U.K.-based Fertifa has bagged a £1 million (~$1.3 million) seed to plug into a fertility-focused workplace benefits platform. Passion Capital is investing in the round, along with some unnamed strategic angel investors. The August 2019-founded startup sells bespoke reproductive health and fertility packages to U.K. employers to offer as workplace benefits to their staff — […]
Reliance Jio Platforms, the telecom venture run by India’s richest man (Mukesh Ambani), had 405.6 million subscribers in the quarter that ended in September, becoming the first operator outside of China to cross 400 million subscribers in a single-country market. The Facebook and Google-backed telecom operator said its finances have improved, too, despite the pandemic. […]
If the projections are to be believed, the amount of money swirling around the space industry is poised to grow considerably over the next decade. Consider that the aviation giant Boeing estimates that the aerospace market will reach $3 trillion in market size between now and 2029. It’s most certainly in Boeing’s best interests to […]
The cloud infrastructure market kept growing at a brisk pace last quarter, as the pandemic continued to push more companies to the cloud with offices shut down in much of the world. This week the big three — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — all reported their numbers and, as expected, the news was good, with […]
Coronavirus cases in the United States are reaching new peaks. E-commerce is continuing to boom. And b8ta, a San Francisco startup that is betting on the future of physical retailers, is doubling down on its in-person footprint. B8ta offers shelf space to unique digital products, such as electric skateboards or a coffee alarm clock, on […]
Yesterday’s earnings deluge made plain that tech shares are not rocketing higher as 2020 comes to a close. Indeed, in pre-market trading this morning, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are all down. Alphabet is the only member of the Big Five that is worth more today than yesterday. Strong advertising and cloud results helped the […]
Mobile news organization NowThis is announcing a bit of counter-programming for next week’s presidential election — it’s partnering with meditation app Calm to create a live stream for anyone who needs relief from the stress of Election Day news. Not that NowThis is exactly avoiding that news, but this live stream (combining breathing exercises and […]
China was the first major global smartphone market to rebound from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stringent lockdown measures were able to help the country recover from the virus relatively quickly during the first wave, as sales started to return well ahead of other areas. In Q3, however, things have begun to decline […]
Here’s an example of ad targeting that’s actually good for public health: In a campaign encouraging people to wear masks, the Illinois state government has been focusing its digital ad dollars on the counties with the highest COVID risk. To achieve this, the government’s been working with Civis Analytics, the data science company founded by […]
The UK’s ICO has reduced the size of a data breach penalty for hotel business Marriott — dropping it to £14.4 million (~$23.8M) in a final penalty notice down from the £99M ($123M) figure that the watchdog initially said it would levy in July 2019. The fine relates to a data breach suffered by the […]
Global fitness giant Under Armour announced this morning that it will be selling MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million, five and a half years after acquiring it for $475 million. The company also announced that it will be winding down the Endomondo platform which it also acquired at the same time for […]
AOL founder Steve Case was there in Dulles, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., when in 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed as part of a major overhaul of U.S. telecommunications laws that President Bill Clinton signed into law. Soon after, in its first test, a provision of that act which states that, “[n]o […]
Amazon expects to incur $4 billion in COVID-related costs next quarter, an estimate that provides a bellwether for other businesses, large and small, trying to stay operational and control expenses amid the pandemic. The upshot: Amazon is planning for COVID to remain an unwelcome companion through the end of the year with costs higher than […]
WhatsApp, the popular instant messaging app owned by Facebook, is now delivering roughly 100 billion messages a day, the company’s chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said at the quarterly earnings call Thursday. For some perspective, users exchanged 100 billion messages on WhatsApp last New Year’s Eve. That is the day when WhatsApp tops its engagement figures, […]
What does a hologram-obsessed entrepreneur do for a second act after setting up a virtual Ronald Reagan in the Reagan Memorial Library, or beaming Jimmy Kimmel all the way from Hollywood to the Country Music Awards in Nashville? If that entrepreneur is David Nussbaum, the founder of PORTL Hologram, the next logical step is to […]
Tesla has made good on founder and CEO Elon Musk’s promise to boost the price of its “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) software upgrade option, increasing it to $10,000 following the start of the staged rollout of a beta version of the software update last week. This boosts the price of the package $2,000 from its price […]
Polestar, the electric vehicle brand that was spun out of Volvo Car Group, has issued another recall for its newest electric vehicle. The company is voluntarily recalling nearly 4,600 vehicles over what has been described as faulty inverters, Reuters reported. Polestar said in a statement that all affected customers will be notified, beginning November 2. […]
Corsair Gaming today announced that it has acquired EpocCam, the software developer behind the iOS software of the same name. It’s easy to see why the gaming company would be interested in such an acquisition in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic has lead to a worldwide spike in remote working — and, as a result, more […]
Google releases its latest earnings report, Spotify is getting ready to raise prices and Excel gets friendlier to custom data types. This is your Daily Crunch for October 29, 2020. The big story: Google had a good quarter Google’s parent company Alphabet released its third-quarter earnings report this afternoon, coming in well ahead of Wall […]
PUBG Mobile, the sleeper hit mobile game, will terminate all service and access for users in India on October 30, two months after New Delhi banned the game in the world’s second largest internet market over cybersecurity concerns. India on September 2 banned PUBG Mobile Nordic Map: Livik and PUBG Mobile Lite, along with more […]
