The Chinese government is moving to curb the power of some of China’s most influential internet companies. The country’s top market regulator announced Monday that it is fining Alibaba and China Literature, Tencent’s e-book spinoff, for failing to report their past acquisition deals for clearance. The cases involve Alibaba’s equity investments in major Chinese mall […]
Pioneered by WeChat almost four years ago, mini-apps are now common in China and India, and gaining traction in other markets, too. Mini-apps, or lightweight apps designed for integration into host apps, allow smartphone users to access several services through one app, saving them data and storage space. They also give host apps more ways […]
Ola said on Monday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with the government of Tamil Nadu in India to set up what it claims would be the “world’s largest scooter manufacturing facility” in the South Indian state as the Indian ride-hailing firm begins a new push with electric vehicles. The SoftBank-backed Indian ride-hailing […]
Reddit announced that it has acquired short video platform Dubsmash. The deal’s terms were undisclosed. Dubsmash will retain its own platform and brand, and Reddit will integrate its video creation tools. Its co-founders, Suchit Dash, Jonas Drüppel and Tim Specht, will join Reddit. According to Crunchbase data, the app has raised $20.2 million from investors […]
“Mank” is a change of pace for director David Fincher — instead of exploring the world of startup backstabbing (“The Social Network”), political backstabbing (“House of Cards”) or actual stabbings (“Seven,” “Zodiac,” “Gone Girl,” “Mindhunter” etc.), Fincher takes us back to ’30s and ’40s Hollywood. Working from a script by Fincher’s late father Jack, the movie […]
The place we’re in, the valley of the dolls between the vote and the Inauguration, is overshadowed by the battle to save our lives. The vaccines look promising, and so does the persistence of the Trumpster to play his games. Somehow we have to live with that, on both sides. In the business we’re in, […]
Welcome back to Human Capital, where I break down the latest in diversity, equity and inclusion, and labor in tech. This week, Twitter dropped its latest diversity report and Tesla released its first one ever. Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized for the way things went down with Dr. Timnit Gebru, a prominent researcher in […]
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. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Subscribe here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Welcome to the depths of December, a time in which […]
Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Maybe it is a stock market bubble, or a tech-stock bubble at least. And maybe DoorDash, Airbnb and C3.ai and their bankers should have priced higher regardless to take advantage of all […]
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 is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech, the New York Times first reported on Friday night, and later supported by The Wall Street Journal. This EUA follows a recommendation by an independent panel of experts commissioned by the […]
Hyundai takes a controlling stake in an iconic robotics company, Twitter acquires a screen-sharing startup and we round up some security-themed gift ideas. This is your Daily Crunch for December 11, 2020. The big story: Hyundai acquires 80% stake in Boston Robotics Boston Robotics is behind a number of impressive robots, including the dog-like quadruped […]
Austinites, watch out; another tech company is headed into town. Just days after Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed during an interview that he has moved to Texas, and less than two weeks after HP Enterprise, a spin-out of the iconic Silicon Valley company Hewlett-Packard, announced that it is separately moving to Texas, yet another of […]
You don’t have to buy into 5G conspiracy theories to think that you could do with a little less radiation in your life. One way of blocking radiation is a Faraday cage, but this is usually a metal mesh of some kind, making everyday use difficult. Researchers at Drexel University have managed to create a […]
This holiday season, TechCrunch readers can send an Extra Crunch annual membership as a gift to a friend, family member or co-worker for 25% off. The gifting feature can be found here. Extra Crunch is our membership program that helps you spot technology trends and opportunities, build better startups and stay connected. It features thousands […]
These predictions center around how we’ll fundraise post-pandemic, how the funding divide may widen for some, what fundraising activity could look like and sectors we think will fare well.
Benchmark, the storied venture firm, has brought aboard a fifth general partner: 29-year-old Miles Grimshaw, a Yale graduate who joins the outfit from Thrive Capital, where he similarly joined a team of four other partners back in 2013, helping them raise the firm’s fourth and fifth funds (per Forbes). From his post as a general […]
It was an unprecedented year for [insert anything under the sun], and while plenty of tech verticals saw shifts that warped business models and shifted user habits, the gaming industry experienced plenty of new ideas in 2020. However, the loudest trends don’t always take hold as predicted. This year, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon each […]
