Amazon suffered steep losses in year-over-year income as post-pandemic shopping habits and inflation threw the retailer for a loop. In its third quarter 2022 earnings report today, Amazon revealed that operating income decreased to $2.5 billion in Q3 2022 compared to $4.9 billion the same quarter last year, while net income dipped to $2.9 billion … Read more
Cruise, General Motors’ autonomous vehicle subsidiary, is now inviting potential passengers in Phoenix and Austin to join the waitlist to be among the first Cruise robotaxi passengers. The company has been operating a fully driverless commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco since June, with fully driverless meaning there’s no human safety operator behind the wheel. … Read more
A day after weighing in with its third quarter earnings report, Meta is flailing. The company formerly known as Facebook was in trouble Thursday after uninspiring numbers and an apparent lack of faith in Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse vision sent its shares plunging by 25%. At the time of writing, Meta was trading around $98, down … Read more
Perhaps sitting perched somewhere in sunny Miami, Florida, is a founder wondering the best ways to fundraise for a company when situated outside a traditional tech hub like the Bay Area. They need not worry. Last week, Mike Asem from M25, Elizabeth Yin of Hustle Fund and Accel’s Rich Wong answered that question at TechCrunch … Read more
Apple is no stranger to asserting its dominance. That’s exactly what the tech giant did this week when it announced new, stringent guidelines for NFT transactions in the iOS App Store, marking the first time the company has taken any sort of substantial position on web3. We hopped on the mic for the Thursday episode … Read more
Image Credits: TechCrunch Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we recorded our news episode live onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, in which we talked about the Aptos launch and shared our predictions for where we expect money to flow in the web3 world. This week, we dove into NFTs, examining Apple’s new App Store guidelines … Read more
Cartridges and discs used to be how you got the latest games, but that’s been changing as downloads have become more convenient and reliable. But some people prefer the sure thing: a physical copy, so they can play offline or with a bad connection. To them, Activision says “qq”: the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare … Read more
Fair warning, it’s going to be a quick one from me today. I caught the thing again, roughly three months after the last time I caught the thing. They say, “third time’s the charm,” and I now recognize that they were referring to chest pain and a general light-headedness. Turns out it doesn’t get easier. … Read more
A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union’s competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. However TechCrunch understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by … Read more
Snapchat has changed the way it pays creators through its Spotlight reward fund. Creators that use Snapchat’s TikTok clone, Spotlight, will now be paid millions per year, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. This marks the second time Snapchat has reduced the payout. In 2021, the company rewarded creators millions per week, down … Read more
Uber is releasing a suite of new safety features geared towards the driver, including freezing fake rider account names and piloting a front-facing video recording tool to replace a driver’s dashcam. The safety features follow a feedback period from drivers that Uber began this summer. It looks like drivers have been having a hard time … Read more
For most venture-backed social companies, a period of hypergrowth seems like it would be the dream. It means the app broke through the noise of thousands of others, resonated with a mass market of people and didn’t need to spend a penny on marketing. Clubhouse, however, offered a retort to that perspective. The app’s fall … Read more
The social platforms that power the creator economy might seem like they’re starting to slip. YouTube’s quarterly ad revenue declined 1.9% year over year, per Google parent company Alphabet’s quarterly earnings report this week. Overall, Alphabet missed analyst estimates, earning $69.1 billion in revenue, about a billion dollars less than expected. For many YouTubers, ad … Read more
The Tesla Cyberquad for Kids, a $1,900 mini ATV inspired by the yet-to-be produced Cybertruck, is being recalled due to safety concerns flagged by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Radio Flyer, which makes the Cyberquad for Tesla, is handling the recall. About 5,000 units have been sold, per the CPSC. Consumers will receive full refunds … Read more
Google has acquired Alter, an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar startup that helps creators and brands express their virtual identity, for about $100 million, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a push to boost its content game and better compete with TikTok. The acquisition was completed about two months ago, the source said, … Read more
Meta’s other bet is making Alphabet’s long-running Other Bets segment appear cheap, both in cash and market cap terms. Shares of Facebook’s parent company plummeted after the company reported huge costs and losses associated with its future-facing metaverse project, accompanied by a revenue decline that, while forex-impacted, was still far from the heady days when … Read more
Telegram announced today that will it hold an auction for usernames — for both individual accounts and channels — through a marketplace built on top of the TON blockchain. In August, Telegram founder Pavel Durov first mentioned the idea by noting the possibility of adding “a little bit of Web 3.0 to Telegram in the … Read more
It’s hard to imagine anyone but advertisers being happy with Apple for putting more ads on the page in App Store listings, but the way they rolled it out was especially troubling. Ads for shady gambling apps quickly pervaded the platform, appearing in the “you might also like” section of ordinary apps — including at … Read more
Nearly five years ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched Neptune, a service for running apps that need a graph database to store and query connected data sets. Now, to keep up with the serverless trend, AWS is expanding the offering with Amazon Neptune Serverless, a serverless option for Neptune that automatically scales to support variable … Read more
While Meta tries to convince users to attend virtual work meetings in its metaverse, ForeVR Games, a VR gaming startup with casual games like bowling, darts and cornhole, is a reminder that virtual reality is supposed to be fun. ForeVR announced today a $10 million Series A funding round, which is being put toward building … Read more
News broke this morning that UserTesting, a former startup that went public last year, is selling to private equity (Thoma Bravo, Sunstone Partners) for $1.3 billion, or $7.50 per share in cash. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2023, does include a “go-shop” period, in case a better deal crops up. … Read more
Thoma Bravo and Sunstone Partners announced today that they’re acquiring customer insight platform UserTesting for $1.3 billion in an all-cash deal. The acquirers say they plan to combine it with UserZoom, a customer research company Thoma Bravo bought an $800 million majority stake in last April. The firms paid what appears to be a generous … Read more
As the NFT ecosystem continues to waver, superfans and blue-chip holders are still holding on strong. But how can the digital asset sector reignite growth and appeal to new audiences? The number of NFT sales is down almost 90% from the year-ago date, according to data on NonFungible market tracker. But still, the hype is … Read more
Venture capitalists get flooded with startup pitches, which can make it difficult for founders, especially those building in crowded categories, to stand out. And while every investor is looking for something different, there are ways founders can improve their chances of getting noticed. Speaking at last weeks’ Disrupt 2022 conference, investors Annie Case, a partner … Read more
If you’re a parent, one of the hardest things about getting divorced is still having to deal with your ex about financial matters regarding your children. And, according to a 2015 report, just 50.2% of all 13.6 million custodial parents in the United States had either legal or informal child support agreements. Even in those … Read more
Corey Wilton Contributor Share on Twitter Corey Wilton is the co-founder and CEO of Mirai Labs, the gaming studio behind Pegaxy. The first wave of the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming boom seems to be coming to an end. There are still plenty of blockchain studios staging successful multimillion-dollar raises around the globe, but competition for funds … Read more
Elon Musk published a note addressed to Twitter advertisers on his account this morning, the day before his court-ordered deadline to close his $44 billion acquisition of the social media platform. In the short address, Musk — who is currently in San Francisco and spending the week at Twitter HQ — explains to Twitter advertisers … Read more
Persona, a four year old identity startup, has done pretty well for itself with its original identity verification idea, an API that lets companies capture various documents like a driver’s license or passport to prove who you are online. It went so well, the company announced today that it has expanded into a full blown … Read more
The New York Post, one of the biggest New York City daily newspapers, said it was hacked on Thursday after several offensive articles and tweets were published to the newspaper’s website and Twitter account. The articles and tweets, which were racist and sexually violent in nature, were pulled a short time later. TechCrunch is not … Read more
Meet Neoplants, a French startup that is designing genetically modified houseplants so that they can absorb air pollutants. The startup’s first plant, the Neo P1, works hand in hand with the company’s own microbiome located in the soil near the plant roots. Neoplants targets specifically a group of indoor air pollutants that can’t be efficiently … Read more