Enterprise

Netflix is developing features that would allow members to play its mobile games with one another and competitively rank themselves on gaming leaderboards. The company, starting last month, quietly launched the ability for users to create unique “game handles” in a subset of its mobile games, including Into The Breach, followed by Bowling Ballers, Mahjong

Novel competition litigation filed in the UK against Facebook/Meta — seeking to extract billions in damages from the social media giant via an opt-out class action lawsuit route — will proceed to a certification hearing at the end of January, 2023, after Meta did not challenge the choice of forum to hear the claim. The

It’s been almost four years since the Proud Boys were banned from Facebook, but apparently its members are still trying to claw their way back onto the social network after all this time. Meta disclosed Thursday that it recently removed a network of activity affiliated with the violent extremist group after it detected members making

Black Girls Code board member Heather Hiles is breaking their silence regarding allegations made against them from Black Girls Code founder, Kimberly Bryant. Hiles comments are the latest in a still developing fight between Black Girls Code’s board and the nonprofit’s recently ousted founder Kimberly Bryant. The battle includes a number of known lawsuits, including

Google says it has pulled over 2,000 personal loan apps from its Play Store in India, and is working to make some changes to its policy at a time when the local central bank is increasingly cracking down on predatory practices. Saikat Mitra, Senior Director and Head of Trust and Safety at Google Asia-Pacific, said at

Supply chain disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine is driving increased costs of goods and services, affecting not only the industrial sector (e.g., semiconductors), but also the agriculture industry. Global food prices have dropped for three consecutive months but still remain relatively high compared to last year, per the 2022

Collage-style video “mood boards” are going viral on TikTok — and so is the app making them possible. Pinterest’s recently soft-launched collage maker Shuffles has been climbing up the App Store’s Top Charts thanks to demand from Gen Z users who are leveraging the new creative expression tool to make, publish and share visual content.

TechCrunch+ dug into the late-stage funding market yesterday using recent data from Carta to explore how the largest startup rounds are changing. Catching up those who missed the piece: We are seeing late-stage startup rounds shrink rapidly, even if valuations for the startups closest to going public are proving stickier than we perhaps expected. Today

His hedge fund investors didn’t want to listen to him when, in 1999, Julian Robertson questioned the sanity of the prices being paid for shares in nascent internet companies. So months after being berated for 15 minutes at an annual shareholders meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York in October 1999, he began the

Meta, formally Facebook, has officially rolled out what it’s calling Meta accounts and Meta Horizon Profiles. The global launch will be gradual, but both “accounts” are to be used in place of the personal social media account logins — Facebook and Instagram — once used to log in to the company’s virtual reality (VR) system. 

Dutchie today is announcing a new cannabis point of sale platform, including a dual-screen terminal for dispensaries. Called Dutchie POS, this comes just weeks after the company announced a new payment platform, Dutchie Pay. With Dutchie POS and Dutchie Pay, the cannabis tech company is now offering cannabis operators one of the most comprehensive platforms

Black Girls Code filed a lawsuit Monday alleging its founder Kimberly Bryant, who was ousted from her role as a board member and chief executive earlier this month, has “hijacked” the nonprofit’s website. The heart of the complaint, which was filed with the U.S District Court for the Northern District of California, is over control

Ryan Neu Contributor Ryan Neu is the founder and CEO of Vendr, a SaaS purchase platform. Previously, he was a B2B SaaS sales leader at both InVision and HubSpot. Companies are hitting a considerable inflection point when it comes to how they assemble and manage their software tech stack. On one hand, the storm of

Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia disclosed 15 early-stage startups it has selected for the seventh cohort of its accelerator program Surge, pushing ahead with new investments even as the deal activity has considerably slowed in the region. Since its launch in March 2019, the accelerator has helped its participating startups collectively raise over $1.7

YouTube removed two videos from its platform showing Tesla drivers using their own children to conduct vehicle safety tests. The tests were meant to prove that Tesla’s Autopilot and “full self-driving” (FSD) beta software — the automaker’s advanced driver assistance systems which have automated driving features but do not enable the cars to drive themselves

In its five years as a standalone automaker, Polestar has placed into production two vehicles and announced the delivery schedule of four additional vehicles. The latest, the Polestar 6, is an electric roadster that’s due to hit the road in 2026. It’s an impressive pace for a new company.  While some of that success can

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. It’s been a week of people trying to make sense of what’s happening in tech. If you’ve been compartmentalizing: Cheers! Now let me walk you through what’s been going on. On Monday,

It was the world’s largest gathering of internet celebrities. As I waited to meet Twitch streamer Code Miko in a hotel lobby at VidCon, I spotted an Instagram-famous husky, a fan favorite contestant from Netflix’s “The Circle,” and a controversial beauty blogger. But when a fashionable Korean American woman approached me, I realized I was

Netflix’s ad-supported tier may not run commercials during kids’ programs, a decision that its rival Disney+ made in May. As reported by Bloomberg, Netflix told partners that kids’ programming would stay commercial-free. Sources also told the outlet that original movies would initially stay ad-free, likely to appease filmmakers who don’t want their high-budget releases ruined

John Carmack, the game developer who co-founded id Software and served as Oculus’s CTO, is working on a new venture — and has already attracted capital from some big names. Carmack said Friday his new artificial general intelligence startup, called Keen Technologies, has raised $20 million in a financing round from former GitHub CEO Nat

Crypto enthusiasts promise to build a decentralized money system that allows people to freely trade without any intermediary intervention. It’s a rosy picture, but recent events of security vulnerability indicate that the decentralized world might not be working as well as the believers envision yet. That’s why entrepreneurs, infused with venture capital, are racing to

Sunstone, a higher education startup that collaborates with academic institutions to help upskill their students for employability, has raised $35 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand to more Indian cities. Sunstone founders said Friday WestBridge Capital led the startup’s Series C financing round. Alteria Capital also participated in the funding,

A group of more than 600 Google employees is pressing the company to expand worker health benefits, divest itself of some political ties and bolster user privacy in light of the Supreme Court decision to strip federal abortion rights. The Google workers demanded the changes in a petition led by the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU),

When it all comes down to it, what is a business? You are an organization that has identified a pain point that people are experiencing. In order to remove that pain point, you are offering a product in exchange for money. It sounds so simple. In the startup world, we often talk about painkillers versus

Dodge revealed Wednesday an EV concept that looks — and even sounds — like the gas-powered Charger muscle car that will be discontinued next year. The two-door Dodge Charger Daytona SRT Concept — the Daytona name a nod to its gas-powered ancestor’s 200 mph NASCAR track milestone — is not just a design exercise, according

Following Amazon’s $3.9 billion acquisition of One Medical, Business Insider reported the company would add mental health services to its portfolio. Although there are skeptics who fear Amazon’s privacy track record in the context of healthcare, some say the company’s moves could be positive for the industry.  The tech behemoth originally entered the health sector

Crowdfunding website Kickstarter sparked fears overnight of a possible security incident after the company sent unsolicited password reset emails to millions of users without prior explanation. The emails, seen by TechCrunch, tells users that Kickstarter is “simplifying its login process” and urges users to “set a new password for your Kickstarter account.” The emails offered

Bangalore-based Exponent Energy might have come up with a way to deliver 15-minute rapid charging for electric vehicles. The startup, which just raised a $13 million Series A, relies on a combination of its proprietary battery pack and charging infrastructure to achieve such a feat. Exponent Energy’s business model is geared towards OEMs building commercial

SAIC Mobility Robotaxi, an arm of state-owned Chinese automaker SAIC aiming to launch a commercial robotaxi service, raised $148 million (RMB 1 billion). The funds will be used to scale its robotaxi service in China, which it will operate in partnership with autonomous vehicle company Momenta. SAIC Group led the Series B round that also

Motional, the Aptiv-Hyundai joint venture that’s working to commercialize autonomous driving technology, has launched its new all-electric IONIQ 5-based robotaxi for driverless ride-hail operations on the Lyft network in Las Vegas. The news follows years of collaboration between the two companies in Las Vegas. The launch of the IONIQs, which marks the turnover of Motional’s