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A substantial portion of the world’s trade is done in United States dollars, creating problems for businesses in countries with a dollar shortage. Blockchain startup XREX was launched to help cross-border businesses in emerging markets perform faster transactions with products like a payment escrow service and crypto-fiat exchange platform. The Taipei-headquartered company announced today it has […]

Twitter seems on an aggressive path to putting pedal to the metal. From its earliest days as a failwhale generator and a ransacker of third party successes, the company under Jack Dorsey’s stewardship has become an acquirer of tools to support the creators it hosts. Twitter Spaces, its Clubhouse clone, has steadily improved its UI […]

Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! I’m back from a very fun and rehabilitative couple weeks away from my phone, my Twitter account and the news cycle. That said, I actually really missed writing this newsletter, and while Greg did a fantastic job while I was out, I won’t be handing over […]

Mark Mills Contributor Share on Twitter Mark Mills is the author of the forthcoming book, "The Cloud Revolution: How the Convergence of New Technologies Will Unleash the Next Economic Boom and a Roaring 2020s." He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a Faculty Fellow at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering. More posts […]

Servicing one’s car personally is a time-consuming, expensive and painstaking process. It’s a cycle that can lead to more expensive repairs and safety issues down the line, and no car owner likes that. Egypt and Dubai-based auto tech startup Odiggo is a platform addressing this problem. It allows car owners to get the help they […]

Samsung wasn’t quite ready to declare the Galaxy Note dead. Not just yet. When we put the question to the company again after this month’s Unpacked event, a rep told us: Samsung is constantly evaluating its product lineup to ensure we meet the needs of consumers, while introducing technology that enhances users’ mobile experiences. We […]

Thanks for reading Startups Weekly. Want the weekly digest in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. When COVID-19 first began to infect the world, my interviews with venture capitalists all somewhat fit into the same mold. Investors would tell me that they’re “triaging” their own portfolio to understand how to help startups rocked by […]

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. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

This week was more than hectic, so we have a lot of ground to cover. Below are more notes on the Brazilian IPO market, more coverage of the Chicago startup scene and a host of numbers from startups concerning their recent growth results.

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.

The future of SaaS is bright, and while nothing is guaranteed, it is likely that India will take an even bigger place in that limelight.

In a late Friday night blow to Uber, Lyft and other gig worker-centered companies, a superior court judge ruled that California’s Proposition 22, which was passed in 2020 and designed to overrule the state’s controversial AB-5 law on the employment status of gig workers, violates the state’s constitution. Gig worker bill, AB-5, passes California State […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

“Email impacts marketing strategy and enables better overall business success. It’s the lifeblood of an effective multichannel campaign,” says Melissa Sargeant, CMO at Litmus. “However, Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection — announced earlier this summer with its iOS 15 update — attempts to eliminate metrics and data associated with email.” This week in marketing, Sargeant dives […]

With the hasty U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan underway after two decades occupying the country, social media platforms have a complex new set of policy decisions to make. The Taliban has been social-media-savvy for years, but those companies will face new questions as the notoriously brutal, repressive group seeks to present itself as Afghanistan’s legitimate […]

General Motors is recalling even more Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles due to possible battery cell defects that could increase the risk of fire. This latest recall, announced by the automaker on Friday, marks the third time GM has issued the consumer notice for the Bolt. The second recall, which was issued in July, covered 2017 […]

Today’s business leaders are using yesterday’s tactics in an attempt to address tomorrow’s problems.

3D rocket printing company Relativity Space has pushed back the date of the demonstration launch of its lightweight Terran 1 rocket from winter 2021 to early 2022. The company announced the updated schedule on Twitter, while also confirming that the launch will take place out of Cape Canaveral in Florida. A few updates on #Terran1: […]

Conducting an APK teardown of the latest version of the Peloton Android app, 9to5Google found evidence the company is preparing the software to support a rowing machine in the near future.

If you're a founder who finds yourself in a meeting with a VC, try to remember two things — you're the smartest person in the room, and investors are looking for a reason to say "yes."

If viral TikTok songs like Dr. Dog’s “Where’d All the Time Go?” or Bo Burnham’s “Bezos I” weren’t already stuck in your head on loop, now they could be. Today SiriusXM launched a TikTok Radio channel, which features TikTok creators as channel hosts. The station is designed to sound like a “radio version of the […]

Less than three months after announcing a $300 million Series E, Brazilian proptech QuintoAndar has raised an additional $120 million. New investors Greenoaks Capital and China’s Tencent co-led the round, which included participation from some existing backers as well. São Paulo-based QuintoAndar is now valued at $5.1 billion, up from $4 billion at the time […]

Disinformation, misinformation, infotainment, algowars — if the debates over the future of media the past few decades have meant anything, they’ve at least left a pungent imprint on the English language. There’s been a lot of invective and fear over what social media is doing to us, from our individual psychologies and neurologies to wider […]

If Spotify is still a growth-focused company, shouldn't it preserve its capital to invest in exclusive podcasts and the like — efforts that may grant it pricing power in the future?

The U.K.’s competition watchdog has raised serious concerns about Nvidia’s proposed takeover of chip designer, ARM. Its assessment was published today by the government, which will now need to decide whether to ask the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to carry out an in-depth probe into the proposed acquisition. In the executive summary of the […]

Newly reported financial data from Bird, an American scooter-sharing service, shows a company with an improving economic model and a multiyear path to profitability. However, that path is fraught.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Danny was back, joining Natasha and Alex and Grace and Chris to chat through the week’s coming and goings. But, before we get to the official news, here’s some personal news: Danny is stepping back from his role as co-host of the Friday show! Yes, Mr. […]

Poland-based health tech AI startup Cardiomatics has announced a $3.2 million seed raise to expand use of its electrocardiogram (ECG) reading automation technology. The round is led by Central and Eastern European VC Kaya, with Nina Capital, Nova Capital and Innovation Nest also participating. The seed raise also includes a $1 million non-equity grant from […]

Breef’s platform is democratizing how brands and boutique agencies connect with each other in the process of planning, scoping, pitching and paying for projects.

Rutter is developing a unified e-commerce API that enables companies to connect with data across any platform.

Three University of Michigan students are building Channels Inc., a communication software tailored for physical workers, and already racking up some big customers in the event management industry.

Apple recently began a research study designed to collect speech data from study participants. Earlier this month, the company launched a new iOS app called “Siri Speech Study” on the App Store, which allows participants who have opted in to share their voice requests and other feedback with Apple. The app is available in a […]

China has passed a personal data protection law, state media Xinhua reports (via Reuters). The law, called the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), is set to take effect on November 1. It was proposed last year — signalling an intent by China’s communist leaders to crack down on unscrupulous data collection in the commercial sphere […]

Facebook is launching a new program in India to help small and medium-sized businesses secure loans in the South Asian market as the company makes further push to expand its presence among merchants. The social conglomerate said its new program, called Small Business Loans Initiative, addresses some of the biggest pain points small businesses face […]

The process of digitizing the operations of mom and pop stores in Nigeria is serious business right now. In fact, it might be the second-best thing after fintech at the moment. Today’s news is from Alerzo, a little-known B2B e-commerce retail startup based in Ibadan, Nigeria. The company is announcing a $10.5 million Series A […]

Microsoft has invested $5 million in Indian budget hotel chain Oyo, according to a regulatory filing this week. The investment confirms a TechCrunch scoop from last month. The new investment values Oyo at $9.6 billion, only slightly below the $10 billion implied valuation from the Indian startup’s previous financing round in 2019. The startup, which […]

Elon Musk wants Tesla to be seen as “much more than an electric car company.” On Thursday’s Tesla AI Day, the CEO described Tesla as a company with “deep AI activity in hardware on the inference level and on the training level” that can be used down the line for applications beyond self-driving cars, including […]

Remember that weird Will Smith movie about robots? Yeah, neither do we. But Elon Musk does. Tesla is developing a 5’8” Tesla Bot, with a prototype expected sometime next year. The news comes during Tesla’s inaugural AI Day, which was streamed on the company’s website Thursday night. The bot is being proposed as a non-automotive […]

Choosing an insurance policy is one of the most complicated financial decisions a person can make. Jakarta-based Lifepal wants to simplify the process for Indonesians with a marketplace that lets users compare policies from more than 50 providers, get help from licensed agents and file claims. The startup, which says it is the country’s largest […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

For the first time, Google has published the number of geofence warrants it’s historically received from U.S. authorities, providing a rare glimpse into how frequently these controversial warrants are issued. The figures, published Thursday, reveal that Google has received thousands of geofence warrants each quarter since 2018, and at times accounted for about one-quarter of […]

As one of four general partners at Andreessen Horowitz who are now investing the venture firm’s third crypto fund, a $2.2 billion vehicle, Arianna Simpson is highly focused on how to return that capital and much more to the firm’s limited partners. Toward that end, she has been following more startups that combine crypto with […]

To the average person, Facebook’s monopoly seems obvious. But obviousness is not an antitrust standard. Monopoly has a clear legal meaning, and thus far Lina Khan’s FTC has failed to meet it.

The truth is, we are still early when it comes to data transformation. The success of tech giants that put data at the core of their business models set off a spark that is only starting to take off.

For smartwatches, it’s Apple against the world. Per recent numbers from CounterPoint, the Apple Watch commanded more than one-third of global shipments in Q1. Samsung/Tizen’s own market share is a distant — but respectable — second place, with 8%. With Google’s Wear OS at fifth place at just under 4%, it’s easy to see both […]

Adobe announced today it is acquiring Frame.io, a video review and collaboration platform used by over a million customers, for $1.275 billion in cash. Founded in 2014 by post-production company owner Emery Wells and technologist John Traver, New York-based Frame.io was created to solve the workflows challenges filmmakers faced in their daily lives. Today, the […]

Today, OnlyFans dropped the massive bombshell that it will be banning “sexually explicit content” from the app later this year. This is obviously a wildly seismic shift for OnlyFans, which completely disrupted the adult content industry and gave performers a path toward greater independence by allowing them to connect directly with their fans via subscriptions. This […]

Have you ever tried to share a funny tweet with a few friends via Twitter DM, only to accidentally start a group chat? You’re not alone. Today, Twitter announced that it will roll out a few quality of life improvements to its direct messaging system over the next few weeks, including the ability to DM […]

OnlyFans has announced that it will ban sexually explicit content starting in October. The platform was not built specifically for porn but that has grown to be its most popular and visible use case, but pressure from “banking partners and payout providers” means the company will have to leave the adult content world behind and […]

If you’re a venture-backed startup at some point it would be wise to generate a return — either get acquired or go public. If you’re going to get acquired, chances are you’re going to spend a lot of time with corp dev teams.