Circle Ventures, the venture arm of the USDC issuer Circle, has invested in an offshore Chinese yuan-backed stablecoin project, CNHC. It’s hard to overlook the timing and strategic significance of the tie-up. In a matter of several years, stablecoins have grown from a fringe category into a more than $130 billion market. These digital coins … Read more
Snapchat launched parental controls on its app last year through the new ‘Family Center’ feature. Today, the company announced through a post on its online Privacy and Safety Hub it will now add content filtering capabilities that will allow parents to restrict teens from being exposed to content identified as sensitive or suggestive. To enable … Read more
T-Mobile is acquiring Mint Mobile, the budget-friendly wireless provider partially owned by Ryan Reynolds in a deal valued at up to $1.35 billion, the company announced on Wednesday. The move indicates that T-Mobile is looking to boost its prepaid offerings. In a blog post, T-Mobile said it reached a deal to acquire Ka’ena Corporation, the … Read more
TechCrunch Live records live today and tomorrow at 12:00 PDT, and you’re invited to pitch your startup. Called Pitch Practice, it should be self-explanatory. Participants have a chance to practice their pitch by presenting to another founder and investor. This week’s guests are fantastic too. You want their feedback on your pitch. Participants have two … Read more
Yesterday, OpenAI unveiled its new GPT-4 model and competitor Anthropic unveiled its own ChatGPT competitor Claude. Parallelly, Quora announced that its chatbot app Poe will now have a paid tier that will let you ask questions to bots powered by these models. Poe subscriptions will set you back $19.99 per month or $199.99 per year, … Read more
GitHub has published its own internal guides and tools on how to go about setting up an open source program office (OSPO). The new GitHub-OSPO repository on GitHub (where else?) is aimed at businesses in the first year of setting up their inaugural OSPO, and includes everything from policies covering contributor license agreements (CLA) to … Read more
The Nest Protect is the single best piece of smart home hardware I’ve ever purchased. Not everything in your home would benefit from being connected, but smoke detectors really do. They go a long way toward providing peace of mind when you’re away from home. Hopefully you’ll never need it, but if you do, it … Read more
Google-owned mapping app Waze is adding a new feature that seeks to help EV owners find a compatible charger en route. Users, once they have entered their vehicle model and plug type into the app, will be able to find the nearest EV charging stations, Waze said Tuesday. To avoid outdated and unreliable information about … Read more
Google-owned mapping app Waze is adding a new feature that seeks to help EV owners find a compatible charger en route. Users, once they have entered their vehicle model and plug type into the app, will be able to find the nearest EV charging stations, Waze said Tuesday. To avoid outdated and unreliable information about … Read more
One Impression, an Indian influencer marketing platform that does business in markets including Indonesia, Dubai, Europe and the U.S., has raised $10 million in a funding round led by the South Korean gaming company Krafton. The Gurugram-based startup is building an Amazon-like platform to help brands quickly find relevant influencers for their marketing campaigns. It … Read more
TuSimple co-founder Xiaodi Hou has refuted allegations from senior leadership that he was trying to poach staff for his new company. In a LinkedIn post, Hou said that he resigned from TuSimple’s board last week due to disagreements about CEO Cheng Lu’s compensation package, as well as the company’s shift from Level 4 autonomy to … Read more
TuSimple co-founder Xiaodi Hou has refuted allegations from senior leadership that he was trying to poach staff for his new company. In a LinkedIn post, Hou said that he resigned from TuSimple’s board last week due to disagreements about CEO Cheng Lu’s compensation package, as well as the company’s shift from Level 4 autonomy to … Read more
TuSimple co-founder Xiaodi Hou has refuted allegations from senior leadership that he was trying to poach staff for his new company. In a LinkedIn post, Hou said that he resigned from TuSimple’s board last week due to disagreements about CEO Cheng Lu’s compensation package, as well as the company’s shift from Level 4 autonomy to … Read more
When Masaya Aso worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that “many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all.” To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPluss, a now two-year-old, Japan-based startup that designs and develop autonomous mobile robots to transport … Read more
When Masaya Aso worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that “many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all.” To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPluss, a now two-year-old, Japan-based startup that designs and develop autonomous mobile robots to transport … Read more
When Masaya Aso worked on autonomous driving technology at Bosch in Japan and Germany, he realized that “many tasks were still manual as over 85% of warehouses have almost no automation at all.” To help address the problem, Aso co-founded LexxPluss, a now two-year-old, Japan-based startup that designs and develop autonomous mobile robots to transport … Read more
Tesla is opening up Powerwall home battery sales, nearly two years after limiting them because its supply was “too low.” Tesla announced its backup battery tech long ago, in 2015, explicitly intending for the product to work in tandem with solar panels. Yet up until 2021, the automaker also allowed folks to buy the big … Read more
Tesla is opening up Powerwall home battery sales, nearly two years after limiting them because its supply was “too low.” Tesla announced its backup battery tech long ago, in 2015, explicitly intending for the product to work in tandem with solar panels. Yet up until 2021, the automaker also allowed folks to buy the big … Read more
The Justice Department and SEC are investigating the stock sales that officers of Silicon Valley Bank made days before the bank failed, according to both the WSJ and the NYTimes. The probes are reportedly in their preliminary phase and both outlets note that it’s common to investigate prearranged stock selling plans when the sales take … Read more
Silicon Valley-based data security company Rubrik has come forward as the latest victim of the Fortra GoAnywhere zero-day vulnerability, which has been linked to hacks targeting a hospital chain and a bank. In a blog post published on Tuesday, Rubrik’s chief information security officer Michael Mestrovich said that attackers had gained access to the company’s … Read more
Silicon Valley-based data security company Rubrik has come forward as the latest victim of the Fortra GoAnywhere zero-day vulnerability, which has been linked to hacks targeting a hospital chain and a bank. In a blog post published on Tuesday, Rubrik’s chief information security officer Michael Mestrovich said that attackers had gained access to the company’s … Read more
SVB’s new CEO Tim Mayopoulos has had a lot to say in the 24 hours since he joined the bank on Monday. In a private Zoom meeting run by SVB for a select number of LPs and investors, he asked clients to return deposits to the institutions: “that’s the single most important thing you can … Read more
Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook parent Meta, has pointed to internal data analysis that suggests engineers who initially joined the company in an in-person capacity performed better than those who joined remotely from the get-go. He also suggested that younger engineers, or more accurately those who are “earlier in their career,” perform better … Read more
Anthropic, a startup co-founded by ex-OpenAI employees, today launched something of a rival to the viral sensation ChatGPT. Called Claude, Anthropic’s AI — a chatbot — can be instructed to perform a range of tasks, including searching across documents, summarizing, writing and coding, and answering questions about particular topics. In these ways, it’s similar to … Read more
Meetings and events management software provider Cvent is to be taken private yet again, as part of a $4.6 billion transaction involving two of the biggest players in the private equity sphere. Today’s announcement continues a recent trend that has seen myriad companies retreating from the public markets, driven by opportunistic private equity firms looking … Read more
Microsoft announced another ten-year agreement to bring its Xbox game lineup to cloud gaming service Boosteroid. This is Microsoft’s third deal with other gaming platforms as the company is trying to convince regulators that they should approve the acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Last year, Microsoft announced its intention to buy Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. … Read more
The UK government has asked the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) to review TikTok in a move that could prefigure a ban on the app on government devices. Speaking to Sky News, security minister Tom Tugendhat said the government has asked the NCSC to look into the popular video sharing app — telling the broadcaster … Read more
Companies moved en masse to the cloud during the pandemic, under pressure to digitally transform. According to a 2021 survey from O’Reilly, cloud adoption steadily rose across industries, with 90% of organizations using cloud computing compared to 88% in 2020. The accelerated cloud adoption led to a rise in security issues. In a recent poll … Read more
Ross Haleliuk Contributor Share on Twitter Ross Haleliuk is an investor and head of product at LimaCharlie.io. More posts by this contributor 4 ways cybersecurity startups can boost adoption and shorten time to value To bring PLG to cybersecurity, let’s change our hiring habits Trust is fundamentally about a sense of safety, familiarity and assurance … Read more
India’s Enforcement Directorate is investigating “several” crypto cases for money-laundering schemes and has seized $115.5 million to date in such crimes, the Ministry of Finance said, the latest in a series of crackdown by the authorities on the nascent space that is already reeling from the tremulous market conditions. The Indian crime fighting agency has … Read more