Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. We’ve been living through a lot of tech history over the past two years, but the brutal Twitter layoffs feel especially sad, complex and exhausting … Read more
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. As much as I like spotting new trends, it is just as important to get confirmation on previous predictions we made or heard. This … Read more
Want to start a DAO? It’s not that hard. Want to join a DAO? It’s even easier, but there are several steps to get connected. Some of those steps are daunting. That’s why Alex Taub started Upstream, which attempts to make starting and onboarding for a DAO much easier. Tune in to the next TechCrunch … Read more
As rumors rumbled that the U.S. Federal Reserve would hike rates once more — and when it followed through earlier this week — another round of layoffs hit the tech sector. Stripe, Opendoor, Chime, Zillow, Cerebral, Brex, and of course Twitter, among others, have already cut or are about to eliminate thousands of jobs. That’s … Read more
Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter CEO less than one year ago, finally addressed the layoffs that impacted approximately 50% of the company he co-founded in 2006. The workforce reduction, led by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk, impacted thousands of people – and key teams working on human rights, accessibility, AI ethics and curation. … Read more
SpaceX’s Starlink internet has included unlimited bandwidth since launch, and while the service will technically continue to provide that to customers, users who exceed 1TB of data use in a single month will now be throttled once they reach that threshold. Starlink sent out an email to users across the U.S. and Canada on Friday … 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. Friday, and all eyes are on the vast number of Twitter employees who were given the boot, unceremoniously, with many of ’em finding out they’d lost their job because they were unable … Read more
The crypto ecosystem may be experiencing fewer hacks and alleged fraud incidents, but they’re still occurring as bad actors take hundreds of millions of dollars from users in the space. According to Immunefi’s Crypto Losses Q3 2022 report, crypto losses have declined for the past three quarters in a row, but it’s not clear whether … Read more
In a series of cancellations, HBO has managed to disappoint many viewers as of late. Now, “Westworld” fans will be among them. The network announced today that it is canceling the sci-fi drama after four seasons. The show just aired its season four finale in August. HBO, in a prepared statement, said, “Over the past … Read more
YouTube is gearing up to roll out a new feature that will allow select creators to invite a guest to go live with them, the company announced on its Creator Insider channel and in a blog post. At launch, creators will only be able to co-stream via a phone, as the feature won’t be available … Read more
Elon Musk is wasting no time making extremely deep cuts at Twitter, calving off many teams doing essential work at the company in the process. News of layoffs swept the platform on Friday, showing that Twitter’s billionaire owner is painting in broad strokes when it comes to trimming down the team by half. The same … Read more
Benitago Group’s website no longer working this week set off an alarm bell for some folks, those who regularly follow the comings-and-goings of active fulfillment-by-Amazon aggregators. They believed it might spell the end for the e-commerce aggregator, which raised $380 million in equity and debt financing last year. Co-founder Benedict Dohmen confirmed to TechCrunch via … Read more
A lot of problems worth solving aren’t ones that you can solve in a year or two or even 10. For founders and investors alike, such long timelines can seem daunting. But for Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of battery tech startup Sila, hard tech problems are also some of the most tantalizing. “It’s always … Read more
Stability AI, the venture-backed startup behind the text-to-image AI system Stable Diffusion, is funding a wide-ranging effort to apply AI to the frontiers of biotech. Called OpenBioML, the endeavor’s first projects will focus on machine learning based approaches to DNA sequencing, protein folding, and computational biochemistry. The company’s founders describe OpenBioML as an “open research … Read more
This week Amanda Silberling and I went live on LinkedIn and Twitter Spaces to talk about Elon Musk’s questionable plans for blue checks on Twitter. Then, I talk with Natasha Mascarenhas about a new startup, Rewind, that wants to help humans have perfect memory. And as always, we break down the biggest stories in tech. … Read more
After Warner Bros. Discovery reported its third-quarter earnings results yesterday, the company told investors and analysts in a call that the forthcoming combined HBO Max/Discovery+ streaming service will now launch in the U.S. earlier than previously announced. CEO David Zaslav said the yet-to-be-named service is now getting a spring 2023 launch instead of in the … Read more
Many big companies in the fintech world cut jobs in the past month. And yet Stripe’s announcement it would lay off 14% of its workforce still made a splash, proving that unicorns and decacorns are not immune to the challenging economic and fundraising conditions. The Stripe news closely follows Chime confirming this week that 12% … Read more
TechCrunch Sessions: Space returns on December 6, and among our distinguished guests is Dr. Carolyn Mercer, chief technologist for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, who will share the agency’s tech and science ambitions and priorities in the Artemis era. Mercer is a NASA veteran and started as a research engineer at Glenn before ascending through the … Read more
Education options during and after incarceration have never been particularly extensive, despite the best intentions of educators. Emerge Career is working on changing that, and its early success in putting formerly incarcerated folks to work is attracting investment from both VCs and government programs. It was only August when Emerge first appeared as it came … Read more
Are you ready to launch a bajillion-dollar startup? Before you start: Are you planning to build a centaur, a unicorn or perhaps a decacorn? Startup pitching has become an existential drama, in part because so many founders exaggerate the size of the total addressable market (TAM) in which they hope to compete. At TechCrunch Disrupt, … Read more
You’d be forgiven for expecting public fintech companies that facilitate consumer trading to be under pressure this week. And yet, after reporting earnings, the share prices of two pandemic-era highfliers gained ground. Coinbase and Robinhood up? In this economy? Yes. Of the out-of-fashion tech sectors, consumer trading has to be among the most out of … Read more
We’re encouraged to think of pitch meetings as a trial by fire: If an entrepreneur can negotiate deadly traps and slay the doubt monsters that bedevil tech investors, they’ll be rewarded with a golden SAFE note at the end of their quest. Particularly for first-timers, the pitch has become an existential drama, which can lead … Read more
As mass layoffs begin at Twitter, major advertisers are pausing their campaigns on the social network — a move that’s gotten the attention of newly-minted CEO Elon Musk. In a tweet this morning, Musk blamed a “massive drop” in Twitter revenue on “activist groups pressuring advertisers,” likely referring to an open letter sent Tuesday by … Read more
So let’s say hypothetically, you’re an extremely online billionaire who just bought a social media platform for $44 billion, a purchase you presumably regret given the fact that you spent months in legal limbo trying and failing to get out of the deal. You’re probably wondering how you can turn a company that operated at … Read more
A month after Hulu raised the subscription prices of its on-demand streaming service, it is now targeting the subscribers of its live TV streaming bundle. Parent company Disney announced in August that it would increase the cost of the Hulu Live TV bundle later in the year. Starting on December 8, Hulu Live TV subscribers … Read more
As a startup, when you’re trying to stay as lean as possible, outsourcing is the name of the game; if you can get someone else to do the work for you (and manage the team, deal with hiring and HR, etc.), that’s a win. The major exception is anything that creates core intellectual property and … Read more
Uber has applied to withdraw a petition in Kenya challenging the new ride-hailing regulations that capped commissions at 18%, and required taxi apps operating to acquire licenses. Coulson Harney, the law firm representing Uber, filed the notice of withdrawal, bringing to an end its push to have the new digital ride-hailing regulations annulled. “Take notice … Read more
Etsy is launching a new image search feature that is designed to help users find what they’re looking for faster. Up until now, the only way to search on Etsy was through keywords. Now, users on iOS can tap the new camera icon in the search bar and upload or take a photo, after which … Read more
Surfe, the startup that was originally named Leadjet, is an interesting browser extension if you spend a lot of time on LinkedIn and are tired of switching between your CRM and the professional social network. When you install Surfe’s browser extension, you get some nifty syncing features between your CRM and LinkedIn. For instance, you … Read more
TechCrunch Sessions: Space is back! Happening December 6 — our third dedicated space event. This is a live, in-person event featuring the most influential people in the space industry, across public, private and defense. 2022 was a year that saw the commercial space industry undergo a lot of change, including significant consolidation, as well as … Read more