The AfroTech Conference, one of the nation’s most prominent Black tech gatherings, will touch down in Austin on November 13 for its first in-person event since 2019. The event is put on annually by the publication AfroTech, with this year’s theme being web3. High-profile speakers for the conference include NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace, billionaire Mark … Read more
Rocket Lab will try to catch a spent Electron rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter in a few hours, a technique that could be central to driving down rocket production costs and increasing launch cadence. The mission will take place just five months after Rocket Lab conducted its first (partly) successful attempt, during which a … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Oh what a week. What a week. Things are busier than ever at TechCrunch, where we’re coming out of our post-conference stupor and charing straight back into a packed news cycle. Sure, Musk is … Read more
Ashish Kakran Contributor Share on Twitter Ashish Kakran, principal at Thomvest Ventures, is a product manager/engineer turned investor who enjoys supporting founders with a balance of technical know-how, customer insights, empathy with challenges and market knowledge. More posts by this contributor Here’s where MLOps is accelerating enterprise AI adoption Remember the cable, phone and internet … Read more
While there are differing perspectives on the degree to which no-code and low-code development tools could eventually supplant human software developers, it’s clear that any software that takes care of the technical “heavylifting” is having a huge impact within businesses — in terms of opening app-building to more personnel, plugging the talent gap, and helping … Read more
A recently presented European Union plan to update long-standing product liability rules for the digital age — including addressing rising use of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation — took some instant flak from European consumer organization, BEUC, which framed the update as something of a downgrade by arguing EU consumers will be left less well … Read more
Toto Wolff, the 50-year-old Austrian chief executive, team principal and part-owner of the Mercedes Formula 1 team who was recently described by the New Yorker as someone who might breeze “past you in the airport, smelling good, wearing loafers and no socks,” talked openly yesterday about his team’s terrible, no-good year. Sitting with Oliver Steil, … Read more
TikTok owner ByteDance is moving towards a launch its music streaming service TikTok Music, rivaling Spotify and YouTube Music, reports have stated. In addition to recent discoveries of TikTok Music trademarks in global markets, TechCrunch has now discovered newly added references regarding a “TikTok Music” service in the Resso streaming app, owned by TikTok’s parent … Read more
Danish startup Pleo has announced that it plans to lay off around 15% of the company’s workforce. As the company currently has nearly 1,000 employees, it could affect up to 150 people. Pleo develops expense management tools for SMBs around Europe. “I’ll be honest. Pleo today, at the point of almost 1,000 employees and with … Read more
After trying for years to replicate the success of its QR code-enabled payments solution overseas, Ant Group seems to have finally found a path to scaling. Instead of going after end users, the Alibaba-affiliated fintech giant has been quietly forming partnerships with local payments providers in Asia. It’s built something akin to the Mastercard or … Read more
PayPal announced Thursday that it will soon support Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhones. The company said in its Q3 2022 earnings report that both PayPal and Venmo will soon support this tech as a part of its offering. Merchants will be able to accept contactless card payments as well as payments via Apple Pay … Read more
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has formed a joint venture with Foxconn to build and sell EVs, the latest move by the nation to meet its Vision 2030 goal of reducing its dependence on oil and diversifying its economy. The new company, called Ceer, will design, manufacture and sell a portfolio of EVs using BMW’s … Read more
Commercial electric vehicle company Arrival has gotten a warning from the Nasdaq Stock Market because its stock price is trading too low. The company issued a press release Thursday saying it received a notification at the start of the week that it was not in compliance with the Nasdaq’s requirement to trade ordinary shares above … 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. Oh heeeey! How are you doing today? We’ve had a pretty busy day on the site today, with a veritable cornucopia of news spilling all over the internet. We’ve selected some of … Read more
Rocket Lab is gearing up for a second attempt to catch a rocket booster mid-air using a helicopter, a technique the company is hoping to perfect after a partially successful recovery earlier this year. The mission, playfully dubbed “Catch Me If You Can,” is scheduled to take place no earlier than November 4 from the … Read more
There are no sure bets in this — or any — business. Automation, agriculture and a climate-bent are green flags, but no category is immune from mounting economic headwinds on top of the already difficult task of launching a successful startup. While robotics has thus far seen a limited slowdown in investing relative to many … Read more
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) reported its fiscal quarterly earnings this afternoon — its last one before the company is set to launch a new streaming service next year that combines HBO Max and Discovery+ content. Since Netflix reported decent Q3 results, the market likely anticipated an okay turnout for WBD. However, it’s clear the company … Read more
File this in the “did not see that coming” category; JoiPaw, an U.K.-based startup, is building a series of video games for dogs, with the ultimate goal of helping do further research into dementia among our four-legged furry friends. Check out the video below and go “awww,” if you like, but the company’s founder is … Read more
Given the ongoing economic headwinds and the company’s expensive belt-tightening under CEO Andy Jassy, it ought not come as a surprise that Amazon has instituted a corporate hiring freeze. The retail giant’s senior vice president of People Experience and Technology, Beth Galetti, confirmed the move in a staff memo that has since been published on … Read more
Over the last six months, I’ve written up 25 Pitch Deck Teardowns — the popular series of articles where I review a pitch deck in detail, celebrating the wins and gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) suggesting improvements. We’ve seen 74-slide decks (yes, really), decks that are riddled with spelling mistakes and bogged down by hideous design … Read more
Binance’s CEO and founder, Changpeng Zhao, made headlines outside his typical wheelhouse of web3 as an investor in Elon Musk’s Twitter buyout. Zhao, who put in $500 million, told an audience at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal this week that he would consider joining the social media company’s board if Musk asked him to do … Read more
Image Credits: TechCrunch Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week on the podcast, we talked about Apple’s App Store tax and how it could hinder NFT adoption. This week, we dug up a few stories about bankruptcies brewing in the bitcoin mining sector and asked ourselves whether this could unfold in a similar way to … Read more
Kicking things off with a big funding round for AMP Robotics this week for a couple of reasons, but when push comes to shove, it comes down to something really simple: There are a lot of great reasons to be bullish on automation and there are a lot of equally great reasons to be bullish … Read more
Another company hoping to capitalize on Twitter’s upheaval in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover is the newsletter platform Substack. The company has openly targeted Twitter’s user base over the past few days and has now thrown its hat into the ring as a more direct competitor with the launch of Substack Chat. The new … Read more
The 2018 reboot of long-running PlayStation action series God of War as a more contemplative, open-world adventure raised a few eyebrows at first, but the astonishing quality of the finished game put all doubts to rest. The sequel, God of War Ragnarok, is not the revelation the first was, but even “more of the same” … Read more
“Space…the final frontier.” Those familiar words have likely fueled the imaginations of the very people currently forging the future of humanity in space. Don’t miss your opportunity to meet, learn from and connect with them at TC Sessions: Space 2022, which blasts off on December 6 in Los Angeles. Note: Building space startups is serious … Read more
An incoming privacy policy change announced by TikTok yesterday for users in Europe — which, for the first time, names China as one of several third countries where user data can be remotely accessed by “certain” company employees to perform what it claims are “important” functions — has landed months ahead of expected movement on … Read more
At long last, DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s image-generating AI system, is available as an API, meaning developers can build the system into their apps, websites and services. In a blog post today, OpenAI announced that any developer can start tapping the power of DALL-E 2 — which more than three million people are now using to … Read more
Guru Hariharan Contributor Share on Twitter Guru Hariharan is CEO and founder of CommerceIQ, an e-commerce management company. For consumers, the holiday season means indulging in gifts, family traditions and festive celebrations. But for retail businesses, it’s the most critical time of the year. We’re seeing a gathering storm of economic conditions — inflation, inventory … Read more
Lyft said Thursday it is laying off 13% of its workforce as it tries to reduce operating expenses, according to a securities filing. The ride-hailing company described the cuts as proactive step to ensure it “is set up to accelerate execution and deliver strong business results in Q4 of 2022 and in 2023.” Lyft also … Read more