The major tech platforms push back against the House antitrust report, Google Assistant gets a “guest” mode and we interview a freshly minted Nobel laureate. This is your Daily Crunch for October 7, 2020. The big story: Big tech responds to antitrust report The House Judiciary Committee released its tech antitrust report late yesterday, concluding […]
We don’t often cover telecom technology startups, but it’s periodically worth checking in to see what’s happening in that space. We can get a good indication from the latest cohort to emerge from an accelerator associated with South Korea’s largest wireless carrier, SK Telecom. This group of startups will join the Telecom Infra Project accelerator […]
In a blog post Wednesday, Facebook said it will no longer allow content that encourages poll watching that uses “militarized” language or intends to “intimidate, exert control, or display power over election officials or voters.” Facebook credited the update to its platform rules to civil rights experts who it worked with to create the policy. […]
Amazon has sent a legal notice to Future Group, India’s second largest retail chain, for breaching the terms of its contract by selling a significant portion of the business to Ambani’s Reliance Retail. Future Group announced in late August that it was selling its retail and wholesale business, as well as its logistics and warehousing […]
The goal of Sight Tech Global, a virtual, global event on December 2-3, 2020, is to gather the world’s top experts who are applying advanced technologies, notably AI, to the future of accessibility and assistive tech for people who are blind or visually impaired. Today we’re excited to roll out most of the agenda. There […]
Welcome back to Extra Crunch’s Media Roundup, where I round up the stories that entrepreneurs in the content and advertising business should be thinking about — trends, larger platform shifts, as well as noteworthy funding rounds. This time, we’ve got some bad news for movie theaters, the specter of antitrust regulation and a new career […]
YouTube has long allowed its users to test new features and products before they go live to a wider audience. But in a recent change, YouTube’s latest series of experiments are being limited to those who subscribe to the Premium tier of YouTube’s service. Currently, paid subscribers are the only ones able to test several […]
Watching the news this past week was like drinking from a firehose. Speaking of which, you probably missed a busy week in cybersecurity, so here are the big stories from the past week. THE BIG PICTURE Blackbaud hack gets worse, as bank account data stolen Blackbaud, a cloud technology company used by colleges, universities, nonprofits […]
On Tuesday, during TechCrunch’s annual Mobility event, we had the opportunity to interview three investors who spend much of their time focused narrowly on shifts in the transportation industry and we talked with the three — Amy Gu of Hemi Ventures, Reilly Brennan of Trucks VC, and Olaf Sakkers of Maniv Mobility — about a […]
Claire Díaz-Ortiz has been many things over the course of her career — an angel investor, an early Twitter employee (who notably got the Pope on Twitter), the founder of a nonprofit, a published author and an entrepreneur. Now, the globe-trotting, multi-hyphenate polymath is adding “partner” to her list of titles as she joins the […]
Remember ‘Do Not Track‘? The tracker-loving adtech industry hopes you don’t recall that decade+ doomed attempt to bake user-friendly privacy controls into browsers. But a coalition of privacy-forward tech companies, publishers and advocacy groups has taken the wraps off of a push to develop a new standard that gives Internet users a super simple way […]
Google is launching a few new privacy features today that include a refreshed Safety Center that’s now live in the U.S. and coming soon globally, as well as more prominent alerts when the company expects that your account has been tampered with. The most interesting new feature, however, is a new Guest mode for the […]
Former Apple software engineer and designer Ken Kocienda, whose work included the original iPhone and the development of touchscreen autocorrect, has created his first iOS app, Up Spell. The fast-paced, fun word game challenges users to spell all the words you can in two minutes and uses a lexicon of words Kocienda built to allow […]
Most startup founders have a tough road to their first round of funding, but the founders of Digital Brain had it a bit tougher than most. The two young founders survived by entering and winning hackathons to pay their rent and put food on the table. One of the ideas they came up with at […]
Last year, Instagram announced it was ending support for its standalone mobile messaging app known as Direct, which had allowed users to quickly create and share messages with friends. Shortly thereafter, the company launched Threads, a new messaging app focused on status updates and communication with only those you identified in Instagram as your “Close […]
This morning Zira raised $3.1 million in a seed round. The startup provides software that helps businesses schedule their hourly workforce in a more intelligent manner. Software often fails to reach non-information workers, so it’s nice to see a startup focus on a somewhat forgotten demographic. General Catalyst and Abstract Ventures led the round, which […]
Boom Supersonic is closer than ever to its goal of introducing supersonic commercial aviation back to the global stage — the Colorado-based startup unveiled the final design of its XB-1 demonstrator aircraft today. This is a fully functional prototype airplane, which will help the company test out the flight capabilities and systems that will eventually […]
Grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and get ready for Day Two of TC Sessions: Mobility 2020! Yesterday featured an incredible lineup packed with trends, insights and opportunities designed to help you build a stronger business. Buckle up folks, because we have even more in store today. Heads up: There’s still time to get your […]
This week, Unqork, a startup that helps other companies build business apps with a no-code platform, raised a $207 million Series C. The new capital valued the firm at around $2 billion. Even given how much attention 2020 has brought to no-code startups and their low-code relatives, the investment stood out as outsized — and […]
