The Vision Fund, a venture capital arm of SoftBank, has launched a sweeping layoff process, cutting at least 30% of its workforce globally, or approximately 150 of the 500 employees, according to a report by Bloomberg. The news comes nearly two months after SoftBank chief executive officer and founder Masayoshi Son said the company would … Read more
Alex Wiltschko has what he thinks is a big idea. He wants to build a company that digitizes scent. It’s a natural step for Wiltschko, who has a PhD in neurobiology from Harvard, where he studied how the brain processes odor. He didn’t wind up in this specific group accidentally, he suggests. It owes to … Read more
A new, particularly juicy document has surfaced in discovery leading up to the Elon Musk v. Twitter trial, slated to take place in a few weeks. Behold: a trove of texts between Musk and key figures at Twitter, like founder Jack Dorsey, board chair Bret Taylor and current CEO Parag Agrawal, and other casual chats … Read more
Google Colaboratory (Colab for short), Google’s service designed to allow anyone to write and execute arbitrary Python code through a web browser, is introducing a pay-as-a-you-go plan. In its first pricing change since Google launched premium Colab plans in 2020, Colab will now give users the option to purchase additional compute time in Colab with … Read more
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. When Phil Libin co-founded Evernote he spent tons of money making the perfect working environment with chic offices, a shuttle bus and headphones to block out all of his employees’ distracting co-workers. He’s since seen the work-from-home light and co-founded mmhmm to make working remotely more efficient … Read more
Truepill, a platform that helps other companies offer diagnostics, telehealth services and prescriptions, has conducted its fourth layoff of the year. Sources say the layoff impacted around 65% of the existing staff across the engineering, human resources, design, IT and finance teams. The layoff comes around two months after its last round, which impacted about … Read more
SpaceX and NASA have signed a new agreement to study the feasibility of sending a commercial crew in a SpaceX Dragon to boost the orbit of the Hubble Space Telescope. If completed, the mission could extend the operational lifespan of the telescope by as much as 20 years. NASA officials cautioned that today’s news is … 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. Today we are mostly listening to acoustic covers of songs we love (a surprise Iron and Wine cover, perhaps?), and mentally preparing ourselves for TechCrunch Disrupt. Which reminds us — did you … Read more
Satellites in low Earth orbit can’t linger too long after they’ve finished what they went there to do, according to new rules passed by the FCC today. Now there’s a five year limit on loitering in orbit, which should help keep the space debris problem more manageable in years to come. The FCC, for reasons … Read more
It’s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global’s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors — and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer tools, and several stood out from the rest of … Read more
Meta’s researchers have made a significant leap in the AI art generation field with Make-A-Video, the creatively named new technique for — you guessed it — making a video out of nothing but a text prompt. The results are impressive and varied, and all, with no exceptions, slightly creepy. We’ve seen text-to-video models before — … Read more
Twitter is adding new features to make it easier for users to watch and discover videos on its platform, the social network announced on Thursday. Most notably, the company is launching a scrollable TikTok-like scrollable video feed. In the coming days, users on iOS will be able to click on a video in their feed … Read more
Insurtech companies have been among the biggest victims of the public market selloff, especially those that went public in 2021. Notably, Metromile saw its valuation decline over 85% and was subsequently acquired by peer Lemonade, and it hasn’t been alone in losing a lot of value and being eyed by peers and incumbents. All this … Read more
When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. As the markets turned early this year, insurtech left most generalist investors’ playbooks almost as fast … Read more
Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific to Amazon. They’re more a result of having … Read more
As more and more traditional institutions begin to dabble in digital assets, some believe the best way for both old-school finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow together is through a cross-chain world and tokenization. At Chainlink’s SmartCon 2022 conference, the “Bridging Traditional Finance and DeFi” panel discussed how interoperability could drive greater success for … Read more
Consumers reduced their mobile app spending in the third quarter of 2022 by roughly 5%, but the social video app TikTok just delivered another record-breaking quarter on this front. For the fourth straight quarter in a row, TikTok continued its streak as the app that has ever generated the most revenue in a quarter. These … Read more
All new passenger cars, pickup trucks and SUVs sold in New York state must be zero emissions by 2035, Governor Kathy Hochul announced Thursday. “By revving up our clean transportation transition and making major investments to make EVs more accessible, we’re supercharging our fight against climate change,” Hochul tweeted. NEW: All new vehicles sold in … Read more
There are times in the life of a startup when you don’t really want or need to raise money, but an opportunity comes along that’s so good that you create a brand new round just to be able to bring in a strategic investor. That was the situation Danish animation and motion capture company Rokoko … Read more
We’re stoked for what’s shaping up to be a glorious Startup Battlefield competition at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco. Twenty of the most promising and creative early stage startups — chosen from the elite Startup Battlefield 200 — will go toe-to-toe for bragging rights and $100,000. This year’s contenders will have to … Read more
Since E-bike manufacturer Ride1Up closed a $6.5 million Series A led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund, the San Diego-based company has seen steady sales growth since its launch in 2018, especially as consumers switched to ebikes during the pandemic over public transit. Indeeed, last year ebikes reportedly outsold EV and plug-in hybrid automobiles. So it was … Read more
The Tesla Cybertruck is not yet in existence thanks to multiple delays. But when it does come, Elon Musk promises it will also have the ability to “briefly” act as a boat — if the need arises. “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & … Read more
Two and a half years after unveiling Stadia on stage at GDC, the game streaming service is officially done. Subscribers will have access to the games library through January 18 of next year, after which point, it will shut down for good. Google adds in a blog post that it expects to have all refunds … Read more
Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn has begun production of Lordstown Motors’s electric pickup truck. The news, which Bloomberg grabbed first, is a milestone for both companies: Foxconn as it diversifies from manufacturing consumer electronics like iPhones to electric vehicles, and Lordstown as it finally gets its much-anticipated Endurance truck off production lines and, hopefully, into customers’ … Read more
Meet Reflect, a new analytics tool that has been specifically designed for HR teams. While many teams now rely on sophisticated data visualization and business planning tools, HR teams can’t easily measure different metrics and see how they evolve over time. And yet, human resources have become a key component for tech startups and innovative … Read more
Meta announced today that all Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S. can now connect their wallets and share their NFTs. All users in the U.S. also have the ability to cross-post the NFTs that they own across both Facebook and Instagram. The official roll out comes a few months after Meta first began testing … Read more
The IPO market is still frozen like a Nordic lake dotted with fishing huts, but there are signs that a thaw is now in sight. News from Insider indicates that TripActions, a unicorn in the corporate travel and expense category, has filed confidential paperwork to go public. Per the publication, the company is targeting a … Read more
Online daters everywhere fear “ghosting.” Inner Circle, a global dating app, is hoping to address this ongoing problem with the launch of five new features that aim to put a stop to the hurtful online dating experience where people cut off contact with another person without any warning or explanation. Inner Circle dubbed this new … Read more
When it comes to the decentralized world of crypto, few single entities loom larger or carry more weight in the industry than exchange behemoth Binance. The blockchain giant processed $34 trillion in trading volume in 2021, it says, and the exchange shows few signs of resting on its laurels as it pursues bold new bets … Read more
Financial institutions have struggled to develop their own technologies, hence the rise of neo-banks which used Open Banking regulations to build their own fintech stacks. That has led to a wave of innovation, and startups have hungrily devoured the opportunities to “platformise” the financial work. The latest is fintech SaaS provider Toqio, which has now … Read more