MindGeek — owner of several adult entertainment sites, including Pornhub, Brazzers and Redtube — was acquired by a Canadian private equity firm, Ethical Capital Partners (ECP). ECP, which was formed last year, did not disclose the terms of the deal. “In MindGeek, we have identified a dynamic tech brand that is built upon a foundation … Read more
A new class action lawsuit alleges that several well-known finance YouTubers, including Graham Stephan, Andrei Jikh, Jaspreet Singh and others, should be held responsible for promoting now-disgraced cryptocurrency exchange FTX. The lawsuit’s plaintiff is Edwin Garrison, a private investor who also filed a lawsuit against former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried himself, plus celebrity promoters like … Read more
Course Hero, a tutoring business last valued by investors at $3.6 billion, has cut 15% of staff, or 42 people – its first round of layoffs in 17 years, TechCrunch has learned from numerous sources. The workforce reduction comes after Course Hero itself, a rare edtech unicorn, saw co-founder Andrew Grauer leave his post as … Read more
YouTube has announced that it’s raising the price of its YouTube TV subscription to $72.99 per month. The new monthly price is an $8 increase from the current $64.99 monthly fee. New members will see the new price starting today, while existing members will see the price change staring on April 18. The Google-owned company … Read more
YouTube has announced that it’s raising the price of its YouTube TV subscription to $72.99 per month. The new monthly price is an $8 increase from the current $64.99 monthly fee. New members will see the new price starting today, while existing members will see the price change staring on April 18. The Google-owned company … Read more
The technology industry continues to rack up an ever-longer list of layoffs — which now stand at nearly 139,000 according to Layoffs.fyi — but taking the wider job market, the overall pace of recruiting engineers and other technical talent has not let up. Now, one of the bigger players in the area of technical recruitment … Read more
U.S. employees at Bandcamp, an online audio distributor, have announced their formation of a union. Last year, the platform was acquired by Epic Games, the multi-billion dollar company behind games like Fortnite and the Unreal gaming engine. According to the union, known as Bandcamp United, a super-majority of workers are in favor of forming a … Read more
The U.K. has become the latest jurisdiction to ban social video app TikTok from Government devices, confirming reports that surfaced earlier this week. The ban follows a security review ordered by U.K. ministers looking to establish whether Government data could be compromised from social networks installed on work devices. Indeed, the review did include other … Read more
Austria’s data protection authority has found that use of Meta’s tracking technologies violated EU data protection law as personal data was transferred to the US where the information was at risk from government surveillance. The finding flows from a swathe of complaints filed by European privacy rights group noyb, back in August 2020, which also … Read more
The U.S. government has warned that multiple cybercriminal gangs, including a nation state-backed hacking group, exploited a four-year-old software vulnerability in order to compromise a U.S. federal government agency. A joint alert released by the CISA, the FBI, and the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (known as MS-ISAC) on Wednesday revealed that hackers from … Read more
Dr. James Coates Contributor Share on Twitter Dr. James Coates is the Health and Human Performance principal at Decisive Point, a venture capital and advisory firm that invests in and supports startups with emerging defense technologies. More posts by this contributor 3 tips for biotech startups seeking non-dilutive capital to weather the downturn Founders in … Read more
The World Economic Forum says that so-called ‘Scope 3 emissions,’ – or CO2 in supply chains – can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier … Read more
The World Economic Forum says that so-called ‘Scope 3 emissions,’ – or CO2 in supply chains – can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier … Read more
The World Economic Forum says that so-called ‘Scope 3 emissions,’ – or CO2 in supply chains – can make up as much as 90% of a company’s carbon footprint and worldwide more than half of all emissions can be traced back to only a handful of supply chains. Tracking and reducing these emissions are easier … Read more
Deeploi, a Germany-based startup that is building an IT-as-a-Service platform, today announced that it has raised a €3 million seed funding round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from a group of angels that includes the founders of Taktile, Moss, Vay and sennder. The company was founded by Julian Luebke and Philipp Hoffmann. Luebke … Read more
Deeploi, a Germany-based startup that is building an IT-as-a-Service platform, today announced that it has raised a €3 million seed funding round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from a group of angels that includes the founders of Taktile, Moss, Vay and sennder. The company was founded by Julian Luebke and Philipp Hoffmann. Luebke … Read more
Deeploi, a Germany-based startup that is building an IT-as-a-Service platform, today announced that it has raised a €3 million seed funding round led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from a group of angels that includes the founders of Taktile, Moss, Vay and sennder. The company was founded by Julian Luebke and Philipp Hoffmann. Luebke … Read more
The Federal Trade Commission slammed Epic Games with $245 million in fines this week, ordering the Fortnite developer to compensate consumers who made unwitting purchases in its digital store. The settlement, first announced back in December, is now finalized. “Fortnite’s counterintuitive, inconsistent, and confusing button configuration led players to incur unwanted charges based on the … Read more
Walter Thompson Contributor Share on Twitter Editorial Manager Walter Thompson edits staff and guest articles for TechCrunch+ and manages TechCrunch’s guest contributor program. Previously, he worked at a number of startups in various roles and as City Editor of Hoodline. He is the host of The Golden City, a podcast about San Francisco. More posts … Read more
Walter Thompson Contributor Share on Twitter Editorial Manager Walter Thompson edits staff and guest articles for TechCrunch+ and manages TechCrunch’s guest contributor program. Previously, he worked at a number of startups in various roles and as City Editor of Hoodline. He is the host of The Golden City, a podcast about San Francisco. More posts … Read more
Walter Thompson Contributor Share on Twitter Editorial Manager Walter Thompson edits staff and guest articles for TechCrunch+ and manages TechCrunch’s guest contributor program. Previously, he worked at a number of startups in various roles and as City Editor of Hoodline. He is the host of The Golden City, a podcast about San Francisco. More posts … Read more
Walter Thompson Contributor Share on Twitter Editorial Manager Walter Thompson edits staff and guest articles for TechCrunch+ and manages TechCrunch’s guest contributor program. Previously, he worked at a number of startups in various roles and as City Editor of Hoodline. He is the host of The Golden City, a podcast about San Francisco. More posts … Read more
Walter Thompson Contributor Share on Twitter Editorial Manager Walter Thompson edits staff and guest articles for TechCrunch+ and manages TechCrunch’s guest contributor program. Previously, he worked at a number of startups in various roles and as City Editor of Hoodline. He is the host of The Golden City, a podcast about San Francisco. More posts … Read more
Digital payments company Stripe announced Wednesday that it raised over $6.5 billion in Series I funding to value the company at $50 billion. As we reported earlier this month, the payments giant was expected to raise a lower amount of funding, around $2 billion, though at $60 billion valuation. More recently, Stripe was publicly valued … Read more
In another sign that the current VC appetite for AI is insatiable, Adept, a startup building AI that “enables humans and computers to work together creatively to solve problems,” yesterday announced that it raised $350 million in a Series B funding round co-led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital with participation from Addition, Greylock, Atlassian … Read more
Substack announced today it’s bringing its “Chat” feature to the web after launching it on mobile last November. Chat allows writers to communicate directly with their loyal readers right on Substack. When Substack first announced chat, the company was hoping to capitalize on Twitter’s upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover. The company also … Read more
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt went a small way toward addressing concerns over proposed research and development (R&D) tax credit cuts for small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). But he stopped short of the u-turn some had hoped for following the Government’s Autumn Statement last November. Today’s announcement came as part of the U.K.’s Spring Budget, where Hunt … Read more
U.K. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt went a small way toward addressing concerns over proposed research and development (R&D) tax credit cuts for small-and-medium sized enterprises (SMEs). But he stopped short of the u-turn some had hoped for following the Government’s Autumn Statement last November. Today’s announcement came as part of the U.K.’s Spring Budget, where Hunt … Read more
Dish customers are still looking for answers two weeks after the U.S. satellite television giant was hit by a ransomware attack. In a public filing published on February 28, Dish confirmed that ransomware was to blame for an ongoing outage and warned that hackers exfiltrated data, which “may” include customers’ personal information, from its systems. … Read more
There’s no shortage of startups attempting to put drones to work. There is, however, a longstanding question around the efficacy of such plans. Drones — especially the smaller variety — are impressive pieces of technology, but their functionality is relatively limited. A small quadcopter probably isn’t going to prune your trees or walk your dog … Read more