Payment card network Visa has announced that transactions can be settled using USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Crypto.com is the first company to test the new capability with its own Visa-branded cards. USDC is a stablecoin co-founded by Circle and Coinbase and by managed the Centre consortium. As the name […]
The U.S. government has cut trade ties to Myanmar, two months after the country’s military staged a coup overthrowing the country’s president and also its de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and killed at least 200 protesters resulting from its offensive. In a statement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai said the trade suspension would […]
Can the market hold up the optimism that many SPAC-led debuts are implying in their pricing? I do not know. But there are a lot of wagers being made in the market today that are giving me pause.
Cazoo is picking up significant capital today by teaming up with a SPAC in the U.S. at a $7 billion valuation, but another big used-car play is consolidating operations. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Berlin-based Frontier Car Group, which builds used-car marketplaces with a focus on emerging markets, is shutting down its operations in […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You […]
IBM today announced the launch of its first developer certification for programming quantum computers. While quantum computing may still be in its infancy, most pundits in the industry will tell you that now is the time to learn the basic concepts. And while there is little that’s immediately intuitive on the hardware side of quantum […]
The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi friends and new readers, welcome to The Station. A few items before we jump into the news. Rebecca Bellan, who started writing for TechCrunch earlier this month, […]
“There is no doubt that over time, people are going to rely less and less on passwords… they just don’t meet the challenge for anything you really want to secure,” said Bill Gates. That was 17 years ago. Although passwords have lost some of their charm, they have so far survived many attempts to kill […]
Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi Chuxing has started operations in South Africa today, according to Reuters. Founded in 2012, the Beijing based company operates in more than 400 cities in China. It claims to serve over 550 million users in 16 countries across Asia, Europe, Latin America and Australia. This South African expansion (first launch in […]
Boston Dynamics’ transition from a decades-long research robotics firm to a company that productizes and sells hardware has been a fascinating one to watch. There have been some tough lessons along the way, including the very real lesson that at the end of the day, most robots in the world will be deployed for mundane […]
Meet Singular, a new VC firm based in Paris that just finished raising its initial fund. The firm was founded by two former Alven partners — Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan. They have some ambitious goals and an interesting investment model that could help them remain involved even during late-stage rounds. Overall, the firm raised […]
Cazoo, the UK used-car sales portal that has been on a major fundraising tear in the last year, will be next company to pursue more growth by way of a SPAC: the company today announced that it will list on the NYSE by way of a business combination with AJAX I, a special purpose acquisition […]
Last week the Canadian Supreme Court ruled that the national government’s plan to tax carbon emissions was legal in a decision that could have significant implications for the nation’s climate-focused startup companies. The ruling put an end to roughly two years of legal challenges and could set the stage for a boom in funding and […]
Ajaib, the Indonesian investment app, has added $65 million to its Series A, bringing the round’s new total to $90 million. The extension was led by Ribbit Capital, the fintech investor that also led Robinhood’s $3.4 billion funding last month. Ajaib is Ribbit Capital’s first investment in Southeast Asia. The extension will be used to […]
With the close of its latest investment fund, Norrsken VC is is taking an unprecedented step in tying the compensation of its partners to the positive changes the firm’s portfolio companies have on the world — and not just their financial returns. The firm, which released its impact assessment for 2020 last week, has invested […]
The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut […]
Apple has released an update for iPhones, iPads and Watches to patch a security vulnerability under active attack by hackers. The security update lands as iOS 14.4.2 and iPadOS 14.4.2, which also covers a patch to older devices as iOS 12.5.2. watchOS also updates to 7.3.3. Apple said the vulnerability, discovered by security researchers at […]
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Well that was a crazy week I may be getting older, but it does seem that the pace of tech news has gotten stuck in […]
Within 48 hours, the startup world experienced two momentous events: Y Combinator’s largest Demo Day ever, and the early investor exodus of Dispo, a photo-sharing app. Both events, while seemingly unrelated, taught us a lot about the importance, and difficulty, of due diligence in our current world. For background, early investors in Dispo distanced from […]
Who knew building a vertical software as a service toolkit focused on home heating and cooling could be worth $8.3 billion? That’s how much Los Angeles-based ServiceTitan, a startup founded just eight years ago is worth now, thanks to some massive tailwinds around homebuilding and energy efficiency that are serving to boost the company’s bottom […]
