Startups need money. State and local governments need startups and the employment growth they offer. It should be obvious that the two groups can work together and make each other happy. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth. Each year, governments spend tens of billions of dollars on economic development incentives designed to attract
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After months of talks and trials, WhatsApp has finally pulled the trigger on payments in its app. Today the Facebook-owned messaging service announced that users in Brazil would be the first to be able to send and receive money by way of its messaging app, using Facebook Pay, the payments service WhatsApp owner Facebook launched
In a typical month, an IT department might deal with a small percentage of employees working remotely, but tracking a few thousand employees is one thing — moving an entire company offsite requires next-level planning. To learn more about how large organizations are adapting to the rapid shift to working from home, we spoke to Liberty
One of the first national coronavirus contacts tracing apps to be launched in Europe is being suspended in Norway after the country’s data protection authority raised concerns that the software, called ‘Smittestopp’, poses a disproportionate threat to user privacy — including by continuously uploading people’s location. Following a warning from the watchdog Friday, the Norwegian
WhatsApp is adding support for in-app payments, Apple is upgrading the MacBook Pro and Mac Pro desktop and we argue about the future of startup hubs. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 15, 2020. 1. WhatsApp finally launches payments, starting in Brazil After months of talks and trials, WhatsApp has finally pulled the trigger on
Veteran journalist Maria Ressa, the founder of Filipino independent news site Rappler, was found guilty on Monday of cyber libel charges by a Manila court. She faces up to six years in prison. Critics of the charges, which include prominent human rights and press freedom advocates, say charges filed against Ressa and Reynaldo Santos Jr,
Sinch said on Monday it has agreed to buy Indian firm ACL Mobile for £56 million (roughly $70 million) in what is the third acquisition deal the Swedish mobile voice and messaging firm has entered into at the height of a global pandemic. The Swedish firm said acquiring ACL Mobile will enable it to leverage
Chinese internet giant ByteDance has announced plans to discontinue two of its apps in India, its biggest overseas market, and urged its users to move to TikTok. Vigo Video and Vigo Lite, two apps that allow users to create and share short-form sketches and lip-syncing to Bollywood songs, posted a message early Monday (local time)
Jun.11 — Tesla Inc. is getting closer to displacing Toyota as the world’s most valuable carmaker. Colin Rusch, senior analyst at Oppenheimer, discusses his firm’s outperform rating on Tesla’s stock on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Are you an early stage founder? Then listen up, because we created TC Early Stage just for you. This two-day virtual conference takes place on July 21-22. We’ll provide the details below, but first things first. Early bird tickets cost just $199 for early-stage founders, but this sweet deal flies south on June 26 at
Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. Many in the tech industry saw the threat of the novel coronavirus early and reacted correctly. Fewer have seemed prepared for its aftereffects, like the outflow of talented employees from very pricey office
Jul.30 — Connecting cars to each other and the infrastructure around them could play an important role in the future of autonomous vehicles and improving safety. However, a debate over technology and standards is delaying global deployment. While China is focused on utilizing 5G for cars, other markets are debating the choice between a 5G-based
“A lot of people denigrate the value of talking about race and racism in technological spaces,” said Ijeoma Oluo, author of So You Want to Talk About Race, which has surged to the top of the New York Times best sellers list in paperback nonfiction, two and a half years after its initial January 2018
BLCK VC is on a mission to double the number of Black venture capitalists out there by 2024. The reason behind it shouldn’t need explaining — only 2% of all partner-level VCs are Black, and 81% of VC firms don’t have a single Black partner. It’s no surprise then, that the startup ecosystem that is
After a very high-profile departure and a year away from the company, Facebook’s former chief product officer Chris Cox will return to his long-held position with the company. Cox shared the news Thursday in a Facebook post with a photo of his company badge. Elaborating on his return to Facebook, Cox explained that the unique
Snap announces a bunch of new features, Moderna prepares for the final-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine and Sony shows off the PlayStation 5. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 12, 2020. 1. Snapchat debuts Minis, bite-sized third-party apps that live inside chat Snap Minis are lightweight third-party programs that users can quickly pull up
It has been an incredibly tough period for everyone the past few months as the global COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out whole industries from the economic map. While tech has been among the most resilient industries in the face of this cataclysm, the extreme mobility of the industry’s workforce begs large questions about what the
Peppy, the U.K. employee healthcare benefits platform focusing on family support, female health and mental well-being, has raised £1.7 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Outward VC, with participation from Seedcamp, Hambro Perks, Form Ventures and various unnamed angel investors. The London-based startup says the new funding will support the next stage of
Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under the auspices of its “New Product Experimentation” team, which launched last
Volkswagen has started to sell a home-charging device as the automaker prepares to bring its new ID family of electric vehicles to market. The ID.3 is the first electric vehicle under the ID label and will only be sold in Europe. Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be
APIs provide a way to build connections to a set of disparate applications and data sources, and can help simplify a lot of the complex integration issues companies face. Postman has built an enterprise API platform and today it got rewarded with a $150 million Series C investment on a whopping $2 billion valuation —
APX is an early-stage accelerator in Berlin, but it’s not quite your average accelerator — it’s essentially a joint venture between giant European publishing house Axel Springer and Porsche, the German automaker. Earlier this month, we sat down with APX managing director Jörg Rheinboldt to discuss what makes APX different and how it’s weathering the
Light’s push into smartphones was an inevitability. Sure, the startup turned heads with its pricey L16 camera, but these days mobile photography is almost exclusively the domain of the handset. Early last year, the answer arrived in the form of the trypophobia-inducing Nokia 9 PureView. In a category where manufacturers raced to add more cameras, the
Jun.08 — Bitcoin continues to fall from its December highs and chances of it rebounding in the near future seem far from reality. Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde sat down with Erik Voorhees, CEO of ShapeShift. He’s been an original builder and entrepreneur in Bitcoin since 2011.
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. After a pretty busy week on the show we’re here with our regular Friday episode, which means lots of venture rounds and new venture capital funds to dig into. Thankfully we had our full contingent on hand: Danny
Pipo Saude, a Brazilian provider of healthcare services for businesses and their employees, has raised $4.6 million in a new round of funding to expand its footprint in Brazil. “The company’s platform offers recommendations for the healthcare products that fit the team, enabling businesses to improve the quality of life of their employees,” said chief
Extra Crunch Live, TechCrunch’s chat series for Extra Crunch members, is tacking toward founders after bringing on a host of investors: on Thursday, June 18, Plaid CEO Zach Perret will join us for a conversation. Plaid, known for APIs that connect fintech applications with users’ bank accounts, came to prominence in late 2018 when it
The unicorns are still at it, Vision Fund 2 or no Vision Fund 2. This week, Instacart announced that it has raised fresh capital at a valuation north of $13 billion. And, on the tail of that news item, DoorDash is looking to add more cash at a valuation that could stretch to a pre-money
The digitally face-swapped videos known as deepfakes aren’t going anywhere, but if platforms want to be able to keep an eye on them, they need to find them first. Doing so was the object of Facebook’s “Deepfake Detection Challenge,” launched last year. After months of competition the winners have emerged, and they’re… better than guessing.
Over the past few years, Snapchat has been building up an increasingly complex weave of partnerships. They have their advertising partners that power the vast majority of their monetization efforts. They have app developers on Snap Kit that they are also selling new features like CameraKit and Minis too. They’re bringing game developers on board