Venture is back, baby! But not really at the later stages and, oh, also definitely not at the same valuations or cadence as 2021. After more than six months of declining deal counts and venture activity, venture deal pace is starting to pick up again. Multiple investors and lawyers told TechCrunch this week that they’ve … Read more
Amazon today introduced two new Fire TV devices designed to cater to customers seeking a more premium experience. At its fall hardware event this afternoon, the company showed off the latest version of its high-end media player, the Fire TV Cube, as well as new higher-end TVs with the Fire TV Omni QLED series models. … Read more
Weighing in at $100, the new Amazon Blink Floodlight camera brings more brightness and smarts to its camera line. The company also launched a brand new Blink Mini Pan Tilt mount, giving security-conscious customers the ability to look around a bit more than before. The two new additions to the Blink family were launched at … Read more
Amazon is launching two new designs for its Echo Dot Kids devices, the company announced at its virtual event today. The Echo Dot Kids devices now come in new Owl and Dragon designs. The two new designs join Amazon’s current Echo Dot Kids devices: the Tiger and the Panda. The new designs will be available … Read more
Amazon released Wednesday the second-generation version of Echo Auto, a smaller and slicker device aimed to broaden the e-commerce giant’s reach by bringing its Alexa voice assistant into more vehicles. Echo Auto, which first came to market in 2018, connects to a vehicle’s infotainment system to bring the Alexa assistant into the vehicle. A driver … Read more
There’s been a standing question surrounding how seriously we should ultimately take Astro. The product was launched exactly one year ago, in limited quantities as a Day One offering for $1,500 a pop. My interaction with the robot was (at the time) limited to a few pre-launch demos. I came away from the experience thinking … Read more
During Amazon’s hardware event this morning, the company announced new Alexa-powered Echo devices including new Echo Dot and Echo Dot with Clock models. One of the more notable upgrades is Eero Built-in for Echo Dot, which allows Echo Dot devices to serve as Wi-Fi extenders for existing Eero networks. The Echo Studio — which now … Read more
Alongside news of new Alexa devices, Amazon today unveiled a refresh of its Ring lineup including new cameras, alarms and more. The flagship addition for consumers is a new “pro-tier” security camera joining Ring’s radar-powered lineup, the Spotlight Cam Pro. However, the more interesting (or creepy?) news is Amazon’s plan to integrate its Ring Virtual … Read more
In May, Lionsgate announced that it planned to spin off Starz. According to an SEC filing today, the company is switching focus on spinning out its studio business from Starz instead of the other way around. The SEC filing states, “[Lionsgate] remains on a path to separating our Starz and studio businesses. As negotiations progress, we … Read more
Amazon today announced a new feature for U.S. drivers who may need assistance while on the road — like if they get a flat tire or run out of gas, for instance. At its annual hardware event, the company introduced a service called Amazon Roadside Assistance, accessible from the Alexa app, or via Echo Auto … Read more
Exactly a year ago today, Amazon announced its entry into the fitness tracking space, with the launch of the Halo View. The wearable was certainly priced right at $80, with a design that appeared to take cues from some Fitbit offerings. Ultimately, however, the product received the wrong kind of press, over the matter of … Read more
While Iranians struggle to access the Internet as civil protests continue to grow against the regime, TechCrunch has spoken to a tech entrepreneur inside the country to get a picture of how a small group of activists is working to get internet access working again inside the country after it was debilitated by the government, … Read more
Hard to believe that, in 2022, the Kindle can still headline an Amazon event — and yet, he were are. We’re expecting plenty of news out of today’s virtual Amazon event (and slightly melancholy that we weren’t able to cover it from Seattle), but the company’s 15-year-old e-reader line is the big news this time … Read more
After nine generations of Pokémon, it can sometimes feel like the game developers are just pulling random words from a hat and seeing what they come up with. I still can’t decide if Klefki, the sentient keyring Pokémon, is a stroke of genius or madness. Now, there’s an AI generator for that. Justin Pinkney, a … Read more
Despite the boom of education technology investment and innovation over the past few years, founder Julia Stiglitz, who broke into the edtech world as an early Coursera employee, thinks there’s a lot of room to grow. Her new startup, CoRise, sells expert-led programming to people who want to up-skill their careers. It’s a fresh play … Read more
As we close out the third quarter and look ahead to Q3 venture capital results (early work here, here, and here), I am curious about present-day targets for startups at different stages. What does a startup need to have done — and what does it need to forecast — to raise a Series A today? … Read more
Google is revamping its Play Store in an effort to help users better discover and install apps to other devices via their phone. The company announced a series of changes to the Google Play Store that will enable cross-device discovery and new tools to help developers better showcase their non-phone apps, it says. Among the … Read more
Several months after launching DALL-E 2 as a part of a limited beta, OpenAI today removed the waitlist for the AI-powered image-generating system, which will remain in beta but let anyone sign up and begin using it. Pricing will carry over from the waitlist period, with first-time users getting a finite amount of credits that … Read more
What do more than 2,000 data scientists, engineers and machine learning professionals have in common? They’re all getting ready to hear from a fantastic lineup of speakers at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit on November 8. Over the course of the summit, you’ll hear from 18 of the the most influential and forward-thinking leaders in … Read more
For many non-technical sales teams at product-led growth companies, it’s difficult to sift through reams of data to find out the best way to engage with potential paying customers. That’s a problem that HeadsUp, a conversion engine for product-led sales, wants to solve. The San Francisco-based startup announced today it has raised $8.5 million in … Read more
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: My … Read more
Developers are a huge catalyst for growth in the competitive world of layer-one blockchains. Where the devs go, they build out applications and robust ecosystems, and user activity and interest tends to follow. Coral has been instrumental in building out dev tools for the Solana blockchain ecosystem. The startup created Anchor, which it says is … Read more
Billtrust, a company developing a platform to automate the invoice-to-cash process, today announced that it agreed to be acquired by EQT, the Sweden-based private equity firm, for $1.7 billion in an all-cash deal. Approved by Billtrust’s board of directors, the transaction is expected to close in Q1 2023 subject to the green light from Billtrust’s … Read more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is sick and tired of having to pause before tweeting to consider the potential implications on his company’s stock price. The celebrity executive is urging a federal appeals court to throw out a provision in his 2018 consent decree with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that requires him to … Read more
The rise of so-called “smart factory” technologies is leading to a race to modernize manufacturing plant and warehouse floors. Old equipment is being replaced by newer, more advanced machinery as manufacturers look to keep pace with the competition — and wrestle with high turnover rates. According to a survey by Plex Systems, 50% of manufacturers … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How does the “build in public” mindset impact the … Read more
Daniel Hoffer Contributor Share on Twitter Daniel Hoffer is the managing director of Autotech Ventures. He leads investments in B2C and B2B startups with a focus on marketplaces, SaaS, and logistics. Commerce is as old as humanity, and yet innovation in how to build better and more efficient companies not only continues, but is accelerating. … Read more
Just about every company is going to face a catastrophic incident at some point where a key part of the system goes down, and you need to know not only how to respond in the moment, but how you figure out what happened when it’s over. Jeli.io is an incident management startup from former Netflix … Read more
Large AI systems like OpenAI’s GPT-3 might grab headlines, but the practical limitations of power consumption and cost — not capabilities — often determine where AI is deployed. For the most part, highly capable systems are relegated to the cloud because they’re too complex to run on edge devices with weaker hardware and limited connectivity. … Read more
In March 2020, Sami Bouremoum and Michael Ginzo, two tech entrepreneurs with a background in consulting (Bouremoum worked for Bain & Company) and software development (Ginzo led product at hiring startup Deel), came together to co-launch Hofy, a company that delivers office equipment to remote hires. It wasn’t long after that Hofy began earning “low-six-figure” … Read more