The co-founders of Swedish caller ID app Truecaller are stepping back from day-to-day operations, ending an era for considered one of Sweden’s most successful consumer technology corporations as it pursues a goal of 1 billion users.

Alan Mamedi and Nami Zarringhalam, who co-founded Truecaller in 2009 and are pictured above, will hand over their responsibilities to Rishit Jhunjhunwale, the corporate’s chief product officer and head of its key India division, in January. Both founders will remain strategic advisors and board members.

The succession comes as Truecaller, which operates the eponymous call and spam blocking app, finds its feet after a difficult period, with third-quarter revenue rising 15% to SKr457.3 million ($42.3 million). More importantly, promoting revenues – which had been a cause for concern – rose 8% after several quarters of decline.

“We are approaching half a billion users and I am confident that we can reach one billion users within a few years,” Mamedi said in his last quarterly statement as CEO. “We are one of the few companies in the world whose product has managed to attract hundreds of millions of people. This is how we put Sweden on the world map. This achievement is something that my co-founder Nami and I are incredibly proud of.”

Jhunjhunwala, who joined the corporate in 2015 and holds Swedish citizenship despite his Indian roots, inherits an organization that’s finding its feet after a difficult post-IPO period. Truecaller, which went public in October 2021, dominates caller identification in emerging markets but in addition faces recent challenges in developed economies, particularly on Apple’s iPhone platform.

The group plans to launch what executives call the “biggest product improvement ever” for iOS this quarter, which can match some Android features. Although iPhone users make up just 7% of Truecaller’s base, they generate 40% of subscription revenue – a difference that highlights each future challenges and opportunities.

“I have been working closely with Alan and Nami since 2015 and I know this is a big challenge,” said Jhunjhunwala, who oversaw product development and the corporate’s two largest revenue streams.

The move comes as Truecaller shares have rallied greater than 70% from March lows, with JPMorgan analysts noting that recent market entries and emerging revenue streams could further boost growth.

However, challenges remain. The company is undergoing regulatory scrutiny in India, where it generates greater than 70% of its revenues. Recent reports suggest that Airtel’s recent spam blocking tool could threaten its dominance, although early reviews favor Truecaller’s offering.

The founders’ departure was announced alongside accelerated third-quarter results, which showed promising growth in strategic markets such as Colombia and Nigeria, where user numbers increased by 40% year-over-year. Subscription revenue within the U.S. grew greater than 60% as the corporate focused on converting users into paying customers.

“We have a fantastic management team in whom we have the utmost confidence,” Mamedi and Zarringhalam said in a joint statement. “With these elements, we are confident that the company is well-positioned for future success.”

SpaceX will conduct its sixth flight test of Starship, the largest rocket ever built, on November 18, following the successful success of its previous mission lower than a month ago.

The high flight cadence is due partially to this success, which included the first-ever return of the super-heavy booster to the launch site – where massive baton-shaped arms extending from the launch tower caught it in mid-air – and a controlled goal splashdown after the suborbital flight of the spacecraft’s upper stage on Indian Ocean. This sixth test covers a lot of the same objectives; this fact prompted the Federal Aviation Administration to approve each Flight 5 and 6 at the same time last month. Up until this point, SpaceX had to attend (sometimes months) for regulatory approval before each Starship launch.

In post in your websiteSpaceX says it will attempt to copy the same successes on November 18, including catching the booster at the launch site and accurately splashing down the spacecraft. The company will also proceed to check the heat shield and re-entry maneuvers “to expand the capabilities of the ship and boosters and move closer to enabling the entire system to be brought back online.” The engineer also made plenty of system improvements, including greater redundancy in the boosters, propulsion system, updated software controls and other changes.

SpaceX will also try and re-ignite considered one of the six Raptor engines in orbit, which will be a key opportunity to reuse Starship’s upper stage. Engineers will also test this stage in one other way: the company will test recent secondary thermal protection materials. Additionally, as the company put it, “the craft will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, intentionally emphasizing flap control limitations to obtain data on future landing profiles.”

All of this testing will culminate in “significant improvements” to the craft starting with Flight 7, comparable to redesigned flaps, larger fuel tanks and state-of-the-art thermal protection.

The live test webcast will begin roughly half-hour prior to the 30-minute launch window at 2:00 PM Pacific Time and might be viewed on the X or SpaceX website. SpaceX says this late afternoon launch window (which opens at 4 p.m. local time in Texas) will provide higher viewing conditions once it re-enters orbit.

Today, there is nearly no developer on this planet who doesn’t use an AI co-pilot ultimately. However, using GitHub Copilot or Cursor.AI to ask technical questions and get debugging help could also be just the start. One day, AI coding may include agents that can write programs themselves based on natural language prompts. Such programs can even replace human engineers.

AI coding startups that can generate code based on natural language prompts include Replit and Bubble.

Ultimately, in accordance with some VCs, firms will employ fewer engineers and every of them will manage agents coding artificial intelligence. “It’s not a cake made in heaven. It’s in the near future, but not today,” VC Corinne Riley, partner at Greylock, said last week on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt.

She added that coding assistants are already widely accepted in coding interviews for potential employees at lots of Greylock’s portfolio firms.

However, he doesn’t believe that to be able to lower your expenses, really young firms should ever use artificial intelligence agents to exchange human engineers. At the seed stage, “you might be constructing the inspiration of the corporate, right? So when you’re making major engineering compromises at this stage, it’s probably not the fitting decision. These are decisions you can make in the longer term,” she said.

But money management can be why young startup engineers should enlist AI coding help as often and in addition to possible, Elizabeth Yin, co-founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, said on the VC stage.

“One of the main challenges in the early stages is that you don’t really know what problem you’re solving, what the ICP (ideal customer profile) is and what exactly they need. So you’ll end up throwing away a lot of work. So the faster you can work and the faster you can iterate, the better in terms of learning quickly,” Yin said.

He believes that early-stage startups ought to be open to any tools that allow founders to quickly assemble product samples to maneuver faster, even in the event that they should be fastidiously and thoughtfully rebuilt later. “I would actually be a fan of it if it meant you could learn a lot faster,” she said.

This is in contrast to the times before artificial intelligence, when each pilot needed to be coded by someone with the suitable skills. Today, an engineer can view a model, use AI debugging, and have a look.

VC Renata Quintini, early-stage co-founder of Renegade Partners, agrees.

“When it comes to finding product-market fit or testing it, that leverage needs to be leveraged, but I wouldn’t worry about seed-stage optimization,” she said on stage.

Interestingly, as startups founded in 2024 launched using AI development processes, we could witness the seeds of the primary future workforce of AI agents. And the primary people to recruit AI agents will likely be the programmers themselves. This thought is as ironic because it is prophetic.