TechCrunch

Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings announced Thursday that he would step down after more than two decades at the company. While news of his departure comes as a shock, Hastings noted that Netflix has planned its next era of leadership “for many years” in the announcement, which was shared on the company’s blog. In … Read more

The clock is ticking for Uber to electrify its fleet, and the rideshare company wants automakers to help by designing cheaper electric vehicles for its drivers. Lawmakers are setting deadlines for rideshare companies to ditch fossil fuels (California‘s Air Resources Board among them), and Uber has its own electrification deadlines, which range from 2025 to … 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. Do you believe in second chances? Well, FTX’s new CEO John J. Ray III hopes so. The disgraced crypto exchange’s new chief is open to the … Read more

I managed to squeeze the remaining vestiges out of CES 2023 in last week’s Actuator. The good news is that things are starting to pick up again like clockwork. If you’ve emailed me about work stuff in the past week, I apologize for the delay — I’ve been out of one frying pan and into … Read more

Facebook parent Meta announced today it’s further centralizing various user settings across its suite of apps — Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. As a result, several existing settings will be relocated to Meta’s “Accounts Center” feature, first launched in 2020. Specifically, the changes will see Meta moving settings related to personal details, passwords, security options and … Read more

There’s no shortage of tools for brainstorming, collaboration and keeping all your knowledge in one place. Still, judging from the number of new tools that come to market on a regular basis, it seems that people are frustrated with the available tools. Scrintal recently raised $1 million to build its visual collaborative knowledge base tool … Read more

Another bill has come in for Meta for failing to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — but this one’s a tiddler! Meta-owned messaging platform, WhatsApp, has been fined €5.5 million (just under $6M) by the tech giant’s lead data protection regulator in the region for failing to have a lawful … Read more

A date has been set for a trial by jury in a significant antitrust case against Google involving its alleged abuses of power in the Android app market. Fortnite maker Epic Games and dating app giant Match Group, joined by over three dozen state Attorneys General, have accused Google of unfairly leveraging its market dominance … Read more

As FTX news subsided in recent weeks, the new CEO of the crypto exchange shared that he is exploring the possibility of restarting the company, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. John Ray III, the new FTX CEO, said in an interview that “everything is on the table,” in regards to reviving … Read more

Sophia Amoruso, the creator of Nasty Gal and Girlboss, has started a movement, has empowered generations of women and done the entrepreneur victory lap – the last of which she doesn’t necessarily recommend to other founders because “it’s a distraction.” She’s also raised down rounds, run out of venture capital funding, filed for bankruptcy and … Read more

Successful startup founders do not spring fully formed from the head of whatever god or goddess keeps tabs on entrepreneurs. It takes time to educate yourself, learn essential skills and acquire a smart, connected network. Here’s the great news — TechCrunch Early Stage, taking place April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts, is designed to help both … Read more

In late-2020, Presso pivoted. It made a lot of sense at the time. People weren’t traveling much and therefore weren’t particularly hung up on getting their business attire dry-cleaned. Certainly the hospitality industry — which had been identified as a major potential revenue sort –0 had effectively ground to a screeching halt. Around that time, … Read more

Sling TV, the DISH-owned streaming service, finished the year off with a substantial drop in subscribers, ending Q4 2022 with a loss of 77,000 subs. As reported in an SEC filing on January 17, Sling TV now has a total of 2.33 million subscribers, down from 2.41 million in the previous quarter. While the company … Read more

Twitter finally broke its silence over the first security incident of the Musk era: an alleged data breach that exposed the contact information of millions of users. In late December, a poster on a popular cybercrime forum claimed to have scraped the email addresses and phone numbers of 400 million Twitter users by way of … Read more

If you thought the fourth quarter of 2022 felt slow when it came to investment activity in the fintech space, that’s because it was. In fact, the three-month period marked the lowest quarter for U.S. fintech funding since 2018, according to CB Insights’ State of Fintech 2022 report. But overall, while total fintech funding globally … Read more

A €390M privacy fine for Meta announced earlier this month in the European Union — for running behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram in the region without a valid legal basis — was several billion dollars smaller than it should have been, and orders of magnitude too tiny to be a deterrent for others going … Read more

Yum Brands, the parent company of fast food chains KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, has confirmed that company data was stolen in a ransomware attack. TechCrunch first learned of an apparent incident affecting Yum Brands earlier this week, which the Kentucky-based company confirmed in a statement on Thursday. Yum Brands said a ransomware attack impacted … Read more

Private investment in the space economy dropped by 58% in 2022 compared to the year prior, with macroeconomic headwinds battering private and public markets, according to a new analysis from New York-based Space Capital. But while 2023 is shaping up to be another hard year for startups, Space Capital’s report maintains that the external pressures … Read more

Trunk, a startup that aims to build a toolkit that helps developers build and ship their code faster, today announced the launch of its latest product: CI Analytics. The new service helps developers understand how their CI Workflows (currently with a focus on GitHub Actions) perform in the real world — and if there are … Read more

Getting a handle on food costs at an independent restaurant is a constant challenge for owners, and there is a long list of startups, like MarginEdge, OneOrder, TouchBistro, PreciTaste, ConverseNow, Fudo, Owner.com, that have stepped with their solutions. Zitti’s app shows food pricing insights. Image Credits: Zitti Zitti’s co-founder Dante DiCicco is coming at this … Read more

Depending on who you ask, generative AI is either massively overhyped or undervalued. Defined as algorithm-driven tech that creates text, art and other forms of media given a prompt, it’s captured the attention of major VC backers who’ve piled hundreds of millions of dollars into firms like Jasper and Stability AI. But generative AI has … Read more

People are addicted to credit cards —  and it’s no wonder, given the lucrative rewards that many of them offer. But for merchants, credit cards tend to be less appealing. That’s because they’re on the hook for interchange fees, or transaction fees a merchant’s bank must pay whenever a customer uses a card to make … Read more

Instagram announced today it’s expanding its selection of time management tools with the launch of a new feature called “Quiet Mode.” The feature aims to reduce users’ anxiety about taking time off from the app by silencing incoming notifications, auto-replying to DMs, and setting your status to ‘In Quiet Mode’ to inform friends that you’re … Read more

Britishvolt, a battery manufacturer startup, announced Tuesday that it was declaring bankruptcy, dealing a punishing blow to the United Kingdom’s automotive sector. The company had been championed by U.K. leaders, who had hoped it would provide a laundry list of benefits: good paying jobs, advanced manufacturing know-how and homegrown battery packs to support the domestic … Read more

Jonathan Martinez Contributor Share on Twitter Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor Teach yourself growth marketing: How to launch a paid acquisition channel Teach yourself growth marketing: How to set up a landing page … Read more

Google has been dealt a significant blow in one of its key overseas markets. India’s Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block an antitrust order that requires the Android maker to make a series of changes that could topple its financial viability. India’s apex court rejected to block the ruling against Google by the nation’s … Read more

Autonomous vehicle technology may no longer be the fuel powering the hype machine. But companies applying the technology to agriculture, commercial and logistics applications are still attracting venture capital. Take Outrider, a Golden, Colorado startup developing autonomous electric yard trucks, for example. Distribution yards are the nerve center of the supply chain. Its where all … Read more

The teenage market for apps is a tough nut to crack and stay relevant in. Just ask Snapchat. Equally, teens are going through a stage in life where almost every social interaction seems to carry portent of some kind of other. This would explain in part why apps like SendIt, NGL, and Nocapp (some are … Read more

Oro, an open source ecommerce platform co-created by Magento’s cofounder and former CTO, today announced it has raised $13 million in a strategic growth round of funding. Founded in 2012, Los Angeles-based Oro’s platform constitutes a range of applications, including OroCommerce, its flagship B2B ecommerce platform for building storefronts and marketplaces; OroMarketplace, an end-to-end management … Read more