OpenStack, the massive open source infrastructure-as-a-service project that allows enterprises and public hosting services to run their own on-premise clouds, today released version 25 of its software, dubbed Yoga. Like all large open source projects, OpenStack has gone through its ups and downs, but as the Open Infrastructure Foundation, the organization behind OpenStack and a
Six months after raising $250 million, Papaya Global is making a key acquisition to expand its cloud-based HR and payroll platform globally on the heels of major surge in remote working. The Israeli startup is acquiring Azimo — the London-based money transfer business that Facebook once tried to buy to spearhead its own remittance efforts —
Spotify’s popular playlist creation tool, Blend, is getting its biggest update since its offiical launch last year. The feature currently allows two Spotify users to see where their musical tastes overlap by mixing together their favorite songs to find those they have in common. This Blend then updates daily with new songs based on everyone’s
Apple is paying a small group of engineers bonuses of up to $200,000 to stay with the company. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports.
Hundreds of companies presented at Y Combinator’s Winter 2022 Demo Day event, and I looked at pretty much all their logos. There’s a lot of solid ones, a few clunkers and a handful of really nice ones. Here’s a list of the latter for your pleasure and edification. I haven’t put these in any order
It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting
Tumblr is expanding its tip jar feature by introducing blog-level tipping for its iOS and web applications, the company announced on Wednesday. The company rolled out its tip jar feature last month allowing users to leave tips on posts. Today’s expansion will allow users to leave tips on blogs. Tumblr says the expansion will benefit
Plastic bags are bad. Ban them from supermarkets, and the problem is solved, right? Right? Right? Turns out, as is often the case, there may be a little bit more to that story. Researchers at the University of Georgia suggest that banning the sale of plastic bags may come with a side-dish of unintended consequences.
Healthcare has a hiring crises. Nearly 20% of medical workers have quit their jobs during the pandemic, according to a recent Morning Consult survey. Some studies estimated the healthcare system’s burnout cost at about $4.6 billion a year before the spread of COVID-19, a number that has likely risen. Organizations have increasingly ramped up benefits
The European Union has announced a new bundle of sustainability-focused policy proposals that will expand existing ecodesign rules on energy efficiency by encouraging longer product lifespans, supporting the growth of circular economy business models and helping consumers combat greenwashing and make more environmentally friendly purchasing choices, as regional lawmakers work to make good on a
The race is certainly on in the electrification of boating … even if everyone is jockeying for position before the market materializes. Flux Marine is joining the likes of Pure and Zin in trying to convert some of our waterways’ gas-guzzling outboards to cleaner, quieter battery powered ones, and the company just raised $15.5 million
Apple today announced it will begin to allow a subset of applications sold on its App Store to link to an external website where users can create or manage their accounts with the app developer. The change to Apple’s App Store Review guidelines only applies to what Apple calls “reader” apps — meaning, apps designed
The credit card giant Visa has launched a NFT creator program in an effort to bring small businesses into the digital economy. “We’ve seen rapid growth in the NFT ecosystem over the past year,” Cuy Sheffield, head of crypto at Visa, told TechCrunch. “We think NFTs represent a new form of ecommerce.” The idea of
Mosaic, which aims to change the way CFOs of high-growth companies operate, has raised $25 million in a Series B round of funding led by Founders Fund. Bijan Moallemi, Joe Garafalo and Brian Campbell started San Diego-based Mosaic in 2019 after meeting at Palantir Technologies, where they worked on building out that company’s finance organization
As competition heats up for creator talent, Pinterest today announced it was more than doubling its initial investment in its Creator Fund with an additional $1.2 million in a combination of cash grants, ad credits, and other creator resources for underrepresented groups. The comapny last year announced the debut of its $500,000 Creator Fund alongside
It’s no secret that digital supply chains are increasingly under attack as hackers look to use this vector to get access to company networks and confidential information. But that also means businesses have to figure out ways to secure their assets even when they sit outside of the attack surface they would traditionally focus on.
When we started covering Builder.ai a few years ago, the startup was tapping into a new wave of businesses wanting their own native apps. The previous wave of agency-built and outsourced apps was waining, and Builder.ai realized it could tap into this trend by creating a turnkey, almost drag and drop approach, at least on
Turns out the smartphone market can still surprise — to an extent. You can almost certainly figure out which two companies command the first and second position in the U.S. market these days. You would, however, be forgiven for doing a double-take after hearing that Motorola has managed to shore up third place, according to
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, March 29, 2022! Haje and I are now flying solo with the newsletter. It will be all hands on deck today and tomorrow as
Day one of Y Combinator’s Demo Day confab for the Winter 2022 batch is over. We shook up our coverage this year, divvying things up by sector and geography. Our goal was to avoid a huge list, the sort that we compiled in years past. TechCrunch has notes on the ever-growing contingent of companies from
TikTok today is announcing a new in-app creation tool called TikTok Library, which the company hopes will make it easier for creators to access entertainment content and participate in trends. Initially, the Libary will be populated with select content from GIPHY, including its collection of GIFs with sound, known as GIPHY Clips. Over time, TikTok
There’s no textbook-approved technique for building a startup engineering team: in the early days, everyone wears several hats. But when a company enters its growth phase, the recruiting process is systematized, new hires are sorted into discrete units, and a thin layer of management is applied to keep everything on track. When Jean-Denis Greze accepted
Talenthouse AG has made a name for itself as an aggregator of content creators, which is then commissioned by brands for their own social media channels. Brands just can’t seem to come up with the same kind of authenticity, so they farm it out in this manner. But business is going well, so Talenthouse is
China’s augmented reality startup Nreal is on a roll. The company, which hopes to bring AR to the masses by making bright-color, lightweight smart glasses, has just received $60 million in a Series C extension round, bringing its total funding in the last 12 months to a handsome $200 million. The new investment is led by
You can “collab” on Instagram, but what about on Twitter? The social network is continuing to work on a feature that would allow multiple users to co-author a tweet, which it’s referring to as “Collaborations.” The option has yet to be made publicly available and only works after one user accepts a request to collaborate
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Michael Redd Contributor Michael Redd spent 12 seasons playing in the NBA and on the U.S. Olympic team. He is now co-founder and chairman of 22 Ventures. More posts by this contributor 3 warning signs that your investor will leave you on the sidelines Startup accelerators are increasingly putting the brakes on demo days. The
Andrew Gershfeld Contributor Andrew Gershfeld is a partner at Boston-based Flint Capital, an investment company supporting entrepreneurs from Israel, Europe and the U.S. at an early stage of their business. Around May 2020, nearly everything moved online, and investment pitches were among the first to do so. The entire milieu around startup funding shifted overnight.
Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is introducing several new features and shortcuts to its Messenger app. Most notably, the company is adding a new Slack-like “@everyone” functionality that will notify all participants in a chat about a new message. Meta notes that the new feature is perfect for group reminders, get-togethers or when you’re asking
Furniture is one of the largest waste categories in the U.S., generating more than twelve million tons of waste in landfills every year, according to 2018 data by the Environmental Protection Agency. Kaiyo, an online marketplace for second-hand furniture, says it has helped the impact by keeping nearly three million pounds out of landfills since its