The United States Department of Commerce Monday proposed investing as much as $6.6 billion to fund a third Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC) fab in Arizona. The funding would arrive by way of the CHIPS and Science Act, in a bid to foster more domestic semiconductor production. The move represents a broader push to…
Spotify already found success with its popular AI DJ feature, and now the streaming music service is bringing AI to playlist creation. The company on Monday introduced AI playlists into beta, a new option that allows users to generate a playlist based on written prompts. The feature will initially become available to users on Android…
The next big thing in mechanical keyboards is magnetic switches. Mechanical keyboards quickly went from a niche product to mainstream during the pandemic, as everybody was looking to upgrade their home offices — and maybe for a new hobby, too. Brands like Akko, Drop, Ducky, Epomaker and Keychron became household names and today’s enthusiasts can…
Mahbod Moghadam, the controversial, never-boring co-founder of Genius and Everipedia, as well as an angel investor, passed away last month at age 41 owing to “complications from a recurring brain tumor,” according to a post attributed to his family and published on Genius. The startup world appears to have caught wind of his passing just…
When Hubspot founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah conceived of their inbound marketing startup in 2004, they were still graduate students at MIT, and inbound marketing was not well understood. They were able to develop that idea into a successful company and eventually went public in 2014. Today, the Boston-based company has a market cap…
Social network X is rolling out access to xAI’s Grok chatbot to Premium tier subscribers after Elon Musk announced the expansion to more paid users last month. The company said on its support page that only Premium and Premium+ users can interact with the chatbot in select regions. Last year, after Musk’s xAI announced Grok,…
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage on Wednesday at a Stanford event held by the university’s business school, offering some small insights into how he thinks about running one of the world’s most valuable tech companies. It was a notable appearance because Pichai’s been having a bit of a rough go lately. Google is…
Reuters reported on Thursday that Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is exploring the possibility of buying Boston-based HubSpot, a CRM and marketing automation company with a market cap of over $33 billion – a number that has been climbing on those reports. If such a deal were to happen, the cost would likely be pretty substantial,…
When it comes to funding, the fintech sector didn’t have a very good start to the year. Fintech funding slid by 16% quarter-over-quarter during the three-month period, according to CB Insights’ Q1 2024 State of Venture Report. But even more troubling than the double-digit dip was the fact that the $7.3 billion raised globally by…
Weeks before the national elections in India, Elon Musk-owned X said it is rolling out support for posting Community Notes — the company’s crowd-sourced fact-checking program — in the key overseas market. The first set of contributors from India will start posting notes from today and more will be accepted over time, X said. The…
Discover the forefront of hard tech innovation in an exclusive session sponsored by HAX at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024. Led by SOSV general partner Duncan Turner and HAX chief science officer Dr. Susan Schofer, and moderated by SOSV’s Sabriya Stukes, this session offers a deep dive into the world of hard tech entrepreneurship. With a…
The Indian government has finally resolved a years-long cybersecurity issue that exposed reams of sensitive data about its citizens. A security researcher exclusively told TechCrunch he found at least hundreds of documents containing citizens’ personal information — including Aadhaar numbers, COVID-19 vaccination data, and passport details — spilling online for anyone to access. At fault…
Tucked inside Canoo’s 2023 earnings report is a nugget regarding the use of CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet — just one of many expenses that illustrates the gap between spending and revenue at the EV startup. Canoo posted Monday its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings for 2023 in a regulatory filing that shows a company burning…
OpenAI is making its flagship conversational AI accessible to everyone, even people who haven’t bothered making an account. It won’t be quite the same experience, however — and of course all your chats will still go into their training data unless you opt out. Starting today in a few markets and gradually rolling out to…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Remember in the last edition of TechCrunch…
The Linux Foundation last week announced that it will host Valkey, a fork of the Redis in-memory data store. Valkey is backed by AWS, Google Cloud, Oracle, Ericsson and Snap. AWS and Google Cloud rarely back an open-source fork together. Yet, when Redis Labs switched Redis away from the permissive 3-clause BSD license on March…
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the notable happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TC’s auto reporter Sean O’Kane revealed how EV startup Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started…
In March, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill that could force ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban in U.S. app stores. Much of the related discussion and debate has centered around American data security and speech rights, but a potential move also highlights something else: TikTok is growing its focus…
Google is shutting down its Podcasts app in the U.S. in a matter of days. The company has begun warning the app’s users they will need to migrate their subscriptions to YouTube Music by April 2 to follow and stream their favorite shows going forward. Users who don’t make the move immediately will still have…
As deepfakes proliferate, OpenAI is refining the tech used to clone voices — but the company insists it’s doing so responsibly. Today marks the preview debut of OpenAI’s Voice Engine, an expansion of the company’s existing text-to-speech API. Under development for about two years, Voice Engine allows users to upload any 15-second voice sample to…
Byju Raveendran, the founder of embattling edtech group Byju’s, has made a last-ditch attempt to placate disgruntled investors, informing them that the board is weighing an offer of renounced shares to prevent dilution of their holdings ahead of validating a recent rights issue that cuts the Indian startup’s valuation by 99%. In an email to…
High Frequency PCB Differ From a Rigid PCB high frequency pcb is designed to carry signals at rates higher than 1 gigahertz. These boards use special materials like FR4-grade glass-reinforced epoxy laminate, polyphenylene oxide (PPO) resin and Teflon. These materials provide a low and stable dielectric constant, ensuring high-frequency signal transmission. They also offer low…
Ibotta confidently submitted an S-1 filing with the SEC on March 22 with the intent to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange. The 13-year-old cash-back startup looks to make its public debut after turning profitable and recording impressive revenue growth in 2023. The company reported $320 million in revenue in 2023, up…
Quality Control in a Flex PCB Supplier In order to ensure quality, you need to make sure that your flex pcb supplier has the right equipment and follows strict PCB manufacturing procedures. This includes visual inspection, component matching and solderability testing. It also involves following IPC rules for flex circuit design and assembly. Unlike rigid…
StealthMole, an AI-powered dark web intelligence startup that specializes in monitoring cyber threats and detecting cybercrime, announced Thursday that it has raised a $7 million Series A funding round. The Singapore-headquartered startup with an R&D office in South Korea will use the fresh capital to establish additional R&D centers and support more commercial uses of…
When entrepreneur Stephen Chen’s mom began approaching retirement age, she was forced to borrow money from Chen — and Chen’s brother — to make ends meet. They wanted to help, but the siblings also wanted to figure out a more sustainable, long-term solution that’d help their mom retire without having to worry about finances. Chen…
PayPal Ventures’ latest investment is in an Indonesian startup that provides personal insurance products covering a variety of risks, including accidents, phone screen damage, and ticket cancellations. Qoala has secured $47 million in a new round co-led by PayPal Ventures and MassMutual Ventures, the five-year-old startup said Wednesday. MUFG Innovation Partners, Omidyar Network as well…
Brands want to use generative AI to personalize their marketing efforts — but they are also deathly afraid of AI going off message and ruining their brand. At its annual Summit conference in Las Vegas, Adobe today announced GenStudio, a new application that helps brands create content and measure its performance, with generative AI —…
Bankrupt commercial EV startup Arrival has sold some of its assets, including advanced manufacturing equipment to Canoo, another struggling startup trying to build and sell electric vehicles. The acquisition, which was touted as a cost-saving measure that will reduce capital expenditures by 20%, comes as Canoo struggles to move beyond prototypes toward commercial production. Canoo…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Before we jump into the startup and…
Nvidia and Amazon Web Services, the lucrative cloud arm of Amazon, have a surprising amount in common. For starters, their core businesses emerged from a happy accident. For AWS, it was realizing that it could sell the internal services — storage, compute and memory — that it had created for itself in-house. For Nvidia, it…
In this edition of Week in Review, we have big news on the latest Apple antitrust lawsuit. Microsoft’s AI ambitions dominated the news as well, so let’s dive right in.… Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here to receive the Week in Review newsletter in your inboxes. The U.S. joined international regulators in accusing…
On March 11, a fizzy startup announced that it had raised $67 million at a $1.4 billion valuation and reached $263 million in sales in 2023. Did you guess that this startup is Liquid Death, a canned water company? Liquid Death has now raised more than $267 million in venture funding despite sitting in a…
Few missions more acutely embody the maxim “space is hard” than Atomos Space’s first demonstration mission, which the company has managed to pull back from the brink of disaster — more than once. That demonstration mission, dubbed Mission-1, launched to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on March 4. The objectives of the mission…
You’ve gone home with a Tinder date, and things are escalating. You don’t really know or trust this guy, and you don’t want to contract an STI, so… what now? A company called Calmara wants you to snap a photo of the guy’s penis, then use its AI to tell you if your partner is…
After a three-year fund-raise, World Fund has finally closed a €300 million first fund, €50 million short of it’s target in 2021, but still a considerable number given a background of war and economic uncertainty. The VC originally emerged from the founders of the Ecosia independent search engine, where search enquiries funded the planting of…
The United States Department of Justice this morning filed a lawsuit accusing Apple of monopolistic smartphone practices. Seventeen state attorneys general joined the federal department in the massive suit. “Consumers should not have to pay higher prices because companies violate the antitrust laws,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement issued with the…
Reddit priced its stock on Wednesday at $34 a share, the top of the anticipated range, a signal that investors are excited about the company’s IPO on Thursday. The social media giant raised nearly $500 million in the offering. Excluding employee stock options, the 19-year old company’s valuation will start at $5.4 billion, a far…
Sometimes insurance isn’t just money. Sometimes it’s equipment. That’s one way to think about direct air capture, a technology which uses machines to pull carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere. The idea has been floating around for years, but it received a surge of interest in the wake of a 2022 report by the UN…
The field of insurance technology has had a rough time. About 7 years ago, early insurtech companies promised to disrupt the insurance industry with new tech, but today, most of those companies have either been acquired or are floundering in the public markets. Fortunately, insurtech has found a new wave to ride in the past…
Link-in-bio startup Linktree introduced new features today including a featured layout to highlight links better, the ability to fetch the latest posts from Instagram, and support for a more prominent profile picture. The company said that the new featured layout is great for highlighting certain links. When you select “Featured layout” for a link it…
Analysts say this is likely more of a one-off than a sign that LP interest in venture is waning. The Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association (LACERA) voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital at a March 13 meeting. The board of investments voted to decrease its allocation range to venture capital and…
The job of so-called “solutions professionals” — people like sales engineers, solutions architects and consultants — revolves around pitching complex enterprise tech to potential customers. It’s important work. But despite this being the case, rarely are solutions teams adequately staffed and resourced, according to entrepreneur Dan Chen. “Solutions teams bring technical credibility to the selling…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. I spent a few days in Austin…
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! I’m filling in for Mary Ann, who is on a much deserved break. This week, we look at Griffin Bank getting its license ahead of some heavy hitters, and we go inside Stripe’s annual letter, some funding rounds, and more! The big story A top story for this…
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options. X CEO Elon Musk announced that he would open source Grok, X’s AI-powered chatbot meant to…
GitHub’s chief legal officer, Shelley McKinley, has plenty on her plate, what with legal wrangles around its Copilot pair-progammer, as well as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which was voted through the European Parliament this week as “the world’s first comprehensive AI law.” Three years in the making, the EU AI Act first reared its head…
Gumroad, an e-commerce company for creators, updated its rules to more strictly limit NSFW content, citing restrictions from payment processors like Stripe and PayPal. For creators who sell adult art, like explicit comic books or lewd cosplay photos, these sudden policy changes can be detrimental, resulting in an unforeseen loss of income. “I’m concerned on…
India’s antitrust regulator has ordered an investigation into Alphabet’s Google amid a dispute with some Indian developers over its in-app billing system, saying the U.S. tech giant implemented its policies in an “unfair” and “discriminatory manner.” The Competition Commission of India said in an order on Friday that Google appears to have violated several provisions of…
Texas residents can no longer access Pornhub — without a VPN. As of Thursday, when people in Texas try to access any of the porn sites owned by Aylo, formerly MindGeek, they’ll instead see a long message in opposition to age verification laws. Laws requiring age verification on adult entertainment sites have already gone into…
The National Payments Corporation of India, the firm that built the eponymous UPI rail in the country, approved Paytm’s application to participate in the payments ecosystem as a third-party application provider, delivering much-needed relief to the financial services firm that serves more than 300 million users and over 10 million merchants in the South Asian…
One undeniable trend from this year’s Modex conference: suddenly everyone is into truck unloading. The past couple of years have gone from a few select companies to seemingly everyone in and around warehouse robotics looking to tackle the problem. Most solutions are some variation on a basic theme: a robotic arm attached to a mobile…
TikTok faces an uncertain fate in the U.S. once again. On Wednesday morning, the House of Representatives will debate the newest bill to ban TikTok, which passed unanimously out of its committee last week. After a surprise flurry of activity in the House, TikTok is the target of a new government push to separate the company…
Decentralized Twitter/X rival Bluesky announced on Tuesday that it’s open sourcing Ozone, a tool that lets individuals and teams collaboratively review and label content on the network. The company plans to open up the ability for individuals and teams to run their own independent moderation services later this week, which means users will be able to…
Apple will allow iOS developers located in the European Union to distribute apps from the web, rather via its App Store. The option, which it says will be made available to qualifying developers “later this Spring”, is being offered in response to the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) which puts obligations on how Apple can…
Perhaps a few years from now, the halls of the Georgia World Congress Center will be peppered with humanoid robots the week of Modex. In 2024, however, Digit stands alone at the supply chain show. It’s a testament to Agility’s healthy head start over competitors like Figure, Tesla, 1X and Apptronik. This time last year…
Telegram founder Pavel Durov said that the company expects to hit profitability next year with eyes on going public in the future. The chat app, which crossed 900 million users, is making “hundreds of millions of dollars” through ads and subscriptions, Durov told the Financial Times in an interview. He mentioned that while global investors…
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more…
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more…
TikTok faces an uncertain fate in the U.S. once again. After a surprise flurry of activity in the House this week, TikTok is the target of a new government push to separate the company from its Chinese ownership or force it out of the country. TikTok is based in Los Angeles and Singapore, but is…
A cyberattack at U.S. health tech giant Change Healthcare has ground much of the U.S. healthcare system to a halt for the second week in a row. Hospitals have been unable to check insurance benefits of in-patient stays, handle the prior authorizations needed for patient procedures and surgeries, or process billing that pays for medical…
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, has a seat at the table — or board, rather — once again. OpenAI today announced that Altman will be rejoining the company’s board of directors several months after losing his seat and being pushed out as OpenAI’s CEO. Joining him are three new members: former CEO of the…
The Artemis Fund, which invests in underrepresented founders, closed on its second fund with $36 million in capital commitments. Stephanie Campbell, Diana Murakhovskaya and Leslie Goldman Tepper founded Artemis in 2019, naming the firm after the Greek goddess of the hunt, wild things and a champion of women. Artemis, with offices in Houston and New…
Think quick — how much does a top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max cost? If you said around $1,600, you’d be right, but only if you’re based in the U.S. In Turkey, the same phone will set you back almost $3,000. That gap introduces a fantastic opportunity for arbitrage — and a lively second-hand and refurbished…
Homomorphic encryption, a complex technique that uses cryptographic algorithms to keep data secure as it travels around networks and to third parties, continues to elude mass-market scalability and thus adoption — not least because currently, the complexity that makes it so effective also makes it slow and hard to use widely. But in a world…
Ocean intelligence company Saildrone has just put the first of a new generation of Surveyor autonomous vessels in the water: an aluminum version that the Navy is keen to take advantage of. But don’t worry — they aren’t putting guns on them. Founder and CEO Richard Jenkins told TechCrunch that the demand for vessels like…
This year, billions of people will vote in elections around the world. 2024 will see — and has seen — high-stakes races in more than 50 countries, from Russia and Taiwan to India and El Salvador. Demagogic candidates — and looming geopolitical threats — would test even the most robust democracies in any normal year.…
Founders have spent a lot of time over the past few years trying to build practical consumer use cases for AI and machine learning. AI startup Advocate thinks that the tech could help people apply for federal government benefits more easily. The New York-based startup was founded by Emilie Poteat, who got the idea after…
With the news yesterday that “mini organs” have been grown for the first time using human stem cells, this futuristic area of bio-medicine is clearly accelerating by leaps and bounds. However, harvesting stem cells is a controversial process, since a major method involves harvesting during pregnancy. Now a Swedish startup has raised VC investment to…
In his quest to turn a simple and functioning Twitter app into X, the everything app that doesn’t do anything very well, Elon Musk launched audio and video calling on X last week — and this new feature is switched on by default, it leaks your IP address to anyone you talk with, and it’s…
The European Union has fined Apple €1.84 billion for breaching antitrust rules in the market for music streaming services on its mobile platform, iOS. The penalty is focused on Apple’s application of anti-steering provisions, which put restrictions on music streaming apps’ abilities to tell consumers about cheaper offers outside Apple’s App Store. The iPhone maker…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. I was in Los Angeles earlier this…
Amid the speculation and volatility in the casino-like crypto land, there remains a subset of individuals who espouse blockchain’s potential to decentralize various aspects of human activities for the greater good. Taiko‘s founder Daniel Wang is one of these idealistic founders. A serial entrepreneur, Wang initially wanted to bring decentralization to social platforms. Decentralized networks…
Hello, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, investment firm KKR announced that it would acquire VMware’s end-user computing business from Broadcom for $4 billion. As Ron explains, that business included VMware Workspace One and VMware Horizon — two remote desktop apps that had…
Last night, for an evening hosted by StrictlyVC, this editor sat down with Trae Stephens, a former government intelligence analyst turned early Palantir employee turned investor at Founders Fund, where Stephens has cofounded two companies of his own. One of these is Anduril, the buzzy defense tech company that is now valued at $8.4 billion…
Waymo received approval Friday afternoon from the California Public Utilities Commission to operate a commercial robotaxi service in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Peninsula and on San Francisco freeways. The approval removes the last barrier for the Alphabet company to charge for rides in these expanded areas. Importantly, it opens up new territory for Waymo…
Elon Musk has sued OpenAI, its co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman and affiliated entities, alleging the ChatGPT makers have breached their original contractual agreements by pursuing profits instead of the non-profit’s founding mission to develop AI that benefits humanity. Musk, a co-founder and early backer of OpenAI, claims Altman and Brockman convinced him to…
Intuitive Machines’ first lunar lander officially lost power today after spending seven days on the moon. The lander made history for being the first American hardware to reach the lunar surface since 1972 and the first privately built spacecraft to land on the moon. But the lander, called Odysseus, will be remembered for another reason:…
Several internet-connected doorbell cameras have a security flaw that allows hackers to take over the camera by just holding down a button, among other issues, according to research by Consumer Reports. On Thursday, the non-profit Consumer Reports published research that detailed four security and privacy flaws in cameras made by EKEN, a company based in…
An internal congressional memo viewed by TechCrunch casts strong doubt on Rocket Lab’s claim that its Neutron rocket will be ready for launch in time to meet a crucial contract deadline from the Space Force. “In light of public reporting and media pressure, Rocket Lab has escalated their campaign to misrepresent their launch readiness in…
Nothing isn’t one to be quiet about new releases. The London-based phone company’s media push largely relies on trickling out information about devices bit by bit. It’s been a solid strategy thus far (if a bit annoying as someone who covers this world), as so many of its announcements have been first-gen products, each generating…
A number of major AI services performed poorly in a test of their ability to address questions and concerns about voting and elections. The study found that no model can be completely trusted, but it was bad enough that some got things wrong more often than not. The work was performed by Proof News, a…
Yesterday, Mistral AI, a Paris-based AI startup working on foundational models, announced a new large language model that could rival OpenAI’s GPT-4, a chat assistant and a distribution partnership with Microsoft yesterday. But Microsoft and Mistral AI buried the news — or at least an important part. As part of the partnership, Microsoft is investing €15…
Once upon a time, gadgets knew what they were truly for. Toaster? Brown thy bread. Smartphone? Connect thy user. But the Ring Car Camera? Ever since its launch it found itself in a bit of an identity crisis. After three and a half years, Amazon’s page for the camera now says that “we don’t know…
Interview Kickstart, a profitable startup helping tech professionals acquire career-advancing skills, has raised $10 million in its maiden funding from Blume Ventures, the companies said on Monday. The San Francisco-based startup, founded in 2014, assists engineers learn from employees of top tech companies or their alumni. Though always profitable, 2023 was pivotal for Interview Kickstart…
As humans spend increasing amounts of time indoors, we lose access to the sun’s natural benefits. Recognition of season affective disorder has grown accordingly. While the actual occurrence of the condition is low (around 5% — or 10 million or so Americans), it’s led to increasing awareness of the sun’s impact on the production of…
Welcome to the very last issue of The Exchange! With TechCrunch+ sunsetting this month, The Exchange column and its newsletter are also coming to an end. Thank you for reading, emailing, tweeting, and hanging out with us for so many years. P.S. A special thanks from myself to Anna, who was nothing short of a…
Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, Google launched two new open large language models, Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, in its continued bid for generative AI dominance. The company, which describes the LLMs as “inspired by Gemini,” its flagship family of GenAI…
Intuitive Machines’ spacecraft touched down yesterday on the lunar surface . . . sideways. CEO Steve Altemus confirmed during a press conference Friday that, while it wasn’t a perfect landing, it’s nothing short of a miracle the spacecraft landed intact at all. Using a small model of the lander, Altemus demonstrated how engineers believe the spacecraft, called Odysseus, made its…
Well-known accelerator group Techstars announced a slew of changes to its operations this week, including the shuttering of some of its city-based programs. Criticism from former members of its decisions lit social media channels who argued that the famed startup accelerator has lost focus on the very thing that historically made it so successful: city-based…
Security experts are warning that a pair of high-risk flaws in a popular remote access tool are being exploited by hackers to deploy LockBit ransomware — days after authorities announced that they had disrupted the notorious Russia-linked cybercrime gang. Researchers at cybersecurity companies Huntress and Sophos told TechCrunch on Thursday that both had observed LockBit…
With the European Commission set to rule on Spotify’s complaint focused on competition in the streaming music market, there are hints that the ruling will not be in Apple’s favor. This week, the Financial Times reported the EC will issue its first-ever fine against the tech giant for allegedly breaking EU law over competition in…
In the face of South Africa’s worsening energy crisis, marked by increasingly severe power shortages, implementing daily electricity rationing has become imperative to avert the risk of a nationwide grid collapse. According to the state-owned power generator Eskom, the country witnesses a significant power deficit, surpassing 6,000 megawatts on occasion. This situation is similar in…
A spacecraft containing pharmaceutical drugs that were grown on orbit has finally returned to Earth today after more than eight months in space. Varda Space Industries’ in-space manufacturing capsule, called Winnebago-1, landed in the Utah desert at around 4:40 p.m. EST. Inside the capsule are crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used to treat…
A sweeping law enforcement operation led by the U.K.’s National Crime Agency this week took down LockBit, the notorious Russia-linked ransomware gang that has for years wreaked havoc on businesses, hospitals, and governments around the world. The action saw LockBit’s leak site downed, its servers seized, multiple arrests made, and U.S. government sanctions applied in…
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and Dom are joined by Shan-Lyn Ma, the co-founder and CEO of Zola, an online platform for wedding planning and gift registries. Ma talked about why she decided to launch the business after trying to buy a gift for a…
Walmart-backed PhonePe is set to launch its Android app store this week with zero commission for in-app purchases for developers. The app store is based on Indus OS’ tech, a company that PhonePe acquired in 2021. In this story, we are going to take a look at why developers are pushing for an alternative store…
To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more…
Partech has closed its second Africa fund, Partech Africa II, at €280 million ($300 million+), just one year after reaching its first close. At that size, Partech Africa, which originally targeted €230 million before its fundraising efforts started, solidifies its position as the largest fund dedicated to African startups. Amidst a backdrop of global VCs…
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. Earlier this week, the 19-year-old son of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, was found dead at UC Berkeley of an apparent drug overdose, according to his grandmother, Esther Wojcicki. The news broke widely yesterday, though Wojcicki posted the news to Facebook several days ago, writing: “Tragedy hit my family yesterday.…
Few categories are as ripe for automation-fueled disruption as construction. The industry is valued at around $2 trillion a year, in the U.S. alone. Much of that work is strenuous, repetitive and sometimes dangerous — precisely the sorts of problems industrial robotics are built to solve. The other thing construction brings is a wide range…
Welcome, folks, to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering noteworthy happenings in the tech industry. This week, OpenAI stunned the blogosphere with the release of Sora, a new AI model that can generate videos in impressively high fidelity. We’ve seen video generators before. But what makes Sora unique is its understanding of time…
Almost a year ago, Alphabet’s growth stage venture arm, CapitalG, named partner Laela Sturdy as its new head, just as the unit’s founder, David Lawee, stepped down. Few were surprised Sturdy was promoted to the post. She joined Google in 2007 in a marketing role, was pulled into a number of departments in the following…
The global video game industry makes more money each year than movies and music combined. But that doesn’t mean the sector was immune to the macroeconomic impacts of the last few years. Gaming companies have held sizable layoffs, and venture funding to the category hit a five-year low in 2023. But VCs are optimistic that…
In the quest to replace traditional seafood with alternatives, Berlin-based Pacifico Biolabs believes it has a unique approach to making whole muscle structures using fermentation. While fermentation, the process of growing cells in bioreactors, is already used to make a number of alternative proteins, like cultivated meat, Zac Austin, co-founder and CEO, calls the process…
There’s been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be extraordinarily slow. That’s because, in addition to all the usual challenges attendant with open source…
The global venture capital market is enduring a long period of limited exits. Startups are staying private longer, M&A is quiet in part due to sharpened regulatory oversight, and the IPO market remains frozen. This means many historical venture deals are slowly rotting on the vine, in IRR terms. The crypto market is no different,…
It’s [checks calendar] a week and a half until Mobile World Congress 2024 [mild panic creeps in], and TechCrunch will be returning to Barcelona once again for the big phone show [soothing memories of tapas past]. The event is always a big one for big telecos, phonemakers and European startups alike. As ever, we’re particularly…
Mushrooms are having a moment. Whether it’s in the form of a functional beverage, using the mushroom root to make alternative protein, creating leather-like materials or just the mushroom itself, the fungi is gaining an audience. Spacegoods is the latest startup to join this craze. The London-based wellness brand is tapping into functional mushrooms and…
After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy, TechCrunch has learned. Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only…
What’s more rewarding for an angel investor than paper returns in a startup? An acquisition that turns those paper returns into a cash payout while still maintaining shares in the company. “The return after dilution was eight times my investment,” said Selma Ribica in an interview with TechCrunch recently. “I kept some stock of the…
Venture capital firm Homebrew is targeting $50 million for a new fund, according to a new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing comes as a bit of a surprise considering that Homebrew nearly two years ago said it was pursuing a more stage-agnostic evergreen model that would be funded solely by…
Peak XV, the venture capital firm that split from Sequoia Capital last year, is taking its portfolio companies from India, Southeast Asia and Australia on an “immersion” trip to Silicon Valley this week to meet several industry titans, the latest in the venture firm’s broadening offerings and networking flex. About 60 founders, many backed by…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week was a busy one with…
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the last few days in tech. This week, social network Bluesky opened for anyone to join — which feels appropriate here in NYC, given the sunshine and unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been enjoying. For those more inclined to while away the days…
Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Tech’s ability to reinvent the wheel has its downsides: It can mean ignoring blatant truths that others have already learned. But the good news…
Notion launched its new calendar based on Cron last month, but its productivity suit can soon have more privacy-focused offerings. The company announced today that it has acquired Skiff, a platform that offers end-to-end encrypted file storage, docs, calendar events, and email. Skiff was started in 2020 by Andrew Milich and Jason Ginsberg. The company…
Some people watch the Super Bowl for the actual football game being played. Many watch the event for the halftime show or as an excuse to eat wings and other game day snacks. Some watch it to look for better software solutions for their company — maybe? Papaya Global hopes so. The late-stage global workforce payment…
Software asset management — an area of enterprise IT designed, in part, to help companies save money — continues to draw a lot of money itself. In the latest development, Xensam — a startup out of Stockholm that provides AI-based tools to help businesses understand and track where and how software is being used —…
The FCC’s war on robocalls has gained a new weapon in its arsenal with the declaration of AI-generated voices as “artificial” and therefore by definitely against the law when used in automated calling scams. It may not stop the flood of fake Joe Bidens that will almost certainly trouble our phones this election season, but…
To reduce financial scams, Google has started a new program to prevent users from sideloading certain apps in Singapore. The company is looking to block sideloaded apps that abuse Android permissions to read one-time passwords received through SMS and notifications. Google said there are four sets of permissions that bad actors exploit to commit financial…
Copilot, Microsoft’s family of AI-powered chatbots and assistants, is getting a few new upgrades timed with a flashy Super Bowl LVIII ad campaign. In a post on the official Microsoft blog, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer, outlined what users can expect. “Today marks exactly one year since our entry into AI-powered experiences for people…
Imagine you work for a car rental agency or a package delivery company and you’re in charge of a fleet of vehicles. If you’re switching to EV vehicles, it becomes more complex to manage your vehicles due to long charging time and limited charging point availabilities. Guided Energy, a French startup that raised $5.2 million…
Spotify, a notable Apple critic, unsurprisingly came out swinging after Apple announced how it was complying with the EU’s new regulation, the Digital Markets Act, or DMA, calling Apple’s plan “extortion” and a “complete and total farce.” But on its Q4 2023 earnings call with investors, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek took a more muted tone…
River, an Indian startup manufacturing electric two-wheelers, has raised $40 million in a funding round led by Japan’s Yamaha Motor as the nearly three-year-old startup looks to increase R&D spending and expand the market presence of its first electric ‘SUV’ two-wheeler in India. The all-equity Series B round also saw participation from startup’s existing investors,…
Reliance Industries-spin off Jio Financial Services said Monday evening that it is not negotiating with Paytm to acquire the Noida-headquartered firm’s wallet business. Jio Financial Services termed the media reports about their alleged talks “speculative” and dismissed that there had been any negotiations. The Hindu Businessline reported over the weekend that Paytm and Jio Financial…
Shares of Paytm plunged 10% on Monday, the third consecutive session of declines, touching an all-time low of 438.35 Indian rupees (or $5.28) after the RBI’s clampdown last week looks to have had a more extensive impact than previously anticipated. The trading was halted after Paytm’s shares fell 10%, the artificial limit put on its…
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech that was. And, boy, was it a week. Lots happened — let’s dig in. As layoffs in tech picked up, the Vision Pro, Apple’s attempt at an AR headset, launched with hundreds of apps right out the gate.…
Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we sat down with Mamoon Hamid and Ilya Fushman, two longtime VCs whose paths first crossed as children in Frankfurt, Germany, and who were brought in to reboot the storied venture firm Kleiner Perkins roughly six years ago. They’ve seemingly accomplished their mission to burnish the…
Fast fashion is an industry ensnared in labor issues and copyright problems, and it has an immense environmental impact due to its wastewater and carbon emissions. It also happens to have the potential to make a lot of money, fast. But despite all these issues, VCs won’t stop loving the sector. On Wednesday, my colleague…
The makers of two phone surveillance services appear to have shuttered after the owner agreed to settle state accusations of illegally promoting spyware that his companies developed. PhoneSpector and Highster were consumer-grade phone monitoring apps that facilitated the covert surveillance of a person’s smartphone. Commonly dubbed stalkerware (or spouseware), these apps are typically planted on…
Shares of Paytm fell another 20% Friday before hitting the lower circuit that temporarily halts trading as the Indian financial services firm reels from the clampdown by the central bank. Paytm fell to 487 Indian rupees, or $5.88 within minutes of the market opening, the lowest it has hit in 55 weeks. Paytm shares also…
The pace is picking up for the Apple Vison Pro apps ahead of the spatial computing device’s Friday launch as developers ready their apps for the new platform. While just last week, only 150-plus apps had been specifically designed for the Vision Pro so far, according to a third-party analysis of the App Store, Apple…
Reliance-backed Viacom18 has reached an agreement to buy 60% of Disney’s India unit, WSJ reported Thursday citing unnamed sources, creating a pathway for the Indian conglomerate to form a $10 billion media giant in the South Asian market. The deal, which WSJ says will close this month, values Disney’s India unit at $3.9 billion, the…
On Tuesday, hackers stole around $112 million of the Ripple-focused cryptocurrency XRP from a crypto wallet, Ripple’s co-founder and executive chairman has disclosed. Ripple’s Chris Larsen said on Wednesday that the stolen crypto was his. Larsen wrote on X (previously Twitter) that “there was unauthorized access to a few of my personal XRP accounts (not…
A Delaware judge ruled Tuesday that Elon Musk’s $56 billion multi-billion pay package is unfair, voiding the largest in compensation deal in corporate history. The decision, issued Tuesday in the Delaware Court of Chancery by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, means that Musk, the world’s richest person, can’t keep the 2018 compensation package. The ruling can be…
With over 39 years of C-level global experience in the tech sector, Ivan is a seasoned and experienced investor, entrepreneur, advisor, board member, operator, and educator focused on helping teams prepare for rapid growth, scaling, expansion, and liquidation events. Last year, 2023, will be remembered in the tech world for massive losses, as 3,200 startups…
Rebellions, a South Korean fabless AI chip startup, said today it has closed $124 million (165 billion KRW) in a Series B round of funding to develop its third AI chip, called Rebel. The startup will also use the new capital, oversubscribed with an initial target of $90 million, to ramp up production of its…
Today, we’re talking about Arc’s new mobile app vs. Google search; why Reddit’s IPO might finally happen; why Meta :heart: Apple; and… what Garry said. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – the same weekly newsletter you’ve been reading, but with a new name and a few changes. As I mentioned…
Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech (formerly The Interchange)! In this edition, I’m going to look at Brex’s latest round of layoffs, the state of fintech investing in 2023 and more! I may be taking some time off in coming weeks but never fear, TechCrunch Fintech isn’t going away. We’ll be back soon! To get a roundup…
Hey, folks, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter covering notable happenings in tech over the past few days. On the agenda for this edition is Disney’s innovative VR treadmill, OpenAI fixing its “lazy” AI and MIT’s high-capacity, fast-charging organic battery tech. We also cover Apple’s new stolen device protection feature, AI…
Richard Marcus Contributor Richard Marcus is the head of information security at AuditBoard. Many have described 2023 as the year of AI, and the term made several “word of the year” lists. While it has positively impacted productivity and efficiency in the workplace, AI has also presented a number of emerging risks for businesses. For…
Count Spotify among those not thrilled with how Apple has chosen to comply with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which sets the stage for sideloading apps, alternative app stores, browser choice, and more. On Friday, the streaming music company issued its response to Apple’s new DMA rules, calling the new fees imposed on developers…
The raft of iOS changes Apple dropped in the European Union yesterday, as it prepares for enforcement of the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) to kick in March 7, include some big developments around browsers that look set to shake up a pretty stale market. The goal for the EU regulation is exactly that: To…
Veho, a package delivery company, confirmed that it laid off 19% of its employee headcount, or about 65 jobs. As first reported by The Information, these layoffs came after Veho grew revenue nearly 90% in 2023. “We conducted a reorganization of our corporate team to improve efficiencies, accelerate our path to profitability and be able…
Google announced today that it’s rolling out a few new features for Pixel users. Most notably, the tech giant announced that Pixel 8 Pro users will be able to use the phone’s Thermometer app to take their temperature, or someone else’s, with a forehead scan. You can save the reading to your Fitbit profile to…
Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle technology company aiming to launch a “driverless” self-driving trucks business by the end of 2024, laid off dozens of workers this month, according to sources familiar with the action. The Pittsburgh-based company, which also has facilities in California, Colorado, Texas and Montana, has since confirmed that about 3% of its…
European Union lawmakers scrambling for the bloc to be a contender in the generative AI race are presenting a package of support measures aimed at charging up homegrown AI startups and scale ups. Artificial intelligence technologies — and especially generative AI models which are trained on very large data-sets and have capabilities such as being…
Aniai, a startup that has built a burger-grilling robot, Alpha Grill, said today it has raised $12 million, bringing its total raise to $15 million. The money will go toward launching its first manufacturing facility, Factory One, in South Korea. The firm will also be deploying a cloud-based AI software platform for the robot called…
Silverfort, the Israeli/U.S. startup, takes an all-in view when it comes to identity security in an organization. When it comes to potential breaches, people, machines, clouds, legacy and new apps can all be targets, and they can be exploited at any of the many points where they interact with each other. So the best way…
European VC Plural has carved out a reputation for itself as one of the few VC’s in the region started and led by entrepreneurs who grew their own startups, with its founders including Taaavet Hinrikus from Transferwise/Wise; Sten Tamkivi; and Ian Hogarth, the founder of Songkick who more recently has also added a role with…
About 16.6 million LoanDepot customers had their “sensitive personal” information” stolen in a cyberattack earlier this month, which the loan and mortgage giant has described as ransomware. The loan company said in a filing with federal regulators on Monday that it would notify the affected customers of the data breach. LoanDepot did not say what…
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome to TechCrunch Mobility – the same weekly newsletter you’ve been reading, but with a new name and a few changes. Don’t worry, this…
Welcome, folks, to TechCrunch Week in Review (WiR), a digest of the past few days in tech happenings. As I write this, snow’s gracing New York City — an increasingly rare treat thanks to our changing climate. And that feels fitting in light of the Apple Vision Pro’s imminent launch. After all, one of the…
We all make mistakes. But sometimes we forget that technology does, too — especially when it comes to AI, which is still in its early days in many respects. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Japan’s long-planned Smart Lander for Investigating Moon has successfully touched down on the lunar surface, making the nation the fifth in history to do so. But all is not well for SLIM, which may have a limited lease on life due to trouble with its solar cells. In a press conference following the early-morning (local…
Lai Ching-te, who won Taiwan’s presidential election last Saturday, will be facing a crossroads in the country’s technology industry when he takes office in May. Lai’s administration will be the third term of Democratic Progressive Party rule in Taiwan, and he is widely expected to continue the work of his predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, when it…
Apple this week updated its App Store rules to comply with a court order after the Supreme Court declined to hear the Epic Games-initiated antitrust case against Apple over commissions. As a result, developers can now promote alternative means to pay for their in-app purchases and subscriptions via links or buttons inside their iOS apps.…
After laying off over 1,000 workers across divisions last week and cutting 100 jobs at YouTube, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to its staff warning more layoffs are expected this year. Pichai’s memo said the company will have to make “tough choices” to meet its ambitious goals, as reported by The Verge. The…
Argentinian payments infrastructure startup Pomelo has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding. The Buenos Aires-based company started in 2021 with the goal of giving fintechs and embedded finance players a way to launch virtual accounts and issue prepaid and credit cards via compliant onboarding processes. Pomelo went live with its first customer…
Sierra Space is joining Rocket Lab as a current or formerly VC-backed space company to land a major satellite deal with the military. The Space Development Agency (SDA) selected Sierra, along with Lockheed Martin and L3Harris, to build 54 satellites in deals collectively worth $2.5 billion. The news, announced today, follows news from last week…
The Apple-versus-Beeper saga is not over yet it seems, even though the iMessage-on-Android Beeper Mini was removed from the Play Store last week. Now, Apple customers who used Beeper’s apps are reporting that they’ve been banned from using iMessage on their Macs — a move Apple may have taken to disable Beeper’s apps from working…
Federal safety regulators have opened an investigation into Fisker’s first electric vehicle over braking problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) issued a notice that it’s probing Fisker’s Ocean SUV for loss of braking performance. The agency is focusing on nine complaints about the issue thus far, including one…
Christine Edmonds Contributor Christine Edmonds is a General Partner at ICONIQ Growth. She was the founding member and now leads the ICONIQ Growth Analytics team, supporting our portfolio companies with quantitatively backed advisory and thought leadership. Christine also helps oversee internal applications of data analytics to support and enable our broader investing platform. Building a…
CES has long been a launchpad for innovation and cutting-edge technology. However, at this year’s event, there was a conspicuous void: the near-absence of sex tech. Despite being an industry that caters to a universal human experience, sex tech has always had an uneasy association with CES. This year, its conspicuous absence begs the question:…
Hello, fine friends, and welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap of noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. Our team on the ground at CES 2024 had plenty to report from the show — and more’s on the way. (Here are thorough roundups of all the announcements.) But the world…
Another CES has come and gone and transportation was still one of the central actors on one of the world’s largest tech stages. It wasn’t just electric cars either that captured our attention at CES 2024. Companies and startups focused on automated driving, EV charging, software (and more specifically AI), sensors, aviation, boats, drones, micromobility…
Few tech demos can match the spectacle of robotics. Even as the field grows increasingly prevalent in a broad range of industrial workplaces, mechatronics doing impressive things will never cease to amaze. For many, the mere presence of a robot is shorthand for the future, and for big electronics firms, it’s a quick and simple…
Ten of TuSimple’s autonomous big rigs are set to be auctioned off later this month, just a few weeks after the self-driving trucking startup that went public in 2021 announced it was exiting the U.S. market. The trucks, along with a slew of research and development equipment and office supplies, will be sold off in…
Hyundai’s India subsidiary has fixed a bug that exposed its customers’ personal information in the South Asian market. TechCrunch reviewed a portion of the exposed data that included the registered owner name, mailing address, email address, and phone number of Hyundai Motor India customers who have serviced their vehicles at any of the company’s authorized…
ChefPaw is an machine designed to prepare homemade dog food. The appliance aims to provide an alternative to store-bought dog food, focusing on fresh ingredients tailored to individual pet dietary needs – and saving a ton of money along the way. It turns out that fresh-ingredient food for your four-legged furbaby is hella expensive, and…
Female-founded companies in the U.S. raised $44.4 billion out of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year. Companies with founding teams that are all women raised around $3.1 billion — or 1.8% — which is a dip from $5.1 billion (2.1%) in 2022 and from the $7.3 billion (also 2.1%) raised in 2021’s…
OpenAI is launching a new subscription plan for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot, aimed at smaller, self-service-oriented teams. Aptly called ChatGPT Team, the plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. All users in a ChatGPT Team gain access to OpenAI’s latest…
Apps of as many as eight crypto exchanges including Binance, Kraken, Mexc and Kucoin have disappeared from Apple’s App Store in India, less than two weeks after the global firms were flagged for operating “illegally” in the country. Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency which scrutinizes financial transactions, late last month issued show cause…
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. This week in AI, Microsoft unveiled a new standard PC…
The countdown to launch is on. United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan Centaur rocket has been rolled to the launch pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of its early Monday morning launch, a mission that could end with the first fully private spacecraft landing on the moon. Vulcan’s primary payload is Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander.…
Paris-based startup Nabla just announced that it has raised a $24 million Series B funding round led by Cathay Innovation, with participation from ZEBOX Ventures — the corporate VC fund of CMA CGM. This funding round comes just a few months after Nabla signed a large-scale partnership with Permanente Medical Group, a division of U.S.…
Logan Paul is offering refunds for CryptoZoo, the failed and allegedly fraudulent Pokémon-inspired NFT game that he launched in 2021. The catch? You can’t sue him if you get a refund. In an X (formerly Twitter) post on Thursday, Paul announced that he is “personally committing” more than $2.3 million to buy back NFTs purchased…
Hello, and welcome to 2024! If, like us, you’re still burning off a holiday sugar rush, here’s the perfect way to focus your energy and boost your reputation as a thought-leader at the same time. Apply to speak at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, taking place on April 25 in Boston, and share your hard-won expertise…
Intel, intent on making bigger moves in the market for AI-powered enterprise software, is spinning out a new platform company with the backing of Boca Raton, Florida-based asset manager and investor DigitalBridge. Called Articul8 AI (an awkward abbreviation of “Articulate AI”), the new entity builds off a proof-of-concept from an Intel collaboration with Boston Consulting…
The Israeli cybersecurity industry, much like the global one, has been undergoing an evolution that seemed to peak in 2021 with soaring funding rounds, overwhelming valuations, and multiple newly minted unicorns, only to cool down dramatically amidst the market slowdown of 2022 with steep declines and frozen growth rounds. The breakneck speed of these fluctuations…
Another proptech startup has run into trouble. Frontdesk, a startup that managed more than 1,000 furnished apartments across the United States, laid off its entire 200-person workforce Tuesday after attempts to raise more capital failed, TechCrunch exclusively learned from sources familiar with internal happenings at the company. The mass layoff comes just seven months after…
Mutual fund company Fidelity has marked down its investment in X holdings — the parent company of X (formerly Twitter) owned by Elon Musk — by 71.5% from the original valuation of shares, according to a new disclosure. Fidelity spent $19.2 million to acquire a stake in X back in October 2022. The fund manager…
As the new year approaches, many of us are reminded of all the things we accomplished this year — getting a promotion, being more productive or even showing up to places on time — as well as things we failed to do. (There may or may not be a barely used foldable WalkingPad collecting dust…
I’ve been one of the those “I don’t own a TV” people for a long time. Really my entire adult life, excepting those times when I shared my living space with someone who brought their own to the party. My exact motivation is a bit hazy all these years later, but at a certain point,…
From Salesforce drama to the year of generative AI Apologies to the Grateful Dead, but what a long, strange year it’s been in 2023 enterprise tech news. It began with a ton of Salesforce drama and eventually got taken over by generative AI and ChatGPT, which seemed to come out of nowhere to completely dominate…
Marc founded Faculty to help organizations make better decisions using human-led AI. For over 10 years, he has worked with government agencies and leading brands to implement impactful AI solutions. It’s becoming increasingly clear that businesses of all sizes and across all sectors can benefit from generative AI. From code generation and content creation to…
Skincare girlies, fear not — your moisturizer probably does not attract spiders. Sol de Janeiro’s Delícia Drench Body Butter, which launched earlier this month, is quickly becoming a holy grail product among skincare enthusiasts. In addition to hyaluronic acid, the lotion is packed with flashy ingredients like copaiba resin, passionflower seed oil and prebiotic hibiscus…
Audiobooks are a great way to bring words on a page to life and fit reading into your schedule throughout the day when you’re doing things like working out, cooking, driving and relaxing. Amazon-owned Audible is arguably the most popular audiobook app out there, but there are several other lesser-known options that offer a great…
More than anything, CES is a chance to plant a flag. Consumer electronics’ massive trade show is strategically positioned within the first week of the year. All the holiday tech has been purchased, opened and used or returned. It’s all a distant memory for tech companies looking to assert themselves as leading innovators for the…
A day after an Apple Watch import ban went into effect in the U.S., an appeals court has instituted a pause. The halt also comes a day after Apple filed an emergency request with the U.S. Court of Appeals. The pause will remain in place until the court takes additional action. However, the Apple Watch…
We’ve known about the Vision Pro for more than half a year now (not to mention the years of rumors), but Apple’s first “spatial computing” device is one of consumer electronics’ biggest question marks heading into the new year. The $3,499 headset was given an “early-2024” release time frame when it was unveiled at WWDC…
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. To close out the year, I wanted to sit down with a venture capitalist and riff on the coming year. On today’s episode, we’re joined by…
This April marked the 10th anniversary since Google released the first generation of Glass. It may be difficult to believe with a decade of hindsight, but the limited release “Explorer’s Edition” were coveted objects. For a little while, at least, they felt like the future. The last 10 years of smartglasses has, however, been an…
The company began the year with a ton of turmoil This year did not start off great for Salesforce, with an unusual level of turbulence and uncertainty surrounding the company. But as the year comes to a close, Salesforce finds itself in surprisingly good shape financially: Its stock is up over 96% year-to-date. Earlier this…
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the top tech — and tech-related — stories over the past several days. With the holiday around the corner, this reporter expected a quieter week. But the opposite happened — there’s been no shortage of stories to write about. In this edition…
Art Kraisingkorn Contributor Touchapon “Art” Kraisingkorn is Amity’s co-founder and chief technology officer. Art earned his MBA at the University of Cambridge and spent five years at IBM. There’s a common narrative that repeats itself in the tech industry. A burgeoning startup emerges with a groundbreaking concept, successfully attracts incredible VC funding, and skyrockets to…
It was pure coincidence, but months before the pandemic took hold around the world, IndieBio — a startup accelerator devoted to startups using biology to solve large problems — expanded its remit, adding a New York arm to the operations it was already running out of San Francisco. Of course, it’s because of what the…
The advent of the Internet combined with the ability to customise items such as clothing long ago created a revolution in marketing, especially for merchandise purposes. I think we’re all familiar with the ‘merch’ phenomena by now, no? Benefitting from that long-term trend is SME-focused, customized merchandise startupBizay, which has been able to raise a…