Facebook has bought several virtual reality game studios over the past couple of years, and they added one more to their portfolio Friday with the acquisition of Seattle-based BigBox VR. The studio’s major title, “Population: One,” was one of the big post-launch releases for Facebook’s Oculus Quest 2 headset and is a pretty direct Fortnite […]
This morning, Anna Heim and Alex Wilhelm dug into the EU insurtech market, interviewing European VCs and collating the biggest recent rounds to take the temperature of the waters across the pond.
Mate Rimac, the founder and CEO of Croatian electric hypercar and components developer Rimac Automobili, started a separate company nearly three years ago to work on electric robotaxis. Little is known about the company, which still operates in stealth. Rimac told TechCrunch this week at TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 he hopes to keep this separate […]
NASA said Friday it was seeking proposals from commercial companies for two new private crewed missions to the International Space Station. The first mission would likely take place between fall of 2022 and mid-2023. The second one would follow sometime between mid-2023 and the end of 2023. Private astronaut missions are a relatively recent initiative […]
In Friday acquisition news, Shopify shared today that they’ve acquired the team from augmented reality startup Primer, which makes an app that lets users visualize what tile, wallpaper or paint will look like on surfaces inside their home. In a blog post, co-founders Adam Debreczeni and Russ Maschmeyer write that Primer’s app and services will […]
French startup Lydia is better known as the dominant app for peer-to-peer payments. But the company has been adding more features, such as a debit card, account aggregation, donations, money pots and more. This week, the company is adding savings accounts thanks to a partnership with French fintech startup Cashbee. If you aren’t familiar with […]
Now that we have your attention, know this: Prices go up tonight on passes to TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing & Fundraising. If you’re an early-stage founder (pre-seed through Series A), don’t miss this chance to save $100 on our two-day virtual event dedicated to helping you build a stronger startup. It’s one of the […]
We spoke with a number of VCs from Europe to hear their perspectives on what’s happening on the ground, including folks from Accel, Astorya.vc and Insurtech Gateway.
It’s been just under two years since I reviewed the WF-1000XM3, and in that time, Sony’s earbuds never stopped being the reference point for high-end earbuds. Seriously, I reviewed a new pair like a month ago and still made the customary reference. That’s a rarity in these days of the yearly upgrade cycle. And that […]
Last week, Apple announced it wanted employees to return to the Cupertino campus for three days a week starting in September. Some employees who have grown used to the flexibility of working at home pushed back. Prior to the pandemic, with few exceptions, most employees went into an office most days. But when COVID hit […]
The war for talent in the tech world can be brutal — and so, it turns out, can the war between platforms that help companies source it. In the latest developement, Toptal — a marketplace for filling engineering and other tech roles with freelance, remote workers — has filed a lawsuit against direct competitor Andela […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re closing our survey soon, so this is your last chance (probably) to get your voice heard! Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy, busy time. We had Grace on the dials today, […]
Volkswagen says more than 3.3 million customers had their information exposed after one of its vendors left a cache of customer data unsecured on the internet. The car maker said in a letter that the vendor, used by Volkswagen, its subsidiary Audi and authorized dealers in the U.S. and Canada, left the customer data spanning […]
Well this is big. The U.K.’s competition regulator looks set to get an emergency brake that will allow it to stop Google ending support for third-party cookies, a technology that’s currently used for targeting online ads, if it believes competition would be harmed by the depreciation going ahead. The development follows an investigation opened by […]
Bangalore-based neobank Open is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $100 million, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Temasek, the Singaporean government’s sovereign wealth fund, and General Atlantic are positioning to co-lead the Series C financing round, which values the Indian startup at pre-money $600 million, the sources told TechCrunch, requesting […]
Beauty and wellness businesses have come roaring back to life with the decline of COVID-19 restrictions, and a startup that’s built a platform that caters to the many needs of small enterprises in the industry today is announcing a big round of funding to grow with them. Fresha — a multipurpose commerce tool for independent […]
Tiger Global is in talks to lead a $30 million round in Indian edtech startup Classplus, according to sources familiar with the matter. The new round, which includes both primary investment and secondary transactions, values the five-year-old Indian startup at over $250 million, two sources told TechCrunch. The new round follows another ~$30 million investment […]
Tesla finally held the long-awaited, and once rescheduled, “delivery event” for its ultra-fast Model S Plaid at its factory in Fremont, California. The electric vehicle company will begin with 25 deliveries on Friday evening, expanding to several hundred cars per week and a thousand cars per week in the next quarter, CEO Elon Musk said […]
