TechCrunch

John Curtius, the prolific Tiger Global senior partner who has been at the center of some of the firm’s biggest deals in the last several years, is leaving the firm, TechCrunch has learned. He will be leaving to start his own firm, which will concentrate investments from Series A to Series C. Curtius will stay … Read more

Section 230 of the Communications Act, which prevents online platforms from being liable for the content posted by their users, will be evaluated by the Supreme Court in the coming season. It’s anyone’s guess how it may be affected, but we can be sure that the regulatory landscape for tech will look rather different this … Read more

Twitter’s throwback feature, Twitter Status, is today expanding its list of potential status updates to choose from, in a continuation of tests that began this July. The feature, which is something of a cross between Myspace moods and a Facebook status, allows users to tag posts with an additional expression beyond the tweet itself — … Read more

Electric vehicle maker Rivian announced its Q3 production and delivery numbers on Monday, revealing it made 7,363 of its R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV during the three-month period that ended on September 30. Rivian also said it delivered 6,584 vehicles during the same span. The automaker is still backing its target of delivering 25,000 … Read more

Today, Spotify released the first two episodes of the new original podcast “Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith,” narrated by reality TV star Kim K and true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi. The series will be available worldwide and is free for all Spotify listeners. The podcast will have eight episodes in total … Read more

Gopuff added another private label to its arsenal of offerings, this time in the health and wellness space with Goodnow, the company announced Monday. The Philadelphia-based instant grocery delivery company is starting with products like over-the-counter medications for pain, allergy, cold, flu and sinus relief, as well as first aid items, sleep aids and diagnostic … Read more

Spin, which was acquired by Tier Mobility earlier this year, has laid off about 10% of its staff — including a number of executives — and is exiting Canada and Seattle, TechCrunch has learned. The micromobility company informed its workforce of more than 700 during a Friday all-hands meeting that lower-than-expected demand in the U.S. … Read more

One of the highest-profile sexual assault allegations against Chinese business tycoons ended abruptly this past weekend. Liu Qiangdong, the founder of Chinese ecommerce giant JD.com, also known as Richard Liu, has reached a settlement with Liu Jingyao, a former University of Minnesota student who alleged that the billionaire raped her in her apartment in 2018. … Read more

Facebook parent Meta has settled a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in data scraping operations, which had seen them gathering data from Facebook and Instagram users for marketing intelligence purposes, according to the original complaint filed in October 2020. The companies named in the suit, Israeli-based BrandTotal Ltd. and Delaware-incorporated … Read more

I’ve long been super against edited tweets, mostly for technical reasons. The core issue is that Twitter isn’t like other social media sites; unlike, say Instagram and Facebook posts, embedded tweets drive the news in many ways. Republishing and retweeting of tweets is the main risk around allowing users to edit it. Let me break … Read more

Kim Kardashian is the latest celebrity to land in legal trouble for unlawfully promoting a crypto product to her followers without disclosing she had been paid to do so. The reality star settled with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a $1.26 million penalty for promoting a crypto security sold by EthereumMax. While … Read more

Silly season is out in venture capital land. Today investors and founders alike will bore your ears off with notes about incremental cash flow positivity and their timeline to adjusted EBITDA profitability. Lame. Despite the general boringness of today’s venture capital landscape, replete with conservative valuations, falling deal sizes, and clucking investors sitting atop a mountain of capital, … Read more

Golden State Warrior and four-time NBA champion Draymond Green will take the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco — and get ready for a plot twist. He will bring his popular podcast, “The Draymond Green Show,” to the Disrupt stage with a very special guest — himself. Turning the tables, Green … Read more

Twitter is rolling out the ability to edit tweets to Twitter Blue subscribers in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the social network announced on Monday. The company says the edit button will roll out to Blue subscribers in the U.S. soon, but didn’t provide a specific launch date. Twitter Blue subscribers in these countries can … Read more

Heading into 2022, it seemed like we were poised for a big year in M&A. This was especially true for enterprise SaaS companies that saw their values begin to fall in late 2021, a trend that extended into this year. Why are we not seeing more aggressive M&A activity and some good old-fashioned bargain hunting … Read more

While the broader virtual reality industry earnestly waits for Meta’s next announcements around new VR products at its Connect event next week, Google’s venture arm GV is placing an interesting bet in a startup building up an ecosystem around some of Meta’s hardware. GV has led a $12 million Series A investment in SideQuest, the … Read more

YouTube’s Premium paid subscription includes benefits like ad-free viewing, video and song downloads for offline consumption, and background plays. Now, it might also be shifting video streaming in 4K resolution (currently free for all users) to the premium tier. Over the weekend, users across Reddit and Twitter noted that YouTube had been asking them to … Read more

An antitrust win for Amazon and Apple in Italy where an appeals court has cancelled a multimillion dollar penalty the pair were hit with last year for alleged collusion following an investigation into the reselling of Apple and (Apple-owned) Beats kit on Amazon’s Italian e-commerce marketplace. The original €203M (total) penalty had already been reduced … Read more

Jesse Pujji believes the future of mobile e-commerce will look more like TikTok, Instagram and Snap, and started Kahani, a SaaS company for merchants, to lead the charge. Prior to Kahani, the serial entrepreneur was a founder in several companies, including Gateway X, Ampush and GrowthAssistant. After moving into the executive chairman role at Ampush … Read more

We’re just a few short weeks away from the first in-person TechCrunch Disrupt in three years. The agenda is absolutely bursting with expert insight and information from the leading voices in the early-stage startup universe. We want to take a moment to highlight a session led by our title sponsor, AT&T, who helps more than … Read more

Entertainment platform Fandom announced today its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands from media company Red Ventures, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide. While the financials of the deal were not disclosed in the official announcement, Fandom told TechCrunch that the deal cost somewhere … Read more

If crypto is going to reach “mass adoption,” the industry still has a lot of people it needs to bring on board. Approximately 83% of U.S. adults haven’t ever invested in, traded or used cryptocurrency, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted this summer. While many builders and investors agree that it’s still relatively … Read more

At this point in the BeReal hype cycle, you might’ve seen some wild things in your friends’ once-per-day snaps (personally, I’ve seen a couple of “sitting on the toilet” posts, and I am grateful it hasn’t been worse). In the “Saturday Night Live” season premiere, the sketch comedy writers ask: what if the BeReal goes … Read more

Welcome to Q4, friends. If you were hoping to begin the final chunk of 2022 with good news, tough. We’re starting the quarter off with rough data instead. Sure, we’re waiting on data dumps from CB Insights, PitchBook, and Crunchbase about Q3 venture capital aggregates, but one particular bellwether indicator that we track here at … Read more

Another major piece of mobile M&A appears to be in the works in the UK. Today, Vodafone confirmed that it was in merger discussions with Three UK, a carrier owned by CK Hutchison, to accelerate their 5G rollout. A deal would not involve any cash consideration, Vodafone said: “The envisaged transaction would involve both companies … Read more