Reports indicate Elon Musk is on track to close his purchase of mildly popular bird website Twitter dot com as of this Friday, which is when he’s been ordered by the judge in the ongoing legal fracas to do so anyway. The deal closing is bound to have huge impacts, for Twitter employees themselves; for … Read more
U.S. officials have charged a Ukrainian national over his alleged role in the Raccoon Infostealer malware-as-a-service operation that infected millions of computers worldwide. Mark Sokolovsky — also known online as “raccoonstealer,” according to an indictment unsealed on Tuesday — is currently being held in the Netherlands while waiting to be extradited to the United States. … Read more
Valence Security, a company securing business app infrastructure, today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series A round led by M12, Microsoft’s corporate venture arm, with participation from YL Ventures, Porsche Ventures, Akamai Technologies, Alumni Ventures and former Symantec CEO Michael Fey. The new capital brings the company’s total raised to $32 million, … Read more
The cloud-native market has seen the introduction of a range of open source DevOps tools — tools that combine software development and IT operations — built to address very specific use cases. As a result, DevOps teams today have too many narrow choices that don’t work together seamlessly or that can’t be integrated into a … Read more
The UK’s privacy watchdog has warned against use of so-called “emotion analysis” technologies for anything more serious than kids’ party games, saying there’s a discrimination risk attached to applying “immature” biometric tech that makes pseudoscientific claims about being able to recognize people’s emotions using AI to interpret biometric data inputs. Such AI systems ‘function’, if … Read more
Amazon has become the pacemaker in commerce, and today a startup that’s been building technology to help retailers keep up with it in the world of physical stores is announcing some funding to expand its business. Trigo, an Israeli startup that builds technology for stores to operate cashier-free, “just walk out” experiences similar to those … Read more
Singapore may soon require retail investors to take a test and not use credit card payments and other forms of borrowing for trading cryptocurrencies, the central bank proposed on Wednesday in a series of stringent measures as the island nation looks to make citizens aware of the risks surrounding volatile assets. The Monetary Authority of … Read more
LatticeFlow, a startup that was spun out of Zurich’s ETH in 2020, helps machine learning teams improve their AI vision models by automatically diagnosing issues and improving both the data and the models themselves. The company today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series A funding round led by Atlantic Bridge and OpenOcean, … Read more
Talking to Valentina Milanova, the still just 28-year-old founder of U.K. femtech Daye, is best described as an exhilarating experience. During our interview, she talks in and around her topic — building a startup supporting women’s sexual and reproductive health — non-stop for the best part of an hour, barely pausing for breath and without … Read more
There has been a lot of consumer demand and regulatory push on Apple to change the iPhone’s charging port from the lightning connector to USB-C. Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted in favor of the legislation that mandated phonemakers to adopt USB-C connectors from 2024 — increasing pressure on the tech giant to make … Read more
While hydrogen is still relatively niched as a fuel for electric vehicles, a startup in China is jumping ahead to embrace it for autonomous driving scenarios. WeRide, one of the most funded robotaxi operators in China with investors including Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, said Tuesday it is joining hands with Hyundai to launch a “self-driving hydrogen-powered vehicle … Read more
WhatsApp is used by more than two billion around the world, and is an important tool for many small businesses. But as they scale up, even WhatsApp for Business might not be able to keep up with their needs. That’s where WATI (WhatsApp Team Inbox) steps in. Built on WhatsApp for Business’ API, WATI has … Read more
Helbiz’s deal to buy Wheels has officially gone through, and with it some promises from the shared micromobility operator to its investors that the tie up will double its annual revenue and help it reach profitability. Helbiz is hardly the only shared micromobility operator battling to achieve profitability. It’s a situation that most companies in … Read more
It’s a tough market for venture capital, but Square Peg Capital is plowing ahead with its focus on Australia (where it is based), Southeast Asia and Israel. The firm announced today that it has closed its fifth fund totaling $550 million. This brings its total raised across all funds to about $1.6 billion. Square Peg … Read more
Ride-hail giant Lyft has relaunched Lyft Pink, its monthly subscription plan, at half of its previous price. At $9.99 per month or $99 per year, the new membership offers perks like free priority pickups and a discount of “at least” 5% on Preferred, Lux and XL rides, the company said Tuesday. Members will also receive … 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. Overheard at a VC/startup conference recently: Product market fit is like a product going around from weirdly shaped customer group to weirdly shaped customer group, like that old kid’s book “Are you … Read more
Blizzard has a lot going on. The company’s leadership is a toxic trash heap nightmare (hi, Bobby Kotick!) and it’s only partially cleaned house. Its failure to deliver on the lofty promises of the Overwatch League makes the game’s scene, both competitive and casual, even less of a sure thing. And Microsoft is currently in … Read more
As part of its earnings call, Microsoft today announced a number of new data points for GitHub, the massively popular code repository service it acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018. According to Microsoft, GitHub now has an annual recurring revenue of $1 billion, up from a reported $200 to $300 million at the time of … Read more
A group of Uber drivers in New Zealand won a landmark case Tuesday against the ride-hail company which will force Uber to treat them as employees, rather than independent contractors. New Zealand’s employment court decision only applies to four drivers who were part of a class action lawsuit filed last July, but the ruling may … Read more
Today, for a series of climate-related conversations organized by the global venture firm SOSV, we interviewed famed investor Chris Sacca, whose investment firm Lowercarbon Capital is managing $2 billion in capital across one fund that’s focused on nuclear fusion, another fund focused expressly on carbon removal, and the rest across a wide spectrum of bets. … Read more
Last Friday, The Wall Street Journal quoted sources as saying that Nutanix was looking for a buyer. Some may not find that surprising given Nutanix’s recent financial performance, but the question is if the company were to sell, who would be the most likely to buy it, and would it be a better fit for … Read more
Whenever YouTube superstar MrBeast crops up in business or tech headlines, you’re guaranteed to find a slew of bewildered comments: Who is this guy, and why is a YouTuber such a big deal? Am I old if I don’t know who this is? Why is he younger than me, yet makes so much more money? … Read more
In films, screenwriters always include a moment known as the Promise of the Premise. It’s the part of the story where the audience settles in to the new world they’ve entered. One of my favorite examples is in the first Harry Potter movie, when Hagrid takes Harry to Diagon Alley, the magical shopping district that … Read more
Today after the bell, Alphabet and Microsoft will report their calendar third-quarter financial results. Given the breadth of industries that each of these companies touch, their performance will provide us with rich data concerning different areas of the technology landscape. The fun will continue tomorrow when Meta reports its own results. And later this week, … Read more
Jeremy Abelson Contributor Share on Twitter Jeremy Abelson is the founder and lead portfolio manager of Irving Investors. Combining his experience as an operator and institutional investor, Abelson runs Irving as a multistrategy platform making long-term durable investments in both the public and private markets. More posts by this contributor What am I worth now? … Read more
First, WhatsApp went down this morning. Now, Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime appeared to experience an outage in the U.S. this afternoon. Several Twitter users noted they were having trouble sending messages and connecting on the services and Apple’s System Status dashboard marked iMessage and FaceTime as having issues. “Some users are affected,” the status said. … Read more
I get a lot of pitch deck submissions for this TechCrunch Pitch Deck Teardown series from people who are raising friend and family rounds, and I mostly pass on them. Often, these decks aren’t very good, but it’s important to remember that they don’t have to be. For a small round (say $200,000 or below), … Read more
Disney and the BBC announced today that Disney+ will be the new exclusive home outside of the U.K. and Ireland for the hit British sci-fi series “Doctor Who.” Beginning 2023, new episodes of the series will be released on the platform in over 150 markets, including the United States. BBC will continue to host the … Read more
Many consumers and companies want to reduce their impact on the environment but may not know where to start or how to sustain the necessary changes. Tom Ferrier, the founder of Greener, an Australian cleantech startup, wants to help. He argues that sustainability and climate action doesn’t need to be complicated. His startup is geared … Read more
Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column, Perceptron, aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and explain … Read more