South Korea’s communication watchdog, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), said Tuesday it will investigate Apple and Google over potential violations of the country’s in-app payment rule. Local media reports noted that the agency will start this investigation on August 16. Apart from Apple and Google, the KCC is also investigating SK Group’s homegrown app store
admin
Bloomberg’s Sonali Basak joins Emily Chang to break down Coinbase’s partnership with BlackRock, how investors reacted to the news, and what that means for the future of the crypto exchange in the industry still weighed down by a bear market.
If blockchain, cryptocurrency, decentralized finance (DeFi) and web3 get your entrepreneurial motor running, do not miss our TC Sessions: Crypto daylong deep dive on November 17 in Miami. We have special launch pricing on passes and exhibitor packages, and you can save a chunk of change. But don’t pussyfoot around — supplies are limited, running
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is making some pretty heavy bets on the healthcare space as it acquired Amcare, which runs high-end children’s and women’s hospitals across China. The buyout cost ByteDance $1.5 billion, according to Bloomberg. A spokesperson for Xiaohe Health, ByteDance’s healthcare business, confirmed the acquisition but declined to comment on the deal size.
Spotify announced today that it’s launching a new Home experience that includes separate feeds for “Music” and “Podcasts & Shows.” Now, when Spotify users launch the app, they’ll notice two feeds at the top of the home screen. The company says the new Music and Podcasts & Shows feeds will allow users to easily scroll
TechCrunch is bringing our flagship event Disrupt back to the real world this year, which means we’re hard at work on our big October 18-20 shindig. Founders, investors, tech denizens, crypto fans, and the like: We’re making something incredible just for you. And no portion of the event has me more excited than what we
UK health tech startup, Babylon Health is pulling in its horns in its home market, blaming challenging global and macroeconomic conditions for the termination of a couple of multi-year contracts it had inked with two NHS Trusts in England in recent years — including one from the start of 2020 that had been trumpeted as
Stores face new challenges in a world forever changed by the pandemic. Amazon and other tech giants are encroaching on their business. But perhaps more urgently, supply chain snarls haven’t gone away, presenting retailers with a host of inventory issues. In a March Retail Insights survey, seven in 10 (71%) shoppers said they felt that
Accel has led a $2.6 million funding in Produze, an Indian startup that is attempting to help local agri producers sell to international retailers, the latest in a series of bets as investors and entrepreneurs look to bring efficiency to supercharge one of the world’s largest agri producers. “We are helping agri-producers to reliably access
The pandemic prompted countless companies to migrate to the cloud. By 2025, driven partly by the need for digital services, 85% of enterprises will have a cloud-first principle, according to Gartner. But the transition isn’t always easy. In a recent MuleSoft survey, 84% of organizations said that data and app integration challenges were hindering their
Google has launched a website for its Read Along app for encouraging young children to practice reading. The website, which is introduced as a public beta, works with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge browsers on Desktop and Android, with support for iOS and more browsers such as Safari coming soon. The concept of the website is
WhatsApp is introducing a small flurry of privacy-minded tweaks into the messaging app, the company announced on Tuesday. The Meta-owned globally ubiquitous messaging service says the changes aim to give users more control over their experience while introducing “added layers” to protect their private communications. WhatsApp will introduce an option for users to privately use
Just over a year after launching a major project targeting thousands of sites blatantly flouting cookie tracking rules in Europe, local privacy campaign group noyb has fired off another batch of complaints targeting a hardcore of website operators that it says have ignored or not fully acted upon earlier warnings to bring their cookie consent
WhatsApp now allows you to delete a message for up to two days and 12 hours (60 hours in total), so you can remove an accidentally sent chat even after hours. Previously, this limit was 1 hour, 8 minutes, and 16 seconds — yep, there were seconds involved. The company’s tweet about this feature just
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. Hey, folks! A quick word on pitching. If you are starting your fundraising journey, apply to be part of the 2-minute life pitch practice on our TechCrunch Live series. If you’ve already
Miferia, a Mexico-based business-to-business wholesale marketplace, bagged $7 million in seed funding to continue developing its curated website connecting independent retailers in Mexico with domestic brands in categories like cosmetics, food and beverage and home décor. In 2021, nearly 300 million people were shopping online in Latin America; Mexico accounted for 27% of that e-commerce
Haus launched in 2019 as an answer to a generation’s craving for a more transparent alcohol brand, raising millions in venture funding from angels such as Casey Neistat, Away co-founder Jen Rubio and funds including Homebrew, Haystack Ventures, Coatue, Shrug Capital and Worklife Ventures. Haus has raised $17 million on rolling SAFE notes to date.
With the Senate passing the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 last night, and House passage later this week all but assured, it’s likely that the U.S. will be taking significant — though not comprehensive — congressional action on climate change. The bill is expected to trim U.S. carbon emissions to 40% below 2005 levels by
It seems like only a couple of months since Boundary Layer announced its $5 million-ish round of financing, but the company hasn’t been resting on its laurels. Today, its founders told me it signed up some beefy launch partners and is gearing up for a large-scale roll-out as early as 2025. The company is planning
Vadym Synegin Contributor Vadym Synegin is a Ukrainian impact entrepreneur, philanthropist and investor in fintech and crypto projects with more than 15 years’ experience as an entrepreneur in Europe and the UAE. Ukrainians have often pioneered market-leading companies and built products that positively impact society, especially in the fintech sector. Despite the hurdles of war,
Apple is on the cusp of introducing a tiny change with an outsized impact on the quality of life of iPhone users everywhere who are tired of helplessly watching on as the life trickles out of their device in unquantifiable increments. But there’s good news: In the latest iOS 16 beta, the battery icon again
For years, HBO Max has been under fire for its buggy app. Today, the streaming service’s re-platformed app completed its global rollout on desktop, iOS, Android, and Amazon Fire tablets. New features include a shuffle button on mobile, SharePlay support for iPhone and iPad users in the U.S., a dedicated home for downloaded content, and
SoFi CEO Anthony Noto joins Emily Chang on the heels of their earnings results after the company’s second-quarter revenue and Ebitda beat the average analyst estimate, and the company raised its full-year outlook.
Singapore-based cryptocurrency platform Crypto.com has acquired two startups in South Korea — payment service provider PnLink and virtual asset provider OK-BIT — for an undisclosed amount, Crypto.com said. The company also said Monday it has secured registrations under South Korea’s electronic financial transaction act and as a virtual asset service provider. “We are committed to
Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. This morning was a fun mix of stuff that we don’t always get to, so strap in for the following: We are back Wednesday! Chat soon! Equity drops every Monday at 7 a.m. PDT and Wednesday and Friday at 6
After more than two years of remote work, many employees have no interest in returning to the office — at least not without good reason. Employers have responded in kind, more or less, with tech companies in particular offering generous work from home and hybrid work options. Not all businesses are behind the changes, but
Earnings season is slowing, with the largest U.S. tech companies already having reported second-quarter results. But oftentimes the most interesting results come not from your Amazons or Apples, but from smaller concerns — and even those that are not traditional tech companies. SoftBank, for example. Today, the Japanese conglomerate and startup investing powerhouse reported earnings
Chinese internet giant Baidu has secured permits to offer a fully driverless commercial robotaxi service, with no human driver present, in Chongqing and Wuhan via the company’s autonomous ride-hailing unit, Apollo Go. Baidu’s wins in Wuhan and Chongqing come a few months after the company scored a permit to provide driverless ride-hailing services to the
AI’s strength lies in its predictive prowess. Fed enough data, the conventional thinking goes, a machine learning algorithm can predict just about anything — for example, which word will appear next in a sentence. Given that potential, it’s not surprising that enterprising investment firms have looked to leverage AI to inform their decision-making. There’s certainly
Last year was record-breaking for the cybersecurity market. Data from Momentum Cyber, a financial advisory firm for the security industry, showed that cybersecurity startups raised a “record-shattering” $29.5 billion in venture capital in 2021, more than doubling the $12 billion raised in 2020, while a record number — including Dragos and Noname Security — were