The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Procter & Gamble’s acquisition of Billie, a NY-based startup that sells razors and body wash. In the notice, the FTC alleged that the merger would “eliminate innovative nascent competitors for wet shave razors” to the loss of consumers. Billie was founded in 2017 with the goal of […]
We already knew that Halo Infinite was delayed until next year. Initially intended to launch alongside the new Xboxes, Microsoft announced back in August that it would instead ship in 2021. Exactly when in 2021, though, was still anyone’s guess. A new blog post from 343 Industries narrows it down a bit: it’ll be released […]
A year ago this week Ada Ventures — a UK/Europe focused VC with an ‘impact twist’ aiming to invest in diverse founders tacking societal problems — launched on stage at Techcrunch Disrupt. (You can watch the video of that launch below). Today Ada announces that it has closed its first fund at $50 million. Cornerstone […]
Apple has used a speech to European lawmakers and privacy regulators today to come out jabbing at what SVP Craig Federighi described as dramatic, “outlandish” and “false” claims being made by the adtech industry over a forthcoming change to iOS that will give users the ability to decline app tracking. The iPhone maker had been […]
Apple unveils new high-end headphones, Calm raises more funding and Cyberpunk 2077 faces criticism. This is your Daily Crunch for December 8, 2020. The big story: Apple announces AirPods Max headphones These are Apple’s first over-ear headphones under the AirPods brand (it also owns Beats), and at $549 they’re priced significantly higher than previous AirPods. […]
According to media reports, food-delivery giant DoorDash priced its IPO at $102 per share, ahead of its final IPO pricing range of $90 to $95 per share. The company’s debut has been warmly anticipated by public investors, as evinced by the company raising its range from an initial target of $75 to $85. While we’re […]
The Senate today confirmed the appointment of Nathan Simington to the FCC, which with the imminent departure of Chairman Ajit Pai sets up the agency for years of deadlock unless Democrats take the Senate. The last-minute appointment breaks with political norms, and the vote was entirely on party lines after Democrats objected to the nomination. […]
Uber has offloaded its air taxi enterprise Elevate to Joby Aviation, the last of several moonshots to be sold by the ride-hailing company in a pursuit to stick to its core business and reach profitability. The transaction announced Tuesday is part of a complex deal that includes Uber investing $75 million into Joby and an […]
FireEye, normally the first company that cyberattack victims will call, has now admitted it too has fallen victim to hackers, which the company called a “sophisticated threat actor” that was likely backed by a nation-state. In a blog post confirming the breach, the company’s chief executive Kevin Mandia said the nation-backed hackers have “top-tier offensive […]
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday that he has moved to Texas, confirming months of speculation that the billionaire would leave California, a state of which he has become increasingly critical. Musk confirmed the move during an interview at the The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council annual summit. His remarks confirmed a CNBC […]
Nearly three years after it was first launched, Amazon Web Services’ SageMaker platform has gotten a significant upgrade in the form of new features, making it easier for developers to automate and scale each step of the process to build new automation and machine learning capabilities, the company said. As machine learning moves into the […]
Drivers cruising along an off-the-beaten track might stumble upon an unusual sight in the coming months: a Rivian electric charging station. The electric automaker has designed and is now starting to build out a network of electric vehicle charging stations throughout the United States as it prepares for the first deliveries of its R1T pickup […]
One of the biggest games of the year, “Cyberpunk 2077,” is about to be released, but developer CD Projekt Red is already under fire for an early game sequence with the potential to induce seizures. Players with epilepsy should be warned that there is currently no way to skip this, and the visual feature will […]
As more and more alternative investment marketplaces pop up around specific verticals like art or collectibles, Indiegogo founder Slava Rubin is launching a Kayak-like platform called Vincent which helps curious investors get a handle on what the entire asset class has to offer. Rubin and co-founders Evan Cohen, Eric Cantor and Ross Cohen have raised […]
A third-party contacts app you’re not using may be handing out your home address to its users. In November, former Yahoo CEO and Google veteran Marissa Mayer and co-founder Enrique Muñoz Torres introduced their newly rebranded startup Sunshine, and its first product, Sunshine Contacts. The new iOS app offers to organize your address book by […]
Palantir’s push into federal health work continues. The data analytics company just picked up a new U.S. Food and Drug Administration contract which will span three years for a total of $44.4 million. The company’s shares, which have doubled in value over the last two months, are up around 20% on the news. As Bloomberg […]
The aerospace industry has seen an explosion of activity from the world of startups, where bright engineers are foregoing jobs at large corporations and opting instead to raise funding from increasingly ambitious venture capitalists to build their own startups to turn moonshots into business realities. In the latest development, a startup out of Munich has […]
French President Emmanuel Macron sat down with Niklas Zennström for an interview on the European tech ecosystem. Macron listed everything that’s needed to create European tech giants that compete with the biggest American and Chinese tech companies. According to him, Europe needs to focus on “financing, integration of our markets and an actual single market, […]
This year has taken a toll on so many small businesses, yet the data shows the entrepreneurial spirit remains strong with a drive to push onward, improve and succeed.
Richard Socher, former chief scientist at Salesforce, who helped build the Einstein artificial intelligence platform, is taking on a new challenge — and it’s a doozy. Socher wants to fix consumer search and today he announced you.com, a new search engine to take on the mighty Google. “We are building you.com. You can already go […]
