HILOS is making footwear more sustainable without skimping on style

For HILOS (Human Innovation Lab Operating System), 3D printing means creating footwear that’s chic, low-waste, and runway ready. The shoe itself is not magically appearing out of the 3D printer — the company prints a handful of modular shoe parts, which can be easily and quickly assembled. Nor are they made of the 3D-printed material, which would likely sacrifice functionality and comfort. Instead, HILOS stocks materials like leather and knits, which it also uses in a modular, multi-functional way. HILOS pitched today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt.

Luna wants to help young girls navigate their health and well-being  

The app is designed to help teen girls navigate teenhood by letting them ask questions about their health and wellness and get responses from experts. It also lets them track their periods, moods, and skin. The London-based startup presented today at TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield to detail its mission to educate and support teen girls.

CTGT aims to make AI models safer

CTGT set out to help orgs more thoughtfully deploy AI by working with companies to identify biased outputs and hallucinations from models, and attempt to address the root cause of these. It’s impossible to completely eliminate errors from a model, but CTGT co-founder Cyril Gorlla claims that CTGT’s auditing approach can empower firms to mitigate them. CTGT pitched today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 as part of the Startup Battlefield competition.

TechCrunch Disrupt’s second day begins

TechCrunch Disrupt 2024’s second day will soon rev into high gear, with the Disrupt Stage’s programming starting off at 10am PT and featuring another excellent lineup of sessions and speakers, including…

A fresh round of Startup Battlefield pitches to kick things off

• 11:15 am PT — General Motors CEO Mary Barra
• 1:30 pm PT — Ashton Kutcher on how to make sound investments
• 2:00 pm PT — Startup Battlefield round 4
• 3:15 pm PT — Build Collective’s Tony Fadell on the next generation of deep tech startups

You can catch all of that via our livestream, but that’s not all for the day’s events. For those attending in-person (and tickets are still available!) there are even more events across the Moscone Center. On the Builders Stage, you can explore topics such as…

• How startups can save the world
• How companies can be built while protecting mental health
• How The Chainsmokers go beyond their celebrity with their investments

And then on the SaaS stage, you can learn about…

• Slack’s evolution under Salesforce and what’s next
• The future of open source as a business model
• What VCs really want to see from early stage founders

You can check out the full agenda for Disrupt right here, and stay glued here for more updates as the event progresses for two more days.

This veteran couldn’t share 3D scans of a burnt naval ship, so he created a startup that can

In the summer of 2020, a fire broke out onboard a naval ship docked in San Diego Bay. For more than four days, the USS Bonhomme Richard burned as helicopters dropped buckets of water from above, boats spewed water from below, and firefighters rushed onboard to control the blaze. Before the embers had even cooled, lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) scans were taken to assess how bad the damage was and to figure out how the fire even started. But the investigation was stalled, partially because of how hard it is to send lidar scans. The solution turned into Stitch3D, which was a top 20 finalist in TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield program.

MabLab’s improved drug and drink testing strips could make for safer streets and venues

The company created a testing strip that detects the five most common and dangerous additives in minutes. For anyone who parties or goes out dancing, the risk of accidentally taking adulterated drugs is a real one. MabLab, which pitched today on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, is trying to minimize that risk.

Vinod Khosla calls author of SB 1047 ‘clueless’

Khosla Ventures’ Vinod Khosla said the author of SB 1047, California’s recently vetoed AI bill, was clueless about the real dangers of AI.

Referring to Senator Scott Wiener, Khosla said he was a “huge supporter of him” when it comes to local issues, but that “he is not qualified” to regulate the real dangers of AI.

As part of the conversation, Khosla also took a moment to deliver some harsh words for anyone who supported Donald Trump — including Elon Musk.

Watch the entire conversation with Khosla below.

VRTL wants to make virtual fan events fun again

VRTL, which pitched onstage today as part of the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt, differentiates itself from other video chat or livestream services by not only giving clients valuable data, but also that it has proprietary fan engagement tools. One popular feature allows celebrities to sign autographs virtually for fans — for example, a soccer star might sign a .gif of an iconic play, personalizing it for each individual fan. On the management end, holding a virtual meet and greet is a lot less costly than an in-person one, which requires venue rentals, security, and staffing, not to mention that it only involves local fans.