It’s been almost four months since the layer-1 blockchain Solana announced its web3-focused smartphone Saga and as the phone is approaching its official release date, the plan has shifted. “Our goal isn’t to sell 10 million units,” Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana, said on stage at Disrupt 2022. “We would be very happy with 25,000 … Read more
The orbital economy is heating up, but the infrastructure that supports it is starting to creak. Kayhan Space is a startup that makes sure your satellite doesn’t crash into another — or a launch or piece of space trash, for that matter — using modern data crunching techniques and a web-accessible platform. Kayhan presented today … Read more
Advanced Ionics, a climate-tech startup that hails from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is striving to drive down the price of green hydrogen by slashing how much electricity is needed for electrolysis by as much as 50%. That’s an admirable goal, because despite all the talk of hydrogen as a “fuel of the future,” the industry is still … Read more
Fresh off his fourth NBA ring and a blockbuster opening night, Golden State Warriors power forward and 4x NBA champion, Draymond Green, will help us kick off the final day of Disrupt in style. Join us tomorrow at 9AM PT at the Disrupt stage in-person, or catch it live on TechCrunch’s homepage. Green has spent … Read more
More investors are swapping cryptocurrencies for stablecoins, signaling a potential shift toward the less risky asset. Stablecoin dominance is near 16%, about 2.7 percentage points away from an all-time high set in mid-June. (This percentage is determined by how much of the total crypto market capitalization is made up of stablecoins; it is, from one … Read more
Serena Williams was our guest at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, and joined TC Deputy Editor-in-Chief Jordan Crook to talk about Serena Ventures, the investment firm she founded with Alison Rapaport Stillman. She talked to us at length about her approach to startup investing, including how much her investor persona differs from her tennis persona, and also … Read more
For most dairy farmers, milk flowing from their cows is tested by a traveling technician once per month. But in a world where bovine mastitis can appear from one day to the next, it is udderly ridiculous to test milk flowing from cows once per month. Today at TechCrunch Startup Battlefield, Labby offered a different solution, with … Read more
As the global data privacy regulatory landscape gets more convoluted and constrictive, engineering teams looking to use structured data to improve their products and AI models are being pushed to jump through plenty of hoops to stay compliant. BetterData, which is launching onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Battlefield startup competition, is aiming to help … Read more
Tesla reported Wednesday reported revenue of $21.45 billion in the third quarter, another record-setting period that still missed analysts expectations. Shares fell 3.5% in after-hours trading following the earnings release. Tesla’s net income for the third quarter was $3.3 billion nearly double the $1.62 billion it earned in the same period last year. The company … Read more
Plastics are great for so many things, but they stay around for an awfully long time. Intropic leaps to the rescue with a set of enzymes that can be added to plastics at the very beginning of their life cycle, before it is even turned into products. The additives the company makes have been proof-of-concept … Read more
Rivian has hired former Waymo executive James Philbin to lead autonomy and AI at the automaker, a new role that signals the company’s interest in automated driving technology. Philbin was director of software engineering for two years at Waymo. Before that, Philbin worked for five years at Amazon’s self-driving subsidiary Zoox, where he lead computer … Read more
I don’t know if anyone’s really noticed, but Netflix had a pretty great third quarter, thank you very much. The streaming platform added 2.41 million subscribers when it only expected 1 million. It also beat analysts’ financial expectations, with $7.93 billion in revenue rather than $7.85 billion. Plenty has been written about Netflix’s good results, … Read more
RJ Scaringe, CEO and founder of electric vehicle maker Rivian, said Wednesday the company has fixed a “significant majority” of the more than 12,000 vehicles that were recalled earlier this month. On the TechCrunch Disrupt stage, Scaringe gave the audience a postmortem on how Rivian solved the issue that caused the company to voluntarily recall … Read more
Kevin Hart appeared onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 this year, talking to TC’s Natasha Mascarenhas about how he got into investing to begin with, and the misconceptions he had to overcome to do so. Also, he talks about Hartbeat Ventures, which got its first check for its first fund from JPMorgan. Check out the entire … Read more
Lionel Messi (pictured, right), the Argentine professional soccer/football player who is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, is to make a push into technology investing via a new vehicle that will be shepherded by two Silicon Valley veterans. Play Time is the name given to a new partnership between the … Read more
News that activist investor Starboard Value has its eyes on Salesforce landed with a bang this week. But the well-known investing group, fresh off of a bruising fight with Box, has a few other tech companies in its sights. Starboard is taking to task three tech shops for what it considers to be underperformance: The … Read more
RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of electric vehicle maker Rivian, says the company’s future goes beyond electric trucks and vans. Onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt on Wednesday, the executive said out of Rivian’s 13,000 employees, about half are focused on what’s next for the company. “So that’s updated compute, updated drive unites and really important updated … Read more
The way Incooling CEO Helena Samodurova sees it, the IT world is experiencing two major crises: an energy crisis and a supply chain crisis. For IT teams, satisfying new climate-friendly energy budgets is presenting a challenge, particularly when dealing with older computer hardware. At the same time, acquiring improved, less power-sucking machines is becoming tougher … Read more
Born inside the Technical University of Munich, the engineers behind Reverion say they’ve had their heads down for seven years developing a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology. Biogas comes from decomposing waste and is mostly made up of methane. It’s a form of chemical energy that must be … Read more
In a move that broke the hearts of many a tennis fan around the world, Serena Williams recently announced that she would stop playing professional tennis. But today onstage in front of a packed auditorium at TechCrunch Disrupt, she reminded us that while she brings that competitive mindset to running Serena Ventures, an early-stage VC … Read more
The electric everything revolution is here, and with it an unprecedented demand for critical battery materials. The most precious of all? Lithium, the crucial ingredient in the lithium-ion batteries that will power everything from your Tesla to your iPhone. The problem is, extracting lithium is expensive, time-consuming, labor intensive and takes a serious toll on … Read more
Here’s one of those questions you’ve probably never considered, but probably should: What goes on your fruit? Not out in the field — though obviously that’s something worth considering too — rather in that period between the picking and purchasing? Turns out pesticides aren’t just the stuff that gets sprayed out the back of a … Read more
The digital landscape is evolving so fast that one’s four-year degree can hardly keep up with the myriad platforms and APIs emerging every day. That’s why Skills Union wants to connect tech startup workers looking to level up with an array of field-specific experts over live video. Online professional training isn’t new; it’s not uncommon … Read more
“Both my dad and mom had their own business,” Ally Robotics founder and CEO Mitch Tolson tells TechCrunch. “My mom had a sign company. Every single weekend and nights during the week, I was installing neon signs, welding up frames, digging trenches, holes for electrical, all of it.” The executive says those formative years on … Read more
Hartbeat Ventures is taking in its first institutional investment from J.P. Morgan, comedian and entrepreneur Kevin Hart announced today at TechCrunch Disrupt. He made the announcement alongside J.P. Morgan’s head of digital investment banking and digital private markets Michael Elanjian and Hartbeat Ventures’ president and co-founder Robert Roman. Hartbeat Ventures, an early-stage VC firm with … Read more
Alternative proteins are coming in every shape and form, and Sundial Foods is making its mark in one of sports bars’ favorite staples: wings. Co-founders Jessica Schwabach and Siwen Deng started the company in 2019 to create vegan chicken wings that look just like the traditional cut of meat. The pair met in U.C. Berkeley’s … Read more
Last year’s record-breaking venture funding totals were fueled by crossover investors ranging from hedge funds to private equity firms. When market conditions soured at the beginning of 2022, most people assumed that all the nontraditional venture backers would retreat this year as well. That hasn’t happened. As venture capitalists and tourist investors have pulled back, … Read more
Having barely expanded Starlink onto the seas and looking at the Ukraine war as a business opportunity, Elon Musk has expanded Starlink through a commercial- and private jet-focused sub-brand, Starlink Aviation. The idea of having Wi-Fi up in the sky isn’t new, but your service is typically limited. On a commercial flight, one is charged … Read more
The Biden-Harris administration, through the Department of Energy (DOE), announced Wednesday that 20 battery companies will receive a combined $2.8 billion to build and expand commercial-scale facilities in 12 states. This is the first phase of $7 billion in total from President Biden’s Infrastructure Law that aims to strengthen domestic battery supply chains and reduce … Read more
As the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigates Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft recently revealed in its filings with the CMA that it plans to create a new “Xbox Mobile Platform” that will include mobile games by Activision and King. “The transaction will improve Microsoft’s ability to create a next-generation game … Read more