As of this writing, COVID-19 has killed more than 3,400 people around the globe and the coronavirus has infected tens of thousands more. But its impact has gone much further, causing major disruptions in public markets and leading corporations to pull out of conferences and delay travel. Big tech companies are asking workers to stay
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To take on the electric future, General Motors turns to its past Ed Niedermeyer 9 hours Ed Niedermeyer Contributor Ed Niedermeyer is an author, columnist and co-host of The Autonocast. His book, Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors, was released in August 2019. More posts by this contributor GM reveals ‘Ultium,’ the heart of
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently
If you’re an early-stage startup founder with a big vision and even bigger dreams, join us and more than 10,000 other like-minded startuppers at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020 on September 14-16. Silicon Valley’s premier early-stage startup extravaganza focuses on founders, investors and startup experts determined to disrupt and reshape technology. Attending is awesome, but
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was packed with news, most of it pretty bad. But Zoom did well, so there’s that. Happily we had our dynamic pairing, Alex “Have I Died” Wilhelm and Danny “Good Hair” Crichton on hand to parse
Google Cloud today announced a new solution for its telecom customers: Anthos for Telecom. You can think of this as a specialized edition of Google’s container-based Anthos multi-cloud platform for both modernizing existing applications and building new ones on top of Kubernetes. The announcement, which was originally slated for MWC, doesn’t come as a major
Those TCL concept phones that were set for Mobile World Congress have finally arrived in prototype form. The Chinese hardware maker showcased a pair of devices this week, including one that saw a brief unveiling during a CES event. The usual concept caveat certainly applies here. As with concept cars, TCL is clearly gauging consumer
Oribi, an Israeli startup promising to democratize web analytics, is now launching in the United States. While we’ve written about a wide range of new or new-ish analytics companies, founder and CEO Iris Shoor said that most of them aren’t built for Oribi’s customers. “A lot of companies are more focused on the high end,”
Hungry, a catering marketplace that connects businesses with independent chefs, announced this week that it has raised $20 million in Series B funding. Hungry tells me that the funding valued the company at more than $100 million (pre-money). The investors were also pretty impressive: The round was led by Evolution VC Partners and former Whole Foods
On Friday, Facebook announced that it would further attempt to limit coronavirus-related chaos on its platform by banning commerce listings and advertisements for medical face masks. “We’re monitoring COVID19 closely and will make necessary updates to our policies if we see people trying to exploit this public health emergency,” Facebook Director of Product Management Rob
The COVID-19 crisis is touching all aspects of society, including how we work. In response, many companies are considering asking some percentage of their workforce to work remotely until the crisis abates. If your organization doesn’t have a great deal of experience with remote work, there are a number of key things to think about
Frontline Ventures, based in Dublin and London, has announced a new $80 million fund designed to assist U.S. tech companies expanding into Europe. The new Frontline X fund — which means the firm now has $200 million under management — focuses mainly on growth-stage B2B companies and invests up to $5 million per company alongside
The FCC is finally going to require wireless carriers to implement an anti-robocalling technology, after asking them nicely for more than a year to do so at their convenience. Of course the FCC itself is now required to do this after Congress got tired of waiting on them and took action itself. The technology is
Startup accelerator Y Combinator announced today that it has moved its demo day online, citing a “growing concern over COVID-19,” or coronavirus. The demo day has historically drawn crowds of Silicon Valley elite, journalists and both national and international venture capitalists to watch more than 100 startups come out to the world. “While we won’t
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Stocks are set to fall further today, likely forcing shares in SaaS and cloud companies down yet again. After two wild trading weeks, the high-flying tech category is off over 9% from recent highs before
Twitter’s CEO defends himself from activist investors, Google takes additional coronavirus precautions and a fizzy drink maker raises $30 million. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 6, 2020. 1. Twitter CEO’s weak argument why investors shouldn’t fire him Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey spoke yesterday at a Morgan Stanley conference, where he delivered remarks (also shared
SaaStr, the venture firm which puts on the largest conference for SaaS companies, postponed its SaaStr Annual 2020 conference today amid concerns from local and national officials around large gatherings in light of the Covid-19 virus. The event was scheduled to take place next week. On March 5th, Santa Clara County issued updated guidelines that
The European Commission announced yesterday it’s reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a “landmark agreement” which will allow the EU’s statistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations offered via these platforms across the bloc. It said it wants to encourage “balanced”
Short-form video service Quibi is announcing its full launch lineup today — exactly once month before launch. True to its name (which stands for “quick bites”), Quibi will focus on short videos that you can watch on your phone. Its content will include “movies in chapters” (longer, scripted stories broken into chapters that are between
Emma, the personal finance management app that bills itself as your best “financial friend,” has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Connect Ventures led the round, with participation from Ithaca Investments, Tiny.vc and existing investor, Aglaé Ventures. The fintech previously raised $700,000 in angel funding in June 2018. Launched in the U.K. in early 2018
Reddit, a discussion website and home to thousands of communities, announced this week a new partnership with mental health service Crisis Text Line. The company offers a mental health text line offering live, 24/7 support for people in crisis, including those considering suicide or engaging in self-harm. With this partnership, Reddit users will be able
Founded in 2005, Etsy was born before cloud infrastructure was even a thing. As the company expanded, it managed all of its operations in the same way startups did in those days — using private data centers. But a couple of years ago, the online marketplace for crafts and vintage items decided to modernize and
Convert Group, a startup based in Athens that offers a SaaS to help FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands understand how they are performing across e-commerce, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. The investment comes from Uni.fund, which is backed by the EquiFund investment platform (an initiative created by cooperation between the Hellenic Republic and
ChatableApps, a U.K. startup commercialising the work of auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr Andy Simpson, has quietly picked up seed backing from Mark Cuban. The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real-time. Alongside Simpson, the company’s co-founders are Brendan O’Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George
Spindrift, maker of fizzy soda and sparkling water, has raised $29.8 million in a funding round, per an SEC filing. The Charlestown, Mass. company was founded by Bill Creelman and has raised $70 million in known venture capital funding to date, per Crunchbase data. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment. Previous
The priorities of venture capitalists don’t always align with those of startup founders and their workers. That’s why we’ve started to see more conversation and activity around cooperatives and the idea of Exiting to Community, spearheaded by Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Where startups can hit a
Twitter tries out its own version of the popular Stories format, a court orders Otto’s founder to pay a big fine to Google and electric skateboard company Boosted makes cuts. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 5, 2020. 1. Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called ‘Fleets,’ which disappear after 24 hours Twitter
Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. “Building AI supercomputers is exciting
Social networks are in for a rude copyright awakening. A new European Union law called Article 17 essentially eradicates safe harbor and requires that they’ve made their “best effort” to get licenses from rights holders for all content on their platform. If a user uploads a video with a popular song in the background, tech
Another afternoon, another round of funding for a mobile banking app. This time, it’s Empower Finance, a San Francisco-based company that’s headed up by former Sequoia Capital partner Warren Hogarth and which just closed on $20 million in Series A funding from Icon Ventures and Defy Ventures. David Velez, who is the founder and CEO