It feels like an eon has passed since the launch in 2019 of Ada Ventures, as a European VC that decided to invest in normally unrepresentative groups and sectors, like women or POC founders, as well as tech which improves society. Its $34 million (£27 million) fund, was designed as a “first-cheque” seed fund. Ada … Read more
The combination of rapid data growth and expanding data regulations like GDPR and CCPA is putting a lot of pressure on companies to figure out just what they have and provide the necessary controls that the evolving body of law requires. Enter Securiti, a startup launched in 2019, originally with the idea of focusing on … Read more
European Union lawmakers have given final approval to an online safety-focused overhaul of the bloc’s ecommerce rules — the first major update to the legal framework for digital services since the year 2000. The Council sign-off means the Digital Services Act (DSA) has cleared the last hoop — and been formally adopted. The European Parliament … Read more
For the average individual living in Lagos — Nigeria’s most populous city, with over 20 million people — apartment hunting is an extreme sport. Not only is rent expensive — low- to middle-income housing can cost between $1,000 and $5,000 yearly — but renters must also pay a year in advance, sometimes even two before … Read more
Apple’s App Store suffered a 5% year-on-year dip in net revenue in September according to a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring. This is the biggest drop in App Store revenue since the financial services company started tracking its data. Woodring said gaming was the biggest reason for the decline as the sector plunged … Read more
Last April, Egyptian and MENA-focused venture capital firm Algebra Ventures announced the launch of its $90 million second fund. It was the sequel to its first: a $54 million fund invested in 21 startups across Egypt and the Middle East. While Algebra Ventures predicted it would reach its first close in Q3 2021, the firm … Read more
Euler Motors, an Indian startup that designs and builds commercial electric vehicles, has raised $60 million in a new funding round as it works to ramp up its production capacity and broaden its offerings. Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC led the New Delhi-headquartered startup’s Series C funding. Blume Ventures, Athera Venture Partners, QRG, ADB Ventures and … Read more
Gaming giant Activision Blizzard unlawfully retaliated against workers at Raven Software who formed a union, the National Labor Relations Board found. The quality assurance (QA) department at subsidiary Raven Software, who mostly work on “Call of Duty,” announced that they would form a union in January. Activision Blizzard sought to block the union, reasoning that … Read more
Google is spinning up a new, online-only startup accelerator centered around the elusive circular economy. The effort is Google’s latest to help environmentally focused startups grow, while potentially hooking them on its cloud products in the process. In the broadest of strokes, the circular economy represents a colossal shift in how humanity makes and uses stuff. … Read more
Zenskar, a startup that is aiming to help SaaS companies automate their billing workflows, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round. Headquartered in New York and Bengaluru, Zenskar is building a platform for SaaS companies to generate bills for their complex pricing plans — whether they are based on usage-based pricing, subscriptions, nuanced … Read more
Elon Musk today waded into the Ukraine-Russia war with a peace plan that was . . . not very well-received. It may have been a tactic to distract industry watchers from Tesla’s third-quarter vehicle production and delivery numbers for 2022, which fell short of analysts’ expectations. But it was a knuckle-headed tactic if so, and … Read more
The UK government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet — saying the data reform bill it had introduced in recent months is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the UK’s data protection regime, which remains based … Read more
Naver, the South Korean search giant, today announced it plans to acquire secondhand apparel marketplace Poshmark for $1.2 billion in cash. The deal values publicly-traded Poshmark’s shares at $17.90 — a 15% premium over today’s closing price — and the companies expect it to close by Q1 2023, subject to approval by Poshmark stockholders and … Read more
John Curtius, the prolific Tiger Global senior partner who has been at the center of some of the firm’s biggest deals in the last several years, is leaving the firm, TechCrunch has learned. He will be leaving to start his own firm, which will concentrate investments from Series A to Series C. Curtius will stay … 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. Oc-flippin-tober? You’ve got to be mock-tobering us. It’s a sobering experience, though, to see the who-ber year fly by like that! Ahem. Forgive the incoherence, we are entering TechCrunch Disrupt silly season … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Max Q. I hope all of our Florida readers stayed safe during Hurricane Ian — thinking of you guys. In this issue: How the Space Coast braced for the storm Humans: 1, Asteroids: 0 News from Astra, Firehawk Aerospace and more By the way…We are just a few weeks away … Read more
Section 230 of the Communications Act, which prevents online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users, will be evaluated by the Supreme Court in the coming season. It’s anyone’s guess how it may be affected, but we can be sure that the regulatory landscape for tech will look rather different this … Read more
Twitter’s throwback feature, Twitter Status, is today expanding its list of potential status updates to choose from, in a continuation of tests that began this July. The feature, which is something of a cross between Myspace moods and a Facebook status, allows users to tag posts with an additional expression beyond the tweet itself — … Read more
Electric vehicle maker Rivian announced its Q3 production and delivery numbers on Monday, revealing it made 7,363 of its R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV during the three-month period that ended on September 30. Rivian also said it delivered 6,584 vehicles during the same span. The automaker is still backing its target of delivering 25,000 … Read more
Today, Spotify released the first two episodes of the new original podcast “Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith,” narrated by reality TV star Kim K and true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi. The series will be available worldwide and is free for all Spotify listeners. The podcast will have eight episodes in total … Read more
Gopuff added another private label to its arsenal of offerings, this time in the health and wellness space with Goodnow, the company announced Monday. The Philadelphia-based instant grocery delivery company is starting with products like over-the-counter medications for pain, allergy, cold, flu and sinus relief, as well as first aid items, sleep aids and diagnostic … Read more
Spin, which was acquired by Tier Mobility earlier this year, has laid off about 10% of its staff — including a number of executives — and is exiting Canada and Seattle, TechCrunch has learned. The micromobility company informed its workforce of more than 700 during a Friday all-hands meeting that lower-than-expected demand in the U.S. … Read more
One of the highest-profile sexual assault allegations against Chinese business tycoons ended abruptly this past weekend. Liu Qiangdong, the founder of Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com, also known as Richard Liu, has reached a settlement with Liu Jingyao, a former University of Minnesota student who alleged that the billionaire raped her in her apartment in 2018. … Read more
Facebook parent Meta has settled a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in data scraping operations, which had seen them gathering data from Facebook and Instagram users for marketing intelligence purposes, according to the original complaint filed in October 2020. The companies named in the suit, Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Delaware-incorporated … Read more
I’ve long been super against edited tweets, mostly for technical reasons. The core issue is that Twitter isn’t like other social media sites; unlike, say Instagram and Facebook posts, embedded tweets drive the news in many ways. Republishing and retweeting of tweets is the main risk around allowing users to edit it. Let me break … Read more
Kim Kardashian is the latest celebrity to land in legal trouble for unlawfully promoting a crypto product to her followers without disclosing she had been paid to do so. The reality star settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a $1.26 million penalty for promoting a crypto security sold by EthereumMax. While … Read more
Silly season is out in venture capital land. Today investors and founders alike will bore your ears off with notes about incremental cash flow positivity and their timeline to adjusted EBITDA profitability. Lame. Despite the general boringness of today’s venture capital landscape, replete with conservative valuations, falling deal sizes, and clucking investors sitting atop a mountain of capital, … Read more
Golden State Warrior and four-time NBA champion Draymond Green will take the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco — and get ready for a plot twist. He will bring his popular podcast, “The Draymond Green Show,” to the Disrupt stage with a very special guest — himself. Turning the tables, Green … Read more
Twitter is rolling out the ability to edit tweets to Twitter Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the social network announced on Monday. The company says the edit button will roll out to Blue subscribers in the U.S. soon, but didn’t provide a specific launch date. Twitter Blue subscribers in these countries can … Read more
Heading into 2022, it seemed like we were poised for a big year in M&A. This was especially true for enterprise SaaS companies that saw their values begin to fall in late 2021, a trend that extended into this year. Why are we not seeing more aggressive M&A activity and some good old-fashioned bargain hunting … Read more