Tech
Didero lands $30M to put manufacturing procurement on ‘agentic’ autopilot
Tim Spencer realized just how complicated manufacturing procurement can be while running Markai, an e-commerce startup in Asia, during the pandemic.
“We had thousands of suppliers, and we were distributing products into dozens of countries around the world,” Spencer (pictured left) told TechCrunch. His staff was overwhelmed by the manual complexity of sourcing suppliers, negotiating pricing, tracking orders, and managing payments.
“I found myself running this big team that was not really set up for success,” he said. He sold Markai in 2023, just as it was becoming clear that generative AI could streamline the most time-consuming procurement hurdles for manufacturers and distributors.
Later that year, Spencer launched Didero with Lorenz Pallhuber (pictured center), a veteran of McKinsey’s procurement practice, and Tom Petit, the former technical co-founder of Landis.
Didero, whose mission is to automate many of the complexities of global procurement, just raised a $30 million Series A co-led by Chemistry and Headline, with participation from Microsoft’s venture fund M12.
“Global trade runs on natural language communication,” Spencer said. “It’s emails, WeChat, phone calls, purchase orders, and packing lists.”
Until the advent of generative AI, these fragmented pieces had to be tracked by humans who spent their days chasing suppliers and manually updating systems of record. Didero claims its platform can ingest that communication, putting a significant portion of the procurement workflow on autopilot.
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Didero functions as an agentic AI layer that sits on top of a company’s existing ERP, acting as a coordinator that reads incoming communications and automatically executes the necessary updates and tasks.
“The goal is to go from ‘I need a good’ to payment without having to lift a finger,” Spencer said.
Unlike Levelpath, Zip, or Oro Labs, which use AI to streamline corporate purchasing, Didero focuses on the supply chain. Its platform is designed for manufacturers and distributors who need to source raw materials and inputs required to build or sell their products.
Didero has a few smaller competitors that can handle some of the tasks that the company does. For instance, Cavela and Pietra help brands source and negotiate pricing with manufacturers, but according to Spencer, these companies serve small and medium-sized companies and don’t handle the full procurement process, from the first quote to the final payment.
Didero has dozens of customers but named only one, Footprint, a provider of sustainable, plant-based packaging.
Tech
The 12-month window
In a recent episode of “No Priors” — the excellent podcast co-hosted by AI investors Sarah Guo and Elad Gil — Gil made a point about exit timing that’s undoubtedly familiar to founders who’ve spent time with him but seems particularly useful in this moment of go-go dealmaking.
For most companies, Gil said, there’s roughly a 12-month period where the business is at its peak value, “and then it crashes out.” The companies that capture generational returns are often the ones where someone spies that moment instead of assuming the good times will get even better. Lotus, AOL, and Mark Cuban’s Broadcast.com all sold at or near the top, and all are held up by Gil as outfits that foresaw what was coming and smartly pulled the ripcord.
To catch that window, Gil offered a practical suggestion: pre-schedule a board meeting once or twice a year specifically to discuss exits. If it’s a standing calendar item, it drains the emotion out of the equation.
This matters more now than it might have a few years ago. A lot of AI startups exist partly because the foundation models haven’t expanded into their category yet. But as many founders — like Deel CEO Alex Bouaziz –have jokingly begun to acknowledge, that won’t last forever.
As Gil put it: “As you see shift[s] in differentiation and defensibility and all the rest, it’s a good time to ask, ‘Hey, is this my moment? Are these next six months when I’m going to be the most valuable I’ll ever be?’”
Tech
Tesla brings its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston
Tesla is expanding its robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston, according to a social media post from the company.
The post says simply that “Robotaxi is now rolling out in Dallas & Houston 🤠” and includes a 14-second video showing Tesla vehicles driving without human monitors or drivers in the front seat.
The company now offers robotaxi service in three cities, all of them in Texas, after launching in Austin last year and starting to offer rides without safety drivers in January 2026. In a February filing, Tesla said that its Austin robotaxis have been involved in 14 crashes since launch.
It also offers a more limited ride service with human drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Tesla may not be running many vehicles in either of these new markets yet, with crowdsourced data on the Robotaxi Tracker website only registering a single vehicle in each city (compared to 46 active vehicles logged in Austin).
Tech
Netflix plans to add a vertical video feed, use AI for recommendations
Netflix is going to launch a TikTok-like vertical video feed within its apps this month, and plans to use AI broadly for content creation and recommendations, the company said on Thursday.
Netflix has been testing a vertical video feed since last year. The short video feature could aid users with discovering video podcasts, along with the current slate of shows and movies. The company is also leaning more into using AI for recommendations after launching a ChatGPT-powered search feature last year.
“We have been in personalization and recommendation for two decades, but we still see tremendous room to make it better by leveraging newer technologies,” Netflix co-CEO Gregory Peters said during the company’s first-quarter conference call. “Recommendation systems based on new model architectures not only improve current personalization but also let us iterate and improve more quickly — adding support for different content types much more efficiently.”
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said he sees AI tools improving the entire content creation process. “In general, we expect GenAI to make content better; better tools, better processes […] It takes a great artist to make great art, and AI won’t change that. But AI will give those artists better tools to bring those visions to life,” he said.
Last month, Netflix bought Ben Affleck’s AI creation company InterPositive, which, Sarandos said, has garnered interest from creators.
“With our acquisition of InterPositive, we think it accelerates our GenAI capability because it is proprietary technology created specifically for filmmakers and filmmaking, different from other GenAI video applications. While our ownership of InterPositive is very new, we have generated interest with creators who have spent time with the tools, and we are seeing momentum build around adoption,” he noted.
Netflix also mentioned that it wants to use AI to improve its ad suite, and allow for new formats and customization to get better returns. The company expects to generate ad revenue of $3 billion this year.
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Netflix reported revenue of $12.25 billion in Q1 2026, up 16.2% year-year-year, and said profit jumped 83% to $5.28 billion. Alongside the first-quarter results, Netflix said its co-founder and chair, Reed Hastings, is leaving the company’s board this summer.
Notably, the company hiked subscription prices in the U.S. late last month, which could have a positive impact next quarter. The company said it ended 2025 with 325 million paying subscribers.
Disney Refuses To Bring Back The One Character Who Could Save Star Wars
The 12-month window
