Ring just launched its first doorbell in two years. The $180 Battery Doorbell Plus brings head-to-toe video and improved resolution to the Amazon brand’s lineup. The smart home accessory features a 150×150-degree view that allows you to see a visitor’s entire body. The company says the Doorbell Plus has the highest resolution of any of its
At Spotify’s Stream On event today, the company introduced new tools to help artists on the streaming service build an audience and grow. Spotify showcased a suite of tools to help artists find fans who would enjoy their music the most, and also announced new features designed to create buzz around their content, merchandise and
The global downturn has impacted every sector, but fintech bore the brunt of it as public-market valuations fell off a cliff last year. However, it appears that even though VCs are proceeding more cautiously than before and taking their time with due diligence, they are still investing. CB Insights recently found that two of the
Meet Elyn, a new French startup that recently raised a $2.7 million (€2.5 million) pre-seed funding round led by Headline and Sequoia Arc. The company wants to offer some flexibility when it comes to e-commerce online payments. Instead of paying for items before they are even shipped, Elyn lets customers try before you buy something.
La Famiglia, a Berlin-based VC fund (no, not the Mafia organization, in case there is any confusion) has raised €250 million for its combined third seed fund (which is €165 million) and its first growth co-investment fund (€90 million). The fund has a vertical focus on ML and AI, data, logistics, and supply chains, consumerization
The reMarkable 2 is a great tablet for reading long documents on, annotating them, taking notes, sketching… but not for full-on writing. At least, it wasn’t until they put out this great keyboard folio that converts this tablet into a pretty compelling minimalist writing station — if you don’t mind a slightly premium price. The
Hotstar will lose HBO content at the end of this month in the latest setback for the Disney-owned on-demand video streaming giant that recently also lost rights for a popular cricket tournament in the country. HBO’s catalog — shows such as Succession, The Last of Us, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Game of Thrones, Industry, Watchmen, The
Elon Musk walked into Twitter’s headquarters on Wednesday carrying a kitchen sink. He posted the video to his own Twitter account. He changed the profile description to read “Chief Twit.” Musk is expected to close the deal to buy Twitter by 5 p.m. New York time Friday. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Matt Rogers, the founder and CEO of Mill, a startup that helps its customers turn their food scraps into farm feed. The former founder of Nest talked about what compelled him to jump back into
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hellooooo, Crunchers! We’re back for another round of tech news from your very favorite news site. It’s been a busy news day, and Haje is on deadline trying to finish this week’s
Local governments in the southwestern U.S. are putting up $150,000 to back what they say is a pioneering effort to “turn air into concrete at scale.” The funds will help cover the cost of the “reference project,” a collaboration between two climate tech startups and a masonry firm in Flagstaff, Arizona. The firms expect construction
Upway, the French startup that refurbishes and resells electric bikes across a range of brands, launched in the U.S. Tuesday. The company will focus its efforts on the Northeast region of the country, but its bikes will be available for shipping across the continental U.S. Upway has already made a name for itself in Europe,
The Sonos One wasn’t broken, but that doesn’t mean the company’s is above fixing it. Over two generations and a few variants, the compact speaker has become one of the company’s most popular. Really, it’s been a big win for a firm whose portfolio can give off a whiff of inaccessibility, compared to other connected
YouTube announced today that it’s relaxing the controversial profanity rules that it introduced toward the end of last year. The company says the new rules ended up creating a “stricter approach” than it had intended. The new update to the policy allows creators to use moderate and strong profanity without risking demonetization. The original policy
The economy is a bit better — kind of, maybe, sort of? While things appear to be trending in the right direction, it’s going to be a long road. Besides, if you’re unable to find work, positive macroeconomic trends are cold comfort. One of the nice things about having a platform like TechCrunch is the
Approximately one in three restaurants will go out of business in its first year. For construction companies, that figure rises to 53%. But AI projects are the real heartbreakers: A Gartner study found that 85% are destined to fail “due to bias in data, algorithms or the teams responsible for managing them.” Unfortunately, the profound
When it comes to sustainable infrastructure development, technology is making terrific leaps and bounds. The money to make it happen, however? That leaves a thing or two to be desired. For one thing, the processes remain largely manual, with financing in this sector remaining reliant on emails, spreadsheets and documents in a variety of formats.
Twitter has ruffled more regulatory feathers in the European Union by going ahead with a rollout of a much criticized paid verification feature without informing its lead data protection watchdog ahead of time — despite previously saying it would. The product, known as Twitter Blue, lets users pay to get a blue check market on
Apple has a tendency to introduce a new iPhone color in the spring. And this time, it’s yellow. The company is adding the color option to both iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. Last spring, the company launched a new green color (Alpine green for the Pro models) for the iPhone 13 series, and in
While “Ted Lasso” writers and co-stars Jason Sudeikis and Brett Goldstein have confirmed multiple times in interviews that the Apple TV+ original series will likely end after three seasons, the story of AFC Richmond may not be over. Sudeikis recently mentioned that he’s open to the idea of a spin-off, which would be a first
Serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor Vinod Khosla has some strong, contrarian advice for the venture capital industry: don’t sit on your founders’ boards. Khosla, who spoke onstage at the Upfront Summit in Los Angeles this week, spoke about the culture of capital. “I’m not a big fan of governance; I think if you engage as
Cash management — tracking who needs to pay an invoice and whether it’s been done — can make or break a business. Now, a startup building SaaS software to help finance departments manage this more intelligently is announcing some funding to expand after seeing strong demand. Growfin, a Singapore- and San Francisco–based fintech startup that
Publishing platform Medium is opening up its debut Mastodon instance, me.dm, to its members, the company announced today. Last month, Medium first teased its plans around the Fediverse — the group of interconnected servers powering a range of open source, decentralized applications, including the Twitter alternative Mastodon and others. It said it wanted to make access to
Catch co-founder Kristen Anderson tweeted Monday that the health and retirement benefits company she and co-founder Andrew Ambrosino started six years ago is shuttering. Anderson and Ambrosino created Catch “with a crazy idea that our benefits shouldn’t be tied to traditional employment and a W2 form,” she explained in a Twitter thread and post on
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. We hope you’re meeting the week with open arms, crunchers, and that the week loves you right back. Unrequited love from abstract conceptual measurements of time are so heartbreaking. Let’s kick this
When Microsoft, after a decade-long hiatus, relaunched its now 40-year-old Flight Simulator series in 2020, it reignited interest in a genre that had long been a mainstay of PC gaming. It’s one thing to marvel at the graphics of the new Flight Simulator, though, and another to try to play the game with mouse and
Amazon announced today the launch of a dedicated Oscars hub on Fire TV where movie buffs can get ready for the 2023 Academy Awards ceremony, including watching all the nominated movies and casting their votes for Oscar winners via the on-screen interactive voting experience, “Oscars predictions.” The new Oscars hub will live on the Fire
Cannabis startups have to navigate some rough waters: They can’t access federal funds or work with traditional banks, and they have to find customers across a fragmented market while adhering to local laws. But at least on the advertising front, a new Twitter update might signal smooth sailing ahead. Twitter updated its advertising rules to
Welcome to the final episode of Inside Startup Battlefield. Thank you so much for listening to our miniseries all about TechCrunch’s pitch competition. Now, it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for — the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s