Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the global population without access to electricity stood at 77% in 2020, according to reports. Also, the average daily electricity supply in some of Africa’s largest cities is less than 12 hours. As a result, individuals and businesses find other options and substitutes, such as generators, to deal with their power
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Yair Snir Contributor Yair Snir is vice president and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital, leading venture investment activity in Europe and Israel. What does an an acquisition process look like? There are two kinds of acquisition processes: planned and opportunistic. A planned process is where a company looks for a suitable buyer for their
A few months on from a tracking controversy hitting privacy-centric search veteran, DuckDuckGo, the company has announced it’s been able to amend terms with Microsoft, its search syndication partner, that had previously meant its mobile browsers and browser extensions were prevented from blocking advertising requests made by Microsoft scripts on third party sites. In a
Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. The home robotics firm, best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum, was founded in 1990 by MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab members Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner. Twelve years after its founding, the company introduced the Roomba, a brand
When it comes to geospatial and mapping data and how they are leveraged by organizations, satellites continue to play a critical role when it comes to sourcing raw information. Getting that raw data into a state that can be usable by enterprises, however, is a different story. Today, a Berlin-based startup called LiveEO, which has
A new app for iPhone users can help you browse the web without being constantly bothered by pop-up panels that beg you to use the company’s app instead. The app, called Banish, is an Safari extension that helps remove the “open in app” banners from various websites and other popups that block content across a
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. Haje and I are swapping places for the next two days while he gets some much-needed rest. While he’s away, please enjoy his latest Pitch Deck Teardown on Glambook. In the meantime,
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate-focused VC firm linked to some of Earth’s wealthiest individuals, has joined a $44 million bet on solar startup Terabase Energy. Terabase aims to rapidly build new solar farms “at the terawatt scale,” CEO Matt Campbell said in a statement. The startup claims its automated, on-site factory can already speed up
Swathy Prithivi started Found with the goal of improving the journey of weight loss. The company quickly discovered a huge demand and rapidly scaled its operations and expanded throughout the United States. The company’s story started in an Atomic incubator. On this episode of TechCrunch Live, we hear from Found’s co-founder and COO Swathy Prithivi
The world needs a company willing to force governments to take action on climate change. So far, climate tech has been the polite corner of the startup world. All pleases and thank yous, triple bottom lines and shared upsides, plenty of virtue and virtue signaling. That’s great and all. Saving the world from probable calamity
Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting, which the company now refers to as its Cyber Roundup, Thursday at the Tesla Gigafactory Texas. The Cyber Roundup comes just a couple of weeks after Tesla reported its Q2 earnings, which showed quarterly revenue declines caused by production challenges, even as the company grew year-over-year. The agenda had 13 shareholder
A popular anonymous social app that was misleading its users with fake messages has been forced to change. The top-ranked app NGL, which became the No. 1 app on the U.S. App Store in June, quietly rolled out an update yesterday that sees it now informing users when they receive messages that aren’t from their
Who will fare better in the current venture downturn? Will it be the legacy investors with years of experience amassed through multiple market cycles — but who also have a sizable portfolio to worry about — or the emerging managers who are looking at the market with fresh eyes and a clean slate? We’re about
The Middle East has long been thought of as an oil region, but the United Arab Emirates aims to change this with an intense focus on growing the country’s technology and startup scene. For the first half of 2022, the Middle East region brought in $1.73 billion in investments across 354 deals, up from more
Before he was the founder and CEO of Patreon, Jack Conte was a musician, mostly posting videos of his songs on YouTube (which he still does). Now, running a company that helps creators earn predictable monthly income from fan memberships, Conte is pissed off at Meta. As both Facebook and Instagram make changes to emphasize
Marjella Lecourt-Alma Contributor Tech companies have historically been viewed more positively than other sectors when it comes to ESG issues, but over the past 24 months, impending climate-related regulations, and the rapid move toward greater accountability has meant that many tech companies are left exposed. Issues such as energy consumption, workforce diversity, human capital, security,
Clubhouse, the social audio app that rose in popularity amid the pandemic, is looking to shake up its platform with the launch of private communities called “Houses.” The company’s new offering allows any person or group to create their own curated “House” within Clubhouse. Users can sign up to create Houses starting today, but Clubhouse says
Microsoft is being called out for blocking users of the end-to-end encrypted email service, Tutanota, from registering an account with its cloud-based collaboration platform, Teams, if they try to do that using a Tutanota email address. The problem, which has been going on unrectified for some time — with an initial complaint raised with Microsoft
It has become something of a tradition: Samsung announces an Unpacked and all or most of the big products get teased out in leaks in the weeks leading up to event. Sometimes the leaks come before the event announcement, sometimes after, but any hope of keeping its biggest news under wraps appears to have largely
Nov.23 — A U.S.-European satellite designed to extend a decades-long measurement of global sea surface heights was launched into Earth orbit from California on Saturday. A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying the Sentinel-6 satellite blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9:17 a.m. and arced southward over the Pacific Ocean. (Source: NASA)
Walmart let go of almost 200 corporate employees on Wednesday amid the economic downturn and rising inflation, according to a person familiar with the development. The company said in a statement that these layoffs are a part of updating its structure. Last month, the firm slashed its Q2 and yearly profit guidance and said people
JPMorgan is anchor investor of the fund, which counts ex-United Airlines CEO Munoz as a partner Mary Ann Azevedo 1 day Latino founders of early-stage companies based in the U.S. just got a new potential source of capital. L’Attitude Ventures announced today that it has closed on its first institutional fund, raising more than $100
Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the U.S., resigned to start a competitor called Qingtian Truck.
Axio, a platform for cybersecurity risk evaluation, today announced the closure of a $23 million Series B round led by Temasek’s ISTARI, with participation from investors NFP Ventures, IA Capital Group and former BP CEO Bob Dudley. Axio CEO Scott Kannry tells TechCrunch that the proceeds — which bring New York–based Axio’s total capital raised
An innovative new medical startup in Romania helped doctors from three countries collaborate to treat Ukrainian cancer patients made refugees after Russia’s brutal invasion. The “Tumor Board” project was initiated by doctors from the US, Romania and Moldova to provide life saving treatments for displaced Ukrainians with cancer. A collaboration of Heal 21 Association and
ByteDance may be preparing for a global launch of TikTok Music service, according to trademarks filed in several countries found by TechCrunch. The China-based conglomerate has filed TikTok Music trademark in countries like the U.K., Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia and Costa Rica. This comes after a Business Insider report last week, which pointed toward a
Despite Zuckerberg & Co. spending billions of dollars on virtual reality tech every fiscal quarter, the wider VR startup ecosystem has been having a tough few years coming down from the highs of 2016, when investors dumped money into the sector expecting Oculus-sized returns only to see most of their investments slowly wilt away. This
News that private equity group Thoma Bravo is buying Ping Identity for $2.8 billion in cash broke earlier today, marking the beginning of the end of Ping’s life as a public company (at least for now). Thoma Bravo will pay $28.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, a price that TechCrunch noted is a roughly
The day before Lyft shut down its in-house rental service and laid off close to 60 employees, the team in charge of the program was consumed by what they thought was a much bigger problem. Throughout June, the rentals team had attempted to get the service up and running in New York without success. The
TechCrunch Disrupt is back, in person on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and we want to remind university and college students that one minute can change the trajectory of your startup dreams. How? The possibility begins when you apply to the TechCrunch Student Pitch Competition (powered by Blackstone LaunchPad). Here’s how it works: Record a