Where is the heart of the technology industry? The simple answer is “Silicon Valley,” a term that now generally means the San Francisco-San Jose-Oakland area of California. There are other options: The two largest public cloud providers, Microsoft and Amazon, are based in the state of Washington. Europe’s tech scene has been busy in recent … Read more
Meta is making it harder to find the Shop tab on Instagram with its latest test. In the new test, the Shop tab has been removed from the app’s Home Screen and is instead hidden underneath Settings. The Shop tab used to be on the bottom navigation bar. Some users first reported the change on … Read more
Alchemist Accelerator, the enterprise-focused startup incubator, is hosting a Demo Day today for its 31st batch of companies. For many of these companies, it’s the first time they’ve shown their efforts to the world. The accelerator itself, meanwhile, has some news: new leadership. Rachel Chalmers, formerly the head of AlchemistX (a division of Alchemist that … Read more
Another bit of self-reporting from Meta today vis-a-vis internal efforts to identify and shut down political disinformation networks operating on its social platforms (aka “coordinated, inauthentic behavior” — or CIB — as it prefers to term it). Specifically, it’s reported taking down two, separate political disinformation networks — one “small” network originating from China which … Read more
Calendly, the scheduling startup that landed with a splash last year when it raised a huge round out of nowhere at a $3 billion+ valuation, has made a name for itself for tools that are used by more than 10 million people to book appointments, arrange meetings, and plan any event that involves two or … Read more
Space and Time, a decentralized data platform, has raised $20 million in strategic funding to help businesses grow through smart contract technology. “Our mission is to make smart contracts smarter and expand the use cases of business logic through smart contracts,” Nate Holiday, co-founder and CEO of Space and Time, said to TechCrunch. “We see … Read more
Downsizing, layoffs, reducing redundancy — to paraphrase the Bard, this “rose” by any other name simply stinks. If you fall into this category, take heart — when one door closes, another door opens, and on the other side is a free Expo Pass to TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco (a $495 value). … Read more
During a recent Twitter Space, M13 Partner Anna Barber and I looked back at the dot-com crash in search of lessons operators can use to avoid missteps founders have made in past downturns. In our conversation, Barber spoke about how founders can better align with investors and employees while managing uncertainty, the dangers of growing … Read more
WhatsApp has published details of a “critical”-rated security vulnerability affecting its Android app that could allow attackers to remotely plant malware on a victim’s smartphone during a video call. Details of the flaw, tracked as CVE-2022-36934 with an assigned severity rating of 9.8 out of 10, is described by WhatsApp as an integer overflow bug. … Read more
Iliad, the telecom company owned by French billionaire and startup investor Xavier Niel, is launching a payment subsidiary called Stancer. The team has focused on one thing in particular — lowering transaction fees as much as possible. While French retailers, online shops and businesses can use Stancer starting today, Iliad has already been using Stancer for … Read more
It’s widely understood that after machine learning models are deployed in production, the accuracy of the results can deteriorate over time. Arthur.ai launched in 2019 with the goal of helping companies monitor their models to ensure they stayed true to their goals. Since then, the company has also added explainability and bias mitigation to the … Read more
If you’re reading this, you almost certainly have a complicated relationship with screens. Every year that passes, they become larger and increasingly present in our lives. Meanwhile, we continue to embrace the technology all while complaining about the hold it has on our lives. Astrohaus’ products have long occupied the strange nexus of technologies designed … Read more
Ido Wiesenberg Contributor Share on Twitter Ido Wiesenberg is co-founder and CEO of Voyantis, a predictive growth platform. The rise in customer acquisition costs (CAC) is creating quite the dent in marketing budgets, placing marketing teams in a position where they have to do more with less. When it comes to user acquisition campaigns, a … Read more
Avidbots, a Canadian robotics manufacturer that develops autonomous cleaning robots, has raised $70 million in a Series C round of funding. Founded out of Kitchener, Ontario, in 2014, Avidbots has built a robotic floor cleaner called the Neo 2, designed for commercial environments such as airports, warehouses and shopping malls. The Neo 2 is already … Read more
Danielle Cohen-Shohet developed a tech platform to help spa, studio and salon industry owners manage their operations. She had seen firsthand the challenges of running a small business as a freelance makeup artist, one of her jobs while she was a student at Princeton. So taught herself how to code, launched in 2016, raised $2.8 … Read more
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