Snapchat’s parent Snap became the latest tech company to announce a huge round of layoffs, confirming ongoing rumors yesterday that it was cutting 20% of its global workforce, affecting at least 1,200 people. The reasons for Snap’s massive scaling back exercise are perhaps obvious, as it’s the same economic reasons why countless other businesses have
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Tired: JBL announced the Tour PRO 2 earbuds with active noise cancellation (ANC). Wired: The case has a touchscreen. That’s right. In the off-chance you didn’t have enough screens in your life, the new earbuds’ case adds another 1.4-inch LED touch display. Users can flick through multiple screens like different watch faces that allow them
Google and its video sharing app YouTube outlined plans for handling the 2022 U.S. midterm elections this week, highlighting tools at its disposal to limit the effort to limit the spread of political misinformation. When users search for election content on either Google or YouTube, recommendation systems are in place to highlight journalism or video
Alternative protein startup SIMULATE, known for its NUGGS and TENDERS, is introducing two new versions of its plant-based, simulated chicken product aimed at restaurants. STRIPS are similar to grilled chicken, while CUTLETS mimic the kind of product you’ll find on fried chicken sandwiches that have become so popular on restaurant menus. The new products are
Laura Spiekerman Contributor Laura Spiekerman is the co-founder and chief revenue officer of Alloy, an identity-decisioning platform for banks and fintech companies. We’ve all seen the headlines: Fintech is struggling. Since last year, valuations are down 70%-80%, deal activity is down 67% and layoffs have plagued many former industry favorites. But fintech is resilient. Innovation continues
Six months after announcing $30 million in equity and debt, Boopos, a Miami-based lending platform for business acquisitions and growth, is back with an even bigger round, a $58 million Series A, again in a mix of equity and debt. The latest round includes $8 million in equity and $50 million in debt, Boopos founder
Reddit’s acquisition spree is continuing this morning with news that the company is bringing the audience contextualization company Spiketrap’s technology in-house. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Reddit says Spiketrap’s AI-powered contextual analysis and tools will help Reddit to improve in areas like ad quality scoring and will boost prediction models for powering auto-bidding. The
Planted, a Swiss startup that’s cooking up alternative proteins using biostructuring and fermentation to serve “clean” cuts of vegan meat — such as the plant-based chicken breast plated up above — has raised again, nabbing CHF 70 million (~$72M) in Series B funding after a $21M pre-B round a year ago. The Series B was
Amazon today announced the addition of Ring Intercom to its list of smartphone offerings. The product is designed to be an add-on to existing apartment intercom systems. The company has created a quick online questionnaire to determine whether your existing system will work with the new product. It’s a rare addition targeted specifically at apartment
Reliance Jio Infocomm, India’s top telecom mobile operator, has earmarked a spending of $25 billion on the rollout of its 5G services that it plans to debut in key cities this Diwali in October, the company announced at its annual general meeting Monday. The company, which has amassed more than 421 million telecom subscribers, will
You know the feeling; you’re on a dating app, and you start a conversation with someone, and things don’t seem like they add up completely. You’ve seen The Tinder Swindler on Netflix, and you’re suddenly wondering: Is someone about to ask me for money? The team at video dating site Filter Off decided to take
There is no data to show how little venture funding goes to trans founders. All that exists is a report from Backstage Capital saying 1% of all venture funds went to founders openly identifying as LGBTQ+. (According to a recent Gallup poll, 7.1% of Americans identify as LGBT+.) That’s a staggeringly low amount of funding,
While the overall crypto markets have been in a rough spot lately, web3 venture capitalists have never had more conviction — or more funding at their disposal — to back startups and teams building in the space. The big question on their minds is whether tokens and startup valuations have bottomed out, or if they
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week’s guest Shiv Rao founded Abridge after experiencing how unnerving it can be to go through a medical emergency with a loved one — even for a practicing doctor like himself. So he and the Abridge team created an app that doesn’t
Don’t you hate it when they give everything away in the headline? So, a belated spoiler warning that, indeed, the iPhone 14 is almost certainly going to be the big headline announcement at Apple’s September event. A few other things seem close to certain, as well, including the Apple Watch Series 8. As ever, there
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense. Oh! And good news, btw, we’re offering 15% off
Greenhouse Co-Founder and CEO Daniel Chait joins Emily Chang to discuss Apple’s push for a return to office of its employees at least three days a week, and the state of the tech labor market. Plus, what he thinks of the latest ‘quiet quitting’ trend.
When it comes to types of venture capital instruments, party rounds are as controversial as they come. A party round is an early-stage financing round, usually occurring between the pre-seed and Series A stages, that includes a laundry list — or “party” — of individual investors. It’s different from a more traditional round, which may
Two weeks ago, longtime venture capitalist Chris Olsen, a general partner and cofounder of Drive Capital in Columbus, Ohio, settled into his seat for a portfolio company’s board meeting. It turned out to be a maddening exercise. “Two of the board members didn’t show up, and the company had a resolution on the agenda to
NASA has finalized an agreement with SpaceX to purchase five more astronaut transportation missions to and from the International Space Station, further entrenching the space company’s position as the prime services vendor for the space agency. The new contract — for the Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13 and Crew-14 missions — is valued at $1.4 billion.
Lyft is facing a fresh batch of lawsuits from drivers and passengers who say they were sexually and physically assaulted during rides and accused the ride-hailing company of failing to protect its users. Seventeen lawsuits were filed in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Peiffer Wolf Carr
Mavenoid, a Swedish company that provides both human- and AI-enabled support and troubleshooting tools for hardware companies, has raised $30 million in a series B round of funding. Founded out of Stockholm in 2017, Mavenoid works with hardware and consumer electronics companies including HP, Husqvarna, and Jabra, serving to automate technical support and onboarding for
Firewalla, maybe the only company that can say that its hardware firewalls have something of a cult following, today announced the latest addition to its portfolio: the $569 Firewalla Gold Plus. The Gold Plus will feature four 2.5 gigabit Ethernet interfaces and its deep packet inspection hardware can handle up to 5 gigabits at a
It’s happening — Paramount+ now has an in-app Showtime bundle. Previously announced back in February, the company is offering a new bundle to U.S. subscribers that brings all the content from Showtime to its flagship streaming service. The two services were already available in a discounted streaming bundle, but now U.S. subscribers can upgrade in-app
The process of finding job candidates often entails a lot of tedious manual work for recruiters, like sending versions of the same email over and over again. That’s why Kula was created. The platform not only automates tasks like sending introductory messages, but also surfaces promising leads from the first-degree connections of an organization’s existing
The process of sending and receiving payments in a $1.5 trillion B2B payments market in sub-Saharan Africa is one where merchants commonly use manual invoices and inefficient processes that burden merchants and make them struggle with their businesses. Duplo, a B2B payments startup that solves these issues by enabling African enterprises to collect payments from
Few areas in tech today are as polarized as the blockchain gaming space. Legacy developers and gamers are calling play-to-earn games Ponzi schemes, while crypto-believers say games that incorporate “tokenomics” are the future for empowering players and creators. Before the debate is settled, the ecosystem around blockchain games is already getting built and funded. Los
Ticketmaster will now let event organizers issue NFTs (non-fungible tokens) tied to tickets on Flow, a blockchain operated by a16z-backed Dapper Labs. The Live Nation subsidiary said that event organizers can make these NFTs available before, during, or after the event and even enable special experiences like loyalty rewards or celebrity meet-and-greets — or simply
NetEase, a Chinese technology company and billion-dollar video-game publisher, has acquired French video-game studio Quantic Dream. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal means that NetEase now has its first studio in Europe, and comes just a few months after the Hangzhou-based company launched its first hub in the U.S., located in Austin,
Sony Music filed a lawsuit against TikTok-competitor Triller for copyright infringement, Variety reports. This lawsuit is the latest event following a troubling pattern of alleged missing payments for the app, which plans to go public even though its $5 billion SPAC deal fell through. Last year, the company announced a $14 million program that would