Discord will start testing a handful of new features in some of its biggest communities this week. The social audio and chat platform got its start connecting gamers for online play, but it’s grown into one of the main ways to build a thriving online community, complete with custom emoji, live events, topic channels and
Month: February 2022
It’s kind of a broken record at this point, but the cloud infrastructure market continues to grow at an astonishing rate. Over the last year, it added almost $50 billion in business, growing from $129 billion in 2020 to $178 billion last year, according to Synergy Research data. Canalys reports similar numbers. As for the
What does Meta/Facebook’s favorite new phrase to bandy around in awkward earnings calls — as it warns of “regulatory headwinds” cutting into its future growth — actually mean when you unpack it? It’s starting to look like this breezy wording means the law is finally catching up with murky adtech practices which have been operating
Following a court order, developers working on dating apps don’t have to use Apple’s in-app purchase system in the Netherlands. And because those purchases aren’t handled by Apple, the company doesn’t take its usual 30% cut on digital purchases. But developers who use a third-party payment system still have to pay a commission. And Apple
Automakers keen to sell vehicles loaded with features and software services — in a bid to generate more revenue — have an information overload challenge. These so-called software-defined vehicles contain myriad systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) running anything from electric powertrains to driver assistance features to infotainment. The crux is that they all must work in concert. Car
The pandemic trade ended a little while ago. The COVID-induced boom that powered a host of tech companies is also fading quickly. The results are showing up in Big Tech earnings. For startups, it’s bad news — the good times of the last few years appear to be in rapid decline, with many startups holding
Convenience stores are typically places people run into while gassing up or if they need a quick snack, but when the global pandemic hit and no one wanted to go indoors with others, some could not survive. That was the case with Adit Gupta’s parents, who owned a convenience store in New Jersey that began
As the automotive industry inches slowly ahead on the road to self-driving vehicles, we’re seeing the emergence of startups aiming to fill in some of the technical gaps in autonomous systems as they exist today. In the latest development, Annotell, a startup out of Sweden that makes software to assess the performance of autonomous systems’
Alphabet announced earnings that beat analyst estimates and declared a 20-for-1 stock split in the form of a one-time special stock dividend. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mandeep Singh has more on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Thursday, February 3, 2022! Today we have a few angles on the startup market. The gist is that there are some positive signals to digest,
Dolby Laboratories today announced that it has acquired Millicast, a WebRTC-based developer platform for building ultra-low-latency video streaming experiences, as it works to build out its developer platform. The promise of Millicast, which was founded in 2018, is that it can deliver content across the globe in broadcast quality and with sub-second latency. The company
Sound the horns, unveil the banners, cue the parade. Snap is profitable. And we don’t mean adjusted-EBITDA profitable, adjusted-operating-income profitable, or even the infamous non-GAAP-net-income profitable. It’s real-profit profitable. In the fourth quarter of 2021, Snap reported $1.3 billion in revenue (up 42% year over year), an operating loss of $25.1 million, and GAAP net
With toilet paper and kitchen rolls in its product portfolio for now, and a lot more coming down the pipe, Cloud Paper is a sustainable, bamboo-based alternative to toilet paper made from whatever toilet paper is usually made from. The company raised a $5m round from an impressive cadre of investors to expand its product
Alon Alroy Contributor Alon Alroy is the co-founder, CMO and CCO of Bizzabo, an event technology platform for hybrid, virtual and in-person events. We’ve been living in a world required to pivot from business-as-usual in person to Zoom meetings, and now to a mix of both. Many companies are continuing to consider various strategies to
With the so-called “Great resignation” many frontline workers (nurses, truck drivers etc) are re-assessing their lives in the wake of the pandemic, while older companies are struggling with this new world order. Employees also also now demanding better communication, so appy-fying those comms makes sense. France-based Snapshift started out as a staff management web solution
A huge amount of energy use on our planet goes toward creating heat, and not only that, but a large amount of that energy is wasted and byproducts like CO2 blasted into the atmosphere. Modern Electron could change that with a new system that captures the emissions and produces clean hydrogen, right inside a home
Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor A lean startup’s growth marketing tech stack 5 common growth marketing mistakes startups make Someone clicks your ad on Facebook, and they choose to purchase
Zero Grocery is on a mission to deliver your groceries in two hours and in a way that doesn’t hurt the planet. The plastic-free grocery, home and personal care delivery startup is one of the companies we featured two years ago when discussing venture capital interest in businesses focused on reducing waste. At the time,
It’s that old chestnut: You are a fancy-pants brand wanting to make a product that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside because you only use fair-trade, sustainably grown ingredients and materials, but you don’t know where to turn. Next thing you know, Novi comes bursting through the wall holding a freshly squeezed pitcher
Google today announced a new version of Workspace, the company’s productivity service that you probably still refer to as G Suite. With the new — and free — Google Workspace Essentials plan, Google wants to bring more business users onto the platform by offering them the basic Workspace productivity tools — with the exception of
Studytube, a Dutch online learning platform, has acquired Springest, a European training-booking marketplace. Simultaneously it’s closed a $30 million Series B investment round led by Energy Impact Partners (EIP) and existing investor Verdane Capital. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Studytube offers mid-sized and large enterprises an online learning and development platform through a
A true “metaverse” may not yet exist, but that hasn’t stopped marketers from adopting the buzzword to promote their apps and games on mobile app stores. According to new data shared today by Sensor Tower, there are now 552 mobile apps that include the term “metaverse” in their apps’ titles or descriptions, in hopes of
Video is the beating heart of the most popular content online these days, and it’s not just because it’s entertaining. It’s also because of how accessible it is: it’s become incredibly easy for anyone, whether you’re technical or not, to make, post or watch video. Today, a London-based startup called Veed that’s built an online-only,
In early morning trading today, shares of PayPal are off around 25% following the company’s earnings report yesterday evening. Investors did not like what the company had on offer. TechCrunch focuses on private companies and private markets. But at times, public companies can help us better understand what is going on in larger markets where
Founded by alums of Hinge and Bumble, Sunroom is a creator platform that throws out the stuff that makes mainstream social media apps such a hostile place for women. And, ideally, it wants to help them get paid in the process. The app was co-founded by Lucy Mort, former design director at Hinge, and Michelle
More than 80% of the world’s workforce, some 2.7 billion people, do not spend their days in front of computers, and that has led to a strong disparity when it comes to technology, with some 1% of IT investment targeting them as users. That’s been changing very rapidly with the rise of smartphones and apps,
With startups getting into nuclear technology, it’s no surprise to see more fund-raising happening. Now, Kyoto Fusioneering, a fusion energy startup based out of Japan but increasingly expanding abroad, has raised 1.33 billion yen (US$ 11.7 million) in its latest round of funding. The company has now raised 1.67 billion yen (US$ 14.7 million) to
Scale AI’s path to becoming a $7.3 billion company was paved in real data from images, text, voice and video. Now, it is using that foundation to get into the synthetic data game, one of the hotter and emerging categories in AI. They announced Wednesday an early access program to Scale Synthetic, a product that
Waldo has raised $15 million for its ‘no code’ automated testing tool. Mobile development teams using Waldo can set up tests without writing a line of scripting code. It then seamlessly integrates in your continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Joshua Zelman from Insight Partners is leading today’s Series A round with participation from Matrix Partners and
The biggest social network in the world isn’t getting any bigger. Meta posted its fourth quarter earnings Wednesday, sharing financials that disappointed Wall Street enough to send its stock into a nose dive. Shares of the company, still trading under the ticker symbol FB for now, plunged 20% as the numbers hit. While Meta’s last