Black public media absorbing The BPMplus program will include two presentations of creative technological productions at “Torrents: New Links to Black Futures” on Saturday, November 16.

Headquartered in Harlem, New York, Black Public Media is a national nonprofit media arts organization supports the event and distribution of black filmtelevision and immersive projects from Black creators who use technology to create content related to the worldwide Black experience.

On Saturday at 12:00, filmmakers and artists will meet at Songbyrd Music House to speak in regards to the art of making artificial intelligence, augmented reality, projections and video projects. The 2024 event’s featured artists, moderated by BPM Emerging Media Director Lisa Osborne, will engage with attendees by sharing their workflow and creative processes, revealing the intentions behind their designs, delving into concept art, and showcasing clips of accomplished work.

Launched in 2018, the BPMplus project offers manufacturers and technologists access to grants, scholarships, workshops, demonstrations and networking opportunities as they create projects using augmented reality, motion capture, artificial intelligence and other technologies.

“As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies become more embedded in our daily lives, it is important that access to these tools is available to everyone in the liminal or pre-commercial phase,” Osbourne said in a press release.

Creators even have access to artist residency programs and the national PitchBLACK Immersive forum.

CulturalDC once more welcomed BPMplus for its annual presentation on Torrents as an interdisciplinary series celebrates the progressive way forward for visual artstechnology, music, film and performance.

“For decades, technology training, grants and other opportunities have been funneled into the hands of a few, essentially injecting biases that existed in old or traditional media into new storytelling tools long before their mass adoption,” Osbourne said. “Our BPMplus programs strive to counter this larger trend in the worlds of technology, film, art and philanthropy by giving our immersive filmmakers and artists a seat at the table to ensure a future where all communities are represented.”

“Torrents: New Links to Black Futures” will run from November 14 to 17. BPMplus Art & Tech Showcase I starts at noon on the last day; Showcase II will happen at 2:00 PM EST. There will likely be a net mixer with a money bar from 3:30-4:30 p.m

Registration is accessible we recommend collaborating free events.

as influential economy is growing, startups like PassionFroot, Agentio and One Impression, together with social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, are attempting to construct marketplaces to connect brands with creators.

A startup based in Miami Influencefocuses on two unique features of its platform: quick response from creators and financial tools ensuring timely payment.

The company is developing a set of tools for brands to higher track campaigns. Additionally, it’s considering introducing latest financial products for creators, including loans, debit cards and bank cards.

To support these efforts, Influur has raised $10 million in Series A financing from Point72 Ventures and HTwenty Capital, bringing its total funding to over $15 million. Business angels include Sofia Vergara and Thalia.

Ishan Sinha, partner at Point72, said the platform helps creators change into higher entrepreneurs.

“Creators are good at creating content. However, they may not be business-savvy entrepreneurs. So by having a place for their money to live, they can get paid quickly and their analysis is powerful,” he said.

Influur was founded in 2021 by 4 Latina founders: CEO Alessandra Angelini, who worked as a producer at CNN before founding the corporate; chief influencer Fefi Oliveira, who has worked within the entertainment industry with corporations akin to Nickelodeon and Telemundo and has over 9 million followers on her social media accounts; chief operating officer Paula Coleman, who also worked at CNN as an associate producer; and sales director Valeria Angelini, who worked as a social media analyst at FedEx.

Before founding Influur, Angelini asked Oliveira, whom she met in college, why the creators didn’t respond to CNN’s attempts to contact her. Oliveira explained that influencers receive hundreds of messages on Instagram and email, making it difficult to manage all of them.

To solve this problem, Angelini got here up with an influencer marketing tool, similar to Google AdSense, to manage a brand’s spend on this space.

Market and community

Once joined, creators can connect all their social media accounts, view marketing pricing, and consider a listing of past brand collaborations. The startup’s founders noted that there are currently over 40,000 creators on the platform with various numbers of followers.

Creators can apply for open brand campaigns that meet their criteria. They also can go for a “gated partnership” where they receive the brand’s product in exchange for content. As for brands, they also can contact chosen creators individually for collaborations.

On the platform, creators can get suggestions and suggestions from other experienced creators and learn from them. To keep interactions relevant, the platform limits posts to creators with greater than 2,000 followers.

Angelini said many platforms list influencers based on online data, which frequently leads to low response rates. She mentioned that the influencer normally responds to a brand inquiry on Influur inside 24 hours.

Influur also offers a premium subscription for creators for $30 per thirty days, which provides them access to a one-click media kit with detailed information on pricing rates, past campaigns, social media and engagement metrics. They also get access to experiences where they will create content and exclusive webinars from popular creators.

According to Oliveira – a creator for years – certainly one of the principal problems is the pursuit of brands for a payment after ending work. To solve this problem, Influur asks brands to pay upfront, holds the cash in an escrow account, after which transfers it to the creator’s wallet once they ship all campaign products.

“Influencers often wait 60 to 120 days after publishing their final product to get paid. We solve this problem with our wallet and instant payments feature,” Oliveira said.

Creators can wait 30 days for withdrawal or withdraw the cash immediately with a 15% fee to Influur. Currently, the corporate supports withdrawals in several countries, including: within the USA, Mexico and Brazil. The startup mentioned that 20% of its creators paid this fee to get a fast payout.

In the longer term, the startup plans to launch a set of monetary tools for creators, akin to virtual accounts, short-term loans, credit and debit cards. “Influencers want Influur to become their bank. We are planning to launch a new financial product so that we are not only part of how influencers make money, but also part of how they save and spend money,” Angelini said.

Point72’s Sinha said that in his careful evaluation of the fund, he discovered that the founders care about financial stability and that the startup is constructing the fitting tools to achieve this.

Insights for brands

With the Series A raise, Influur is working to add insights to influencer campaigns together with financial tools. The company can be making a prediction engine that may allow corporations to predict the effectiveness of campaigns for a particular creator.

The company is expanding its team in 4 centers: San Francisco, Miami, Mexico and Argentina.

In addition to charging creators a 15% fast withdrawal fee and premium subscription, Influur also charges a service fee of 20-25% per transaction from brands. While the corporate had several profitable months last 12 months, it’ll take a while for Influur to generate a profit because it goals to change into money flow positive by 2026.

The startup believes it has an edge over other markets thanks to its financial tools, insights engine, and popular creator as co-founder.

A pointy increase in the number of personal vehicles and a decline in the use of public and non-motorized transport have resulted in increasing traffic congestion in India, the world’s most populous country, which also struggles with relatively narrower roads and insufficient parking spaces in cities. New Delhi recognizes these challenges and is looking for new ways to quickly meet them.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said at a September event that air taxis do will soon change into a “reality in India”, indicating the government’s interest in supporting the new mode of transport. Also the national aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation recently formulated rules regarding vertiports prepare the ground for air taxis.

The ePlane company I’m riding this wave.

The startup, founded in 2019 by IIT Madras aerospace engineering professor Satya Chakravarthy, is constructing an electrical vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicle called e200x, months after developing unmanned drones for transportation and camera applications. Chakravarthy has a strong pedigree: he is also a co-founder and advisor to Indian space tech startups including Agnikul and GalaxEye, in addition to Indian hyperloop-focused startup TuTr Hyperloop.

Chakravarthy told TechCrunch that ePlane has secured mental property rights while developing urban commuter and cargo aircraft that feature relatively low airspeed and a compact wingspan of 8 meters, as opposed to typical air taxis with wingspans of 12 to 16 meters. Thanks to this, it’ll give you the option to land in tight spaces and make many short trips – up to 60 a day – on a single charge, he says. It claims commuters would cut back their journey times by as much as 85%, at a cost lower than twice the fare they typically pay for an Uber ride.

Most eVTOL vehicles are currently multicopters similar to industrial drones, including air taxis equipped with spokes and vertical rotors. Chakravarthy said that while this configuration is easier to develop and implement in the market, it doesn’t allow for longer distances on a single battery charge. ePlane selected a lift-plus-cruise configuration, in which the vehicle has a winged architecture like a typical airplane, but with vertical, drone-like rotors.

“It has been proven that this configuration is actually very reliable because we’ve redundancy in terms of the vertical rotors carrying the weight of the aircraft, while the wings contribute to the gradual balancing of the weight in order that there is no lack of lift during the transition from vertical take-off and hover to flight forward,” he said.

The startup also developed a technology called synergistic lift, which uses vertical rotors even in forward flight to keep the wings sufficiently compact.

Chakravarthy told TechCrunch that ePlane produces aircraft components at its IIT Madras facility, including airframe parts, and designs seats and propellers. The startup outsources the cells but assembles the aircraft’s batteries in-house to manage the plane’s center of gravity.

The startup goals to commercialize its electric air taxi in mid-to-second half of 2026, after obtaining required certifications from Indian and global authorities and creating a prototype of the aircraft in the first half of 2025, Chakravarthy told TechCrunch.

Prior to testing the vehicle, ePlane raised $14 million in a Series B round co-led by Speciale Invest and Singaporean company Antares Ventures. Micelio Mobility, Naval Ravikant, Java Capital, Samarthya Investment Advisors, Redstart (from Naukri) and Anicut also participated in the equity-only round. The round valued the startup at $46 million post-money – greater than double its previous valuation of $21 million.

The fresh capital will help ePlane, which employs greater than 100 people, gain global regulatory certifications and expand its commercialization efforts.

India’s success has helped ePlane expand into other markets, including the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe.

“We work with the belief that in the future, what is good for India will be good for the world,” Chakravarthy said.