To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Well, it’s Friday again. And as the Equity pod team noted today, “You could be Wasted and not even know it.” — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 The search for … Read more
It’s now official: Dungeons & Dragons is licensed under the Creative Commons. This makes the popular tabletop roleplaying game “freely available for any use,” Dungeons & Dragons executive producer Kyle Brink wrote in a blog post today. Just weeks ago, this outcome would have seemed impossible. About a month ago, Wizards of the Coast (WoTC) … Read more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is facing scrutiny by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding his specific comments and efforts to promote the automaker’s claims regarding its “self-driving” capabilities, Bloomberg reports. The SEC investigation into Musk is part of its overall efforts to determine whether Tesla has run afoul of its rules in promoting … Read more
Startups selling dev tools over the last few years have seen the pendulum swing. On one hand, developers rarely need anyone’s permission to start using their tools, which resulted in teams within the same organization using wildly different tech stacks. On the other, a growing number of companies are attempting to limit this chaos at … Read more
In late April, police in Nebraska received a tip saying 17-year-old Celeste Burgess had given birth to a stillborn baby and buried the body. Officers soon learned that her mother, Jessica Burgess, and a friend had helped her with transportation and burial. The police issued citations for concealing the death of another person and false … Read more
We’ll be straight with you. There’s no 1:1 Twitter replacement, not yet and possibly not ever. Still, there are plenty of social apps that might still be worth substituting into your obsessive timeline-checking routines if you’re done with Twitter for whatever reason (we can think of plenty). Twitter’s current situation — advertisers leaving, Nazis logging … Read more
You may not have known that space needs tugboats, but now you do — and Atomos Space just closed a $16.2 million Series A investment, which will enable the company to complete its demonstration mission where it will show off its docking and towing capabilities. The company is building a series of Orbital Transfer Vehicles … Read more
Kano, the venture-backed U.K startup known for its build-your-own computer kits and software for teaching coding and associated STEM skills, has accused Warner Bros. of copying one of its products and infringing on its intellectual property (IP). The product in question is the Harry Potter: Magic Caster Wand that Warner Bros. announced back in October, and which … Read more
Finance people live and breathe spreadsheets, Mayfield’s Rajeev Batra was telling me. We were talking about our upcoming TechCrunch Live event featuring him and Cube’s Christina Ross, and Rajeev was explaining how he sees Cube’s position in the marketplace. Christina Ross co-founded the company in 2018 in a bid to provide a solution to CFOs … 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 week, Natasha Mascarenhas, Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak took the mic to talk through breaking news, retrospective features and all the blogosphere content that fits in between. Shout-out to Theresa and Andrew for putting together … Read more
Americans spent nearly $20 billion on pizza deliveries in 2021. Most of us could probably bake one at home, but speed and convenience are powerful incentives at dinnertime. The potential of AI tools like ChatGPT creates a similar dilemma — should companies license large language models without modifications, or customize them and pay much higher … Read more
HBO announced today that the hit series “The Last of Us” is getting a second season, likely satisfying more than 22 million domestic viewers that watched the Season 1 premiere episode so far. On the night of the premiere, it was viewed by 4.7 million Americans. The announcement comes less than a week after “The … Read more
An impressive new AI system from Google can generate music in any genre given a text description. But the company, fearing the risks, has no immediate plans to release it. Called MusicLM, Google’s certainly isn’t the first generative AI system for song. There’s been other attempts, including Riffusion, an AI that composes music by visualizing … Read more
I find something very intriguing about members of a royal family working to further the startup scene for a particular country. In a magnificently frank conversation, I spoke with HRH Prince Constantijn, fourth in line to the throne of the Netherlands, at CES earlier this month. We discussed the Dutch ecosystem, the role of government … Read more
As generative AI enters the mainstream, each new day brings a new lawsuit. Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI are currently being sued in a class action motion that accuses them of violating copyright law by allowing Copilot, a code-generating AI system trained on billions of lines of public code, to regurgitate licensed code snippets without providing … Read more
Uber Eats is introducing a new feature that shows users how much of their personal information is shared with their delivery person when they place an order on the app. The feature, which is called “View as Delivery Person,” is designed to add a level of transparency when ordering food via the app. The feature … Read more
If you enjoy some good toilet technology, then I think “urine” for a treat. Starling Medical is poised to launch its at-home urine diagnostic patient-monitoring platform, dubbed “StarStream,” that doesn’t rely on the traditional catching containers or dipsticks. Now, if you’re thinking this technology sounds familiar, you would be correct: My colleague Haje Jan Kamps … Read more
Here comes the hockey stick. After years of bumbling along, investment in the energy transition appears to be taking off. Businesses, financial institutions, governments and end users around the world sunk $1.11 trillion into low-carbon technologies, according to a new report from BloombergNEF. It was just over 30% more than 2021 and the second year … Read more
Earlier this month, we reported that investors’ sentiments surrounding venture capital activity going into this were more reserved than upbeat. Investors believe the market correction, which caught up with the continent in the second half of 2022, will spiral into this year. But before that, there was shared optimism that African startups would raise more … Read more
Katherine Kostereva Contributor Share on Twitter Katherine Kostereva is CEO and managing partner of Creatio, which provides a low-code platform for automating workfolws and CRM. More posts by this contributor 3 steps to ease the transition to a no-code company The age-old adage of “doing more with less” is particularly critical advice for both startups … Read more
Chroma, a startup working to build a new type of audiovisual entertainment specifically for mobile devices, is now adding a Twitter co-founder to its board. The company announced today that Twitter and Medium co-founder Biz Stone, previously an angel investor in Chroma alongside Pinterest’s founders, will join the company’s board of directors to contribute his … Read more
Chrome is rolling out an update for Android users that lets them lock their incognito sessions with a password code or biometric info when they exit the app. The feature has been available for iOS users for some time, but now it’s being made available to folks using Chrome on Android. Users can activate this … Read more
Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based asset management firm long known to have a penchant for pre-IPO tech companies, has reduced its shares in African e-commerce giant Jumia, per the latest 13G/A filing released by the asset manager. According to the filing, Baillie Gifford disclosed ownership of 18.75 million shares in Jumia, representing 13.69% of the company. In … Read more
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Did you know you can buy 3D printed key caps to replace, say, your escape key with a cat? Today, that’s our delightful little morsel of whimsy, courtesy of Frederic’s review of … Read more
Walmart recently introduced a new way to shop: via text. Last month, the retail giant launched its “Text to Shop” experience which allows mobile consumers across both iOS and Android devices to text Walmart the items they want to purchase from either their local stores or Walmart.com, or easily reorder items for pickup, delivery, or … Read more
Match Group, the parent company of several popular dating apps, including Tinder and Hinge, has announced a revamped executive leadership team. Most notably, the company is bringing on former Vice President of Product at Snap Will Wu as its new chief technology officer in a newly created role. Wu will oversee product innovation across Match’s … Read more
By any measure, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been a successful executive. He helped build Salesforce from the ground up, starting in an apartment in San Francisco in 1999 and eventually erecting Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in the city. He took the idea of running software in the cloud and grew it into the … Read more
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome back to Chain Reaction. This month was filled with announcements from major crypto firms that were laying off employees. Of course, this “trend” is not limited to this industry — … Read more
Conor Burke spent much of his career in the back office of a big bank in Ireland. His team was tasked with digitizing the onboarding process — particularly document-heavy manual review workflows — that were costing the bank millions of dollars every year and not catching fraud. According to him, the biggest challenge was figuring … Read more
Before they were robots, they were “androids” or “automatons.” The word “robot” is commonly accepted as having arrived in English through — of all places — a Czech play. “R.U.R.” made its public debut in Prague 102 years ago, yesterday. It would arrive in the States a year and a half later, with Spencer Tracy … Read more