Adobe was scheduled to hold its annual conference in Las Vegas two weeks ago, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the company to make alternate plans. In less than a month, its events team shifted venues for the massive conference, not once, but twice as the severity of the situation became clear. This year didn’t just
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The fact that so many people are stuck at home makes for strange opportunities. Italy’s confined populace has taken to singing from the balconies — and now researchers are asking them to use those same balconies to help accomplish a bit of citizen science. The project, created by the Italian National Research Council, aims to
There are early signs that media will be one of many industries to take a huge blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, with sharp declines in ad revenue and significant layoffs. Podcasting is unlikely to be an exception; Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by
The Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group said it would lose a staggering $24 billion on investments made through its Vision Fund and bets on the co-working real estate company, WeWork, and satellite telecommunications company, OneWeb. Ultimately, the company expects the losses to help generate a $7 billion total loss for the technology giant for the
Apple is readying a new iPhone for fall to replace the iPhone 11 Pro this fall, Bloomberg reports, as well as follow-ups to the iPhone 11, a new smaller HomePod, and a locator tag accessory. The top-end iPhone 11 Pro successors at least will have a new industrial design that more closely resembles the iPad
[Editor’s note: Want to get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that startups can use by email? Subscribe here.] While consumer tech has matured as a startup category in recent years, many investors continue to be bullish on specific trends like online gaming, voice, and the unbundling of platforms in favor of focused social networks. That’s
More than six dozen startup founders, venture capitalists, and lobby groups in India have requested the government to grant them a “robust relief package” to help combat severe disruptions their businesses face due to the coronavirus outbreak. In a joint letter to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, startups requested the government to bankroll 50% of their
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was present this week: Natasha, Danny and Alex, along with our intrepid producer Chris. And like the last few episodes it was good to have everyone around as there was so very much to get through. Even better there
France’s health minister Olivier Véran and digital minister Cédric O have officially announced that the French government is working on a smartphone app to slow the spread of coronavirus. The government is putting a stamp of approval on the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project but remains cautious about what to expect from an app.
As domestic and global economies grapple with the COVID-19 era, its impact on startups is coming into focus: All will be impacted, many will suffer and some will close. Boston, a city that TechCrunch keeps tabs on, has seen a number of well-known startups struggle in recent weeks. Their misfortunes come quickly after companies in
Pangea.app, a Providence, Rhode Island-based startup has raised a $400,000 Seed round, it told TechCrunch this week. The company’s new capital, raised as a post-money SAFE, comes from PJC, a Boston-based venture capital firm and Underdog Labs. Previously, Pangea.app raised money from angel investors. The company links “remote college freelancers,” per its website, to businesses
Public markets around the world have been tanking for the past few weeks, and many companies simply can’t operate during a lockdown. Sheltering in place has had some terrible economic consequences, with a record number of Americans getting laid off, including many startup employees. But what is happening in Europe? You might also be wondering
Instacart is adding more support roles to help its shoppers, customers and retail partners as the company faces unprecedented demand for its grocery delivery services due to COVID-19 shelter in place orders. Today Instacart announced that it has doubled its Care team, from 1,200 agents to 3,000 agents. Care team employees will work on answering
Earlier this week TechCrunch caught up with Union Square Ventures‘ (USV) Albert Wenger. Wenger, a managing partner at the venture firm, is well-known in the New York startup scene. USV has invested in former startups like Twitter, Twilio, Etsy and Cloudflare. TechCrunch is touching base with a number of investors during the COVID-19-driven economic slowdown.
Arvind Krishna is not the only CEO to step into a new job this week, but he is the only one charged with helping turn around one of the world’s most iconic companies. Adding to the degree of difficulty, he took the role in the midst of a global pandemic and economic crisis. No pressure
It’s not quite business as usual in the world of business, but in tech, there is still a significant amount of money being raised and invested, both to help sustain the most promising startups, and to help find those emerging despite (or because of) the wider economic and social crises arising from the coronavirus pandemic.
We’re entering a dangerous phase and you’ll need to get creative to survive Joe White 8 hours Joe White Contributor Joe is general partner of Entrepreneur First, a Greylock-backed early-stage deep tech fund; co-chair of GBx, a curated network of British entrepreneurs in the Bay Area; and a former co-founder of Moonfruit.com, a website and
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Airbnb’s recent moves in the wake of a global travel slowdown are interesting and worth understanding in chronological order. What it details is a company spending heavily today to keep up its future health. Demand
France’s competition authority has ordered Google to negotiate with publishers to pay for reuse of snippets of their content — such as can be displayed in its News aggregation service or surfaced via Google Search. The country was the first of the European Union Member States to transpose the neighbouring right for news into national
A new startup called twine wants to help people feel less isolated and alone. Though the project has been in the works for around six months, it’s launching at a time when people are struggling with being cut off from family, friends, neighbors, co-workers and others due to the COVID-19 outbreak and the resulting government
Kate Farms, the supplier of a plant-based liquid meal formula used by hospitals and healthcare providers around the country as a nutritional supplement for patients who cannot process solid foods, has raised $22 million in a round of funding. The new money will allow the company to ramp up its production as it looks to
Phos, the U.K. fintech that offers a software-only PoS so that merchants can accept payments directly on their phones without the need for additional hardware, has raised €1.3 million in funding. The round was led by New Vision 3, an early-stage VC based in Bulgaria (where a part of the Phos team is based), with
It takes either audacious self-confidence or reckless hubris to build a completely asocial video app in 2020. You can decide which best describes Quibi, Hollywood’s $1.75 billion-funded attempt at a mobile-only Netflix of 6 to 10 minutes micro-TV show episodes. Quibi manages to miss every trend and tactic that could help make it app popular.
HubSpot, the Boston-based inbound marketing firm, announced today it is launching a standalone content management system designed to make it easy for marketing personnel to add and update content. While content management, in a sense, has been core to HubSpot from the beginning — many companies use their blogging platform, for example — the company
Starling Bank, the U.K. challenger founded by veteran banker Anne Boden, isn’t furloughing any of its U.K. staff after all. In what appears to be a u-turn, it has been decided that the 41 staff who were going to be put on furlough, under the U.K. government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, are now able to
Android has received a wealth of accessibility features over the last couple years, but one that has been left to third party developers is a way for blind users to type using braille. That changes today with Android’s new built-in braille keyboard, which should soon be available as an option on all phones running version
Seeqc, a startup that is part of a relatively new class of quantum computing companies that is looking at how to best use classical computing to manage quantum processors, today announced that it has raised $5 million from M Ventures, the strategic corporate venture capital arm of Merck, the German pharmaceutical giant. Merck will be
Paidy, a Japanese fintech startup that allows customers to make online purchases without credit cards, announced today that it has raised a $48 million Series C extension from ITOCHU. The company says it has now raised a total of $281 million in equity and debt. Its latest investment from ITOCHU, one of the largest Japanese
Facebook today is launching a new feature called “Quiet Mode” that will allow you to minimize distractions by muting the app’s push notifications for a time frame you specify. The company announced the change as an update on its COVID Newsroom post, describing it as a way for users to set boundaries around how they
Assent Compliance, a company that helps large manufacturers like GE and Rolls Royce manage complex supply chains through an online data exchange, announced a new tool this week that lets any company, whether they’re a customer or not, upload bills of materials and see on a map where COVID-19 is having an impact on their