It’s about time that we learn the difference between what’s a viral trend, and what’s just one person posting a meme that goes viral. For the sake of humanity, let’s count our lucky stars: NyQuil chicken is not a real threat to public health. But this week, the FDA issued a warning about what the … Read more
Gen Z’s favorite social app BeReal experienced a lengthy outage today, which the company only acknowledged with a brief — and fairly vague — tweet, stating: “yup, we’re on it.” In recent months, the Paris-based app maker has seen its photo-sharing service climb to the top of the App Store, ousting competitors like Facebook, Instagram … Read more
Jason Sudeikis’ character from the hit Apple TV+ series “Ted Lasso” will make an appearance in EA Sports’ upcoming video game, FIFA 23. Ted Lasso will be playable as a manager along with the show’s fictional football club AFC Richmond. EA (Electronic Arts) announced the news today alongside a trailer showing everyone’s “favorite mustachioed manager,” … Read more
Netflix announced today that it’s adding a new title to its gaming roster that is based on its popular show “Nailed It!” The game, which is called Nailed It! Baking Bash, will launch on October 4, a day before Season 7 of the bake-off competition show debuts on October 5. The game was developed by … Read more
Matt Blumberg Contributor Share on Twitter Matt Blumberg is the co-founder and CEO of Bolster. He is also the co-author of Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors, and the author of Startup CEO, Startup CXO and the Startup CEO blog. Was anyone else as appalled as I … Read more
Arbor Ventures, funder of fintech and shopping startups like installment loan company Tabby and Amazon brand factory Heyday, has locked down $193 million towards its largest fund to date, TechCrunch has learned. The Singapore-based VC focuses on early-stage financial tech startups, but it operates with a pretty expansive view of what constitutes fintech; its portfolio … Read more
Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as “CZ” in the crypto world, said governments across the globe are making slow but “positive” progress toward regulating cryptocurrency. “On the regulatory side, I think we’re seeing a lot of progress in the positive direction for regulatory framework,” Zhao said in a video call aired live on stage at … Read more
The competition to create ever smaller, ever better robots is a fierce one, and Cornell University is out front now with a set of bots small enough to sit on a human hair, but that can move on their own using nothing but light as a power source. Now, you may remember a similarly small … Read more
Peacock, Comcast’s NBCUniversal-owned streamer, announced its first original adult animation series today. It’s about time the streaming service invested in the genre, as adult animation shows continue to do well for competitors Netflix and Hulu. Peacock’s upcoming animated comedy series, “In the Know,” will star “Beavis and Butt-Head” creator Mike Judge and “Silicon Valley” star … Read more
Xpeng launched the G9 Flagship SUV, the fourth production vehicle in its lineup that will set a “new benchmark” for automated driving technology in passenger vehicles, the Chinese electric vehicle startup said Wednesday. The automaker says the G9 will come with an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) that eventually will cover both city and highway … Read more
IndieBio (part of SOSV) is a biotech investor and accelerator that has started shifting more and more toward climate tech in recent years. The current cohort is batch 13, for fall 2022, and we’ve taken a closer look at the five that stood out the most. IndieBio tells us that this batch is going big … Read more
Between the climate crisis and global pandemics, we’re living in remarkably fraught times. Undaunted by the magnitude of the challenges, Silicon Valley has been hard at work seeking to mitigate the threats, extend help to the overlooked, and prepare for a new kind of future. Some of the most promising and cutting-edge advancements in climate … Read more
The chess world is currently consumed by a drama as lurid and compelling, in its way, as the Don’t Worry Darling fracas. Involving implications of cheating at the highest levels of play, the feud between the world champion and an upstart challenger has prompted speculation on the existential threat to chess posed by an AI … Read more
Twitch plans to standardize its revenue sharing agreement with streamers, reshaping the earnings landscape for top creators who have historically been able to pocket a bigger portion of the money they generate through paid subscriptions on the platform. In a blog post on Wednesday, Twitch President Dan Clancy explained that while the “vast majority” of … Read more
Deepfakes, AI generated porn, and a thousand more innocent uses — there’s been a lot of news about neural network-generated images. It makes sense that people started getting curious; were my photos used to train the robots? Are photos of me in the image-generating training sets? A brand new site tries to give you an … Read more
Crypto token prices have been trending downward for the past year, with BTC and ETH both down over 50% since last September. Yet despite the downturn in cryptocurrency prices, early-stage web3 startups have shown remarkable resilience in their valuations, Seth Ginns, managing partner and head of liquid tokens at digital asset investment firm CoinFund told … Read more
Apple began assembling some of its devices in India and Vietnam a few years ago, slowly cutting its reliance on China. The Cupertino-giant is now gearing up to make the two nations key global manufacturing hubs, according to analysts at JP Morgan. In a report they sent to clients Wednesday, JP Morgan analysts said Apple … Read more
Speech recognition remains a challenging problem in AI and machine learning. In a step toward solving it, OpenAI today open-sourced Whisper, an automatic speech recognition system that the company claims enables “robust” transcription in multiple languages as well as translation from those languages into English. Countless organizations have developed highly capable speech recognition systems, which … 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: Is … Read more
Voxel51, a startup developing a platform to analyze unstructured data, such as images and videos, has raised $12.5 million in a Series A round led by Drive Capital, with participation from Top Harvest, Shasta Ventures, eLab Ventures and ID Ventures. Founder and CEO Jason Corso tells TechCrunch that the new capital will be put toward … Read more
Logitech is unveiling a brand new device today that is both intriguing and easy to understand. The Logitech G Cloud is a handheld console that focuses primarily on cloud gaming services, such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now. While Logitech is better known for its computer peripherals, webcams and gaming accessories, the company … Read more
Amazon today announced it’s bringing a new accessibility option to its new line of Fire tablets with the addition of “Tap to Alexa” functionality — a way to interact with the company’s Alexa voice assistant without actually speaking. The feature was first introduced in 2018 on the Echo Show, as a way for those with … Read more
Salesforce is the most successful SaaS company in the world. AWS is the biggest infrastructure player, and the two giants have gotten together over the years whenever it makes sense. As a couple of examples, the two signed an agreement in 2016 for Salesforce to use AWS infrastructure. In 2018, they got together to make … Read more
Carolyn Childers and Lindsay Kaplan probably consider the saying “It takes a village” to be more than just a mere adage. In 2019, the two women co-founded Chief, a private membership network designed to connect and support women executives. Chief clearly touched a nerve and filled a need. In March — three years post-launch — … Read more
Repairable electronics firm Framework just announced a new take on the company’s signature laptop. Produced in association with Google, the company is releasing the Framework Laptop Chromebook Edition. As the name suggests, it’s an iteration of the Framework Laptop specifically designed for ChromeOS. Image Credits: Framework The system is up for preorder in the U.S. … Read more
One of the most popular communities on TikTok is #BookTok, which is a made up of users who discuss books and share their recommendations with others. TikTok is aware that the community is a big part of its platform and notes that the #BookTok hashtag has more than 77 billion view globally. Now, the company … Read more
This deep into 2022, you might think that SPAC deals were over, done, dusted, forgotten. And yet, TechCrunch recently reported that Intuitive Machines is pursuing a SPAC-led debut to the public markets as we speak. You might not be familiar with the company if you don’t keep close tabs on the space business. Let me … Read more
In recent months, Google has been steadily adding new tools to help consumers choose more sustainable options when using its services like Google Maps, Google Flights, and hotel search. On Tuesday, the company announced it’s expanding these efforts with the addition of a handful of new features that allow travelers to better filter their searches … 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: What does breaking into venture capital look like today, … Read more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has agreed to settle charges against Morgan Stanley Smith Barney (MSSB) for its “astonishing” failure to protect the personal identifying information of some 15 million customers. MSSB, now known as Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, is the wealth and asset management division of banking giant Morgan Stanley, which this week … Read more