Spotify is updating its app to address a long-standing user complaint with music playback — but it’s asking customers to pay for the fix. The company announced today it will introduce, at last, a separate Play Button and a Shuffle Button at the top of albums playlists to make it easier to play the music
Oui Capital, an Africa-focused VC firm based in Lagos and Massachusetts, announced today that it has completed the first closing of its $30 million second fund, Oui Capital Mentors Fund II, as it seeks to strengthen its presence on the continent. The firm, founded in 2019 by Olu Oyinsan and Francesco Andreoli, launched its debut fund at $10
Bolt Mobility, the Miami-based micromobility startup co-founded by Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt, appears to have vanished without a trace from several of its U.S. markets. In some cases, the departure has been abrupt, leaving cities with abandoned equipment, unanswered calls and emails and lots of questions. Bolt has stopped operating in at least five
The regulatory environment surrounding crypto is shifting stateside as the SEC takes aim at major players in the web3 world, promising to shake up business as usual with aggressive action. This week on Chain Reaction, we sat down with David Nage. Nage is a Principal at Arca overseeing their early stage fund with a primary
This week, investors get earnings reports from tech giants Apple, Meta, Amazon and more. Kailey Leinz reports on “Bloomberg The Open.”
As the fintech venture market goes, so goes the venture market itself. Why? Because fintech investment has historically made up around one-fifth of every venture dollar invested — at least in recent years. And after both fintech investing and venture capital itself went a bit bonkers last year, both are dealing with a new, more conservative
Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of
It takes a veritable army to make TechCrunch Disrupt — which takes place October 18–20 in San Francisco — the well-oiled experience that savvy startuppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. If you’re looking for a no-budget way to experience Disrupt up close
While cash from Uncle Sam may not be top of mind for startups, SBA loans can provide low-cost capital Rebecca Szkutak 7 hours What’s the difference between a startup and a small business? Semantics, mostly. As many startups find themselves struggling to raise funds from venture capitalists as financing continues to decline this year, the
As I walked the halls of the massive Boston Convention Center this week for AWS re:Inforce, the division’s annual security event, I spoke to a number of vendors, and one theme was clear: Cloud security really is a shared responsibility. That idea has been around for some time, but it particularly hit home this week
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Bootstrapped startups, or companies that use their own revenue or existing cash flow to fund growth instead of relying on external capital sources, sit in a very separate box than venture-backed startups.
Today, digital world maker Stadium Live Studios, Inc. announced its $10 million Series A funding round to continue its mission of bringing fantasy sports to a younger generation. The Canadian startup was founded in 2020 by Kevin Kim and Paul Xu with the goal of gamifying the sports fandom and building a “digital playground” of
Figuring out the right text prompts to yield the best results with AI systems like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 has become a science in its own right. Now a startup is looking to let “prompt engineers” cash in with an online marketplace that sells these finely tuned phrases. PromptBase, launched in June, allows users to sell
Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at Musk holding onto doge. This week, we’re talking about where all of this crypto VC money is possibly gonna go. To get this in your inbox every Thursday, you can subscribe on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. maybe, it’s all a game? A weekly dispatch from the
Hello hello! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we do a quick rundown of the most-read TechCrunch stories from the past week. The idea: When you’ve had a busy few days, you should be able to skim Week in Review and still have a good idea of what’s up lately in tech.
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by
Bootstrapped startups, or companies that use their own revenue or existing cash flow to fund growth instead of relying on external capital sources, sit in a very separate box than venture-backed startups. By nature of asset class, bootstrapped startups prioritize revenue to keep alive, while venture-backed startups prioritize growth to keep investor buy-in for future
Kompliant, a startup delivering an “AI-driven” business onboarding and risk scoring platform, today announced that it raised $14 million in a seed round led by Level One Fund with contributions from former Visa president John Partridge and Current CEO Stuart Sopp. The funds will be put toward supporting Kompliant’s product development, CEO Edward Katzin told
The runaway success of Axie Infinity and StepN has convinced a flurry of entrepreneurs that web3 gaming, where the ownership of in-game assets is in the hands of users via blockchain adoption rather than a centralized platform, is the future. Some of the biggest hits in the space to date reward users with tokens that
Welcome 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. Several startups want to make it easier and friendlier for individuals to buy stocks. But isn’t pandemic-era stock picking just a bad habit that’d
New numbers from Counterpoint Research paint a rough picture for China’s smartphone market. Things show a steady climb, dating back to the iPhone 5’s 2012 launch, before peaking in December 2016 and beginning their descent back down to Earth. Sales in China dropped sharply in Q2 at 14.2%, year over year. The numbers are now
Clearco, a Toronto-based fintech capital provider for online companies, tells TechCrunch that it has laid off 125 people, or 25% of its entire staff. Those impacted will receive severance pay, a two-year window to exercise equity and job transition support from the leadership team, according to Clearco. The company did not say which teams and
Despite the ongoing correction in the public markets, mass layoffs in the tech sector and high inflation, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says we’re not yet in a recession. At the same time, it’s taking a lot longer to secure startup funding than it did just a few months ago, which means many companies are
It’s been nearly a year since satellite Internet-of-Things connectivity provider Swarm was acquired by SpaceX, and Swarm co-founder and CEO Sara Spangelo (now senior director of Satellite Engineering at SpaceX) is ready to talk about what Swarm’s been up to in that time. SpaceX is not known to be a super acquisitive company, so I
When the Big 3 cloud infrastructure vendors – Amazon, Microsoft and Google – reported their earnings this week, it was clear that the cloud is helping keep their overall numbers up. But perhaps what was most surprising was that after years of sitting at 33% market share, AWS was up a tick to 34% in
The healthcare crisis — more evident now as summer heatwaves put pressure on hospitals — is resulting in a staffing boom. But healthcare professionals in Europe can end up with bad terms and pay due to the many hiring agencies offering medical staff on short-term contracts. As you can imagine, this means this area is
TikTok wants to determine its users’ appetite for mobile gaming with the launch of “mini-games” that can be played inside the social video app and discovered through creators’ videos. TechCrunch learned and has now confirmed TikTok’s new gaming pilot quietly launched just weeks ago with a variety of new partners, including game developers Vodoo, Nitro
Volkswagen dropped a bombshell announcement late last week: Herbert Diess was out as CEO. As a manager, Diess was controversial, with a style that chafed both executives and labor leaders alike. But as a strategist, he was on firmer ground, deftly steering Volkswagen out of the Dieselgate scandal and setting it on a path toward
Yousuf Khan Contributor Yousuf Khan is a partner at Ridge Ventures. Prior to joining Ridge, he was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, CIO and vice president of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage, Qualys and Hult International Business School. More posts by this contributor 10 tips
Like a groundhog and its shadow, many venture capitalists see a shrinking economy and burrow away, resting their check-signing hand for better days. But climate-focused VCs are on a tear lately, pumping well over a billion dollars per quarter into startups that strive to mitigate emissions as the Earth bakes. Buoyant Ventures is one such firm