In the United States, much of commerce relies on moving goods on trucks to market. The way it works is a manufacturer calls a shipping broker with instructions like ‘I need to get a load of beer to Dallas by Friday.’ They agree on a price and the broker finds a trucker to deliver the … 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
Spotify this morning announced it’s acquiring Dublin, Ireland-based content moderation tech company Kinzen, which had been working in partnership with the streamer since 2020. Deal terms were not disclosed. At Spotify, Kinzen’s technology will be put to use to help the company better moderate podcasts and other audio using a combination of machine learning and … Read more
If you’ve been swimming in the toasty waters of high-end pour-over kettles, you’ve no doubt come across Fellow, and its Stagg EKG kettle. The company uses power-pulsing technology to keep the water temperature at a very precise level, which has attracted a number of award-winning baristas to use their products: It turns out that 204ºF … Read more
Chelsea Goddard Contributor Share on Twitter Chelsea Goddard is an early-stage investor based in San Francisco excited about the future of software and space technology. Over the last few years, cloud computing has grown more expensive than ever. Initially drawn to the promise of cutting costs on infrastructure spend, companies far and wide flocked to … Read more
GraphQL company Apollo today announced the launch of GraphOS, a new end-to-end platform that is meant to help businesses build, connect and scale what the company calls “supergraphs.” For Apollo, these supergraphs have recently been a major focus. The basic idea here is to allow businesses to integrate data from a wide variety of sources … Read more
A former Canadian government employee has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for his role in a ransomware scheme that netted him more than $21 million. Sebastien Vachon-Desjardins, a 34-year-old from Quebec, was sentenced in a Florida court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges related to his involvement in the prolific Netwalker ransomware-as-a-service … Read more
Do Kwon refuted claims that his crypto accounts had been frozen after media reports said South Korean prosecutors had escalated against the entrepreneur whose blockchain collapsed and wiped investors’ $40 billion earlier this year. Korean media outlet News1 reported on Wednesday that prosecutors had frozen $39.6 million of crypto assets tied to the Terraform Labs … Read more
Today, Google announced its new cloud region in South Africa, the African nation which is now home to the major global cloud providers on the continent. For Google, this move is part of its broader commitment to invest $1 billion to support “digital transformation” across Africa over the next five years. The commitment, when dissected, … Read more
From Edward Snowden’s government surveillance revelations through the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scandal and Twitter’s recent security pitfalls, whistleblowers have been the driving force behind some of the biggest news stories of recent years. But whistleblowing isn’t always about insiders shining a light on shady practices in governments or billion-dollar tech companies. Oftentimes, … Read more
French startup Gourmey just raised a Series A funding round led by Earlybird Venture Capital. In total, the company banked $48 million (€48 million). The company has been working on cultivated meat, and more specifically lab-grown foie gras. It is part of a new wave of companies that want to turn cell-cultured meat products into … Read more
IriusRisk, a threat modeling platform, today announced that it raised $29 million in a Series B funding round led by Paladin Capital Group with participation from BrightPixel Capital, SwanLab Venture Factory, 360 Capital and Inveready. In a conversation with TechCrunch, CEO Stephen de Vries said that the proceeds will be put toward growing IriusRisk’s U.S. … Read more
Party Round wants you to know that the party isn’t over. In fact, it just rebranded, put the music just a little bit lower, and finally put out some appetizers. After a certain point, don’t we all get peckish? Party Round announced today that it has rebranded to Capital to underscore its product expansion. Now, … Read more
The White House this morning unveiled what it’s colloquially calling an “AI Bill of Rights,” which aims to establish tenets around the ways AI algorithms should be deployed as well as guardrails on their applications. In five bullet points crafted with feedback from the public, companies like Microsoft and Palantir and human rights and AI … Read more
China has joined a handful of countries in banning flavored vapes to combat underage use of nicotine. Starting October 1, e-cigarette companies are only allowed to sell tobacco-flavored vapes in the country, an effort by the government to “standardize” the production, sales and consumption of the novel tobacco product. China’s e-cigarette makers had a short-lived … 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. Good to have you with us again, as the TechCrunch train continues to rumble along the tracks. It’s gonna be a fun and busy week, so let’s dive straight in with the … Read more
Elon Musk may have said the deal is back on, but his legal fight with Twitter is still producing some eleventh-hour twists and turns. In a late Monday filing with the Delaware Court of Chancery, Judge Kathaleen McCormick weighed in on Twitter’s request for additional discovery around potential messages between Musk’s inner circle and the … Read more
Russia is having internal discussions over continuing its participation in the International Space Station (ISS) beyond 2024, despite statements made earlier this summer that the country will pull out of the station program by the middle of the decade. Sergei Krikalev, head of human space programs at Roscosmos, said Monday that the Russian space agency … Read more
For most CEOs, the first several weeks or months are spent learning the ropes, poring over financials and meeting shareholders. More often than not, press interviews are reserved for a later date. Everette Taylor, on the other hand, is jumping in with both feet. It hasn’t been a full week since Kickstarter appointed the former … Read more
Tesla is removing ultrasonic sensors from Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, the next step in CEO Elon Musk’s plan to only use cameras and software to support its advanced driver assistance system and other active safety features. Starting this month, all Model 3 and Model Y vehicles built for North America, Europe, the Middle … Read more
“Growth at all costs” was fuel to 2021’s funding fire as venture capitalists poured money into startups spending oodles of cash on everything from overhiring to inefficient customer acquisition. But amid this year’s downturn, venture capitalists decided — to say, at least — that torching cash in the name of growth maybe wasn’t their best … Read more
The TechCrunch newsroom fears only one thing: the coming of April 1. Because, I’m just going to say it, the tech industry isn’t very funny. But Google Japan’s ongoing series of ridiculous keyboards, where they completely commit to the joke, suggests we may have found the first known exception. The latest is the “Gboard Bar … Read more
This whole browser situation is utterly untenable. I subscribe to a (really great) newsletter called “Today in Tabs,” the name of which sums up a problem that’s surely not unique to me: By 5 p.m. EDT, I have a line of tabs of stories I want to read culled from Twitter, various Slack channels, email … Read more
Duolingo has acquired its first-ever startup, an animation studio that has created art for the language learning app and the likes for Amazon, Dropbox, Spotify and Google. The startup, Gunner, is a Detroit-based business is moving from just being a partner with Duolingo, to a full-fledged part of the growing language learning business. Duolingo declined … Read more
Substack is officially launching its Android app following beta tests, the company announced on Tuesday. The roll out of the Android app comes six months after Substack introduced its iOS app. The Substack Reader app brings all of your Substack subscriptions into one place where you can read content from writers you follow. The app … Read more
It sure looks like Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover is actually happening. On Tuesday, representatives of the billionaire notified Twitter through a letter that he intends to move forward with the tumultuous deal, confirming earlier reports that things were back on track. “We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed … Read more
Meta is shutting down Bulletin, the off-platform newsletter product it launched last summer. Available to writers on an invite-only basis, Bulletin allowed readers to subscribe to newsletters from contributors like Malcolm Gladwell, Tan France and Malala Yousafzai. While some content was available for free, Bulletin allowed writers to sell subscriptions to their newsletters, similar to … Read more
It is typical for consumers to purchase more food items than they need and then throw them away because they either forgot about them or the food expired. It is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food items are wasted yearly, an approximate $1 trillion loss. Recelery, a pantry tracker app and online marketplace, aims … Read more
Crypto “losses” continued to decline in the third quarter, a new report shows. Immunefi’s Crypto Losses Q3 report found $428,718,083 worth of losses in Q3, down 36% from $670,698,280 in Q2 and a drop of 62.9% from $1,155,334,775 during the year-ago quarter. Crypto losses are defined as a combination of hacks and alleged fraud incidents … Read more
Seems Google couldn’t wait until Thursday to announce all of its upcoming hardware. In a pair of blog posts this morning, the company announced two additions to its Nest line of smart home products: a new Nest Doorbell and the Nest WiFi Pro. The latter amps up the company’s dead-simple mesh Wi-Fi offering. The top-line … Read more