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Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day […]

“Emily in Paris,” a new series on Netflix, has provoked skeptical responses from actual Parisians who are happy to point out the abundant clichés in its story of a young American (played by Lily Collins) who takes a last-minute transfer to a marketing agency in Paris. Some fairly obvious culture clash moments ensue, along with […]

The Equity crew this week chewed through a trio of media stories, each dealing with private companies and their successes. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Axios was growing rapidly and near profitability. The paper also broke news that Morning Brew might exit to Business Insider for a hefty $75 million potential payout. Meanwhile, […]

Pear, the eight-year-old, Palo Alto, Calif.-based seed-stage venture firm that has, from its outset, attracted the attention of VCs who think the firm has an eye for nascent talent, staged its seventh annual demo day earlier this week, and while it was virtual, one of the startups has already signed a term sheet from a […]

Election Day approaches! Still not sure where the nearest polling place or ballot drop box is? Google wants to help. This morning the company rolled out a handful of features across Google Assistant, Google Maps and Google Search, all meant to kick in when a user seems to be looking for information on voting locations. […]

A New York Post story forces social platforms to make (and in Twitter’s case, reverse) some difficult choices, Sony announces a new 3D display and fitness startup Future raises $24 million. This is your Daily Crunch for October 16, 2020. The big story: Twitter walks back New York Post decision A recent New York Post […]

Twitter has taken another step back from its initial decision to block users from sharing links to or images of a New York Post story reporting on emails and other data supposedly originating on a laptop belonging to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. The story, which alleged that Hunter Biden had set up […]

Lawmatics, a San Diego startup that’s building marketing and CRM software for lawyers, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. CEO Matt Spiegel used to practice law himself, and he told me that even though tech companies have a wide range of marketing tools to choose from, “lawyers have not been […]

Welcome back to Human Capital, where we look at the latest in tech labor and diversity and inclusion. Because election day is quickly approaching and given that California’s Prop 22 puts the “future of labor” at stake, as Instacart worker and co-organizer at Gig Workers Collective Vanessa Bain told TechCrunch this week, we’re paying close […]

PearPop a new Los Angeles-based company, is on its way to racking up nearly 25,000 users in less than a month, and has already landed seed funding from the firm Rocket One Capital. The company’s premise is simple. Allow fans to bid for shared screen time with their favorite TikTok celebrities, and it’s one that […]

Four years ago, Ping Identity was at a crossroads. A venerable player in the single sign-on market, its product was not a market leader, and after 14 years and $128 million in venture capital, it needed to find a new path. While the company had once discussed an IPO, by 2016 it began putting out […]

Analogue’s beautiful, functional retro gaming consoles provide a sort of “archival quality” alternative to the cheap mini-consoles proliferating these days. The latest system to be resurrected by the company is the ill-fated, but still well-thought-of TurboGrafx-16 or PC Engine. The Duo, as Analogue’s device is called, is named after a later version of the TurboGrafx-16 […]

We propose a new standard for universal ad disclosure that should be met by every platform that publishes digital ads.

If the company struggles to deliver capacity -- and revenue -- from its small-scale Convention Center system, the future of those ambitions could be in doubt.

The deadline for Europe to make a call on the Google -Fitbit merger has been pushed out again — with EU regulators now having until January 8, 2021, to take a decision. The latest change to the provisional deadline, spotted earlier by Reuters, could be the result of one of the parties asking for more […]

It was just a few weeks ago that Datto, what TechCrunch called a “backup and disaster recovery firm,” filed to go public. This week the firm set an initial range for its debut. The Vista Equity Partners -backed company was picked up by the private equity firm back in 2017. Vista is back in the […]

Dee Goens and Jacob Horne have both the exact and precisely opposite background that you’d expect to see from two people building a way for creators to build a sustainable economy for their followers to participate in. Coinbase, crypto-hack projects at university, KPMG, Merrill Lynch. But where’s the art? “Believe it or not, I used […]

I believe creating a broader picture of compensation is essential for startups, global conglomerates and every company in between.

Over the next five years consumers will return an estimated 40 million to 50 million pieces of furniture that more than likely will end up in landfills, creating tons of unnecessary waste, according to Chris Richter, the founder of a new Austin-based furniture startup, FloorFound. To reduce that waste, and give retailers another option for […]

It’s a difficult time for small businesses — to put it mildly. And Fivestars CEO Victor Ho said that many of the big digital platforms aren’t really helping. Ho argued that those platforms — whether they offer delivery services, user reviews or marketing tools — all have the same underlying model: “They seek to take over a small […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was back today, with Natasha and Danny and I gathered to parse over what was really a blast of news. Lots of startups are raising. Lots of VCs are raising. And some […]

Brighteye Ventures, the European edtech venture capital firm, recently announced the $54 million first close of its second fund, bringing total assets under management above $112 million. Out of the new fund, the 2017-founded VC will invest in 15-20 companies over the next three years at the seed and Series A stage, writing checks up […]

Proterra, the battery system technology developer for heavy-duty electric vehicles, said it has raised $200 million in a new round of funding. The new cash comes from Cowen Sustainable Investment Advisors, which led the round, along with money from Soros Fund Management, Generation Investment Management and Broadscale Group. Cowen took the bulk of the round […]

This decision will affect the engineers and developers, marketing teams and all employees who put their all into the technology and company image, only to have it eventually misrepresented in the media.

Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has been issued a permit from California regulators that will allow it to test driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco. The California DMV, the agency that regulates autonomous vehicle testing in […]

Nanoleaf launched the next generation of its light panels in July. Called Shape, this new product looks like the company’s original offering, but sports better connectors, a simpler mounting solution, and most importantly, these panels can work with different shapes. Today, Nanoleaf announced triangle panels, which join the hexagon shape that launched in July. This […]

Google’s strategy around its messaging apps is nothing if not messy right now (hello Hangouts, Meet, Chat, Duo and Co.), but it looks like things will get a bit easier come next year. We already knew that Hangouts’ time was coming to an end and as Google announced today, the company will allow all current […]

Oxford scientists working out of the school’s Department of Physics have developed a new type of COVID-19 test that can detect SARS-CoV-2 with a high degree of accuracy, directly in samples taken from patients, using a machine learning-based approach that could help sidestep test supply limitations, and that also offers advantages when it comes to […]

Instinctive feelings and ‘going with your gut’ in hiring should be treated with caution and decisions should always be based on role-relevant evidence you pinpoint.

The cannabis industry is quickly growing up, and companies like Nabis play a critical role. Today, the company is announcing it raised $5 million in Series A funding, which will help it grow and expand its offering. Nabis is a business to business distributor, handling logistics, payment, and warehousing. Instead of being a distributor for […]

There is no doubt that the new wave of innovation will come from the emerging markets, and the African Diaspora can play an important role.

Temporal, a Seattle-based startup that is building an open-source, stateful microservices orchestration platform, today announced that it has raised an $18.75 million Series A round led by Sequoia Ventures. Existing investors Addition Ventures and Amplify Partners also joined, together with new investor Madrona Venture Group. With this, the company has now raised a total of […]

A few years ago, Whisper president and co-founder Andrew Song was talking to his grandfather about his hearing aids. Even though he spent thousands of dollars on a medical device designed to improve his hearing, and in the process his quality of life, he wasn’t wearing them. Song’s co-founders had had similar experiences with grandparents, […]

USDC, the stablecoin co-founded by Circle and Coinbase, first started as an Ethereum-based token. After adding support for the Algorand blockchain, Centre, the consortium that manages USDC, is announcing that Stellar will be the third blockchain that supports USDC. The rollout should happen at some point during Q1 2021. USDC is a cryptocurrency that follows […]

Nvidia is is going to be powering the world’s fastest AI supercomputer, a new system dubbed ‘Leonardo’ that’s being built by the Italian multi-university consortium CINECA, a global supercomutin leader. The Leonardo system will offer as much as 10 exaflops of FP16 AI performance capabilities, and be made up of more than 14,000 Nvidia Ampere-based […]

YouTube today joined social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter in taking more direct action to prohibit the distribution of conspiracy theories like QAnon. The company announced that it is expanding its hate and harassment policies to ban videos “that [target] an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence,” according to […]

Agility, the Oregon State University spinoff behind Digit and Cassie, announced this morning that it has raised $20 million in funding. The latest round, led by DCVC and Playground Global, brings the startup’s total funding up to $29 million. Other recent investors include TDK Ventures, MFV Partners, the Industrial Technology Investment Corporation, Sony Innovation Fund […]

A new study from Pew Research Center, released today, digs into the different ways that U.S. Democrats and Republicans use Twitter. Based on data collected between Nov. 11, 2019 and Sept. 14, 2020, the study finds that members of both parties tweet fairly infrequently, but a majority of Twitter’s most prolific users tend to swing […]

This morning Alpaca, a startup that helps other companies add commission-free equities trading to their own products, announced a $10 million Series A. The new capital event was led by Portag3, and included prior investors Social Leverage, Spark Capital, Fathom Capital and Abstract Ventures. The company previously raised a $6 million pre-seed and $6 million […]

The AirBuddy app is celebrating another successful Apple week by opening up preorders on v2.0. The original, which arrived in early 2019, brought a pop-up to the Mac when a pair of AirPods were brought near — bringing simple ecosystem integration to the desktop before Apple did. The update, which is set to arrive arrive […]

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that meditation app Calm is looking into raising $150 million more at a valuation of around $2.2 billion, more than double its last private price. This should not surprise. Calm has raised capital at high prices before, including its 2018 Series A which valued the startup at more than a quarter […]

French startup Koyeb has raised a $1.6 million (€1.4 million) pre-seed round. The company focuses on data-processing workflows across multiple cloud providers. It hides many complexities using a serverless model. Jean-David Chamboredon and Juliette Mopin from ISAI are leading the round with Plug and Play Ventures, Kima Ventures, AceCap and a long list of business […]

Extended warranties — those offers to add an extra year or two to an existing product warranty to give you a little more peace of mind in case something goes wrong with something you’ve purchased — have long been a part of the sales process when you’re buying big-ticket items from large stores. Today, a […]

Snapchat this summer announced it would soon release a new music-powered feature that would allow users to set their Snaps to music. Today, the company made good on that promise with the launch of “Sounds on Snapchat” on iOS, a feature that lets users enhance their Snaps with music from curated catalog of both emerging […]

River, the latest venture from Wander founder Jeremy Fisher, has today announced the close of a $10.4 million funding round from Founders Fund, .406, BoxGroup, Josh Kushner and Scooter Braun. River is meant to rethink the way we consume content across the internet. The app pulls stories and content from across the entire internet, including […]

Application security platform NeuraLegion announced today it has raised a $4.7 million seed round led by DNX Ventures, an enterprise-focused investment firm. The funding included participation from Fusion Fund, J-Ventures and Incubate Fund. The startup also announced the launch of a new self-serve, community version that allows developers to sign up on their own for […]

Savana, a machine learning-based service that turns clinical notes into structured patient information for physicians and pharmacists, has raised $15 million to take its technology from Spain to the U.S., the company said. The investment was led by Cathay Innovation with participation from the Spanish investment firm Seaya Ventures, which led the company’s previous round, and […]

The French and Dutch governments have signalled support for EU rules that can proactively intervene against so-called gatekeepers, aka “structuring platforms” or “large digital platforms with significant network effects acting as gatekeepers” — or, more colloquially, ‘big tech’. They have also called for a single European body with enforcement powers over such platforms — and […]

Brendan Sweeney didn’t know anything about the restaurant business before he and his co-founders launched the Atlanta-based startup Popmenu. What Sweeney did know was that it was nuts that while every other business was using incredible graphics, curated text, carefully crafted images and fancy videos to make their pitch to customers restaurants were — posting […]

Nintendo’s new RC Mario Kart looks terrific