According to Crunchbase, more than 17,000 tech workers have lost jobs since the start of this year. That’s painful, but for perspective: TechCrunch tracked more than 100,000 tech layoffs between August and December 2008. In my experience, founders and investors usually come out unscathed on the other side of events like these. For below-the-line employees,
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Mike Tong Contributor Mike Tong has over a decade of experience leading GTM strategy and operations for tech and data companies as part of McKinsey TMT, AtSpoke, Splunk and the VC firm B Capital. In 2019, I led the sales team and growth strategy for a venture-backed AI company called atSpoke. The company, which Okta
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of Work Bank, plans to make an equity investment of up to €25 million ($26.43) into the Partech Africa Fund II (PAF II) by the Paris-based VC firm Partech. The IFC said in the disclosures that it’s eyeing a stake not exceeding 20%. The agency said
The UK’s competition watchdog has published its final report on a comprehensive, year-long mobile ecosystem market study — cementing its view that there are substantial concerns about the market power of Apple and Google which require regulatory intervention. Back in December, its preliminary report on the market study also identified concerns and discussed potential remedies
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. When did it become Thursday? About 15 hours ago, that’s when! Welcome to the 9th of March 2022, and another, extra crunchy Daily Crunch. Serve it with some real cow milk that
Cow’s milk continues to be a staple of human nutrition. Pediatricians recommend it for infant growth, and for the most part, it has more protein than alternative “milks.” However, this dairy delight isn’t tolerated by all people, and the process from cow to dinner table is a known strain on environmental resources. Enter Brown Foods,
Even as India is increasingly adding generation capacity from solar power, setting examples for many other developing nations, there’s a large population of the South Asian nation that is yet to join the clean energy bandwagon: Indian households. Less than a percent of Indian homes has rooftop solar systems. Such slower adoption could dampen Prime
Roughly a year ago, Google announced the launch of Vertex AI, a managed AI platform designed to help companies to accelerate the deployment of AI models. To mark the service’s anniversary and the kickoff of Google’s Applied ML Summit, Google this morning announced new features heading to Vertex, including a dedicated server for AI system
Larger banks and other financial service providers are getting a lot more serious when it comes to competing with upstarts that are disrupting their businesses with fresher approaches and newer technologies. Today, one of the companies helping those larger banks with that task is announcing a big round of funding to double down on that
Google has released Android 13 beta 3, and while there aren’t any major changes in this version, that’s probably the point of it as the version has reached platform stability. This means that there won’t be any significant changes to Android 13’s APIs, and developers can tune their apps for the version when it rolls
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai talks about where he sees Google’s next $1 trillion in value and plans to evolve search and AI. He also weighs in on the future of the metaverse in the aftermath of controversies involving Meta’s Facebook. He speaks exclusively with Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang for the Bloomberg New Economy Forum.
Amid an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into inaccurate statements to investors, Faraday Future has received a preliminary request for information from the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ’s request for information is related to the SEC probe, according to a securities filing submitted by the electric vehicle startup Thursday. Faraday said it’s
Dubbing is a lucrative market, with Verified Market Research predicting that film dubbing services alone could generate $3.6 billion annually by 2027. But it’s also a laborious and costly process. On average, it can take an hour of recording studio time for five minutes of narration; one calculator pegs the price at $75 per minute for
Meta is scaling back its plans for its augmented reality (AR) glasses and is pivoting its Portal smart display device away from the consumer market, according to a new report from The Information. The report notes that the company had originally planned to launch the first version of its AR glasses, which are codenamed Project
Earlier this year, the news of multi-factor authentication attacks began to surface. MFA is supposed to be a technique to limit attacks. If someone gets hold of a password, an MFA request usually prevents them from getting any further, but this year’s attacks showed that even MFA can be vulnerable under the right circumstances. Xage
Last year, U.K. cybersecurity startup CybSafe, a “behavioral security” platform, raised a $7.9 million Series A. This SaaS product with a per-user-based, subscription licensing model has a “behavior-led” platform that manages people-related security. In other words, it uses behavioral science and data analytics to help employees be more cybersecurity aware. Users get microlearning content and
Amazon is tapping into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer this morning announced a new feature called Virtual Try-On for Shoes that will allow customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phone’s camera. The company
With more and more people ordering food from home — a trend that gathered momentum at a time when it was safer to eat at home than in restaurants — the proliferation of so-called “ghost kitchens” is continuing apace. These kitchens focus on takeaway orders and need a layer of technology to keep things running
Product research generally involves determining whether an idea for a new product might be successful and how to best develop and sell that product. It’s a straightforward process, in theory, but the basic definition belies the barriers that can crop up. Research is often costly — software-as-a-service companies spend an estimated 23% of their revenue
Jailed Kremlin critic, Alexey Navalny, has hit out at adtech giants Meta and Google for shutting off advertising inside Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine which he argues has been a huge boon to Putin’s regime by making it harder for the opposition to get out anti-war messaging. The remarks came after Navalny was
The founders of DigitalBrain have quite a back story, a pair of immigrants living in a hacker house in San Francisco, the two paid bills for a time by competing at hackathons and winning. When they came up with an idea for a business called DigitalBrain, they were able to get into Y Combinator in
The reconfiguring of Russia’s digital landscape in the wake of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine continues to play out at a macro and micro level. Here’s a development on the latter front: Local tech giant Yandex has quietly removed national borders from its maps product. Users of Yandex’s maps app, which is popular in countries
Last year, leaked photos of Meta’s smartwatch with a camera made the rounds. But the product may never make it to the light of day: according to a report in Bloomberg, the parent company of Facebook has halted its development. The report does not give a reason for the about-face, but in April, the tech
Yahya Bouhlel started coding in his early teens. Within this timeline, he interned at several companies in Palo Alto, California. Most of his work revolved around building apps and iPhone games. When he came home to Tunis, he met many students who wanted to build products like him each summer. And it was one such
No matter whether you prefer to track the public or private markets, 2022 has proven to be a messy year for software companies. After a bullish 2021, when investors sent software stocks into the stratosphere, startups rode the same wave of enthusiasm to new heights. Since then, we’ve tracked the pullback in value that software
More updates from not-for-profit climate action search engine Ecosia: It’s given itself its first major branding refresh since launch back in 2009 at the same time as announcing a shift from 3-year to 20-year contracts for its tree planting projects — idea being to ensure that the trees planted with profits from its search ads
Continual, a startup that focuses on simplifying operational AI on top of a modern data stack, today announced that it has raised a $14.5 million Series A funding round led by Innovation Endeavors. In addition, the company today announced that its cloud platform is now generally available. The company, which focuses its AI efforts on
Google is expanding a verification program for financial services ads that it launched in the UK last summer after seeing what it describes as a “pronounced decline” in reports of ads promoting financial scams. First in line to get the requirement, as part of a phased expansion of the policy, are Australia, Singapore and Taiwan.
TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technology. Its addictive nature has been the subject of numerous psychological studies and parents’ concerns, as TikTok becomes one of the most-used apps among children. In
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. On this beautiful June 8, 2022, we celebrate Dominic-Madori Davis joining the TechCrunch team. Check out her first article on the site and her first TechCrunch Plus feature, and give her a