Hey, folks, it’s Kyle, filling in for Greg, who’s out for the next few weeks on parental leave. While he enjoys time with his beautiful, healthy newborn (what better gift for the holidays, eh?), I’m learning the ropes of Week in Review to make sure y’all stay up to date with the latest in tech.
As we were roaming the halls of CES in Las Vegas, one product category stood out across the board; there’s a lot of focus on portable (and less portable) power storage. These are more than your average charge-your-phone-once-or-twice battery packs, ranging from simple small power packs, to sophisticated power stations that can connect to portable
We’ve seen a lot of companies trying to turn the humble pen into something a little more digital, but few have been as elegantly successful as Nuwa. The company showed off its smart pen at CES in Las Vegas this week. The smart pen uses three integrated cameras, along with motion and pressure-sensing electronics to take
You wait for years for a urine analysis company, then all of them hit their flow all at once. One of the notable trends at CES in Las Vegas this year was that the quantified-self movement is going deeper. No longer content with just measuring your heart rate, number of steps, and EKG on your
Media streamer Plex was promising to expand its free streaming service to include rentals years ago, but that announcement arrived just ahead of the pandemic — at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2020. The company then also faced a host of other issues, including technical concerns, that required the company to reprioritize its plans.
W elcome 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. It is always nice to start a new year with a dose of optimism — as long as it is warranted. After reviewing
W elcome 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. If there’s one thing I can rely on every new year, it is that people will debate whether resolutions are an irrelevant, capitalistic waste
If you have a particular hatred for the microwave or prefer your food to be heated gently when you’re ready for lunch, Steambox is ready for your steamy lunch encounters. The company sold more than 500 of its device via Kickstarter at the end of 2019, and is finally ready to start shipping its device.
Something wasn’t working. In late 2020, Magic Leap announced a major change spearheaded by incoming CEO, Peggy Johnson. “[W]hat I found was nothing was really broken,” she told the press at the time, “It just needed to have a bit more focus.” From the outside, certainly, it seemed like typically understated Chief Executive speak. It
Through a partnership with online movie database IMDb, TikTok launched a new feature that allows users to tag a movie or TV show in their video. The link directs viewers to a dedicated in-app page with IMDb-provided information about the specific title as well as a collection of related TikTok videos. TikTok creators can also
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk sent an email late Tuesday to “Everybody” at his electric-car company saying they need to get back to the office or find somewhere else to work. Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow reports.
Raphael Mukomilow Contributor Raphael Mukomilow is partner and head of growth at Picus Capital. His focus is later-stage and growth investments. Pierre Bourdon Contributor Pierre Bourdon is an investor at Picus Capital. After the challenging year that was 2022, one might think that the coming months are not looking great for VCs or founders. But,
David Magerman Contributor The global economic and political turmoil of the past year has had a meaningful impact on corporate innovation in the technology industry and beyond. The worldwide battle with COVID, the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the economic fallout of the COVID lockdowns and supply chain disruptions have together created a painful combination of a
You probably haven’t heard of Brane Audio yet, but trust me on this one: You will. One of my highlights at CES in Las Vegas today was listening to the company’s debut speaker, the Brane X, side-by-side with some other well-known speaker brands. The company’s founder has a background from high-precision magnetics, and after exiting
After surpassing 1.02 billion total hours viewed in the third week of its debut, Netflix’s “Wednesday” has been renewed for a second season, the company announced today. The series originally premiered in November with eight episodes. It’s centered around the popular “Addams Family” character, Wednesday Addams (played by Jenna Ortega), as she begins her first
HealthAtom is aiming to be the go-to cloud-based operations system for small and midsize healthcare companies across Latin America (LatAm). Although the company has been around since 2012, this is the first time it has announced fresh capital, in the amount of $10 million. HealthAtom’s medilink and dentalink software suites let clinics create schedules, manage
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’ve made it to Friday! If you are looking for a good podcast episode, I highly recommend today’s Equity where Natasha M, Mary Ann and Becca talk about CES, NYE, SBF and
From the desk of ‘I’m not sure this is a good idea’ at CES in Las Vegas, comes 444. The early-stage startup is planning to combine pepper spray with some electronics so a potential attack victim’s friends can be notified when they’ve had to deploy the defence spray to get themselves out of a bind.
In November, Netflix unveiled its long-anticipated ad-supported tier which offers customers in select markets, including the U.S., the ability to offset the cost of a Netflix subscription by allowing their viewing to be interrupted with ad breaks. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Netflix President of Worldwide Advertising, Jeremi Gorman, offered some initial
It’s impossible to plan for everything that can go wrong while building a startup. A definitive founder’s guide would have to include chapters like, “So you’ve hired the wrong person,” or, “Five ways to tell if an investor is lying to you.” A definitive guide would have to include chapters like, “So you’ve hired the
Market headwinds continue to dog startups chasing venture backing. That’s the top-level finding of a new PitchBook report that looked at VC trends toward the end of 2022, specifically Q4, including investments made at the seed, late-stage and nearing-the-exit levels. First, the good news: “On an annual basis, angel- and seed-stage deal activity remained relatively
AR tech sounds pretty cool, but nobody wants to be a glasshole. Today at CES, we checked out Lumus‘ bid to make AR glasses a little bit less cringe. The company creates a series of glasses that look, well, more or less like glasses, and are compatible with prescription lenses, too. The new glasses are
Verizon last month introduced a new subscription service aggregator, +Play, into open beta, allowing its customers to purchase and manage subscriptions to over 20 services, including Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN+, discovery+, AMC+, NFL+, NBA League Pass and NBA TV. But while the initial version of the service is expected to launch in the
Bloomberg’s Sonali Basak and Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang discuss the Super Bowl 2022 phenomenon: crypto ads and crypto bets.
Apartment living can be a lonely life, but OneRoof is here to change that. The company offers a hyperlocal social network app meant to connect people in the same residential building around common interests like hobbies and to even organize around a common goal. The pre-revenue company has grown up a lot since we profiled
Indian fintech KreditBee has raised an additional $100 million in a funding round, it said, as the lender looks to scale its business in the South Asian market. The new cash infusion is part of the larger Series D funding, which KreditBee said has now closed at $200 million. The new funding, led by Advent
At CES, the company launches battery backup, a lawnmower, a portable A/C and a portable fridge Haje Jan Kamps 21 hours Today at its special launch event, home backup power giant EcoFlow launched a flurry of new products, including a ‘Whole-home Backup Power Solution.’ The company also launched a battery-powered fridge and a portable battery-powered
Roku reached a new milestone in 2022, the company announced today, surpassing 70 million active accounts globally, an increase of nearly 10 million users year over year. The company had 60.1 million accounts in Q4 2021 and 65.4 million in Q3 2022. Roku also reported a 19% year over year jump in global streaming hours.
There isn’t much hope that 2023’s fundraising environment will be better for startups than last year’s. It seems likely that it will get worse before it gets better — even at the earliest stages, which have largely been insulated thus far. But for burgeoning companies capable of building business models that reflect current conditions and
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. Hello, I hope it is a great Thursday for you so far. For me, it’s the little things that get me excited and today it is Delta Air Lines’ announcement that SkyMiles