Tech
DeleteMe acquires social media security tool Block Party
Block Party founder Tracy Chou announced on Wednesday that the company has been acquired by DeleteMe, an online personal data removal service.
A software engineer and advocate for diversity in tech, Chou founded Block Party in 2018 as a tool to help people stay safe from targeted harassment on Twitter, inspired by her own experiences on the platform.
Chou raised a $4.8 million seed round in 2022 to expand the tool to other social networks, which turned out to be really good timing — soon after, Elon Musk would buy Twitter. Under his ownership, the company began charging for access to its API, but the costs were too steep for a startup like Block Party to operate, so Block Party was forced to quickly pivot and launch tools for other platforms.
Over time, the company evolved into a browser plug-in to “deep clean your social media,” integrating with more than a dozen other platforms, like TikTok, Instagram, Venmo, Facebook, and yes, even X.
“In a prior life, I was briefly and mildly Internet famous for my activism and advocacy work,” Chou wrote in a blog post. “The subsequent intrusions on my life and physical safety became a shocking revelation in how exposed I was, and I found myself scrambling to lock everything down.”
That was when she learned about DeleteMe, which could help her remove personal information from data brokers and people search sites. But there wasn’t an equivalent product to help people protect themselves on social media, which is what prompted her to create Block Party. It’s only fitting that Block Party will now become part of DeleteMe.
“Until now, enterprise customers and consumers alike have had to go to different companies to cobble together separate solutions,” Chou wrote. “This acquisition brings both our products under the same roof, and gives everyone who’s been asking for it somewhere to go.”
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For current Block Party users, nothing will change for now — as the tool becomes more integrated into DeleteMe at large, the company says it will share more with customers.
“I used to be more open about my life online. Many of us were. But for too many people, that openness has come at a real cost,” she wrote. “We don’t have to choose between having a voice and being safe. That was always the point.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Tech
Glean’s top line crosses $300M as AI budget cutting becomes its major selling point
Glean, a company often described as the Google for enterprise, said it has reached $300 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), a three-fold increase from the $100 million milestone it reached just 15 months ago.
While many AI startups are growing at a blistering pace, Glean’s progress is particularly remarkable. After years of essentially being the only player in the category, the seven-year-old startup is accelerating its growth as tech giants enter the enterprise AI search market with rival products.
“The first four or five years of our existence, we had no competition,” Glean CEO Arvind Jain told TechCrunch. “Given how important search is to make AI work in the enterprise, every single company in the world wants to be in this space.”
Tech heavyweights building Glean-like tools include Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, Salesforce, and Atlassian.
Jain maintains there’s value in being a first mover in the space, but that it’s also equally important to offer a better product.
What Glean does better than its competition, according to Jain, comes down to the deep understanding that its AI tools have of customers’ business needs. Glean’s AI achieves this knowledge — a concept captured by the new, popular term “context graph” — by connecting to and learning from enterprises’ internal software systems.
Jain claims that Glean’s context graph also helps enterprises cut AI computing costs.
“If you connect your AI to Glean, it gives you all the information that you need to do your work, and that results in AI consuming far fewer tokens compared to if you unleash AI onto your systems directly,” Jain said. That’s because with Glean, AI ends up performing fewer operations, he added.
At a time when many companies are blowing through their AI budgets, those token cost savings have become a major selling point for the company.
“One of the things you know our customers really like about Glean is the fact that we can reduce your AI bill significantly,” he said.
The company, which was last valued at $7.2 billion when it raised a $150 million Series F last June, offers various pricing structures to its customers, which include Databricks, Reddit, Pinterest, and Samsung.
According to Jain, Glean offers both a consumption-based model, where clients pay per use, and a hybrid model that combines a fixed monthly fee for active users with separate usage fees for model consumption.
Glean is definitely not the first company to do this, but it’s worth pointing out that the company’s $300 million milestone cannot be fully described as traditional ARR, because a consumption model by definition doesn’t have a strictly recurring component.
Pure consumption pricing models depend on fluctuating user activity rather than predictable subscription renewals, therefore a portion of Glean’s top line is more accurately described as an annualized revenue run rate.
Glean did not immediately respond to a request for comment; this post will be updated if the company replies.
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Tech
Final 24 hours to save up to $410 on your TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 ticket
This is it. The countdown is almost over. You now have until tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT to lock in Early Bird savings of up to $410 for TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 before prices increase.
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Tech
Today is the last day to apply to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 returns October 13–15 to Moscone West in San Francisco — and applications to speak are open for just a few more hours.
We’re inviting founders, investors, operators, and technology experts to apply for a chance to take the stage at one of the most influential tech events of the year.
More than 10,000 startup and VC leaders will gather at Disrupt 2026 to explore what’s next in AI, scaling, fintech, infrastructure, robotics, and the future of innovation.
Applications close tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now to share your expertise and help shape the conversations defining the tech industry.
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