Bloomberg’s Peter Blumberg joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss how the securities fraud trial could cost the Tesla CEO billions of dollars from his rapidly diminishing fortune.
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. It kind of feels like tech forgot its umbrella. Like, it remembered to pack its water bottle, wear the right shoes and layer up, but
Howdy, folks! Happy Friday. While our fearless Week in Review leader Greg enjoys parental leave, I’m filling in, curating the latest on the tech news front. It was a roller coaster of a week once again as economic headwinds took a brutal, demoralizing toll, and as chaos reigned at Elon Musk’s Twitter. Somewhere in the
Depending on who you ask, generative AI is either massively overhyped or undervalued. Defined as algorithm-driven tech that creates text, art and other forms of media given a prompt, it’s captured the attention of major VC backers who’ve piled hundreds of millions of dollars into firms like Jasper and Stability AI. But generative AI has
You know what it’s like — you’ve been on vacation and you’ve taken 28 million photos, and you just want to select the best 12 so you can make a calendar. Ain’t nobody got time for that — and that’s what GoodOnes is here to help you with. The app is in early access mode
Many of us would feel better if we ate better. But for patients with chronic diseases, the issue is more pressing: Fixing their diet is often key to keeping their condition under control. According to the CDC, six in 10 adults in the U.S. have a chronic disease such as diabetes or heart conditions. Millions
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha Mascarenhas, Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak jumped on the mic to talk through a diverse news week. Shout-out to our producer, Theresa Loconsolo, for putting together a script, and TC’s Andrew Mendez for
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. Happy Friday! Join us in wishing Lorenzo a very warm welcome to the team! He’s joining our crack team of cybersecurity reporters, working alongside Zack and Carly. He just published his first
Area 120, the Google in-house incubator responsible for products such as Checks, Tables, Stack and ThreadBite, has been significantly affected by broader layoffs at Google parent company Alphabet. A spokesperson tells TechCrunch via email that the majority of the Area 120 team has been “winded down,” and that only three projects from the division will
Though investment in food technology has slowed in line with the rest of the venture capital world, the industry recently achieved some milestones that suggest the sector and the government are moving into alignment. In fact, some investors feel that 2023 will be the year when alternative seafood companies and products make notable strides. More
Shadow is making its first acquisition as it announced that it would snatch up Genymobile, the company behind Genymotion. Shadow is better known for its cloud computing service that works particularly well for cloud gaming. It also offers a cloud storage service based on Nextcloud. As for Genymobile, the French startup has been around for
Starting on February 21, Amazon’s Music Unlimited streaming service will increase by $1/£1 in the U.S. and the U.K. The Amazon Music Unlimited Individual Plan is increasing from $9.99 (£9.99) to $10.99 (£10.99) per month, whereas the student plan is changing from $4.99 (£4.99) to $5.99 (£5.99) per month. The company noted the price changes
Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow breaks down Elon Musk’s testimony in Delaware where he claimed he had no role in setting up his $55 billion pay deal to run Tesla back in 2018. ——– Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch the latest full episodes of “Bloomberg Technology” with Emily Chang here: Get
Thoma Bravo, the private equity and growth capital firm, today announced that it would spend $1.8 billion CAD (~$1.34 billion) to acquire Magnet Forensics, a Waterloo-based company making software used by defense forces and businesses to investigate cybersecurity threats. Magnet Forensics will be purchased by a newly created corporation controlled by Thoma Bravo, Morpheus Purchaser
People can never land on a word to explain what is happening to women and minorities within venture. Are such founders overlooked or undersought? Underestimated and underrepresented? Marginalized? Discriminated against? Or just ignored? The excuses used to justify these sobriquets are equally scattered. Women received just 1.9% of all venture capital funds last year because
In an industry obsessed with making everything huge (at least here in the U.S.), you may not’ve expected GM to show interest in an electric baby pickup, but here we are. GM is considering a pickup design that’s “smaller than the Ford Maverick and the Hyundai Santa Cruz,” with a “low roofline” and a 4
European startups have always suffered from the perennial startup problem: how to exit? However, in Europe the problem has always been particularly acute. How many large European industrial or corporate giants acquire or acqu-hire? Not that many, and not nearly enough. It’s part of the reason so many European startups end up heading to the
Netflix reported its Q4 2022 financial results yesterday, topping 230 million global subscribers, up from 223.09 million, thanks to the addition of 7.7 million subs. During the earnings call, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company is “keeping an eye” on a free ad-supported TV (FAST) option, a move that many media companies are considering
In late-2020, Presso pivoted. It made a lot of sense at the time. People weren’t traveling much and therefore weren’t particularly hung up on getting their business attire dry-cleaned. Certainly the hospitality industry — which had been identified as a major potential revenue sort –0 had effectively ground to a screeching halt. Around that time,
Swiggy plans to lay off 380 jobs and shut down its meat marketplace as the Prosus Venture and SoftBank-backed Indian food delivery giant looks to navigate the market downturn that has forced firms to become leaner and more disciplined. In an email to employees on Friday, Swiggy co-founder and chief executive Sriharsha Majety said the
Cookie consent banners that use blatant design tricks to try to manipulate web users into agreeing to hand over their data for behavioral advertising, instead of giving people a free and fair choice to refuse this kind of creepy tracking, are facing a coordinated pushback from the European Union’s data protection regulators. A taskforce of
Entertainment company Fandom has laid off an unspecified number of employees across multiple properties including Giant Bomb, GameSpot and Metacritic. These properties are mainly focused on publishing content around gaming and TV shows. According to a report by Variety, the company employs around 500 people, and the layoffs have affected roughly 10% of its staff
Copilot, a platform aimed at helping companies, including marketing agencies, accounting firms and law firms, run and grow their businesses, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by YC Continuity and Lachy Groom at a $100 million post-money valuation. Co-founder and CEO Marlon Misra said that the funds
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. Thursday! This week has just flown by, and we’re still reeling from the excitement that a company is leaning into compliments. Compliments? In this day and age? Is there actually hope for
Britishvolt, a battery manufacturer startup, announced Tuesday that it was declaring bankruptcy, dealing a punishing blow to the United Kingdom’s automotive sector. The company had been championed by U.K. leaders, who had hoped it would provide a laundry list of benefits: good paying jobs, advanced manufacturing know-how and homegrown battery packs to support the domestic
A €390 million privacy fine for Meta announced earlier this month in the European Union — for running behavioral ads on Facebook and Instagram in the region without a valid legal basis — was several billion dollars smaller than it should have been, and orders of magnitude too tiny to be a deterrent for others
Netflix founder and co-CEO Reed Hastings announced Thursday that he would step down after more than two decades at the company. While news of his departure comes as a shock, Hastings noted that Netflix has planned its next era of leadership “for many years” in the announcement, which was shared on the company’s blog. In
Coinbase Global Inc. is firing about 950 employees, or 20% of its workforce, as the worsening crypto slump spurs another round of layoffs at the biggest US digital-asset exchange. CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong made the announcement in a blog post Tuesday. Bloomberg’s Abigail Doolittle reports. Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrM7B7SL_g1edFOnmj-SDKg Watch
Successful startup founders do not spring fully formed from the head of whatever god or goddess keeps tabs on entrepreneurs. It takes time to educate yourself, learn essential skills and acquire a smart, connected network. Here’s the great news — TechCrunch Early Stage, taking place April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts, is designed to help both
There’s no shortage of tools for brainstorming, collaboration and keeping all your knowledge in one place. Still, judging from the number of new tools that come to market on a regular basis, it seems that people are frustrated with the available tools. Scrintal recently raised $1 million to build its visual collaborative knowledge base tool