IBM wants to scale up its quantum computers to over 4,000 qubits by 2025 — but we’re not quite there yet. For now, we have to make do with significantly smaller systems and today, IBM announced the launch of its Osprey quantum processor, which features 433 qubits, up from the 127 qubits of its 2021 … Read more
If the global pandemic taught us anything, it’s that you could work from anywhere as long as you had a computer and good wireless signal. However, getting paid when you live, say, in Argentina but work for a company on the other side of the world is not so simple. Many fintech startups have taken … Read more
Meta’s body blow layoff announcement will see the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp making its first-ever major layoffs as a company, cutting 11,000 employees, 13% of its total; predictably investors are responding favorably, bumping the stock up by over 5% in pre-market trading. While the dust settles and we start to get an idea … Read more
Medibank has urged its customers to be on high alert after cybercriminals began leaking sensitive medical records stolen from the Australian health insurance giant. A ransomware group with ties to the notorious Russian-speaking REvil gang began publishing the stolen records early Wednesday, including customers’ names, birth dates, passport numbers, and information on medical claims. This … Read more
Equals, a New York-based startup ambitiously aiming to challenge Excel’s dominance with a supercharged spreadsheet, today announced that it raised $16 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Craft Ventures, Box Group, Worklife and Combine. Co-founded by Ben McRedmond and Bobby Pinero, two former Intercom employees, Equals … Read more
Apple announced its so-called Figma Whiteboard competitor called Freeform at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. The company hasn’t rolled out the idea board app to everyone yet but if you are using public or developer beta, you will get to play with the app with the iOS 16.2 update, and on Mac with … Read more
Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp’s parent company Meta has confirmed a huge round of layoffs, amounting to 13% of its workforce. “I want to take accountability for these decisions and for how we got here,” CEO and cofounder Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a statement. “I know this is tough for everyone, and I’m especially sorry to … Read more
We knew it was happening, but U.K.-based online furniture and home accessories retailer Made.com has officially entered administration, confirming previous reports with the appointment yesterday of PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrators. While Made.com had revealed that it was in discussions with potential buyers, nothing materialized in time and the company ceased taking new orders in late October, … Read more
Celonis has made a big impact since it launched in 2011, raising $2.4 billion along the way. Its most recent investment, a $1 billion raise in August, was on a $13.2 billion post-money valuation, the kind of money you haven’t been seeing in 2022. The company has primarily made its reputation by using software for … Read more
Meet Plain, a new startup that wants to reinvent support tools. While the customer support space is a competitive industry with big tech companies like Intercom and Zendesk, Plain believes it has a different approach as it focuses on API integrations to make your company’s product and your support platform work hand in hand. Plain … Read more
Californians seem to be voting against a proposal on the midterm election ballot that would tax the wealthiest Californians to help pay for electric vehicle tax incentives and EV charging infrastructure in the state. With about 53% of the state’s votes counted, Proposition 30 was losing 57.3% to 42.7%, according to California’s Secretary of State. California … Read more
Tiger Global is adding Rohit Iragavarapu, the partner at TCV Capital involved in deals such as Gitlab, Attentive, Toast, LegalZoom and Avetta, to its investment team, two sources familiar with the matter said. Before joining TCV in 2019, Iragavarapu worked at TPG Global and Morgan Stanley, according to his Linkedin profile. He starts his investor … Read more
Startups might be in a funding midwinter, but the ray of sun shining on some VCs speaks of a different trend. EQT Ventures, the venture fund arm of Sweden’s investment giant EQT making early-stage bets on startups primarily in Europe, has closed its latest fund and filled its coffers with 1 billion euros (and $1.1 … Read more
If you have used Instagram on your desktop system, you know that it looks like a badly made copy of its mobile website. The company is now introducing a refreshed design that takes advantage of large screens. Instagram’s head Adam Mosseri made this announcement through a post on Tuesday along with a feature that enables … Read more
Kuda, the London-based and Nigerian-operating startup taking on incumbents in the country with a mobile-first and personalized set of banking services, is expanding to the U.K. by offering a remittance product to Nigerians in the diaspora. The digital bank has seen some success since launching in Nigeria in 2019. Kuda claims to have up to … Read more
Beekeeper, a platform for businesses to engage with frontline workers, has raised $50 million in a Series C round of funding. Founded out of Switzerland in 2011, Beekeeper targets the estimated 80% of the global “deskless” workforce who don’t work from a fixed office-based location, spanning hospitality, retail, manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, among other industries. Beekeeper’s … Read more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is selling millions of Tesla shares again. The celebrity executive disposed of 19.5 million shares Tuesday, which is worth about $3.95 billion, according to three filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Musk did not take to Twitter to explain why he sold shares, but it’s possible the money will … Read more
Before starting Electric Era, Quincy Lee was one of the chief mechanical engineers at Space X. He got bored of doing space stuff when the climate crisis was happening down here on Earth and decided to do something about one of the biggest challenges with the adoption of electric vehicles: Distributed high-speed charging infrastructure. Crappy … Read more
Movie theater attendance is down, largely thanks to the pandemic, but chains like AMC still need to make money. If meme stocks aren’t a reliable business plan, why not find another use for a giant room with a huge screen and lots of seats? In partnership with Zoom, AMC Theatres will launch a product called … Read more
Twitter is turning the famous blue check mark into a symbol that denotes you’ve paid Elon Musk $8, rather than one that identifies public figures. But of course, if anyone with a spare $8 and a fragile ego can get verified, then the symbol is rendered meaningless, paving the way for trolls to go hard … 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. Today, we’ve been learning about what the hell a Mastodon even is, so the timing of Amanda’s piece ‘A beginner’s guide to Mastodon’ is all sorts of perfect. Give it a read, … Read more
Spaceflight startup Skyroot wants to make history by launching India’s first privately developed rocket, and it’s aiming to do so as early as next week. The company said Tuesday that the first launch of the Vikram-S suborbital rocket could occur as early as November 12, with a launch window that extends until November 16. The … Read more
Excess inventory, including returned items, from e-commerce, logistics and retail companies often ends up being disposed. Manila-based Humble Sustainability is a circular economy startup that wants to keep it out of the Philippines’ landfills. Since its launch, it has processed more than 150,000 items like clothing, consumer electronics and household appliances that are either resold … Read more
Day One Ventures, a venture firm launched in 2018 with a pitch to combine venture capital acumen with marketing and communications support, has launched a program aimed explicitly at those impacted by tech layoffs this year. The program, titled “Funded Not Fired,” will write $100,000 checks into 20 startup teams by the end of the … Read more
Salesforce laid off hundreds of people this week as the onslaught of tech cutbacks continued unabated. The company would not share an exact number, but said it was less than a thousand, and the people involved were informed yesterday, according to a person close to the company. Protocol first reported the layoffs (although it appears … Read more
Disney reported results for the final quarter of its 2022 fiscal year today, revealing a total of 164.2 million Disney+ global subscribers, an increase of 12 million subs from 152.1 million in Q3. The flagship streaming service was only expected to gain 9.35 million subs. Across Disney’s streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ had a … Read more
Google announced today that it’s making the new Gmail interface the standard experience for users. The company first released the new interface earlier this year but allowed users to revert back to the original view. Starting this month, users will no longer have the option to go back to the old interface. “The integrated view … Read more
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume, has signed a letter of intent to buy its closest competitor, FTX, making huge waves in the crypto community after the putative billionaire CEOs of the exchanges engaged in a multi-day public dispute on Twitter. “It’s like real-life ‘Game of Thrones,’” Alex Taub, founder and CEO of … Read more
The disgraced founder of Theranos, Elizabeth Holmes will be sentenced on November 18 after she was found guilty on four counts of defrauding investors in January. Once the youngest self-made female billionaire, Holmes is could face up to twenty years in prison for each of the four counts of fraud. Holmes had delayed sentencing by … Read more
Ten years after a cap-and-trade scheme championed in part by John Kerry was unceremoniously killed by one of his colleagues across the aisle, the former senator turned climate envoy is once again pitching the policy as a solution to climate change. As an idea, cap and trade isn’t bad! It works by having governments cap … Read more