About a year ago, Keychron launched its Q-series of custom mechanical keyboards that now spans the gamut from small 60% boards to full-size options, with everything in between. Whatever your preference, Keychron clearly wants to be in the running for your money. Now, the company is launching the Q8, a rare 65% Alice-style board with
Google is again delaying plans to phase out Chrome’s use of third-party cookies — the files websites use to remember preferences and track online activity. In a blog post, Anthony Chavez, Google’s VP of Privacy Sandbox, said that the company is now targeting the “second half of 2024” as the timeframe for adopting an alternative
Our foodchains are notorious for being not-exactly-amazing for the amount of carbon they crank into the atmosphere. Root Global just raised a round of funding in a bid to become what it calls the ‘carbon OS’ for the food industry. It builds software to help companies up and down the food value chain get to
Shypyard, a startup developing business planning products and services for brands and direct-to-consumer merchants, closed on $3 million in seed funding. The round was led by Gradient Ventures with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, Position Ventures and a group of angel investors that includes current and former executives and founders at Shopify, BigCommerce and SnapCommerce.
Microsoft announced its fourth-quarter results Tuesday, missing Wall Street’s expectations. The company reported it had $51.9 billion in sales for the quarter that ended June 30, an increase of 12% year-over-year. Analysts were expecting around $52.5 billion. Net income inched up 2% to $16.74 billion. This is considered the slowest revenue growth for Microsoft since 2020.
Debt gets a bad rap. That’s partly because it’s associated with higher risk. For startups, a few missed payments could force them to shutter, depending on the terms of their loan agreements. But despite its reputation, debt isn’t an act of desperation during down times. As my colleague Alex Wilhelm notes, for companies that have
As regulation, platform dynamics and consumer choice continue to eat into the adtech stalwart known as cookies, it’s leaving a gap in the market for advertising solutions that can work well without relying on cookie functionality. Today, an adtech out of Spain that’s doing just this has raised a big round of funding to double
A new report detailing the cost of mobile data in different markets across the world, bears the evidence of why internet use in most of Africa remains low despite the growing broadband internet coverage. The Worldwide Mobile Pricing 2022 report, which surveyed 233 countries, shows that five of the 10 most expensive countries to buy
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. What is up, you delightful beings. Today, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Instagram. Devin wrote about how the platform just keeps getting worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok,
The pandemic normalized delivery in the U.S. But even before the health crises struck, delivery sales at restaurants alone were increasing at a rate of 7% to 8% per year, roughly twice that of sales across the entire restaurant industry, according to McKinsey. The trouble is, delivery can be a nightmare from the restaurant and
Cruise, the General Motors subsidiary dedicated to commercializing autonomous vehicles, saw a jump in expenses during the second quarter as the company launched its first commercial robotaxi service in San Francisco. Cruise’s expenses hit around $550 million compared to $332 million during the same quarter of last year. Operating losses in the second quarter topped
Applying for mortgages is often a time-consuming and disorganized process, with reams of manual paperwork required. Based in Jakarta, IDEAL simplifies the process with a platform that lets users compare mortgage products and apply for them from multiple banks at the same time. The startup announced today it has raised $3.8 million in pre-seed funding
Infobip, a cloud communications startup which – like Twillio – handles things like SMS, email, voice and WhatsApp messenger for customer engagement, has completed its acquisition of VoIP provider Peerless Network. Although the deal was announced last November, TechCrunch can exclusively reveal that it was worth north of $200 million. Last year info big raised
Butlr, an MIT Media Lab spinout developing sensors that use body heat to estimate office occupancy, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series A round with participation from Carrier Global Corporation (a strategic investor), Tiger Global, Primetime Partners, E14, Unionlabs, Hyperplane and Tectonic Ventures. Co-founder and CEO Honghao Deng said that the
It seems everything is doom and gloom in the U.S. venture market, between startup layoffs and declining venture deal counts to an essentially moribund exit environment. But there are bright spots, one of which being the Southeast region, which is on track for its best year yet. The Southeast region had its best quarter for
There are many companies bringing one-click checkout to the direct-to-consumer marketplace, but few are developing similar tools for the business-to-business marketplace. B2B payment volume is five times the size of business-to-consumer retail payments, yet much of those payments are not being done online. That’s where Balance comes in. The company, co-founded by former PayPal employees
Inflation is up and consumer confidence is down, which is why e-commerce startups that hope to weather the ongoing downturn should expand their product offerings. Does that sound counterintuitive? “The more complementary and additive a product is to your catalog, the larger your cart size and the more likely a customer is to return,” says
The parent company to Pokémon Go, Niantic has been very clear over the years that it wants us to take a “stupid walk for our stupid mental health,” as the meme goes. This week, Pokémon Go is rolling out a “daily adventure incense,” which brings “rare” Pokémon to you, so long as you’re in motion. This
Sono Motors unveiled this week the final production design of the Sion EV, a solar electric vehicle that’s been in the making since the Munich-based startup launched in 2016. It’s been a long and bumpy road for Sono Motors, a journey that involved a couple of crowdfunding campaigns, a near insolvency and a debut on
Datch, a company that develops AI-powered voice assistants for industrial customers, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Blackhorn Ventures. The proceeds will be used to expand operations, CEO Mark Fosdike said, as well as develop new software support, tools and capabilities. Datch started when Fosdike, who has
Neon, a startup providing developers with a serverless option for Postgres databases, today announced that it raised $30 million in a Series A-1 round led by GGV with participation from Khosla Ventures, General Catalyst, Founders Fund and angel investors. In an email interview with TechCrunch, CEO Nikita Shamgunov, who described the tranche as “oversubscribed,” said
Holey Grail Donuts started selling its hand-fried, made-to-order taro donuts on Sunday mornings out of a little red burger trailer in Kauai in 2018. Four years and hundreds of long lines later, the truck is still there, but the company is taking on what co-founder Nile Dreiling calls “a stale $40 billion donut industry” by
Boston Micro Fabrication — BMF among friends — is one of the biggest names in 3D-printing teeny-tiny things. The company just announced a Series C to continue its journey, as it announces it doubled its install base over the past year. “Our business has scaled strongly, and we plan to use the new capital to
Best Buy is opening a new digital-first 5,000 square feet small store in Monroe, North Carolina on July 26. This store will have selected tech products like home theater and audio, computing, headphones, wearables, fitness, cell phones, cameras, smart home, and small appliances that shoppers can experience and purchase. This is a departure from the
Amazon has announced that it’s increasing the prices for its Prime subscription service in Europe, with fees rising by as much as 43% in some markets. The announcement comes some six months after the ecommerce giant announced a similar price increase in the U.S., where the annual price jumped 17% from $119 to $139. The
Cordial, a cross-channel marketing and data management platform, today announced that it closed a $50 million Series C funding round led by NewSpring, with participation from new investor ABS Capital. Jeremy Swift, Cordial’s CEO and co-founder, said that the fresh capital will be used to expand the company’s global footprint, launch new platform features and
Bennett Carroccio Contributor Bennett Carroccio is the co-founder and CEO of Canal, the connected commerce platform transforming the way products are sold online. The biggest startups in the world are laying employees off. The yield curve has become inverted, inflation is at 8.6%, and economic pessimism is the highest it’s been since 2009. For e-commerce
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Alex and Grace are back to cover the biggest and most interesting technology, startup and markets news. Sitting as we are on the precipice of a huge data dump, we had lots to chat through!
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. Happy new week! Christine went on a well-deserved break, so you’ll have to deal with a double dose of my awful puns and worse headline shenanigans for a bit. Oh! And we
Jaka Robotics, a Chinese startup that makes collaborative robots, has just pulled in a hefty Series D funding round of over $150 million from a lineup of heavyweight investors to help it expand globally. The round is led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, TrueLight Capital, Softbank Vision Fund II, and Prosperity7 Ventures, a growth