Kristen Corpion Contributor Share on Twitter Kristen Corpion is the founder of CORPlaw, a Miami-based law firm serving fast-growing technology companies and entrepreneurs as fractional general counsel. More posts by this contributor All my apes gone: Legal disputes at the intersection of IP and NFTs When should an early-stage startup hire a full-time lawyer? As … Read more
Meet Nilos, a startup that wants to bridge the gap between crypto wallets and traditional business bank accounts. The company provides a dashboard that displays all your transactions — whether those are fiat transactions or crypto payments. From this platform, you can initiate payments and reconcile operations across multiple accounts. The startup raised a $5.2 … Read more
Orbital Reef, the in-progress private space station headed by Blue Origin and Sierra Space, is coming to the big screen. The companies announced today that the space station will be featured in a forthcoming film, HELIOS, in a deal with production company Centerboro Productions. The film, which will be set in 2030, will be the … Read more
We’re less than one month away from coming to you — live and in person — at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco. We can hardly wait to…Wait, what’s that? You haven’t booked your pass yet? Shut the front door! Okay, let’s take a moment and run down just some of the reasons … Read more
Electrical engineers have been designing custom circuit boards on computers for years, but this approach simply moved the paper and pencil method to digital. It didn’t advance the craft or make it easier for engineers to reuse design elements across designs. They always have had to start from scratch, even if they can apply learnings … Read more
Apple’s new iOS 16 operating system is about to get its first significant set of bug fixes, including those that will address users’ complaints over shaky cameras when using some apps, and a frustrating copy and paste bug that asks users far too often if an app has permission to access their clipboard, among other … Read more
Twitter is expanding access to an opt-in feature that is designed to make its platform more accessible for people who use screen readers. The social network is rolling out an image description reminder to encourage more people to add descriptions to the photos they share. Twitter began testing the feature in July with 10% of … Read more
Somehow, some way, the third quarter is nearly over. That means we’re gearing up for a wave of venture capital data that will start to drop in less than two weeks’ time. We’re itching to get our hands on the final numbers because the third quarter of 2022 is a pretty damn important data point. … Read more
InnovaFeed, a vertical insect farm operator that’s rearing insects for animal and plant nutrition, has raised $250 million in a series D round of funding led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund. While countless companies are developing alternative and more sustainable ways for humans to get their protein fixes such as through … Read more
Selling weed is easy. Selling legal weed is not easy. Dispensaries have to comply with an ever-changing list of regulations and consumer expectations. For example, online menus must match local inventory, and dispensaries must find a system that allows cashless transactions for those customers with credit cards. And then there’s marketing concerns, loyalty programs, and … Read more
Targeting a younger generation of daters, the Match-owned dating app Hinge today launched two new features, “Video Prompts” and “Prompt Polls,” allowing users to answer video-specific prompts as well as publish polls with three unique answers for potential matches to choose from. The announcement of the two new features comes a year after Hinge rolled … Read more
Mullen Automotive is the leading bidder on bankrupt commercial EV maker Electric Last Mile Solutions, its second major deal this month as it strives to deliver its own electric vehicle. The California-based automaker placed a stalking horse bid of nearly $92 million to buy ELMS, which had been developing a commercial EV called the Urban … Read more
If you’re having trouble tracking your work and personal life as it spreads over 20 different apps and productivity suites, to the point where you have a meeting in 5 minutes you don’t even remember making, you’re not alone. We can’t all have a PA to keep track for us, but Augment hopes that a … Read more
Spotify is today launching support for audiobooks on its streaming service, offering a third type of audio content for its customers beyond music and podcasts. Initially, audiobooks will be made available to U.S. users who will be able to access a selection of some 300,000+ titles, recommended by Spotify editors. But over time, the company … Read more
TrovaTrip, a travel planning and booking platform that lets creators host adventures with their communities, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Madrona. Founded in 2017, the Portland-based company makes it easy for creators to sell and host multi-day experiences around the world. TrovaTrip offers more than 150 experiences in 48 countries. … Read more
As fintechs become more efficient, so too do fraudsters. “Faster instant payments mean faster fraud,” Sardine CEO and co-founder Soups Ranjan told TechCrunch. That’s the thesis behind his startup, which uses behavioral, financial and device-specific user data to detect fraud on behalf of its clients in the crypto and fintech industries. Those conditions also mean … Read more
Fintech startup Revolut has confirmed it was hit by a highly targeted cyberattack that allowed hackers to access the personal details of tens of thousands of customers. Revolut spokesperson Michael Bodansky told TechCrunch that an “unauthorized third party obtained access to the details of a small percentage (0.16%) of our customers for a short period … Read more
A non-binding opinion issued today by an influential advisor to the Europe Union’s top court could foreshadow a major regional development at the intersection of privacy and competition regulation — or ‘privacy vs competition’ as it’s sometimes narrowly framed. The opinion follows a referral to the Court of Justice (CJEU) related to an appeal by … Read more
There is no secret that both viewers and creators are confused by the puzzle that is YouTube’s recommendation algorithm. Now, a new study by Mozilla suggests that users’ recommendations don’t change a lot when they use options like ‘dislike’ and ‘not interested’ to stop YouTube from suggesting similar videos. The organization’s study observed that YouTube … Read more
Iconic New York venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau announced $230 million in additional funding across two new funds: LH Seed VIII, which focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage companies, and LH Select IV, which invests in companies from Series A to C. The new funds come about two years following unannounced sixth seed and third Select … Read more
Monese, the London-based fintech that provides digital banking and remittance services to consumers and businesses across Europe, has raised $35 million from global banking giant HSBC. Founded in 2013, Monese is one of several so-called “challenger” banks to emerge from the U.K. capital, serving customers with a range of online-only services including standard cash accounts, savings, … Read more
Slack has succeeded in large part in the enterprise by allowing people to communicate in a number of ways while integrating with many common enterprise applications. This lets you stay in Slack to get your work done without dreaded task switching. But what Slack has lacked until now was a way to share information about … Read more
Scratchpay, the Pasadena, Calif.-based petcare financier turned healthcare financier, closed a new round of funding amounting to $35 million. It’s a sign that investors are still looking at growing the fintech scene despite the markets’ downturn and an acknowledgment from investors that there is a slowdown in investments. 8 investors discuss fintech’s potential despite the … Read more
The ultimate goal of pulling customer data together into a customer data platform (CDP) is building more meaningful customer experiences in real time. Up until now, that’s been more aspirational than real, but Salesforce is announcing Genie, a real time data integration platform, today at the Dreamforce customer conference that aims to make that dream … Read more
Tres, a financial “data lake” for web3 companies, has raised $7.6 million in a seed round led by boldstart ventures, its founder and CEO Tal Zackon, exclusively shared with TechCrunch. Investors include F2, The Chainsmokers’ venture fund Mantis, New Form Capital, Kenetic Capital, Blockdaemon Ventures and Alchemy. As well as angel investors like Fireblocks CEO … Read more
Despite representing 10% of the world’s GDP, the tourism industry has been one of the last to embrace big data and analytics. Darren Dunn and Jay Kinghorn experienced this firsthand — Dunn as a sales executive at various travel companies including FarePortal.com and Jay as an associate managing director at Utah’s office of tourism. “Destinations … Read more
Data privacy regulations like GDPR, the CCPA and HIPAA present a challenge to training AI systems on sensitive data, like financial transactions, patient health records and user device logs. Historical data is what “teaches” AI systems to identify patterns and make predictions, but there are technical hurdles to using it without compromising a person’s identity. … Read more
Robotics has made great strides in even just the last five years. But despite major advances in core technology such as sensing and computing, many of the robots populating industries like manufacturing are considered “special purpose”: they are engineered to perform a limited number of tasks in stable, predictable environments. It’s not uncommon to encounter … Read more
The Peloton Row hasn’t been a particularly well-kept secret over the last couple of years. After long-standing rumors, the connected fitness firm teased the rowing machine in a member’s video back in May. Today it’s finally back with some firm details on the latest major addition to its home fitness offerings. The Row goes up … Read more
Starting next year, Amazon plans to pump electrofuels into some of its diesel delivery vans in a deal with Infinium. Amazon didn’t say what it’s paying, nor for how much synthetic fuel, but the conglomerate intends to cover “approximately 5 million miles of travel per year” using e-fuels, it said in a statement. It’s not … Read more