Amazon’s latest challenger is China’s online dollar store Pinduoduo

The race to bring China-made goods to Western consumers via online stores is heating up. Pinduoduo, the Chinese e-commerce giant known for offering hard-to-believe deals, has quickly gained momentum for its first international endeavor in the U.S. The company’s overseas shopping app, called Temu, briefly claimed the top spot of Android shopping apps in the … Read more

Daily Crunch: Revolut advises users to take caution after hacker breach triggers phishing campaign

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hey there, you deep-fried morsels of delight. Deep fried, because that’s the thing that made you crunchy. No? Because this is the Daily Crunch? The TechCrunch team got so competitive in this … Read more

SpinLaunch wraps up new round to fling payloads to space

SpinLaunch’s technique for sending payload to orbit, which uses centrifugal force to fling mass to space, has solicited its fair share of skeptics. But at least some of those skeptics are likely a little quieter today, as the company announced a notable new funding round to accelerate the commercialization of its kinetic launch system. The … Read more

Leoparda Electric is bringing battery swapping for two-wheelers to LatAm

Leoparda Electric, a São Paolo–based startup, wants to be the Gogoro of Latin America. In other words, it’s looking to build out a network of battery swapping stations that should help spread adoption of electric two-wheelers in the region. While LatAm is the second largest two-wheeler market after Southeast Asia, electrification in the region has … Read more

Streamer involved in Twitch gambling saga now embroiled in sexual assault allegations

Mizkif / YouTube The fallout regarding a Twitch streamer’s gambling scam has taken a dramatic and disturbing turn as one streamer involved has been accused of “covering up” a sexual assault. Yesterday, news broke that ItsSliker scammed fellow streamers out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in order to support a sports gambling addiction. That … Read more

33% of U.S. TikTok users say they regularly get their news on the app, up from 22% in 2020

Earlier this summer, a Google exec admitted that TikTok was eating into its core Search business, particularly among younger users. But that’s not all TikTok is now being used for, a new Pew Research Center study indicates. According to the findings from a report that examined Americans’ use of social media for news consumption, 33% … Read more

Razor’s Edge Ventures closes $340M fund as it looks to invest in defense startups

In a sign that national security tech is a safe bet even during troubled economic times, defense- and security-focused VC firm Razor’s Edge Ventures today announced the closing of its third startup investment fund at just under $340 million. It exceeded the initial target of $250 million, the firm notes, and will target companies developing … Read more

Building control startup PassiveLogic inks partnership with Nvidia, secures $15M

About five months after raising $15 million, PassiveLogic, which provides a platform to autonomously control building systems, has secured an additional $15 million in an “off-round” strategic investment from Nvidia’s venture arm, nVentures. The new cash brings PassiveLogic’s total raised to over $80 million, and CEO Troy Harvey tells TechCrunch it’ll be put toward expanding … Read more