TechCrunch

Silicon-Valley based VC firm 500 Global and German’s economic development agency Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) will train managers of leading accelerators in Africa over the next two years, to help them establish sustainable business models that commandeer greater influence in their ecosystems. The program, dubbed Bootcamp for Accelerator Managers (BAM), will use project-based teaching … Read more

More on rumors of looming job cuts at Twitter: Bloomberg is reporting that new owner Elon Musk will slash headcount by 50% to cut costs, citing people familiar with the matter. Its report suggests staff will begin being told Friday. Additionally, Bloomberg says Musk will reverse Twitter’s current ‘work from anywhere’ policy — and intends to … Read more

Lugano, Switzerland-based venture capital fund Privilège Ventures just launched its fourth fund. The CHF 20 million (just over $20 million) fund is earmarked for women-led early-stage startups across Europe. “We don’t just want to support women,” Jacqueline Ruedin Rüsch, founding general partner at Privilège Ventures said in an interview with TechCrunch. “The data shows women … Read more

We are living in the era of so-called microsatellites, which are equipped with thermal cameras and other regalia to, for instance, alert farmers before crops are damaged, predict droughts, and aid in the juggling of supply chains. Climate change is making less land available for agricultural food production, leading to strict regulations on the use … Read more

Meet Fintecture, a French startup that wants to upgrade B2B payments. While many payment companies have focused on B2C payments with Stripe leading the way, B2B payments haven’t changed much over the years. “In the U.S., there are still a lot of paper checks. In Europe, it’s mostly transfers and manual reconciliation,” Fintecture co-founder and … Read more

Meet Bump, a French software-as-a-service startup that wants to help you maintain and use APIs across your organization. The company automatically generates documentation for your APIs so that other teams always know how to use certain APIs. Over time, Bump becomes the central repository for all things related to your APIs. It acts as a … Read more

SparkLabs Korea, a Seoul-based seed to early-stage accelerator, held a demo Day on Thursday for its 19th cohort of companies. The latest demo day marks its tenth year after SparkLabs launched its accelerator program in December 2012. The accelerator has backed more than 270 startups since its inception in 2012, co-founder and partner of SparkLabs … Read more

Twitter is canceling its Chirp conference for developers amid management transition, the company said late Thursday. After Elon Musk took over the company last month, there have been several executive exits and directional changes in the company’s product strategy. So it is not surprising that social network is abandoning its plan for the conference’s return … Read more

Chargebee, backed by marquee investors including Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital India, has laid off about 10% of its staff in a “reorganization” effort due to ongoing global macroeconomic challenges and growing operational debt. The Chennai and San Francisco-headquartered startup, which offers billing, subscription, revenue and compliance management solutions, confirmed to TechCrunch that the update … Read more

India’s mass rapid transit systems — or metro, as it’s known locally — rely on commuter smart cards that are vulnerable to exploitation and allow anyone to effectively travel for free. Security researcher Nikhil Kumar Singh discovered a bug impacting Delhi Metro’s smart card system. The researcher told TechCrunch that the bug exploits the top-up … Read more

Autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation released its third-quarter earnings report after the bell Wednesday. The company closed out the quarter with about $1.2 billion in cash and short-term investments, which Aurora says will be enough to make it to commercial launch in mid-2024. Those statements were made just days after former competitor Argo AI … Read more

Fisker is raising its manufacturing forecast two weeks before its first electric vehicle, the Ocean SUV, enters production. The automaker plans to produce 42,400 Ocean SUVs by the end of 2023, up from an initial forecast of 40,000, due to strong demand in the U.S. and Europe. The company said it has received 62,000 reservations … Read more

Meta announced today that it is introducing a number of new creator updates across Instagram and Facebook. Most notably, the company revealed that creators on Instagram will soon be able to create their own NFTs and sell them directly to fans, both on and off Instagram. With this update, creators will have access to a … Read more

As advertisers pull back on spending and supply chain disruptions persist, investors have braced themselves for an unpleasant quarter for Roku. And investors are probably right to be worried. Roku released its fiscal third-quarter earnings results on Wednesday, revealing that it is still experiencing slow growth in active accounts and revenue in a continuously challenging … Read more

The venture capital industry is built on signals. Lead investors help close rounds, pro rata rights show promise of a company, and the partner title gives validity to folks within firms looking to close deals. Revere, a new bet being built by former AngelList executive Eric Woo and family office operator Chris Shen, is playing … Read more

Web3 developer tooling startup Tenderly is getting into the node game with a new product it announced today called Web3 Gateway. The product will help web3 developers read, stream and analyze blockchain data, according to the company. The offering builds on the company’s observability stack, which it says indexes over nine billion transactions across more … Read more

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest rates for mortgages dropped to historic lows. Predictably, home buyers made hay, taking full advantage of the favorable financial environment to pick up new homes and refinancing mortgages on their existing homes. Startups operating in the financial side of the real estate tech market suddenly faced … Read more

Four years ago, Comma.ai founder George Hotz turned to his board — of which he is the only member — and fired himself as CEO. At the time, the goal for the famed iPhone and PlayStation 3 hacker, known as geohot, was to build out a new research division to focus on behavioral models that … Read more

OpenAI, the San Francisco-based lab behind AI systems like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, today launched a new program to provide early-stage AI startups with capital and access to OpenAI tech and resources. Called Converge, the cohort will be financed by the OpenAI Startup Fund, OpenAI says. The $100 million entrepreneurial tranche was announced last May … Read more

Opendoor is letting go of about 550 people, or 18% of the company, across all functions, its co-founder and CEO Eric Wu announced in a blog post today. The real estate technology company is one of many real estate tech companies that have had to lay off workers in 2022. Online mortgage lender Better.com has … Read more

Digital bank Chime confirmed today that it is laying off 12% of its workforce, or about 160 people. The Information first reported the news. According to an internal memo obtained by TechCrunch, Chime co-founder Chris Britt described that the move was one of many that would help the company thrive “regardless of market conditions.” In … Read more

“The Last of Us,” HBO’s upcoming original series, gets an official release date of January 15, 2023, WarnerMedia announced today. Based on the popular video game, the series will make its debut on HBO at 9:00 p.m. ET and then stream in 4K on HBO Max. It appears HBO Max is looking to compete with … Read more