Sexual wellness brand Cake this week is expanding its product placement in some major retailers, including new space in CVS stores, as it announces $8 million in new Series A funding. We last profiled Cake in April when its line of lubricants, condoms, toys and sexual hygiene products made its debut in Target and took … Read more
Robinhood is finally rolling out a beta version of its non-custodial crypto wallet to 10,000 customers on its waitlist after announcing the product in May, its CTO and general manager of crypto, Johann Kerbrat, told TechCrunch. The product is called Robinhood Wallet and will be the company’s first internationally-available app, Kerbrat said. The company revealed … Read more
No matter what mayhem is going on in the markets, every company needs to stay on top of its accounting practices — especially in crypto, where the decentralized nature of transactions and the relative newness of blockchain tech pose all sorts of complications for traditionally-trained finance teams. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why less … Read more
Instagram is currently a mess and users — including Kim Kardashian — are unhappy about it. The company is trying to cram too many features like Reels, Remixes, an algorithmic feed and NFTs into the app. Ansh Nanda and Hardik Patil got so frustrated that they decided to make an app called The OG App … Read more
Kumo, a startup offering an AI-powered platform to tackle predictive problems in business, today announced that it raised $18 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia, with participation from A Capital, SV Angel and several angel investors. Co-founder and CEO Vanja Josifovski says the new funding will be put toward Kumo’s hiring efforts … Read more
The cloud services sector is still dominated by Amazon and the other so-called “hyperscalers” — e.g. the Microsoft Azures, Google Cloud Platforms and IBM Clouds of the world. According to Synergy Group, an IT market research firm, Amazon, Microsoft and Google together held a 65% share of the global cloud services market as of Q2, … Read more
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell ramped up his criticism of decentralized finance on Tuesday, saying the monetary policy normalization worldwide has “revealed significant structural issues in the DeFi ecosystem” and laid bare “conflict of interest,” as he called for more appropriate regulation. “Within the DeFi ecosystem, there are these very significant transparency, lack of transparency [issues],” … Read more
NASA has completed a key step of its “Double Asteroid Redirection Test” (DART), smashing a satellite roughly the size of a vending machine into a small moon that’s about half-a-mile in diameter. The moon, Dimorphos, is orbiting an even larger asteroid, Didymos, and while neither is in any danger of colliding with Earth, they’re good … Read more
Early-stage founders eager to secure funding (in other words, just about 99.99% of you), listen up. While venture funding may have slowed, venture capital firms still have plenty — and by that we mean billions — of dollars at their disposal. Question is, how do you tap into that monetary mountain? You start by purchasing … Read more
In a world of climate change-fueled food shortages, insect-based proteins are being viewed as an increasingly valuable potential alternative food service. Livin Farms has put insect larvae at the center of its own alternative protein play. The Vienna-based firm produces Hive Pro, a modular system designed to automate the process of rearing and processing black … Read more
Data cleansing — prepping data for applications like predictive analytics — takes time. In fact, data scientists spend an estimated 60% of their time cleaning and organizing data, according to one recent survey. It’s not just time that’s lost. According to Experian, “dirty data” costs the average business 15% to 25% of their revenue and … Read more
AmazeVR, a Los Angeles-based virtual concert platform, said Tuesday it has raised a $17 million funding round to create immersive music experiences through virtual reality (VR) concerts. Like other industries, the entertainment sector was affected by the coronavirus lockdown. Many music artists had to cancel or push back their live events during the pandemic. Some … Read more
India’s financial crime fighting agency searched the premises of Coda Payments India, distributor of Sea’s Free Fire, as part of an investigation. The Enforcement Directorate said in a tweet Tuesday that it searched three premises of Coda Payments India as part of an “ongoing investigation” into the distributor and Free Fire, a title that New … Read more
IT systems are becoming increasingly complex, what with the mass move to the cloud during the pandemic. The modern data stack consists of hundreds of tools for app development, data capture and integration, orchestration, analysis and storage. And it’s getting bigger and more convoluted by the day. According to Productiv, a software-as-a-service app management startup, … Read more
Tatsumeeko, a role-playing game on Ethereum and Solana created by the team behind Discord chatbot Tatsu.GG, announced today it has struck a partnership with Immutable X (IMX). The partnership’s goal is to enhance Tatsumeeko’s gameplay experience by focusing on trackable ownership and transfer of in-game assets. Immutable X is a layer-2 Ethereum scaling solution that … Read more
Internal combustion engines still rule the roost when it comes to powering automobiles, but there are signs that they’re slowly trundling into oblivion, at least in some markets. The likes of Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K. are planning to ban sales of diesel and petrol cars by the end of the decade, while markets such … Read more
Ghanaian agtech Farmerline has secured $1.5 million equity funding from Dutch impact investor Oikocredit in its second close of the pre-series A round. The new funding brings the total amount raised in the round to $14.4 million, including $6.4 debt funding. The funding comes at a time when Farmerline, which has operations across Ghana, is … Read more
Meetings are essential to helping teams, especially remote or hybrid ones, stay in touch. But too many meetings can become unproductive, as shared information and action items get buried underneath all the other stuff workers have to do. Productivity platform Loopin wants to help by integrating with work apps and gathering information from across multiple … Read more
French startup Regate has raised a $20 million Series A funding round (€20 million) led by Valar Ventures. The company has built a modern software-as-a-service product that integrates directly with your existing accounting stack and connects with your corporate bank account. This way, you can automate and simplify some of your financial and accounting tasks … Read more
IRobot makes robots that vacuum. IRobot makes robots that mop. Other companies make robots that vacuum and mop. So, why doesn’t iRobot? If you had asked the company that question as recently as a few weeks back, you likely would have gotten a stock answer about not doing something until you can do it right. … Read more
In China, a crop of homegrown chip companies has popped up as Beijing strives to decouple from America’s advanced technology and manage sanctions risks, which have crippled Huawei’s lucrative smartphone business. In the red-hot space of autonomous driving, Chinese semiconductor firms, buoyed with venture capital, are aiming to provide the best alternatives to Nvidia and … Read more
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. Good morning, you crunchistas. We hope you’ve had a chill weekend. Or if it wasn’t chill, that it was wild for all the right reasons. YOLO and all that. Okay, on with … Read more
Meta is working on making it easier for users to switch between Facebook and Instagram accounts through a new profile switching tool. Anyone using either app will be able to hop between them if they’ve linked those profiles through Meta’s centralized profile hub, the Accounts Center. When logged into one app, users can easily toggle … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Max Q. This past week, thousands of people traveled to Paris for the International Astronautical Congress 2022, one of the world’s largest space conferences. Alas, I was not one of them. But it means there’s tons of news, so let’s get to it! In this issue: An analysis of Intuitive … Read more
Mark your calendars, startup fans, because TechCrunch is returning — live and in person — to the beautiful City by the Bay to host our flagship event, TechCrunch Disrupt, on October 18–20 at the Moscone West Convention Center followed by an online recap event on October 21. TC Disrupt is the grande dame of tech … Read more
From the cringe-inducing Jar Jar Binks to unconvincing virtual Leia and Luke, Disney’s history with CG characters is, shall we say, mixed. But that’s not stopping them from replacing one of the most recognizable voices in cinema history, Darth Vader, with an AI-powered voice replica based on James Earl Jones. The retirement of Jones, now … Read more
The communications world is an enigma, and at times, feels counter to the job of a journalist. So to hear that there’s an effort to help more comms people trade notes, share stories and prepare curated responses, I have the selfish worry that we’ll have less vulnerability coming from founders and executives around the startup … Read more
Crypto platform Nexo is being sued by eight U.S. state securities regulators representing New York, California, Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Washington and Vermont. According to a press release from New York Attorney General Letitia James, Nexo and Nexo Capital failed to register with the state’s securities and commodities brokers or dealers and lied to … Read more
HBO’s “The Last of Us” is the latest TV series adapted from a video game that aims to bring more gamers to the streaming service. Today, the first full trailer of “The Last of Us” was released, giving fans of the best-selling franchise a look at the new show, set to premiere on HBO and … Read more
Code-generating systems like DeepMind’s AlphaCode, Amazon’s CodeWhisperer and OpenAI’s Codex, which powers GitHub’s Copilot service, provide a tantalizing look at what’s possible with AI today within the realm of computer programming. But so far, only a handful of such AI systems have been made freely available to the public and open sourced — reflecting the … Read more