Toyota has been taking a beating in the press these days. The new Prius, arguably the company’s standard bearer, has been damned with faint praise. One review called it “the best CD player in a download world.” Beyond that, the company has been called out for lobbying against California’s right to set emissions standards and
It’s the first official day of CES and our team has already located dozens of the coolest new gadgets, features, and weird concept cars that probably will never see the light of day. Halo (not Amazon’s Halo) has a wearable for babies that tracks heart rate, rollover, skin temperature, and movement. 10,000 steps a day
The COVID-19 pandemic brought video production to its knees, but the show must go on, and necessity is the mother of invention. Studiobox leapt into the breech, creating an interview studio in a box. For the interviewee, a rugged case shows up, delivered by a friendly FedEx delivery person. They open it, plug it in,
Tesla shares hit a session low. Investors seem to be worried that CEO Elon Musk has too much on his plate. Ed Ludlow reports on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.” 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 the latest in
Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor Growth hacking is really just growth testing Why growth activation matters Without customers, there can be no business. So how can you drive new customers
Venture capitalists are in the business of predicting the next big thing, even if they get burned in the process. While everyone piled onto crypto in 2021 — and many remain bullish about its future despite multiple failures this year — 2022 saw the rise of generative AI. But as is the case with any
Today at CES 2023, a great-big tech conference in Vegas, Mercedes-Benz announced its answer to range anxiety and the great electric-vehicle charger shortage. Following the likes of Tesla and GM, the German automaker shared a plan to develop a 10,000-charger network by 2030, starting with the U.S. and Canada, and later expanding into China, Europe
A rare privacy penalty for Apple: France’s data protection watchdog, the CNIL, has announced it imposed a sanction of €8 million (~$8.5M) on the iPhone maker for not obtaining local mobile users’ consent prior to placing (and/or reading) ad identifiers on their devices in breach of local data protection law. The sanction decision was issued on
Come on in, the water is lovely. You wouldn’t have thought there was space for more players in the busy soup that’s the crowded sous-vide market, but Typhur begs to differ, thank you very much. At CES in Las Vegas, the company released an exquisitely designed $99 temperature sensor and announced its flagship product, the
Disney+ is going to add support for enhanced IMAX signature sound by DTS to select Marvel films and more in 2023. The streaming service has been offering movies in an IMAX Enhanced format for more than a year now, and plans to expand the experience even further with this upcoming addition. Disney Streaming, in partnership
Profet AI, a Taiwanese startup that makes auto machine learning software for manufacturers, announced today it has raised $5.6 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Darwin Ventures. Returning investors Hive Ventures, AUO and SVTI also participated, along with Harbinger VC and Jensen Capital Management. Founded in 2018, Profet AI’s customers include
Microsoft plans to collaborate with the Indian space agency to give Indian space tech startups free access to cloud tools, the two said Thursday, the latest in the U.S. tech giant’s attempts to deepen its ties with young firms in the South Asian market. As part of a memorandum of understanding that Microsoft has signed
Meta is kicking off the New Year with more privacy fines and corrective orders hitting its business in Europe. The latest swathe of enforcement relates to a number of EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) complaints over the legal basis it claims to run behavioral ads. The Facebook owner’s lead data protection watchdog in the
Ember’s a bit of a weird one. The Southern California firm has two distinct – though not wholly unrelated arms. There’s the smart mug side of the business that launched the startup and the more recent cold chain shipping wing, which leverages its temperature control technology to move things like medical supplies. While it seemed
Spotify is introducing a new in-app experience called “Playlist in a Bottle” that is designed to let you capture your current music tastes and revisit them one year later. The streaming service announced on Wednesday that the new user experience will help users capture the moment by the time January 2024 rolls around. To get
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. Hello, and welcome to the middle of the week. CES is starting tomorrow, so bookmark TechCrunch’s dedicated CES page to catch up on all the happenings. Now, onto the news! — Christine
Tech isn’t as collegial as it used to be. Rocket ships are being unveiled as sputtering messes, mission-driven startups don’t feel so mission-oriented when responding to investor pressure, and widespread layoffs offer a loud reminder that jobs are breakable contracts, not sacrosanct vows. Over the past few months, thousands of employees from Meta, Twitter, Stripe,
Unless you live in a natural fibers-only household, your laundry is likely exacerbating an environmental crisis with each wash. The terrible microplastics mess we’re making — thanks in great part to the rise of synthetic clothing — apparently inspired Samsung to develop some new washing machine tech, which it called a “breakthrough in the fight
This past year was tumultuous for venture investors, to say the least. The ecosystem watched as startup funding dried up, held its breath as a $32 billion venture-backed company evaporated almost overnight and witnessed one of the largest startup acquisitions of all time. Did you hear anyone yell “bingo?” Probably not. It’s unlikely that many
CES is about to begin in earnest, but even though the show floor opens tomorrow, we’ve already found lots of interesting tech at the show, ranging from practical to bizarre (yet compelling). Read on for our roundup of the coolest things we’ve seen so far. Image Credits: Icoma Last night we spotted a suitcase-sized electric
Depending on whether you spend most of your time in hospitals, offices or in the great outdoors, when you hear “Canon,” your mind will likely go to medical scanning equipment, high-end printers or cameras. At CES this year, the 85-year-old company is leaning in a new direction, with an interesting focus on software applications. At
Natalia Holgado Sanchez Contributor Natalia Holgado Sanchez is head of capital markets at Secfi, an equity planning, stock option financing and wealth management platform for startup executives and employees. I am not sure about you, but lately I’ve been hearing the same chatter from friends and colleagues at startups. It’s usually a version of: “Will
Time’s running out if you want a chance to show what you know at TechCrunch Early Stage on April 20 in Boston, Massachusetts. What’s that mean, exactly? It’s a shot at presenting your expert content to hundreds of bootstrapping entrepreneurs and fledgling founders at the beginning or very early stages of the startup journey. The
While German startup Trade Republic is better known as a mobile app that helps you buy and sell stock, the company is adding interest on uninvested cash. Users who hold cash in their Trade Republic account will receive 2% in annual interest. This feature reminds me of Robinhood’s brokerage cash sweep program. In the U.S.,
It would be a massive understatement to suggest that robot toys are a mixed bag. They largely get the looks right, but brains are another thing altogether. Look at the time and money that went into building the first Roomba, for example, and it becomes very clear why the dream of ubiquitous home robot still
Vimeo rings in the new year with another round of layoffs, affecting 11% of its workforce. In an email to staff today, CEO Anjali Sud cited an “uncertain economic environment” as the reason for the reduction. “This was a very hard decision that impacts each of us deeply. It is also the right thing to
The “Pineapple Express” that dropped several inches of rain over the Bay Area last week left the ground saturated. The next storm front expected to arrive tomorrow is expected to bring disruption and destruction on a massive scale. It’s a decent metaphor for our startup ecosystem: Just as there aren’t enough sandbags in San Francisco
Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Brex co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras to chat about his corporate credit card and expense management startup. Henrique talked about what made him and his co-founder (Pedro Franceschi) decide to launch the company and why
Food waste and food packaging take up a significant portion of the world’s landfills. AlterPacks is tackling both issues with technology that turns food waste into takeout boxes and other containers. The Singapore-based startup has raised $1 million in pre-seed funding led by Plug and Play APAC and Seed Capital, with participation from Earth Venture
Nintendo’s Power Glove was, to quote one of the 80s’ finest films, “so bad.” The NES peripheral transfixed a generation of youngsters, only to later realize that the “bad” in this instance should perhaps have been taken a bit more literally. Nintendo ultimately sold one million of the things, but the technology just wasn’t there,