We’re beyond amazed at the collective creativity, ingenuity and technical prowess of the Startup Battlefield 200. Out of thousands of applications, only 200 early-stage startups made the final cut, and you’ll find all of them — and only them — exhibiting on the TechCrunch Disrupt show floor on October 18-20 in San Francisco. That’s a … Read more
Florida’s Space Coast continues to make preparations for the extremely powerful and slow-moving Hurricane Ian, with officials rolling rockets back to the safety of hangars and delaying launches until the storm passes. The massive storm made landfall near Fort Myers Wednesday afternoon, coming in at just a few miles per hour shy of the Category … Read more
Digital mortgage lender Better.com continues to lay off staff, and seemingly in as callous a way as possible. Indeed, whereas most companies try to avoid repeated layoffs, the outfit — which gained notoriety by laying off about 900 employees over Zoom on December 1, 2021 — has since been laying off smaller groups very systematically, … Read more
After a weeks-long suspension, Pornhub’s account has been permanently removed from Instagram. Instagram told TechCrunch that Pornhub has repeatedly violated community guidelines, prompting the account’s removal. Meanwhile, Pornhub declared in an open letter to Meta and Instagram that Instagram’s enforcement of these platform rules are “opaque, discriminatory and hypocritical.” Addressed to four Meta executives, including … Read more
Porsche plans to go public on Thursday at a $73 billion valuation, catapulting the company to become the world’s fourth-most valuable automaker and netting billions of dollars for parent company Volkswagen to advance its drive toward electric vehicles. The initial public offering for Porsche AG on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange values the brand at $79 … Read more
Taiwanese battery-swapping company Gogoro has signed a $345 million five-year credit facility agreement in order to increase liquidity among uncertain economic conditions. The loan comes from a group of 10 syndicated banks led by Mega International Commercial Bank Co., according to a regulatory filing. Gogoro will use the funds to pay off an existing facility, … Read more
Regie.ai, a startup using OpenAI’s GPT-3 text-generating system to create sales and marketing content for brands, today announced that it raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Scale Venture Partners with participation from Foundation Capital, South Park Commons, Day One Ventures and prominent angel investors. The fresh investment comes as VCs see a … Read more
On the same day that Lionsgate renamed Starzplay to Lionsgate+, MGM’s Epix announced it would also get a “+” in its brand title. Epix, the ad-free streaming service, announced today that it will relaunch as MGM+ in early 2023. While the new name is hardly original, mainly the plus sign, the rebranding comes as streaming … Read more
With the rising tide of fake news on social media platforms, the debate over how much control a government should have on online information is a perennial one. In Vietnam, the government is intensifying its control over the internet regime. The country is formulating new rules to control news dissemination on social media platforms that … Read more
Amazon Alexa will be the foundation of BMW’s next-generation voice assistant, the companies announced Wednesday at Amazon’s annual Devices and Services launch event. The German automaker and Amazon are have had a relationship for years now. BMW started offering the Alexa assistant in select cars starting in 2018 and the partnership has grown from there. … Read more
Lyft has been canceling job interviews this week and is reportedly on a hiring freeze in the U.S., according to anonymous professional network Blind and a report from Bloomberg. The freeze affects all departments in the U.S. and should last into next year as the ride-hail giant continues to face economic unpredictability. “Like many other … Read more
As regulators around the world try to provide frameworks for the digital asset industry, two U.S. senators have introduced a bill to help crypto companies report cybersecurity threats. U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn, Republican of Tennessee, and Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, exclusively shared with TechCrunch the reformed legislation, the Cryptocurrency Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which … Read more
Tesla’s second AI Day is fast approaching, and with it a flurry of speculations as to what will be discussed at the event — a phenomenon that we at TechCrunch are certainly not above. AI Day is the luxury electric vehicle maker’s annual event to hype up its artificial intelligence capabilities across different business segments, … Read more
Eviation’s Alice electric aircraft took off for the first time yesterday, teasing a future in which regional flights of hundreds of miles will be done with zero emissions and a lot less noise. It’s still a ways off, but today’s demonstration shows it’s at least just a matter of time and money. The Alice is … Read more
When UiPath announced in April that it was bringing on veteran enterprise executive Rob Enslin as co-CEO, it was unexpected. UiPath had gone public the prior year, while Enslin was leaving Google Cloud after only two years, just as it was beginning to find its footing. But at the time, UiPath faced some harsh realities … Read more
Movie and TV reviews site Rotten Tomatoes is releasing a card game in early 2023 called “Rotten Tomatoes: The Card Game,” a fast-paced party game that challenges cinephiles by making them guess what rating a movie has—a.k.a the Tomatometer score, which reflects the percentage of positive professional critic reviews for a movie. This is the … Read more
At a Google Search-focused event this morning, Google announced that it will soon introduce ways to translate news coverage directly from Search. Starting in 2023, English users, for example, will be able to search and see translated links to news results from Spanish-language publishers in countries such as Mexico, in addition to links to articles … Read more
This spring, Google announced it would expand the types of personal information users could request to have removed from Google Search results to include contact information, like a phone number, address or email. At Google’s “Search On” event today, where the company unveiled a number of announcements related to its Search products and services, it … Read more
In early April, software engineer Dmitri Kyle Brereton published a blog post — “Google Search Is Dying” — that struck a nerve. Now among the most upvoted threads of all time on Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum, the piece argues many users have become so dissatisfied with Google search results that they now append “Reddit” … Read more
Google is adding several new sustainability features for Search, the company announced today at its Search On event. The search giant will start showing the annual fuel cost for cars in search results to help people who are in the market for a new car. Google will also show emissions estimates for cars, so you … Read more
At its Search On event this afternoon, Google announced a number of shopping-related changes and new features across areas that include visual shopping, personalization and buying with the help of trusted reviews. The additions aim to help the company better attract online consumers to shop on Google, instead of starting their searches directly on Amazon … Read more
Google is gearing up to launch several Search updates to make it easier for users to find the perfect dish, the company announced today at its Search On event. Most notably, the search giant says users will be able to use its upcoming image and text-based “Multisearch Near Me” local search feature to find specific … Read more
Kickstarter announced today that it has appointed Everette Taylor as CEO. The news comes nearly six months after Aziz Hasan officially stepped down from the Chief Executive role. Hasan had served in the position for around three years, leaving COO Sean Leow leading the company in an interim role. “Everette brings so many exciting qualities … Read more
Google is gearing up to launch several new updates for Maps in the coming months, the company announced today at its Search On event. Google teased the upcoming launches of new Maps features called Immersive view, Neighborhood vibe and Search with Live View. The company says all of the features announced today are part of … Read more
Google is introducing a new Maps feature called “Neighborhood vibe,” the company announced today at its Search On event. The feature is designed to give users an instant understanding of a specific neighborhood right in the Maps app. Neighborhood Vibe surfaces photos and information from the Google Maps community to give you an idea of … Read more
A new Google feature that will allow users to search using both images and text combined in to find local retailers who offer the apparel, home goods or the food you’re looking for will soon roll out to users in the U.S., Google announced today at its “Search On” event. The company had first previewed … Read more
Google is giving its translation service an upgrade with a new machine learning-powered addition that will allow users to more easily translate text that appears in the real world, like on storefronts, menus, documents, business cards and other items. Instead of covering up the original text with the translation — the new feature will instead … Read more
Google today announced it’s revamping the traditional Google Search experience to allow users to more naturally explore information. To accomplish this, the company is introducing a number of new features, including tools to drill down into topics and other changes that will make using search a more visual experience, highlighting maps snippets, imagery and even … Read more
Amazon showed its Eero Wi-Fi lineup some love this morning during a hardware event, announcing the Eero PoE 6, a Wi-Fi 6 Power over Ethernet (PoE) access point that can provide up to 2,000 square feet of coverage and support up to 100 devices. A complementary new product, the Eero PoE Gateway, delivers up to … Read more
You already know whether you’re an Amazon Echo type person. If so you’re probably looking at one right now, thinking “should I upgrade that thing or is it pointless?” Probably the latter — unless you also have Amazon’s Eero mesh wi-fi product, in which case: it’s probably still pointless, unless it’s pretty old. In which … Read more