Apple has released a bevy of new accessibility features for iPhone, Apple Watch, and Mac, including a universal live captioning tool, improved visual and auditory detection modes, and iOS access to WatchOS apps. The new capabilities will arrive “later this year” as updates roll out to various platforms. The most widely applicable tool is probably
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A small handful of Snap Kit platform developers have not yet complied with the new guidelines around anonymous messaging and friend-finding apps announced in March. The Snapchat maker revamped its developer platform policies on March 17, 2022, to ban anonymous apps and require developers to build friend-finding apps to limit access to users 18 or
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. It’s Monday the 16th of May, and I’m back once again, like a renegade master. I’m fantastically over-caffeinated and at a standing desk today, so for the occasion, it’s a dancing desk.
A trio of PayPal Ventures alumni has raised $158 million for Infinity Ventures, a new early-stage venture firm dedicated to investing in fintech startups globally. Jeremy Jonker, Jay Ganatra and Mario Ruiz left PayPal Ventures in May 2021 and had their first close last June and final close by October 2021. They left PayPal because
Twitter is full of bots, this much we know. But how full, and what kinds of bots? With estimates ranging from Twitter’s own “under 5 percent” to independent researchers suggesting 20% or more, it’s clearly a tricky number to nail down, as the company’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, explained in a thread today. Prospective buyer Elon
The Cloud Foundry Foundation today announced the launch of Korifi, a new developer experience that will offer a Cloud Foundry-compatible application platform on top of Kubernetes. Since its initial release more than 10 years ago, the open-source Cloud Foundry project has established itself as the go-to Platform as a Service (PaaS) for many larger enterprises
Instant grocery startups sprang up and grew like weeds during Covid-19, fueled by consumers opting to practice social distancing and ready to order their food and sundries at the tap of an app; and VCs seeing an gap in the delivery market that had yet to be definitively filled. Now, perhaps inevitably, comes the consolidation.
Russ Heddleston Contributor Russ Heddleston is Head of Commercial, DocSend at Dropbox. More posts by this contributor Essential steps to thriving and surviving while fundraising Pre-seed round funding is under scrutiny: Is VC pandemic posturing here to stay? Every journey to entrepreneurship is unique. I find the world of startups fascinating because the desire to
Business cards feel almost as outdated as Victorian calling cards, but they are still a networking staple. Melbourne-based Blinq wants to do away with them altogether. The app generates a QR code that shows your professional info, including social media links, as soon as someone scans it, even if they don’t have the app installed.
As a gunman wrought terror in a Buffalo, New York supermarket over the weekend, the violence was, yet again, streamed live online. The latest U.S. mass shooting left 10 people dead and raised familiar questions about how much responsibility social media companies bear in amplifying extremism that can lead to violence and in circulating footage
Electric vehicle volumes are soaring in the U.S. — with registrations up 60% in the first quarter of the year — even as the country’s auto market contracted 18% as continued parts shortages constrained inventories. Between January and March, U.S. consumers registered 158,689 EVs, according to Experian. With EV volumes rising and automakers selling fewer
Supply chain disruptions caused — or exacerbated — by the pandemic continue to affect businesses in a range of industries. For example, 36% of small businesses responding to a U.S. Census Small Business Pulse last year reported delays with domestic suppliers. Each missed shipment or material shortage can be costly. In a 2021 Deloitte survey,
Google is facing a new class-action style lawsuit in the UK in relation to a health data scandal that broke back in 2016, when it emerged that its AI division, DeepMind, had been passed data on more than a million patients as part of an app development project by the Royal Free NHS Trust in
African merchants encounter many challenges when it comes to international shipping ranging from logistics and customs to hidden and excessive charges. Digital freight forwarders on the continent have grown to tackle these supply chain issues. In some way, they are taking after the likeness of an $8 billion company and a market leader in the
Akuity, a provider of app delivery software for Kubernetes, today announced that it closed a $20 million series A funding round led by Lead Edge Capital and Decibel Partners, bringing Akuity’s total raised to $25 million. Co-founder and CEO Hong Wang says that the funding will enable Akuity to expand the size of its workforce
New data about the real-time-bidding (RTB) system’s use of web users’ info for tracking and ad targeting, released today by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties (ICCL), suggests Google and other key players in the high velocity, surveillance-based ad auction system are processing and passing people’s data billions of times per day. “RTB is the
Uber Eats is launching two autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles on Monday with Serve Robotics, a robotic sidewalk delivery startup, and Motional, an autonomous vehicle technology company. The new programs are a part of a range of new products Uber is launching across its ride-hail and delivery platforms, which are being announced on Monday
Airbnb CEO & Co-Founder Brian Chesky joins Emily Chang for a post-earnings discussion after Airbnb exceeded estimates. Chesky predicts a high demand for travel heading into the summer season after more than two years of Covid-19 restrictions.
Welcome back to The Interchange, the weekly TechCrunch series that looks at the latest — and what’s ahead — in the global fintech industry. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about
Curious Thing founders Dr. Han Xu, Sam Zheng and David Mckeague Sydney-based Curious Thing is an aptly-named startup. The voice AI communication platform can call people and ask them questions like “How are you feeling today?” and then follow up with “how does it feel compared to yesterday?” Used primarily by health and financial companies,
Jamie Hale Contributor Jamie Hale is the CEO and co-founder of Ladder. He has also worked as a partner at Aldenwood Capital and at Jasper Ridge/Oak Hill Investment Management. Like many legacy markets poised for change, the insurance industry has already seen its first wave of innovation. Similar in many ways to the initial novelty
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. This may be your first time reading this newsletter — if so, welcome! If not, you already know that Alex created it. And if
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week we recorded live, which is always good fun, meaning that we took some questions from the audience. If you want that version of the show, we have a YouTube archive of it here.
FalconX Head of Institutional Coverage Aya Kantorovich speaks with Emily Chang about cryptocurrency markets and the implications of algorithmic stablecoins like Terra dropping below its peg value.
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Hey Jane, a digital health startup that scales access to abortion pills, makes sense. It’s a direct-to-consumer pharmacy that aims to meet consumers where they are, which is especially important as the
While stocks looked for a comeback on Friday after another torrid week of selloffs, it’s a fact that software valuations are testing new levels of price depression. There’s widespread damage as a result of all of those red charts plummeting down and to the right: The decline in the value of public software companies has
Startup Carbon Clean announced earlier this week that it raised $150 million in a Series C that provides it with a sizable war chest to continue the development of its modular carbon capture system. Carbon Clean has won its share of admirers, most recently Chevron, which led the round, and BloombergNEF, which named it a BNEF
Attention mobility startups, professionals, investors and enthusiasts! You have just 48 hours remaining to save $200 on TC Sessions: Mobility 2022, our first in-person mobility event since 2019. The event takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California with online analyst commentary on May 20. It’s the must-see mobility event of the year, and
TechCrunch is more than just a site with words. We’re also building a growing stable of podcasts focused on the most critical topics relating to the startup and venture capital worlds. To help you find the right show for your interests, we’ve compiled our audio output from the week here. Embedded below is the latest
Twitter’s new CEO Parag Agrawal has largely remained silent through the company’s ongoing rollercoaster ride, even as its likely future owner Elon Musk continues to very much do the opposite. But Agrawal finally broke his silence following an especially tumultuous week at the company, which saw him oust two key executives, Twitter’s head of product