If you’re interested in writing a post for TechCrunch or TechCrunch+, please join the Twitter Space I’m hosting today at 3 p.m. PDT/6 p.m. EDT. I’ll explain our editorial guidelines, the editing process and most importantly, the criteria we use to determine whether a post creates value for readers. This Space is not a forum
admin
John Diener, the CEO of an aquaculture nutrition and genetics company, would visit hundreds of shrimp farms as part of his job. But gradually he became frustrated by some of the environmentally unsustainable practices used in many locations. One night, his wife bought some frozen shrimp to cook for dinner and he realized the industry
Google’s latest flagship phones have an impressive set of automated, AI-powered tools to help make your photos look better, with smart blurs, object removal, and skin tone exposure. While we’ll have to test them out to see if they work as advertised, they could be useful for everyone from pixel peepers to casual snapshot takers.
It makes sense that phone manufacturers are paying extra attention to how faces show up in photos, and the new Pixel 6, announced by Google today, introduces a suite of new AI-powered tools to make humans show up better than ever. The two highlights are Face Unblur — which helps reduce blur on moving faces
Fintech startup Revolut wants to foster usage in the U.S. with better free accounts. Like in other markets, Revolut offers both free and paid accounts in the U.S. When you pay for a subscription fee, you get higher fair usage caps and more features, such as insurance coverage and different card designs. With today’s change,
Mage, developing an artificial intelligence tool for product developers to build and integrate AI into apps, brought in $6.3 million in seed funding led by Gradient Ventures. Co-founders Tommy Dang and Xiaoyou Wang started the company at the end of 2020 after working together to build internal low-code tools at Airbnb. While collaborating with product
In April of this year, collaborative design powerhouse Figma launched a white boarding tool called FigJam. A separate tool and brand from Figma, FigJam allows users to brainstorm and iterate together in an infinite white board experience, complete with voice service to chat it out in the very same tool. For all intents and purposes,
The UK’s antitrust watchdog will take a close look at the music streaming market. Today the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that it will be conducting a market study of music streaming as soon as possible, as its latest piece of work aimed at expanding competition in digital markets. It uses market studies to
Gloucester, Massachusetts-based Cometeer has been around for nine years. In that time, the company has built up a mad scientist’s lair worth of coffee scientists, equipment and processes to jolt some fresh life into the industry. Based out of a former frozen seafood facility, the company has created a multimillion-dollar proprietary production line to turn
Not content with setting your feet a-tapping with its intuitive music sequencer aimed at amateur music makers, Artiphon today announced an app that adds video-making prowess to the Orba’s already impressive feature set. Appealing to your inner Video Jockey, the Orbacam demo video makes it look easy, adding video filters and effects to your visual
Aiven, a Finnish startup that helps companies combine various open source technologies with public cloud infrastructure resources, announced a $60 million investment on a $2 billion valuation today. The news follows a $100 million investment in March at an $800 million valuation, a hefty increase in such a short time. World Innovation Labs and IVP
The people who work on shipping vessels are vital to world trade, but they still experience a lot of arcane hiring processes. Many lack transparency about important things like pay or even the working conditions of they ships they will spend months on. Maritime recruitment platform Seafair was created to solve these problems. It vets
Facebook already allows users to cross-post their Instagram Stories and Reels to Facebook. Now it’s testing a new feature that would see posts flowing in the other direction, too. The company recently rolled out an option that allows users to cross-post their Facebook updates that include photos or videos over to their Instagram. For people
Expensify filed to go public late last Friday, adding its name to the growing roster of technology companies looking to list during this period of hot valuations and strong recent debuts. GitLab, for example, went public last week. The devops giant raised its price range, priced above that interval, and then shot higher once shares
Another big infusion of cash from a major investor is making its way to a fintech out of the UK on the heels of strong growth. Today Zopa — a neobank with some 500,000 users in the UK where it provides peer-to-peer lending, savings accounts, credit cards and other services — has raised $300 million,
Hello again, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s running series of posts discussing how the public markets rarely give even half of a spare fuck concerning what Apple announces at its events. Indeed, Apple’s stock seems to be far more labile to external events than from internally sourced announcements; rare is the case in which Apple’s
How to iterate on product has always been one of the top concerns at startups. But while they previously had to rely solely on customer feedback and instincts, they now also have a trove of data to balance. This dynamic creates new opportunities but also requires a new kind of arbitrage. We discussed this new
It’s been an active four quarters for technology IPOs. If you rewind the clock to Q4 2020, we’ve seen megawatt public debuts from tech shops of all sorts. Airbnb recovered from COVID-19-induced lows to list, while Roblox delayed its IPO and went out with a direct listing. DoorDash went public. C3.ai had an explosive offering
Google has today launched TaskMate in Kenya, a crowdsourcing app that lets people use smartphones to do tasks and get paid, tapping the growing gig economy. The tech giant said it has rolled out the beta version after a year-long experiment in the East African country, and is preparing to introduce it to other countries
Organizations that have made the leap into using big data to drive their business are increasingly looking for better, more efficient ways to share data with others without compromising privacy and data protection laws, and that is ushering in a rush of technologists building a number of new approaches to fill that need. In the
TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey founders and investors in cities across Europe, Middle East and Africa. Over the next few weeks, we will ask entrepreneurs in MENA cities to talk about their ecosystems, in their own words. This is your chance to put your city on the TechCrunch Map! This
The ocean economy is growing in importance, and with it grows the need to map, understand, and track the ocean itself. Saildrone has been doing just that with its fleet of autonomous science vessels, and the company has now raised a massive $100M round C to pursue its ro-boat aspirations further. Saildrone’s boats have been
In 2019, Amazon introduced a more affordable way to stream Amazon Music in their home with the launch of a free, ad-supported music service that streamed over its Echo speakers. Today, Apple is catching up with its debut of a new, lower-cost version of its Apple Music subscription it calls the “Voice plan.” Unlike Amazon’s
The necessity of animal testing is a sad one for the process of drug discovery, but there’s seemingly no good alternative to mice, even though they’re not particularly accurate human analogues. Quris claims to have the first real option in its combination of AI with data from a “patient on a chip” that provides remarkably
The decentralized reality of office work after the COVID-19 pandemic continues to drive plenty of startup activity. To wit: OfficeRnD, which makes workplace management software that’s increasingly geared toward helping businesses provide a ‘hybrid office’ model — meaning they’re offering flexible work spaces to staff who want to spend some of their time working out
Apple is set to announce new hardware today. The company is holding a (virtual) keynote at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. [embedded content] Rumor has it that
Uber is testing Pool Chance, a feature that lets riders heading in the same direction share the cost of the journey, in Kenya, with plans to roll out the low-cost service to Ghana and Nigeria. TechCrunch discovered the option when booking a car in Nairobi, Kenya. An Uber spokesperson later confirmed it was part of
One of the gating factors for getting more homeowners to make the switch to solar energy has been that solar, as a business, is hard one to get right, with many a company failing when they’ve been unable to strike the right balance between the technology working as it should, provisioning services in a cost-effective
Tim Parilla Contributor More posts by this contributor How to make sure your legal team is M&A ready A recent Corporate Counsel article highlighted a growing trend: More senior legal leaders are migrating to startups to take on general counsel roles. For some, it’s an attempt to find a better work-life balance (whoops!), while others
January 2020 seems like a long time ago: Billie Eilish swept the Grammy Awards, Tesla’s market cap made it America’s most valuable car company, and Visa announced plans to purchase Plaid for $5.3 billion. A year later, the credit card giant balked at the deal after it attracted regulatory scrutiny, but Ryan Lawler reports that