Enterprise

Amazon this morning announced plans to acquire iRobot for an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion. The home robotics firm, best known for pioneering the robotic vacuum, was founded in 1990 by  MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab members Colin Angle, Rodney Brooks and Helen Greiner. Twelve years after its founding, the company introduced the Roomba, a brand

Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting, which the company now refers to as its Cyber Roundup, Thursday at the Tesla Gigafactory Texas. The Cyber Roundup comes just a couple of weeks after Tesla reported its Q2 earnings, which showed quarterly revenue declines caused by production challenges, even as the company grew year-over-year. The agenda had 13 shareholder

Clubhouse, the social audio app that rose in popularity amid the pandemic, is looking to shake up its platform with the launch of private communities called “Houses.” The company’s new offering allows any person or group to create their own curated “House” within Clubhouse. Users can sign up to create Houses starting today, but Clubhouse says

Axio, a platform for cybersecurity risk evaluation, today announced the closure of a $23 million Series B round led by Temasek’s ISTARI, with participation from investors NFP Ventures, IA Capital Group and former BP CEO Bob Dudley. Axio CEO Scott Kannry tells TechCrunch that the proceeds — which bring New York–based Axio’s total capital raised

TechCrunch Disrupt is back, in person on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and we want to remind university and college students that one minute can change the trajectory of your startup dreams. How? The possibility begins when you apply to the TechCrunch Student Pitch Competition (powered by Blackstone LaunchPad). Here’s how it works: Record a

Andreessen Horowitz’s recent hire of former Jordan Park Group Chief Investment Officer Michel Del Buono suggests the venture capital firm is getting into startup founder wealth management. The outfit, more commonly known as a16z, confirmed Del Buono’s hire as CIO to oversee those types of services for founders, as first reported by Bloomberg. TechCrunch reached

Braxia Scientific is a Toronto-based company that focuses on depression, suicidality and related mental health conditions. Today, the company announced it is buying KetaMD to extend its telehealth prowess and in particular to expand its tech-facilitated ketamine-based treatments from its current local market of Florida into the wider U.S. The deal is worth around $6

Ro’s co-founder and chief growth officer Rob Schutz is stepping back from his current role and will stay involved with the digital health company in an advisory role, TechCrunch has learned. The shift comes just weeks after Ro cut 18% of its staff to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of our organization and better map our

Yair Snir Contributor Yair Snir is vice president and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital, leading venture investment activity in Europe and Israel. Good companies get bought not sold. This saying has been passed down as conventional wisdom through generations of entrepreneurs, but it doesn’t tell the entire story. While the IPO is characterized as

This past month has seen several African fintechs such as Flutterwave and Union54 make headlines for compliance checks and fraud issues. Both unlinked events re-emphasize the importance of know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and why regulators enforce strict policies that financial institutions need to be held accountable to while operating across

Discord announced new measures to bring its Android app into parity with its iOS counterpart today. The changes will improve the app’s experience for Android, which has historically lagged behind the iPhone version of Discord. Discord says the app is now “rebuilt from the ground up” using React Native, a developer framework for making apps

We asked TechCrunch readers to vote for the roundtable sessions they would most like to see at TC Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and startup fans from around the world have spoken. Roundtables — some of the most popular sessions at TechCrunch Disrupt — are 30-minute expert-led discussions designed for up to 20

Oui Capital, an Africa-focused VC firm based in Lagos and Massachusetts, announced today that it has completed the first closing of its $30 million second fund, Oui Capital Mentors Fund II, as it seeks to strengthen its presence on the continent.  The firm, founded in 2019 by Olu Oyinsan and Francesco Andreoli, launched its debut fund at $10

The regulatory environment surrounding crypto is shifting stateside as the SEC takes aim at major players in the web3 world, promising to shake up business as usual with aggressive action. This week on Chain Reaction, we sat down with David Nage. Nage is a Principal at Arca overseeing their early stage fund with a primary

While cash from Uncle Sam may not be top of mind for startups, SBA loans can provide low-cost capital Rebecca Szkutak 7 hours What’s the difference between a startup and a small business? Semantics, mostly. As many startups find themselves struggling to raise funds from venture capitalists as financing continues to decline this year, the

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. Bootstrapped startups, or companies that use their own revenue or existing cash flow to fund growth instead of relying on external capital sources, sit in a very separate box than venture-backed startups.

Hello hello! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we do a quick rundown of the most-read TechCrunch stories from the past week. The idea: When you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to skim Week in Review and still have a good idea of what’s up lately in tech.

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Several startups want to make it easier and friendlier for individuals to buy stocks. But isn’t pandemic-era stock picking just a bad habit that’d

When the Big 3 cloud infrastructure vendors – Amazon, Microsoft and Google – reported their earnings this week, it was clear that the cloud is helping keep their overall numbers up. But perhaps what was most surprising was that after years of sitting at 33% market share, AWS was up a tick to 34% in

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Good morning, you wonderful specimens of humanity! It’s Friday, and I’m writing this from the hammock in my sunny North Oakland garden, so life ain’t all that bad. (I can only assume

Twitter’s bid to get Elon Musk to follow through with his multi-billion-dollar bid to buy the social network will officially go to trial on October 17, a Delaware judge has confirmed. As Bloomberg reported earlier today, the ongoing feud between Twitter and the world’s wealthiest man will come to a head in the Delaware Court

Twitter is increasing the price of its subscription service, Twitter Blue, from $2.99 to $4.99 per month. Starting in October, existing subscribers will have to pay more. New users will currently have to pay the hiked rate. Apart from the U.S., the price hike is also applicable to other countries like Australia, Canada and New

Apple released its third-quarter earnings on Thursday and reported $19.6 billion in services revenue, marking a 12% year-over-year increase, but narrowly falling short of Wall Street predictions of about $19.7 billion. The tech giant’s third-quarter services revenue also falls short of last quarter’s record-breaking $19.8 billion and is also down from the 27% growth it

Facebook users were yesterday unable to engage in discussions or see comments on popular pages, sending confusion to some consumers, who thought they had been censored. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, told TechCrunch that a technical issue had caused the glitch that temporarily concealed comments on the page posts of verified accounts. Facebook said it had

Autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai is forming a strategic joint venture with Sany Heavy Truck, a subsidiary of Chinese heavy equipment manufacturer Sany Heavy Industry, to create an autonomous truck brand. The plan is to combine Pony.ai’s “virtual driver” with Sany’s technical prowess in building heavy-duty trucks to build automotive-grade self-driving trucks with Level 4 autonomy,

Apple has released the fourth developer beta for iOS 16 on Wednesday, bringing limits to the ability to edit and delete iMessages. Most notably, the company is adding an edit history log that will give the person you’re messaging the ability to see any edits you’ve made. Prior to the introduction of an edit history

Debt gets a bad rap. That’s partly because it’s associated with higher risk. For startups, a few missed payments could force them to shutter, depending on the terms of their loan agreements. But despite its reputation, debt isn’t an act of desperation during down times. As my colleague Alex Wilhelm notes, for companies that have

Applying for mortgages is often a time-consuming and disorganized process, with reams of manual paperwork required. Based in Jakarta, IDEAL simplifies the process with a platform that lets users compare mortgage products and apply for them from multiple banks at the same time. The startup announced today it has raised $3.8 million in pre-seed funding

The parent company to Pokémon Go, Niantic has been very clear over the years that it wants us to take a “stupid walk for our stupid mental health,” as the meme goes. This week, Pokémon Go is rolling out a “daily adventure incense,” which brings “rare” Pokémon to you, so long as you’re in motion. This

Best Buy is opening a new digital-first 5,000 square feet small store in Monroe, North Carolina on July 26. This store will have selected tech products like home theater and audio, computing, headphones, wearables, fitness, cell phones, cameras, smart home, and small appliances that shoppers can experience and purchase. This is a departure from the