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Sep 19, 2020
Well… that was pointless. After debasing the idea of free commerce in the U.S in the name of a misplaced security concern, stringing along several multi-billion dollar companies that embarrassed themselves in the interest of naked greed, and demanding that the U.S. government get a cut of the profits, the TikTok saga we've been watching […]
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Sep 19, 2020
President Donald Trump said has has given his stamp of approval "in concept" on the Oracle bid for the U.S. operations of the wildly popular social media app, TikTok, according to a report from Bloomberg. According to the Bloomberg report Trump said, "I have given the deal my blessing," as he left the White House […]
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Sep 19, 2020
Homeland Security's cybersecurity advisory unit has issued a rare emergency alert to government departments after the recent disclosure of a "critical"-rated security vulnerability in server versions of Microsoft Windows. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, better known as CISA, issued an alert late on Friday requiring all federal departments and agencies to "immediately" patch any […]
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Sep 19, 2020
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It's broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Ready? Let's talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Was Snowflake's IPO mispriced or just misunderstood? With an ocean of neat stuff to get through […]
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Sep 19, 2020
Snowflake, Jfrog, Sumo Logic and Unity each raised price ranges days before IPO, to meet what had seemed like growing enthusiasm from public markets. Each one still popped.
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Sep 19, 2020
Welcome back to Human Capital, where we unpack all-things diversity, inclusion and labor in tech. This week, we're looking at Google's internal message board problem, as well as some highlights from TechCrunch Disrupt, where I had the pleasure of chatting with actress, producer and tech investor Kerry Washington about her investment strategy and her thoughts […]
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Sep 19, 2020
A yellow-eyed cat tilts its eyes at the camera, gazing up from a grey bedspread. ‘London Trip', is the AI's title for this photo-montage ‘Memory' plucked from the depths of my iPhone camera-roll. It's selected a sad score of plinking piano and sweeping violin. The algorithm has calculated it must tug at the heart strings. […]
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Sep 19, 2020
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Whoever said you can't make money playing video games clearly hasn't taken a look at Unity Software's stock price. On its first official day of trading, the company rose more than 31%, opening at $75 per share before closing the day at $68.35. Unity's share price gains came after last night's pricing of the company's […]
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Sep 18, 2020
"Like most of the best things in my life," Conan O'Brien explains, with a wry smile, "the success of the podcast was a complete surprise." The answer is a typically self-effacing one from the comedian. Since launching "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" nearly two years ago, the show has quickly risen up the podcasting charts […]
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Sep 18, 2020
SPACs are going to rule the world, or at least, Chamath's future portfolio. Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital, has already tripled down on SPACs, the so-called "blank check" vehicle that takes private companies and flips them onto the public markets. His first SPAC bought Virgin Galactic last year, and his second SPAC bought […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The Trump administration moves forwards with plans to ban TikTok and WeChat (although TikTok gets a partial extension), Unity goes public and we announce the winner of this year's Startup Battlefield. This is your Daily Crunch for September 18, 2020. The big story: US TikTok ban is imminent The U.S. Commerce Department has released details […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Most venture capital firms are based in hubs like Silicon Valley, New York City and Boston. These firms nurture those ecosystems and they've done well, but SaaS Ventures decided to go a different route: it went to cities like Chicago, Green Bay, Wisconsin and Lincoln, Nebraska. The firm looks for enterprise-focused entrepreneurs who are trying […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Some of the biggest names in online gaming in the United States have received letters from the U.S. government requesting information about their relationship with the multibillion-dollar Chinese technology company, Tencent, according to reports. Even as the U.S. Department of Commerce moves to block new downloads of the Chinese company's popular messaging and payment app, […]
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Sep 18, 2020
At Disrupt 2020, we got a chance to see some never-before-seen footage from HBO's upcoming documentary The Perfect Weapon. The documentary, which was executive produced by John Maggio, is based on the book by the same(ish) name written by David Sanger, Washington correspondent for the New York Times. We got to sit down for an […]
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Sep 18, 2020
In a case of bizarre timing, Salesforce announced it was laying off 1,000 employees at the end of last month just a day after announcing a monster quarter with over $5 billion in revenue, putting the company on a $20 billion revenue run rate for the first time. The juxtaposition was hard to miss. Earlier […]
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Sep 18, 2020
We started this competition with 20 impressive startups. After five days of fierce pitching in a wholly new virtual Startup Battlefield arena, we have a winner. The startups taking part in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. It was an unprecedented year as we moved all […]
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Sep 18, 2020
It's great to improve your subscription app's retention rates, but don't do it for the 85/15 split.
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Sep 18, 2020
Engineers at MIT, in partnership with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, have devised a way to build a camera lens that avoids the typical spherical curve of ultra-wide-angle glass, while still providing true optical fisheye distortion. The fisheye lens is relatively specialist, producing images that can cover as wide an area as 180 degrees […]
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Sep 18, 2020
It was a trickle at first that has evolved into a slow and steady stream. Now, a wave of new electric vehicles is building, promising to deliver an unprecedented number of models to North America, Europe and China over the next two to three years. There might not be a better time to dig into […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Zoox, the automated vehicle technology startup that was acquired by Amazon this year, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads. The permit is not for all public roads in the state, but it's still notable considering the company will be able to test […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The tagline from today's announcement from the United States Attorney's office for the Southern District of New York says it all: "Adam Rogas Allegedly Raised $123 Million from Investors Using Financial Statements that Showed Tens of Millions of Dollars of Revenue and Assets that Did Not Exist." Rogas, the co-founder and former chief executive and […]
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Sep 18, 2020
What you think when you hear "seed funding" and "A rounds" might be different from what investors think. You both need to be on the same page as you move forward.
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Sep 18, 2020
The headlines aren't always kind to the National Security Agency, a spy agency that operates almost entirely in the shadows. But a year ago, the NSA launched its new Cybersecurity Directorate, which in the past year has emerged as one of the more visible divisions of the spy agency. At its core, the directorate focuses […]
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Sep 18, 2020
As people begin to process the announcement from the U.S. Department of Commerce detailing how it plans, on grounds of national security, to shut down TikTok and WeChat — starting with app downloads and updates for both, plus all of WeChat's services, on September 20, with TikTok following with a shut down of servers and […]
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Sep 18, 2020
In the midst of IPO week we have to add another name to our future debuts' list, namely Chime, which announced a huge new round of capital today. The $485 million Series F values the consumer fintech giant at $14.5 billion, a huge figure given that Chime was most recently worth $5.8 billion after raising […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Unity Software, which sells a game development toolkit primarily for mobile phone app developers, raised $1.3 billion in its initial public offering. The company, which will begin trading today with the ticker symbol "U", priced its shares at the top end of its expected range, selling 25 million shares at $52 per share. The company's […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Outschool, which started in 2015 as a platform for homeschooled students to bolster their extracurricular activities, has dramatically widened its customer base since the coronavirus pandemic began.The platform saw its total addressable market increase dramatically as students went home or campus to abide by COVID regulations instituted by the CDC. Suddenly, live, small-group online learning […]
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Sep 18, 2020
NASA is going to be testing out a new precision landing system designed for use on the tough terrain of the Moon and Mars for the first time during an upcoming mission of Blue Origin's New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket. The ‘Safe and Precise Landing - Integrated Capabilities Evolution' (SPLICE) system is made up of […]
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Sep 18, 2020
While Checkout.com has kept a low profile for many years, the company raised $380 million within a year and reached an impressive valuation of $5.5 billion. It wants to build a one-stop shop for all things related to payments, such as accepting transactions, processing them and detecting fraud. You might think that it sounds a […]
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Sep 18, 2020
For a company vaunted for its clandestine government work and strong engineering culture, you can't help but wonder if the government's bureaucratic norms and paperwork pushing are starting to flood into the Shire. When most companies go public, they file a Form S-1 with the SEC, wait a few weeks through the investor road show, […]
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Sep 18, 2020
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Zurich and Geneva will capture how those cities are faring in terms of investment, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. (Please note, if you […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Yesterday during Disrupt 2020 I sat down with three investors who know the SaaS startup market very well, hoping to get my head around how hot things are today. Coming on the heels of the epic Snowflake IPO (more to come on that in this weekend's newsletter), it was a great time for a chat. […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Like most of the rest of the world, COVID-19 hit the manufacturing sector by surprise. That China — which continues to comprise the vast majority of electronics manufacturing — was the first global epicenter of the virus certainly didn't help the industry sufficiently brace for the impact of a pandemic on a scale the world […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The German Aerospace Center (DLR) has debuted a prototype of what it calls ‘U-Shift,' an urban mobility vehicle designed for multiple uses. U-Shift is a fully electric vehicle, designed for autonomous operation, and could serve in a number of capacities including as an on-demand shuttle, a bus, a mobile distribution center for package delivery, or […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The U.S. Commerce Department has now announced the details of how it will enforce the shutdown of TikTok and WeChat in the country, after announcing in August plans to do so by September 20 over national security concerns. The news is structured along two dates, September 20 and November 12. Both apps and their app updates […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The U.S. Commerce Department has now announced the details of how it will enforce the shutdown of TikTok and WeChat in the country, after announcing in August plans to do so by September 20 over national security concerns. The news is structured along two dates, September 20 and November 12. Both apps and their app updates […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The Commerce Department announced this morning that it will require mobile app stores to remove popular social media apps TikTok and WeChat. New users will not be able to download these apps, and while existing users will still be able to use their existing apps installed on their phones, new updates will not be allowed […]
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Sep 18, 2020
If venture capitalists could predict the future, why wouldn't they just start companies themselves? That's the question Hussein Kanji, founding partner at Hoxton Ventures, asked rhetorically at Disrupt 2020. "If anyone says that they have predictive power in this industry and says they know where the future is gonna be, I just question the wisdom […]
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Sep 18, 2020
If venture capitalists could predict the future, why wouldn't they just start companies themselves? That's the question Hussein Kanji, founding partner at Hoxton Ventures, asked rhetorically at Disrupt 2020. "If anyone says that they have predictive power in this industry and says they know where the future is gonna be, I just question the wisdom […]
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Sep 18, 2020
The backlash against vaping in the United States has not deterred a Chinese challenger from entering the world's largest vaping market. Relx, one of China's largest e-cigarette companies, is seeking to submit its Premarket Tobacco Product Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration by the end of 2021. Upon completion of a review process […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Google has pulled popular Indian financial services app Paytm from the Play Store for violating its gambling policies. Paytm is India's most valued startup and claims over 50 million monthly active users. Its marquee app, which competes with Google Pay in India, disappeared from the Play Store in the country earlier Friday. Google said that Play […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Ride-hailing services around the world have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Grab was no exception. The company is one of the most highly-valued tech startups in Southeast Asia, where it operates in eight countries. Its transport business suffered a sharp decline in March and April, as movement restriction orders were implemented. But […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Ride-hailing services around the world have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Grab was no exception. The company is one of the most highly-valued tech startups in Southeast Asia, where it operates in eight countries. Its transport business suffered a sharp decline in March and April, as movement restriction orders were implemented. But […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Apple will launch its online store in India on September 23, bringing a range of services directly to customers in the world's second largest smartphone market for the first time in over 20 years since it began operations in the country. The company, which currently relies on third-party online and offline retailers to sell its […]
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Sep 18, 2020
Apple will launch its online store in India on September 23, bringing a range of services for the first to customers in the world's second largest smartphone market in over 20 years since it began operating in the country. The company, which currently relies on third-party online and offline retailers to sell its products in […]
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Sep 17, 2020
In China, short video apps aren't just for mindless time killing. These services are becoming online bazaars where users can examine products, see how they are grown and made, and ask sellers questions during live sessions. Kuaishou, the main rival of TikTok's Chinese version (Douyin), announced that it accumulated 500 million e-commerce orders in August, […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Earlier today at TechCrunch Disrupt, venture capitalist Peter Fenton joined us to talk about a variety of issues. Among them, we discussed how he's putting his stamp on Benchmark now that, 15 years after joining the storied firm, he's its most senior member. Fenton said that he's mostly focused on ensuring that the firm doesn't […]
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Sep 17, 2020
TechCrunch hosted an unusual Startup Battlefield this week — the founders, judges, audience and moderator (me) were all in different locations, doing our best to interact over WebEx. But the 20 startups still demonstrated their products and explained their visions, then were grilled by expert judges. And those judges helped the TechCrunch team select our […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton and myself hosted a live taping at Disrupt for a digital reception. It was good fun, though of course we're looking forward to bringing the live show back to the conference […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Twitter takes preemptive steps to avoid election-related hacks, we check out the new Apple Watches and Facebook launches new business tools. This is your Daily Crunch for September 17, 2020. The big story: Twitter tightens security ahead of election Twitter said today that "high-profile, election-related" accounts in the United States will be receiving notifications telling […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Boston Dynamics is just months away from announcing their approach to logistics, the first real vertical it aims to enter, after proving their ability to build robots at scale with the quadrupedal Spot. The company's new CEO, Robert Playter, sees the company coming into its own after decades of experimentation. Playter, interviewed on the virtual […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Boston Dynamics is just months away from announcing their approach to logistics, the first real vertical it aims to enter, after proving their ability to build robots at scale with the quadrupedal Spot. The company's new CEO, Robert Playter, sees the company coming into its own after decades of experimentation. Playter, interviewed on the virtual […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Impact Creative Systems (formerly Imagine Impact) is bringing a startup accelerator-style approach to finding fresh creative talent, and it announced this morning that, with funding from venture capital firm Benchmark, it's spinning out from Imagine Entertainment — the production company founded by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer. Right after the news broke, the accelerator's […]
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Sep 17, 2020
It's not easy getting funding for any startup, but when Cloudflare launched at one of our early events ten years ago, most investors sure thought its idea was a bit out there. Today, Cloudflare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn joined us at our virtual Disrupt event to talk with our enterprise reporter Ron Miller about those early […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Like plenty of other modern direct-to-consumer companies, influencer marketing has been an essential part of Fabletics' journey. Actress Kate Hudson co-founded the company and co-CEO Adam Goldenberg believes that its network of spokespeople has been key to the company's growth. We were joined on our virtual TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 stage by Goldenberg and comedian Kevin […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Like plenty of other modern direct-to-consumer companies, influencer marketing has been an essential part of Fabletics' journey. Actress Kate Hudson co-founded the company and co-CEO Adam Golderberg believes that its network of spokespeople has been key to the company's growth. We were joined on our virtual TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 stage by Goldenberg and comedian Kevin […]
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Sep 17, 2020
When Alchemist Accelerator shifted its Demo Day to virtual earlier this year, Alchemist director and founder Ravi Belani told me it was a move he expected the team to stick with for some time. Nearly half a year later it's time for another Demo Day — and sure enough, with the pandemic still ongoing, it's […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Jennifer Doudna, one of the pioneers of the gene-editing technique known as CRISPR, thinks the biotech tool could be an essential one for combating COVID-19 and future pandemics. Due to its capacity to be "reprogrammed" like software, CRISPR could eventually be integral to countless tests and treatments. In an interview at Disrupt 2020, Doudna was […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Twitter is taking steps to tighten account security for a range of users ahead of the US presidential election, including by requiring the use of strong passwords. "We're taking the additional step of proactively implementing account security measures for a designated group of high-profile, election-related Twitter accounts in the US. Starting today, these accounts will […]
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Sep 17, 2020
What is it about digital learning that has schools so keen on reopening despite the health and reputational risks?
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Sep 17, 2020
One of a founder's biggest early challenges is figuring out how to sift through all the advice they receive.
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Sep 17, 2020
Mozilla today announced that it will shutter two products: Firefox Send, the free file transfer service it already put on hiatus in July, and Firefox Notes, its note-taking extension and mobile app. Firefox Send launched in March 2019. At the time, Mozilla described it as a file-sharing tool with a focus on privacy. That privacy […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Amazon is making it easier for Alexa devices owners to use Routines. The feature, which has been around for years, allows Alexa users to combine multiple tasks into a single voice command of their choosing. For example, you could make a routine that turns off your lights, plays relaxing music, and locks your doors when […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Growing cannabis on an industrial scale involves managing margins while continually adhering to compliance laws. For many growers, large and small, this consists of constant data entry from seed to sale. Canix's solution employs a robust enterprise resource planning platform with a steep tilt toward reducing the time it takes to input data. This platform […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Diesel engines are the workhorses of freight transportation and agriculture — and by extension keep the economy fed and well supplied. They also have a dirty side. The founders of ClearFlame Engine Technologies, a four-year-old startup based in Geneva, Illinois, say they have found a way to clean them up. The company, which participated in […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Crista Galli Ventures, a new early-stage health tech fund in Europe, officially launched last week. The firm offers "patient capital" — with only a single LP (the Danish family office IPQ Capital) — and promises to provide portfolio companies with deep healthcare expertise and the extra runway needed to get over regulatory and efficacy hurdles […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Crover's robotic platform isn't the sexiest or most exciting — particularly for a startup that began life with space travel in its sights. But the real future of robotics and automation lies in the dull, dirty and dangerous tasks employers have difficult finding human workers to fill. Monitoring grain silos, at very least, qualifies for […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Severe droughts have drained rivers and reservoirs across parts of India, and more than half a billion people in the world's second-most populous nation are estimated to run out of drinking water by 2030. Signs of this are apparent in farms, which consume the vast majority of total water supplies. Farmers have been struggling in […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Perigee founder Mollie Breen used to work for NSA where she built a security solution to help protect the agency's critical infrastructure. She spent the last two years at Harvard Business School talking to Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and fine-tuning that idea she started at NSA into a commercial product. Today, the solution that […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Tech's coveted internships were some of the first roles to be cut as offices closed and businesses shuttered in response to the coronavirus. A number of companies across the country, including Glassdoor, StubHub, Funding Circle, Yelp, Checkr and even the National Institutes of Health, canceled their internship programs altogether. For InsideSherpa co-founders Tom Brunskill and […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Justin Kan and Robin Chan have each been angel investing for more than a decade. They're starting a new fund together now, though, to stay involved as cofounders of more startups. Goat Capital is a hybrid incubator versus a pure seed investment firm, Chan explains. It will be writing checks ranging between roughly half a […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Facebook this morning announced a series of new rules designed to further penalize those who violate its Community Standards, specifically around Facebook Groups. It also introduced rules meant to crack down on the spread of misinformation through these more private networks. The changes will impact those who had helped lead groups that were later banned […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Threads is not your average startup and, really, it's not a startup anymore. It's over 10 years old, employs more than 150 people, and successfully bridged the Series A gap in Europe closing a round of $20M back in 2018. And so far, it's surviving 2020. COVID-19 has put retail - and the rest of […]
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Sep 17, 2020
There's a reality TV competition show in the works that will feature a 2023 trip to the International Space Station as the grand prize, Deadline reports. The production company behind the show, which will be called ‘Space Hero,' has booked a seat on a SpaceX Dragon crew spacecraft set to make the trip to the […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Demand Sage, a new startup from the founders of recently-acquired mobile analytics company Localytics, announced this morning that it has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Eniac Ventures and Underscore VC. When I spoke to CEO Raj Aggarwal, CTO Henry Cipolla and CPO Randy Dailey back in February, they outlined a vision to […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Polestar is a startup in an unusual situation. Polestar has the car. It has the executives. Polestar has factories, partners, and distribution channels. It's set for success in a way most startups are not. And yet, success is not guaranteed. I fear Polestar is missing a critical aspect of electric vehicles and selling against Tesla. […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Pachama, the forest carbon sequestration monitoring service that tracks how much carbon dioxide is actually captured in forestry offset projects, has raised $5 million in fresh funding from a clutch of high profile investors including Amazon, Breakthrough Energy Ventures. The investment is one of several deals that Amazon has announced today through its Climate Pledge […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Over the past 24 hours, rumors picked up by Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal and CNBC have put some boundaries on what a possible deal between Oracle and TikTok's parent company ByteDance will look like. In its current incarnation floating around the DC press corps, it appears that TikTok's data on American users will be […]
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Sep 17, 2020
As part of Disrupt 2020 we wanted to look at the contrasting positions of both early and later-stage investing in Europe. Who better to unpack this subject than two highly experienced operators in these fields? After a career at Spotify and then as a VC at Atomico, Sophia Bendz has rapidly gained a reputation in Europe as […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Hulu was one of the first major streaming services to introduce a "co-viewing" feature that allows friends and family to watch Hulu content together from different locations. The feature, Hulu Watch Party, was initially only available for subscribers on the the ad-free tier of Hulu's streaming service. Now, the company is making Watch Party available […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Hollywood has been better known for making films and TV shows about the tech industry than it has been for being a part of it, but today a new enterprise is launching, backed by a major Silicon Valley venture firm, that hopes to hit pause on that image. Imagine Impact, a content accelerator that launched […]
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Sep 17, 2020
SpaceX is set to launch the latest batch of its Starlink satellites on Thursday, with a target lift-off time of 2:19 PM EDT (11:19 AM PDT). The mission will take off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and there's a backup opportunity tomorrow at 1:57 PM EDT (10:57 AM PDT) in case weather or any […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Hello from the midst of Disrupt 2020: after this short piece for you I am wrapping my prep for a panel with investors from Bessemer, a16z and Canaan about the future of SaaS. Luckily, The Exchange this morning is on a very similar topic. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Facebook this morning launched a new app designed to make it easier for businesses to manage their pages and profiles across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger in a single place. The app, Facebook Business Suite, combines access to the business's key updates and priorities, and offers a way to draft and schedule feed posts for both […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Rise, shine and build your business startup fans. It's day four of Disrupt 2020, and this is your daily snapshot of just some of the heavy-hitters, events, breakout sessions and all-around opportunity that's yours for the taking. Looking for the complete lineup? You'll find it in the Disrupt agenda. Note: unless otherwise stated, all times […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Darkstore, the tech-driven fulfillment solution to enable e-commerce companies to offer same-day delivery, has just released a consumer-facing app called FastAF. Right now, the app is only available in Los Angeles. FastAF is built on top of Darkstore, which already has relationships with a number of brands that store their products in Darkstores for same-day […]
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Sep 17, 2020
When you look at the Asia-Pacific (APAC) regional cloud infrastructure numbers, it would be easy to think that one of the Chinese cloud giants, particularly Alibaba, would be the leader in that geography, but new numbers from Synergy Research show Amazon leading across the region overall, which generated $9 billion in revenue in Q2. The […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Redwood Materials, the recycling startup founded by Tesla's longtime CTO and co-founder JB Straubel, has landed Amazon as a new investor and customer. Amazon's investment in Redwood Materials is one of a handful announced Thursday that stems from the e-commerce giant's $2 billion Climate Pledge Fund. Amazon announced in June that it would commit to […]
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Sep 17, 2020
For founders and VCs alike, 2020 has changed the game for good.
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Sep 17, 2020
There are many reasons why you could have a good or a bad credit score. But if you're just entering the job market, you may end up with reliable income and a low limit on your credit card. X1 Card wants to solve that by setting limits based on your current and future income instead […]
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Sep 17, 2020
I'm very much still working on a full review of the new Apple Watches — specifically the Series 6. As of this posting, I've had the wearables in my possession (and on my person) for a little under 24 hours. It's a special circumstance attributable to the virtual nature of this week's event. Simply put, […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Companies like Perfect Day, Impossible Foods, and a host of other startups that are developing replacements for animal farmed goods used in food, clothes, cosmetics, and chemicals have raised a whopping $1.5 billion through the first half of the year. That's according to a new report from The Good Food Institute which is tracking the […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Daniel Arlow has spent the last eighteen years studying genomics and synthetic biology. The arc of his career has taken the first-time founder of the new startup Ansa Biotechnologies from MIT to the famous Keasling Lab at the University of California at Berkeley and now to the world of startups. Now, Arlow is ready to […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Connected home fitness startup Tonal announced today that it has raised an additional $110 million. The latest round of funding includes existing investor L Catterton and new names, including Delta-v Capital, Amazon's Alexa Fund and Mousse Partners, along with athletes Stephen Curry, Paul George, Michelle Wie and Bobby Wagner. The round brings the Bay Area-based […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Mobile games maker Supercell has been one of the great, understated, breakthroughs of the European startup world. The Helsinki-based mobile games maker built an empire out of Clash of Clans, raking in tons of money and catching the eye of world class investors and eventually a new strategic majority shareholder in the form of Tencent […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Small and medium businesses have been some of the hardest hit in the Covid-19 pandemic. And all that has been as true in emerging markets as it has been for SMBs in the developed world. Tunde Kehinde has had a front-row seat witnessing and responding to that crisis. He's the CEO and co-founder of Lidya, a […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Six years ago, SmartNews took on a major challenge. After launching in Japan in 2012, the news discovery app decided that its first international market would be the United States. During Disrupt, co-founder Kaisei Hamamoto talked about how SmartNews adapts its app for two very different markets (the video is embedded below). Hamamoto, who is […]
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Sep 17, 2020
Despite the coronavirus outbreak, which has slowed down deal-making across the world, dozens of startups in India have raised considerable amounts in recent months. Unacademy, which raised $110 million in February, closed a new round of $150 million this month. These large check sizes, and the frequency at which they are being bandied out, were […]
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Sep 17, 2020
At TechCrunch Disrupt today, SmartNews announced the release of major new features for the American version of its news discovery app, designed to make it easier for users to get updates about the elections, COVID-19 and the weather. Several features focus on the presidential race, and other candidates up for vote this year. SmartNews, which […]
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