will “bring a wealth of experience” from his work in the sector.

“This Government has a clear Plan for Change — to boost growth for businesses and communities across the U.K.,” Jonathan Reynolds, the U.K.’s secretary of state for business and trade, said in a statement. “As we’ve set out, we want to see regulators including the CMA supercharging the economy with pro-business decisions that will drive prosperity and growth, putting more money in people’s pockets.”

The big tech factor

Gurr joined Amazon’s U.K division in 2011, initially as VP of its “hardlines” division, which focused on products such as gardening and toys. He transitioned into the role of country manager for Amazon’s China business in 2014, before moving back to head up U.K. operations in 2016. Gurr left Amazon in 2020 to become the director of the Natural History Museum.

Outgoing chair Marcus Bokkerink, who has more of a consulting than commercial background, held his post for less than three years, a relatively short tenure as the position typically lasts up to five years. However, reports indicate that chancellor Rachel Reeves was underwhelmed following a meeting with various U.K. regulators last week, prompting a changing of the guard.

It’s worth noting that although Gurr’s appointment is on an interim basis, the CMA’s CEO Sarah Cardell was also initially appointed as interim CEO back in 2022 before she moved into the role permanently.

That’s not to say this is what will happen with Gurr, but it gives a clear indication about the type of person the government wants to see chairing the country’s antitrust regulator — a body currently investigating big tech firms for all manner of alleged contraventions.

Alex Haffner, competition partner at law firm Fladgate, says it’s no coincidence that Gurr’s appointment has come at a time when the U.K. is “banging the drum for its growth agenda.” He also highlighted that Gurr’s background is “unashamedly commercial” compared to his predecessor.

Over and above that, however, this appointment raises questions about how the CMA might approach its enforcement of rules around big tech across verticals.

“What stakeholders will now be assessing is how the new appointment translates into the CMA’s approach to enforcement,” Haffner said in a statement to TechCrunch. “Recent signs are that it has taken heed of criticism of previous decisions and is perhaps more willing to be flexible — the recent Vodafone / Three clearance decision being a case in point. However, the new Chair also takes on the role at a time when the CMA has taken on significant new powers under the Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Act, particularly in relation to its oversight of big tech, meaning the CMA will likely become more activist, albeit giving considerable attention as to how to enforce in a way which best stimulates competition and therefore economic growth.”

The Open Cloud Coalition, a Google-backed lobby group launched back in October to curry favor with European lawmakers, “congratulated” Gurr on his appointment as interim chair. However, Nicky Stewart, senior advisor to the Open Cloud Coalition, urged the regulator not to lose sight of its ongoing investigation into the cloud services market, which counts Amazon as the runaway market leader.

“As the CMA’s cloud market investigation enters a critical phase, we urge the regulator to stay the course and take decisive action to create a fairer, more competitive cloud market that benefits businesses, consumers, and the wider digital economy,” Stewart said in a statement issued to TechCrunch. “The cloud industry can only flourish when there is a level playing field, and as outlined in our position paper, meaningful intervention is essential to unlocking innovation and investment across the sector.”

• Sega has launched a new Sega Account service
• It’s free to sign up and offers exclusive in-game rewards
• This includes a bonus outfit for Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Sega has just launched a brand new online account system, simply called ‘Sega Account’.

The official Sega Account website reveals that its “lets you maximize Sega’s online services” and that it “offers a ton of benefits.” Much like Sega’s email newsletter system, Sega Account is free to sign up for and seems like it’ll offer exclusive in-game rewards for those who do.

Google is announcing a variety of classroom and accessibility-focused ChromeOS features today, and one of the standouts is being able to control your computer with your head and facial expressions. The feature — aimed at those with motor impairments — was first announced in early December, but it’s now rolling out to more users with compatible Chromebooks (Google recommends 8GB of RAM or more).

This isn’t Google’s first foray into the face-as-a-cursor space. It previously made an open-source AI accessibility tool for Windows games called Project Gameface, which was also announced for Android. Here’s a sample video from Google of the tech in action, demoed by software engineer Amanda Lin Dietz who helped develop it.

Additionally, Google is also teasing a boatload of new Chromebooks for 2025, with over 20 new devices in its standard Chromebook and Chromebook Plus lines coming this year. That estimate may be a bit of a stretch, since Google seems to be counting the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus that launched back in October, but it does also count the just-announced 14-inch Lenovo Chromebook Plus 2-in-1 and more to come.

Along with laptops aimed at educators and students, Google’s got a new batch of classroom-focused ChromeOS features called Class Tools. These allow teachers to have real-time control of their students’ screens. Once a pairing code is shared, educators will be able to send students direct content on their Chromebook screens, flip on live captions or translations for them, remotely view their screens, and share a student’s work with the whole class.

In addition to these collaborative tools, Google Classroom is also getting an integration with Figma’s FigJam, allowing teachers to assign online whiteboards to students for brainstorming and group work. Maybe the combination of FigJam with the teacher’s ability to snoop on students’ screens will reveal who’s really doing all the work for the group.

A four-year-old London startup backed by Peter Thiel has raised a $55 million Series B round as it sets about “fixing the broken clinical trial industry.”

The announcement comes as artificial intelligence is shaping up to revolutionize drug discovery and development, in turn spurring demand for a streamlined clinical trial process to help get new medicines to market quicker.

Lindus Health has built a platform that covers the entire end-to-end process of running clinical trials, with automation playing a central role — as such, Lindus calls itself the “anti-CRO” (contract research organization). A CRO, for the uninitiated, is an external organization used by pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device companies for carrying out crucial clinical research, which enables those companies to focus more on their core drug development work.

The CRO market was pegged as a $82 billion market last year, and is predicted to grow to $130 billion by the end of the decade.

Trials and tribulations

While clinical trials vary in size and scope, they typically involve several stages from start to finish, which includes designing the trial as well as building a protocol and regulatory submission package. After that, they have to set up the technology to run the trails, recruit patients, and collect data. Altogether, this can take years, so when a potentially life-saving drug is on the cards, anything that can speed things is a good thing.

Lindus says it can streamline many parts of this process using machine learning, for instance to design the initial protocol (a detailed plan), which can be very labor-intensive. For this, Lindus has built a protocol generation tool trained on historical data that can create an initial draft.

While its software is a large part of Lindus’ offering, co-founder Meri Beckwith (pictured above right with co-founders Michael Young and Nik Haldimann) stresses that the company delivers everything that’s needed for running a full end-to-end clinical trial, including the staff necessary to conduct it.

“We’ve directly enrolled and provided treatment for more than 35,000 patients now. On staff, we have medics, doctors, technologists who are overseeing the trial data, clinical operations and regulatory folks,” Beckwith told TechCrunch in an interview last week.

Founded in 2021, Lindus Health has so far delivered clinical trials across Europe and the U.S., focusing on conditions such as asthma, acne, chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, hypertension, weight management and social anxiety. These trials are either for trialing drugs or testing new medical devices.

“What you might notice is in common with a lot of these, and what gets us excited, is that these are quite complex, prevalent conditions that a lot of people suffer from, and frankly, they have been neglected by the industry,” Beckwith said.

Drug discovery

While the rise of AI is leading to all manner of ethical and legal quandaries, one area that seems to be exciting many people is its potential applications in health care, particularly in drug discovery.

A slew of startups have raised truckloads of capital to apply AI to the drug discovery process, and the company at the heart of much of this is Google’s DeepMind. Back in October, DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and John Jumper scooped the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, a deep learning model capable of predicting the 3D structure of proteins — data that’s crucial for disease research and helping scientists uncover novel drug candidates.

Hassabis predicts that all human diseases could be cured within a decade thanks to these advances. While some of the early indications are positive, clinical trials will be pivotal to proving the technology’s true worth. As with the drug discovery industry, many startups have been raising venture capital to modernize the dusty old clinical trial industry.

This raises an important question: Is all the hullabaloo around AI drug discovery leading to a greater demand for clinical trial technology?

Beckwith, for his part, thinks there is a correlation.

“Frankly, all these AI drug discovery companies are not going to have the impact they deserve unless we fix this bottleneck in clinical trials,” he said. “The average AI drug discovery company spits out targets and hypotheses about this drug, or that patient population, but you still have to test them.”

For a pure software firm, the concept of rapidly testing, iterating and shipping code is fairly well ingrained in company culture. But in biotech, even where software is central to operations, it has been difficult to adopt such a “move fast and break things” mantra.

This is for good reason, of course, as there is a world of difference between building a fashion marketplace and developing life-saving pharmaceuticals. However, Beckwith says things can be greatly improved with more efficient clinical trial infrastructure.

“Our mission as a company is to help these biotech companies test and iterate more rapidly, and more safely with patients,” he said.

‘Scratching the surface’

Lindus Health had previously raised around $25 million in equity and grant funding, including an $18 million Series A round in 2023 from the likes of Spotify investor Creandum and billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel. With a fresh $55 million in the bank, the company is preparing to accelerate its expansion, which includes moving its global headquarters from the U.K. to the U.S. — a transition that’s currently underway.

Moreover, Lindus plans to invest more resources in its commercial go-to-market team, expand into “more complex” clinical trial types, and bolster its integrations with third-party tooling such as electronic medical records.

As with any company worth its salt in 2025, Lindus is also exploring more applications for AI across its business, including ways to analyze clinical trial data in real-time.

“We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with AI,” Beckwith said.

Lindus Health’s Series B round was led by Balderton Capital, with support from Creandum, Firstminute, Seedcamp, and Visionaries.

In today’s increasingly connected world, the need for reliable, high-speed internet connectivity is no longer a luxury, but a necessity for both organizations and consumers alike. As more individuals and businesses continue to rely more heavily on digital platforms and technologies, the demand for seamless, secure and robust connectivity has never been so important. For many businesses, connectivity is not just about operational efficiency, it is at heart of business operations, innovation, and security in an age where even minor outages can cause significant disruptions.

This landscape highlights the important role vendors play in ensuring businesses have access to the necessary IT infrastructure and tools needed to succeed. Through focusing on inclusive policies, implementing advanced technologies, and offering tailored solutions, vendors can empower businesses to meet the challenges today’s digital world brings.

Bridging the digital divide for a more inclusive society

Hindustan Unilever has agreed to acquire beauty startup Minimalist for about $342 million, marking its latest push to expand in India’s fast-growing premium skincare market.

The consumer goods giant will initially acquire a 90.5% stake in the four-year-old direct-to-consumer brand through secondary buyouts and primary investment, with the remaining 9.5% to be purchased from founders in two years, according to a stock exchange filing.

The announcement confirms TechCrunch’s report from earlier this month.

The deal gives Unilever’s Indian unit a stronger foothold in the premium beauty segment, adding to its portfolio that includes brands like Dove, Pond’s and Lakmé. Minimalist, known for its actives-led skincare products, reported an annual revenue run rate of over 5 billion rupees and has been profitable since inception.

“This acquisition is another key step to grow our Beauty & Wellbeing portfolio in the high growth masstige beauty segment,” Rohit Jawa, CEO of Hindustan Unilever, said in the statement.

Founded in 2020 by Mohit Yadav and Rahul Yadav, Jaipur-based Minimalist sells a range of products from sunscreen to hair-repair serum. The startup had previously attracted investment from Unilever Ventures in its Series A round in 2021. Peak XV was its first institutional investor, leading the seed funding in the startup through its Surge platform in late 2019. Minimalist is one of the earliest Surge portfolio startups.

The acquisition follows Hindustan Unilever’s expansion into health and well-being through the purchases of Oziva and Wellbeing Nutrition last year. The latest transaction is expected to close in the June quarter, subject to regulatory approvals.

The founders will continue to run the business for two years after the deal closes. Minimalist has built a strong presence in e-commerce, which Hindustan Unilever plans to complement by expanding the brand’s offline distribution using its extensive retail network.

The deal values Minimalist higher than the roughly $300 million valuation it reportedly sought when attempting to raise venture capital in the second half of last year, according to previous media reports.

Indonesia’s antitrust agency KPPU fined Google 202.5 billion Rupiahs, equivalent to $12.6 million, on Wednesday for antitrust violation related to its payment system services for the Google Play Store.

The KPPU ordered the search giant to cease the mandatory use of Google Play Billing in the Google Play Store. It also asked Google to let all developers participate in the User Choice Billing (UCB) program and give them a minimum 5% service fee discount for a year after the decision is finalized, according to its statement.

The antitrust watchdog launched an investigation into Google in 2022 for its market dominance — in particular, the company required Indonesian app developers to use Google Play Billing (GPB). The agency found that the Google Pay Billing System had charged fees up to 30%, higher than other payment systems.

The Google Play Store handles payments between developers and users through the GPB System for in-app purchases. Google requires all purchases of digital products and services in the Google Play Store to go through the Google Play Billing system. At the same time, it prohibits other payment alternatives to Google Play Billing. The agency said that limiting the payment options led to fewer app users, reduced transactions and lower revenue.

The agency noted that the Google Play Store is the only app store pre-installed on all Android devices, with a market share over 50%. As for the search engine market, Google held a market share of 95.16% in the Indonesian search market, and other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo!, DuckDuckGo, and Yandex held the rest as of January 2024, according to Statista.

Google plans to appeal the ruling.

“We strongly disagree with the KPPU’s decision and will appeal. Our current practices foster a healthy, competitive Indonesian app ecosystem, offering a secure platform, global reach, and choice, including user choice billing — which enables alternatives to Google Play’s billing system,” a Google spokesperson, Danielle Cohen, said in an email statement.

“Beyond our platform, we actively support Indonesian developers through a comprehensive suite of initiatives, including Indie Games Accelerator, Play Academy, and Play x Unity, reflecting our deep investment in their success. We remain committed to complying with Indonesian law and will continue collaborating with the KPPU and stakeholders throughout the appeals process,” she added.

The tech industry has been closely watching a series of legal disputes involving Google being fined for breaching anti-competitive practices due to its misuse of dominant market power in various countries, including Indonesia, India, South Korea, France, the EU and the U.S. Japan’s antitrust regulator is likely to determine that Google has breached Japan’s antitrust laws and will order the tech behemoth to cease its monopolistic behaviors, according to Nikkei Asia.