Lightdash, an open source business intelligence (BI) platform that’s setting out to challenge proprietary incumbents such as Looker, is officially launching its core commercial product to the public today backed by $8.4 million in funding. The seed round was led by Accel, with participation from Moonfire, Y Combinator (YC), Snyk founder Guy Podjarny, and Gitlab … Read more
In South Korea, there are about 7.3 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — defined as firms with less than 250 employees. Their workforces combined make up 83.1% of all corporation employees in the country, totaling about 17.1 million people, according to OECD data. To help meet SMEs’ financial needs in the country, Seoul-based fintech … Read more
Halo Car, a Las Vegas-based startup that combines teleoperations and car sharing, said it will remove the human safety operator from behind the wheel later this year — the last hurdle before its commercial launch. The milestone would mean Halo Car will use humans to remotely control vehicles through public streets and deliver them to … 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. Happy Wednesday! Haje is enjoying a well-deserved day off, but I’m here to dive into some news with you. Let’s join hands and jump in at the same time, shall we? — … Read more
SpaceX successfully launched another batch of astronauts to the International Space Station Wednesday, part of an ongoing astronaut transportation contract with NASA. Like the company’s seven other human spaceflight missions, it was completely routine — and that’s what made it so remarkable. The Crew-5 mission (so named because it’s SpaceX’s fifth crewed mission with NASA’s … Read more
Tools helping China’s netizens to bypass the Great Firewall appear to be facing a fresh round of crackdowns in the run-up to the country’s quinquennial party congress that will see a top leadership reshuffle. Greater censorship is not at all uncommon during countries’ politically sensitive periods, but the stress facing censorship circumvention tools in China … Read more
On paper, the federal government looks like an ideal customer for an enterprise startup: Its seemingly endless budget doesn’t fluctuate with market conditions and it’s always in the market for new tech. But it’s a slog to break into, and for a long time, startups and VCs didn’t seem to want to associate with it. … Read more
Space-based advertising has been on the minds of every marketer on the planet since the Apollo era, yet no one has made it happen. A new study suggests that a billboard-like constellation of about 50 satellites, costing $65 million all in, could shine ads to every corner of the Earth for months — and potentially … Read more
In a new letter filed with Delaware’s Court of Chancery, Judge Kathaleen McCormick says it’s still game on — for now at least. In the letter, sent a day after news broke that Elon Musk would seek to seal the deal with Twitter under the original terms, Judge McCormick is weighing in with an important … Read more
Not to be outdone by Meta’s Make-A-Video, Google today detailed its work on Imagen Video, an AI system that can generate video clips given a text prompt (e.g. “a teddy bear washing dishes”). While the results aren’t perfect — the looping clips the system generates tend to have artifacts and noise — Google claims that … Read more
Climate change and geopolitical instability are wreaking havoc on agriculture. To gauge how VCs are responding to these issues, we spoke with seven investors. For starters, rising greenhouse gas emissions are driving punishing droughts and storms, which are harming crops, exacerbating food insecurity and threatening countless livelihoods. At the same time, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine … Read more
Grubhub and Gopuff are partnering to provide fast delivery of grocery items, alcohol and essential items. The new partnership will see the Chicago-based food delivery platform tap into Gopuff’s warehouses to deliver a wider selection of convenience items to its customers, while also opening up a new channel for Gopuff to reach more customers. The … Read more
A world-class tech conference like TechCrunch Disrupt — coming to you live and in person in San Francisco on October 18-20 — doesn’t just happen. It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation, and we want to direct your attention to an essential group of deck hands — our partners. Building a startup is no easy task — not … Read more
One of the biggest games of the year is off to a rocky start, to say the least. Overwatch 2 — the follow-up to 2016’s colorful multiplayer shooter — is cut from the same cloth, extending the life of Blizzard’s mega hit without reinventing the wheel outright. But ever since Overwatch 2 went live on … Read more
Elon Musk has his fingers in a lot of pies. He’s CEO of automaker Tesla and rocket company SpaceX. He also founded tunnel construction firm the Boring Company and co-founded Neuralink, a brain implant startup. Now it looks like Musk will spearhead the effort to take Twitter private and potentially roll it into an “everything … Read more
NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell revealed in a CNBC interview that Peacock added more than 2 million paid subscribers in the third quarter, bringing the total to over 15 million. The recent growth shows the streaming service is recovering from its slowdown at the end of the second quarter when Peacock stalled at 13 million paid … Read more
Hardware hobbyists wanting to get their hands on some juicy single-board Raspberry Pi kit to power low-cost electronics projects have been having a frustrating time for more than a year now, as pandemic-triggered global supply chain disruption continues squeezing reseller inventory. Go try and buy Pi and you can’t miss how official reseller websites everywhere … Read more
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) was the fastest growing crypto market in 2022, according to a new report by Chainalysis. Users in the region transacted $566 billion in cryptocurrency between July 2021 and June 2022, up 48% from a year earlier, the report found. In comparison, crypto transactions rose 40% in Latin America, … Read more
Walmart is holding a “Rollbacks and More” sale event from October 10 to 13 to counter Amazon’s Prime Early Access Sale. Last week, Amazon announced that it’s holding a Prime Day-like sales event on October 11 and 12, marking the first time that the online retail giant will host two sales events exclusively for Prime … Read more
When the economy tightens and the cost of driving new initiatives cramps growth and profitability, sometimes you just need to overhaul your strategy. Case in point, when ride-hail giant Lyft sold its self-driving unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet, it cut $100 million of annualized non-GAAP operating expenses on a net basis. Free from the cost … Read more
Neeva, an ad-free search engine launched last year by a former engineer and executive best known for spearheading Google’s advertising tech business, is about to land in Europe. The Mountain View, California-based company officially launched a subscription-only search engine in its domestic U.S. market in June last year, later going on to add a free … Read more
With all the plastic and paper covering the things we buy, more and more consumers are seeking out companies that operate more sustainably. EcoCart has built an infrastructure for e-commerce companies and works with them to make that shopping experience more transparent and sustainable. Here’s how it works: The three-year-old software company performs product life … Read more
News that well-known technology denizen Elon Musk intends to move forward with his proposed and accepted bid to purchase social media company Twitter was surprise news this week; Musk had fought in court against having to close the deal, arguing various issues with the company to avoid paying $54.20 per share for the former startup darling. … Read more
Amazon announced yesterday that Fire TV users in the U.S. can now watch thousands of hours of free, ad-supported content across sports news, cooking and travel, as well as movie and TV trailers from IMDb. No downloads, fees or subscriptions are required to watch the videos. The new free content can be found in three … Read more
Mobileye, Intel’s automated driving division, filed Friday for what is expected to be the year’s largest IPO, but its success is far from guaranteed. The Israeli company, acquired by Intel five years ago for $15.3 billion, touts a broad vision: An autonomous future “where congestion is seen only in history books.” But its S-1 filing … Read more
Just over a year after its debut, Amazon is discontinuing its interactive, video-calling device for kids and families, the Amazon Glow. First introduced at Amazon’s annual hardware event last year, the device promised a unique way for kids to use technology when on video calls with other family members. Instead of using only a screen, … Read more
CommonSpirit, the second-largest nonprofit hospital chain in the U.S., has confirmed a cybersecurity incident that is disrupting medical services across the country. In a brief statement, Chicago-based CommonSpirit said the “IT security issue” is impacting some of CommonSpirit’s facilities and some patient appointments have been rescheduled as a result. “CommonSpirit Health is managing an IT … Read more
Months after Sendy laid-off 10% of its workforce, the Kenyan logistics startup is at it again after sending more staff home, while announcing the decision to wind-down its Supply service. Sendy confirmed to TechCrunch that discontinuing the supply service affected 20% of its staff, which is about 54 employees – the latest casualties of the … Read more
Facebook is rolling out new ways for users to customize their feed, the social network announced on Wednesday. Beginning today, you will start to see new “Show more” or “Show less” buttons on posts from the people and communities that you’re connected to or on posts that are recommended to you. Facebook is also going … 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, Alex asked: How are platforms responding to the new creator … Read more