Hyzon Motors plans to produce fuel cells, including a critical component required to power hydrogen vehicles, at two U.S. factories in a move aimed at kickstarting domestic production at a commercial scale. The hydrogen-powered truck and bus manufacturer has already leased a 28,000-square-foot facility in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook and plans to expand it […]
Known for its innovations in the payments sector, Square is now officially a bank. Nearly one year after receiving conditional approval, Square said Monday afternoon that its industrial bank, Square Financial Services, has begun operations. Square Financial Services completed the charter approval process with the FDIC and Utah Department of Financial Institutions, meaning it’s ready for […]
A startup by an Apple alum that has become home to millions of low-skilled workers in India said on Tuesday it has raised an additional $12.5 million, just five months after securing $8 million from high-profile investors. One-year-old Apna said Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital led the $12.5 million investment in the startup. Existing […]
A challenger bank raises funding at a massive valuation, Instagram adds Live Rooms and Google updates Workspace. This is your Daily Crunch for March 1, 2021. The big story: Klarna valued at $31B The Swedish challenger bank and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service has raised $1 billion at a post-money valuation of $31 billion. Klarna says it […]
Google over the weekend began to update many of its flagship iOS apps after a lengthy delay caused by the company’s failure to add Apple’s newly required privacy labels in a timely fashion. Though Google earlier this year said it would “soon” begin to add the labels to its apps as they were updated, it […]
“You’re seeing a lot of large companies … are now investing significant amounts into really trying to understand their emissions profile and prioritize emission reductions in a data-driven way."
AWS launched the DeepRacer League in 2018 as a fun way to teach developers machine learning, and it’s been building on the idea ever since. Today, it announced the latest league season with two divisions: Open and Pro. As Marcia Villalba wrote in a blog post announcing the new league, “AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous […]
Facebook was ordered to pay $650 million Friday for running afoul of an Illinois law designed to protect the state’s residents from invasive privacy practices. That law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), is a powerful state measure that’s tripped up tech companies in recent years. The suit against Facebook was first filed in 2015, alleging […]
TC Sessions: Justice is coming up on Wednesday, and we’ve decided to sweeten the deal for what’s included with your event pass. Buy your ticket now and you’ll get a free month of access to Extra Crunch, our membership program focused on founders and startup teams with exclusive articles published daily. Extra Crunch unlocks access […]
Twitter announced Monday that it would begin injecting new labels into users’ timelines to push back against misinformation that could disrupt the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The labels, which will also appear as pop-up messages in the retweet window, are the company’s latest product experiment designed to shape behavior on the platform for the better. […]
As the next Y Combinator demo day approaches, more startups from the current Winter 2021 batch are showing up in our inboxes. One of the most interesting from the mix is BrioHR, which is building human resources (HR) software for Southeast Asia. The company fits into a theme I’ve noticed amongst startups, namely a focus […]
Rocket Lab packed a ton of news into Monday to kick off this week: It’s going public via a SPAC merger, for one, and it’s also building a new, larger launch vehicle called Neutron to support heavier payloads. I spoke to Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck about why it’s building Neutron now, and […]
You might call Cappuccino the anti-Clubhouse, but the company has been iterating on its app concept for a couple of years — its CEO doesn’t have any strong opinions on Clubhouse. And it’s true that Cappuccino is an interesting social app on its own. It has been attracting a loyal user base, especially after a […]
As building in public continues to gain popularity with early-stage startup founders, Murmur, coming out of stealth today, wants to leverage that natural transparency to a louder frequency. Founded by Aaron Dignan, Murmur helps startups create work agreements based on the policies of other startups. “Work agreements” is an intentionally broad phrase, but encapsulates everything […]
In a move designed to directly challenge Amazon, Walmart today announced it’s dropping the $35 minimum order requirement for its two-hour “Express” delivery service, a competitor to Amazon’s “Prime Now.” With Walmart Express Delivery, customers can order from Walmart’s food, consumables or general merchandise assortment, then pay a flat $10 fee to have the items […]
On a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live, Bain Capital Ventures’ Matt Harris said that if you had asked him a year ago what would happen to venture capital during a pandemic lockdown, he would have replied “it would have fallen off a cliff.” Before the world changed so fundamentally, VCs and founders alike believed […]
Buzzy mega-rounds and high-profile IPOs often dominate headlines. But many of those companies were once early-stage and scrapping to raise a seed round. Today, Chicago Ventures, a VC firm that often leads seed-stage rounds, announced the close of its third fund — a $63 million vehicle that it’s already put to work. Chicago Ventures (which […]
Tech companies are no stranger to controversy and workplace issues. Over the years, it’s become clear that no company is immune from diversity issues. But it’s the job of those in the diversity, equity and inclusion departments to create and foster environments that are welcoming to all. Last year, in the wake of the police […]
