Let’s not defend Kim Kardashian for shilling crypto

Kim Kardashian is the latest celebrity to land in legal trouble for unlawfully promoting a crypto product to her followers without disclosing she had been paid to do so. The reality star settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a $1.26 million penalty for promoting a crypto security sold by EthereumMax. While … Read more

I will defend the $700M fizzy water

Silly season is out in venture capital land. Today investors and founders alike will bore your ears off with notes about incremental cash flow positivity and their timeline to adjusted EBITDA profitability. Lame. Despite the general boringness of today’s venture capital landscape, replete with conservative valuations, falling deal sizes, and clucking investors sitting atop a mountain of capital, … Read more

Twitter’s edit button is rolling out to Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Twitter is rolling out the ability to edit tweets to Twitter Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the social network announced on Monday. The company says the edit button will roll out to Blue subscribers in the U.S. soon, but didn’t provide a specific launch date. Twitter Blue subscribers in these countries can … Read more

Why aren’t we seeing more aggressive SaaS M&A?

Heading into 2022, it seemed like we were poised for a big year in M&A. This was especially true for enterprise SaaS companies that saw their values begin to fall in late 2021, a trend that extended into this year. Why are we not seeing more aggressive M&A activity and some good old-fashioned bargain hunting … Read more

YouTube is asking some users to purchase a Premium subscription to watch in 4K

YouTube’s Premium paid subscription includes benefits like ad-free viewing, video and song downloads for offline consumption, and background plays. Now, it might also be shifting video streaming in 4K resolution (currently free for all users) to the premium tier. Over the weekend, users across Reddit and Twitter noted that YouTube had been asking them to … Read more

Beats: Italian antitrust fine for Apple and Amazon cancelled on appeal

An antitrust win for Amazon and Apple in Italy where an appeals court has cancelled a multimillion dollar penalty the pair were hit with last year for alleged collusion following an investigation into the reselling of Apple and (Apple-owned) Beats kit on Amazon’s Italian e-commerce marketplace. The original €203M (total) penalty had already been reduced … Read more

Kahani wants to turn your e-commerce website into an interactive experience

Jesse Pujji believes the future of mobile e-commerce will look more like TikTok, Instagram and Snap, and started Kahani, a SaaS company for merchants, to lead the charge. Prior to Kahani, the serial entrepreneur was a founder in several companies, including Gateway X, Ampush and GrowthAssistant. After moving into the executive chairman role at Ampush … Read more

Wisk Aero reveals its market-ready, self-flying air taxi

Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle company Wisk Aero has unveiled its go-to-market aircraft: a four-passenger autonomous air taxi that the startup will put forward for U.S. Federal Aviation Administration type certification. Type certification, one of the three certifications an aviation company needs to secure before launching a commercial service, means the aircraft has … Read more

Fandom acquires Metacritic, GameSpot, TV Guide and other entertainment brands in deal worth around $55M

Entertainment platform Fandom announced today its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands from media company Red Ventures, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide. While the financials of the deal were not disclosed in the official announcement, Fandom told TechCrunch that the deal cost somewhere … Read more

Mad Realities’ Devin Lewtan talks onboarding new crypto users through content at TC Sessions: Crypto

If crypto is going to reach “mass adoption,” the industry still has a lot of people it needs to bring on board. Approximately 83% of U.S. adults haven’t ever invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this summer. While many builders and investors agree that it’s still relatively … Read more

BeReal gets its own Saturday Night Live skit

At this point in the BeReal hype cycle, you might’ve seen some wild things in your friends’ once-per-day snaps (personally, I’ve seen a couple of “sitting on the toilet” posts, and I am grateful it hasn’t been worse). In the “Saturday Night Live” season premiere, the sketch comedy writers ask: what if the BeReal goes … Read more

Venmo rolls out ‘Charity Profiles’ to allow charities to raise funds directly within its app

Venmo is launching a new feature called “Charity Profiles” that will allow charities to raise funds and receive donations directly within its app, the Pay-Pal-owned company announced on Monday. The new profiles will be available to charities that have received confirmed charity status from PayPal. The new profile option will allow charities to reach more … Read more

The unicorn funding slump is worse than you thought

Welcome to Q4, friends. If you were hoping to begin the final chunk of 2022 with good news, tough. We’re starting the quarter off with rough data instead. Sure, we’re waiting on data dumps from CB Insights, PitchBook, and Crunchbase about Q3 venture capital aggregates, but one particular bellwether indicator that we track here at … Read more

Welcome to Q4, crypto fans and Tesla stans

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Don’t forget that the code “EQUITY” can save you money on Disrupt tickets and TechCrunch+ access. And it makes us here on the show look good! Markets: Stocks are largely down around the world, yet set to … Read more

Amazon is launching a dedicated hub for its affordable shopping options

Amazon is launching Amazon Access, a new hub for customers to explore the programs, discounts and features that the online retailer offers for affordable shopping, the company announced on Monday. Amazon also announced that its discounted Prime membership, which launched in 2017, will now be called Prime Access. The new Amazon Access hub gives customers … Read more

Rivian taps Capital One exec Diane Lye as its first CIO

Rivian has hired Diane Lye as its first chief information officer, a position that the EV maker says is necessary to expand globally. Lye’s hiring comes as Rivian consolidates its internal and external technology teams across its numerous departments, including manufacturing IT and customer-facing digital products. It is also ahead of Rivian’s planned expansion into … Read more

Hackers leak 500GB trove of data stolen during LAUSD ransomware attack

Hackers have released a cache of data stolen during a cyberattack against the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in what appears to be the biggest education breach in recent years. Vice Society, a Russian-speaking group that last month claimed responsibility for the ransomware attack that disrupted the LAUSD’s access to email, computer systems and … Read more

3 guiding FinOps principles that will help you explain cloud costs to the board

Liran Grinberg Contributor Share on Twitter Liran Grinberg is the co-founder of Team8 and the managing partner of its investment fund, Team8 Capital, focused on investing in enterprise technology, cybersecurity, data and AI companies. Has the price tag for innovation become untenable? When venture-backed companies were chasing growth metrics, higher cloud bills were shrugged off … Read more

Kim Kardashian charged by SEC for pushing crypto, reaches $1.26M settlement

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is charging Kim Kardashian for “unlawfully touting” a “crypto security,” the agency announced on Monday morning. The SEC says that Kardashian was in violation of its rules when she promoted a “crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax” without the necessary disclosure that she was paid to … Read more

With $17M in funding, Immerok launches cloud service for real-time streaming data

In 2011, the Apache Software Foundation released Flink, a high-throughput, low-latency engine for streaming various data types. A decade later, a startup called Immerok — founded by David Moravek, Holger Temme, Johannes Moser, Konstantin Knauf, Piotr Nowojski and Timo Walther — has developed an Apache Flink cloud service called Immerok Cloud, which is serverless — … Read more

Geely’s Europe expansion continues, Argo robotaxis on the Lyft app and Tesla AI Day takeaways

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive the full edition of the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. This is a shorter version of The Station newsletter that is emailed to subscribers. Want all the deals, news roundups and commentary? Subscribe … Read more

South African startup Talk360’s seed funding hits $7M after new backing

Months after the initial close of its seed round, Talk360, a South African Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) startup, has raised an additional $3 million, bringing the total investment raised in the round to $7 million. Talk360’s latest investors include Allan Gray E2 Ventures (AGEV), Kalon Venture Partners, E4E Africa, Endeavor, existing lead investor HAVAÍC, … Read more