Beating expectations is worth something again Anna Heim 4 days I don’t know if anyone’s really noticed, but Netflix had a pretty great third quarter, thank you very much. The streaming platform added 2.41 million subscribers when it only expected 1 million. It also beat analysts’ financial expectations, with $7.93 billion in revenue rather than
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. As far as weeks go, this one was as disruptive as they come. TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 has officially come to a close after an iconic
In the midst of the pandemic, Pantheon Design, a maker of industrial 3D printers from Vancouver, BC, suddenly found itself getting orders from factories in the Midwest, the center of heavy industries. The reason? These manufacturers were having a hard time getting parts out of China as COVID-19 restrictions in the country squeezed global supply
Battery technology has made significant strides in recent years, but there’s one place they haven’t changed much — they’re still as stiff as a board. The era of inflexible portable power may be coming to an end, though, if Anthro Energy can bring its bendy batteries to market. It’s getting some help with that courtesy
Popular podcast platform Pocket Casts has released its mobile clients under an open source license. WordPress parent company Automattic acquired Pocket Casts last July, having been acquired by a group of public radio companies, including NPR, back in 2018. Pocket Casts is one of the most popular “podcatcher” apps outside the big tech ecosystems of
Champ Suthipongchai Contributor Champ Suthipongchai is founder and GP at Creative Ventures, a deep tech firm that invests in early-stage companies. If you’re hiring for your startup, you need to understand one thing: This is arguably one of the worst times to be looking for talent. While inflation continues to skyrocket and the Fed pumps
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. Christine is in an airport lounge and Haje is perched on the corner of a cafe bench, as the TechCrunch team is in transit post-Disrupt today. We miss our work besties already
The Biden-Harris administration, through the Department of Energy (DOE), announced Wednesday that 20 battery companies will receive a combined $2.8 billion to build and expand commercial-scale facilities in 12 states. This is the first phase of $7 billion in total from President Biden’s Infrastructure Law that aims to strengthen domestic battery supply chains and reduce
Lionel Messi (pictured, right), the Argentine professional soccer/football player who is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, is to make a push into technology investing via a new vehicle that will be shepherded by two Silicon Valley veterans. Play Time is the name given to a new partnership between the
A new startup wants to help online media outlets make money by making it easier for consumers to access paywalled content without being locked in to multiple subscriptions. Demoing as part of the Battlefield 200 cohort at TC Disrupt this week, Zette is trying to achieve something that others before have tried. Since the dawn
Jan.28 — Tesla Inc. heads into earnings after meeting key deliveries and setting stock records. Bloomberg’s Taylor Riggs reports.
Sathya Elumalai was finding it hard to manage his mother’s health after she was diagnosed with four chronic conditions. Rather than guess her health status for the day, he decided to co-found Aidar Health to get that information directly and reliably. In founding Aidar, Elumalai also created and launched MouthLab, a device it claims tracks
After attempting to sell its tech to large food service companies, cooking automation startup Jasper has shifted to direct-to-consumer. In a recent conversation, CEO Gunnar Froh told TechCrunch about the pivot and gave a general update on the company, a member of this year’s Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2022. When Gunnar founded Jasper several years
Born inside the Technical University of Munich, the engineers behind Reverion say they’ve had their heads down for seven years developing a way to get more electricity out of biogas and existing fuel-cell technology. Biogas comes from decomposing waste and is mostly made up of methane. It’s a form of chemical energy that must be
Last month, on International Equal Pay Day, the International Labour (ILO) Organization revealed that on average, women globally are paid about 20% less than men. This pay gap is even bigger for Black and Hispanic women, where Black women were found to earn over 63% less than white men, and Hispanic or Latina women 57.3%
Taylor Swift’s latest album “Midnights” has dropped, and it might be setting a new standard for China’s digital music industry. Within a day of its release, the 13-track album, priced at 35 yuan, or $4.83, has racked up nearly 200,000 copies on Tencent’s QQ Music, one of the largest music streaming platforms in China. While
Cloud cost optimization startups have become ubiquitous, and they’ve found a friendly ear among enterprise clients looking to cut costs amid the downturn. But should younger startups similarly scrutinize their cloud spend? According to several cloud investors, startups should prioritize building over optimization — unless it’s going to save them a big chunk of money.
The amount of capital raised by Black entrepreneurs continues to decrease. The latest Crunchbase numbers show that Black founders raised $187 million in Q3, a staggering decline from the nearly $1.1 billion they received in Q3 2021 and a sizable drop from the $594 million the cohort raised in Q2. Black founders raised just 0.12%
Over the last 10 years startups in Africa’s off-grid solar sector have attracted over $2.3 billion in funding. However, the largest share of the financing has gone to just seven pay-as-you-go (pay-go) Africa-based scaleups, leaving hundreds of others in the early-stage struggling to fundraise, according to the newly released biennial Gogla-World Bank report. The seven
Another antitrust lawsuit is being filed in Europe targeting Big Tech for hefty damages over claims of abusive self-preferencing. This time ecommerce giant Amazon — and its nudge-tastic ‘Buy Box’ — is in the frame for an incoming opt-out representative legal action that’s been announced in the U.K., seeking an estimated £900 million in damages
Disney collaborated with its Accelerator participant Obsess, an e-commerce platform known for creating interactive virtual storefronts, to release a new web3 experience for its Disney Music Emporium online store. The 3D 360 virtual experience lets fans discover soundtracks and songs from popular Disney films and TV shows by clicking on various vinyl records and CDs
BeReal, the photo-sharing app, has been a huge hit with Gen Z and beyond. Now with other big social apps rushing to clone some of its no-frills ethos, it’s put together a war chest to work on its next chapter. TechCrunch has learned that the startup closed a round of $60 million earlier this year.
Shares of Delhivery have dropped by over 32% since Thursday, tumbling below its issue price from May, after the Indian logistics firm posted muted quarterly business growth this week. Delhivery said this week that its supply chain service and truckload business volumes had shrunk in the quarter ending September. Shares of Delhivery plunged on the
RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of electric vehicle maker Rivian, says the company’s future goes beyond electric trucks and vans. And he’s putting considerable human power behind that effort. Of Rivian’s nearly 15,000 employees, about half are focused on future products, Scaringe said while on stage Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt. “So that’s updated compute, updated
Sensat, a platform that helps physical infrastructure companies map and visualize all their data, has raised $20.5 million in a Series B round of funding. Founded in 2015, London-based Sensat is one of a number of so-called “digital twin” software companies that serve construction, mining, energy and similar industries with tools to replicate their physical
Amazon says over half a dozen hardware vendors have indicated that they cannot enter into a TV manufacturing relationship with the e-commerce group over fear of retaliation from Google, escalating tension with the search giant with whom it competes on several businesses. The revelation, officially shared by Amazon for the first time, was made by
Warner Bros. Discovery has partnered with blockchain company Eluvio to launch tomorrow “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (Extended Version) web3 movie experience, with limited-edition multimedia non-fungible token (NFT) versions of the movie. “The Fellowship of the Ring” NFTs feature a 4K UHD, 3-hour-and-48-minute extended version of the 2001 film, over
TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 — the first in-person Disrupt in three years — is in the books. And as always, we end it by crowning the winner of Startup Battlefield. It began with 20: As seasoned TechCrunch readers will know, startups participating in the Startup Battlefield were handpicked to compete in the event. During the first
When Uils launched in 2021, it was a car rental service for rideshare drivers. But after the founders realized that many rideshare drivers don’t have access to credit, particularly in Latin America, the Buenos Aires-based company pivoted to fintech, offering financial services to drivers through a behavioral scoring engine based entirely on a person’s driving
It almost sounds too good to be true: Take basalt dust that today is wasted in the manufacturing of things like asphalt shingles, sprinkle it on farmers’ fields, and it raises crop yields while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Where’s the catch? For the entire thing to work, farmers need to add just