One year ago, Uber’s business model could be categorized as an “all of the above approach,” a strategy to generate revenue from all forms of transportation, including ride-hailing, micromobility, logistics and package and food delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic upended that business strategy, prompting Uber to offload its shared micromobility unit Jump, double down on delivery […]
Welcome back to Human Capital, a weekly digest about diversity, inclusion and the human labor that powers tech. This week, we’re looking at a number of topics because a lot went down. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took a controversial stance on social, Clubhouse found itself under scrutiny again, but this time around anti-Semitism and a […]
GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, will invest $752 million in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, and TPG will invest $250 million in the Indian firm, they all said Saturday midnight (local time). The Government of Singapore Investment Corp and TPG are the latest high-profile investors to back Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain, in the past four […]
Neobanks have created a new tech stack, completely changing the services, products and speed at which they are delivered, and creating more fluidity in payments and currencies.
Plaid, the company building a universal banking API that lets you connect an app or service with a bank account, has updated Plaid Link. Plaid Link is the interface you see when you add your bank account to any app or service that uses Plaid, such as Venmo, Acorns or Chime. Given that 3,000 apps […]
Anyone who writes online or in a word processor has likely gotten used to the inevitable squiggly line denoting a misspelled word or clumsy phrase. But what if you use a word that’s loaded, a phrase that’s too formal or not formal enough, or refer to a group of people in an outdated way? Writer […]
For several years, blockchain technology has been touted as a way to verify the sale of property. Any kind of property. And so entrepreneurs busily began the process of trying to create a startup that could complete a property deal on the blockchain. One that stood out from the start was Propy, started by Natalia […]
Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is adding a new way to withdraw funds from your Coinbase account. If you’ve added a compatible debit card to your account, you can transfer USD, EUR or GBP to your bank account nearly instantly. There are some drawbacks, and the main one is that you’ll pay a lot of fees. In […]
Removing the background of a video you’ve shot can be a real pain if you don’t have the kind of tools and setup used by professionals — and even then it isn’t as easy as it should be. Kaleido’s one-step background removal tool for images, remove.bg, has graduated to full-motion video with the company’s new […]
Update: Tonight’s launch was scrubbed with two seconds remaining in the count and will be rescheduled. SpaceX is set to launch a GPS-III satellite for the U.S. Space Force using a Falcon 9 rocket, with a target launch time of 9:43 PM EDT (6:43 PM PDT). That opens a 15-minute launch window, and so far weather […]
Long before the coronavirus, Sora, a startup run by a team of Atlanta entrepreneurs, was toying with the idea of live, virtual high school. The program would focus on student autonomy and organize its curriculum around projects that learners wanted to work on, such as finding ways to reduce the impact of climate change on […]
For the past two years, TechCrunch has brought together the best and brightest minds in mobility at our TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility event. This year, we are adding a little extra twist. On October 5, the day before Mobility 2020, TC is hosting a pitch-off — which only ticket holders can access — highlighting disruptive startups […]
Bolt Threads has brought together some new and existing partners, including Stella McCartney, Kering (the fashion house behind brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta), Lululemon and Adidas to create a consortium that will explore the company’s use of its mushroom-based leather substitute in products, the company said. These companies will be among […]
Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, slightly above Wall Street’s expectations and a notable improvement from last quarter, as well as the same period a year ago. Tesla’s numbers in the third quarter marked a 43% improvement from the same period last year, when the company reported it had delivered 97,000 electric vehicles. […]
This week’s pair of direct listings from Asana and Palantir were historic moments for each firm, but they also served as public business experiments. For Palantir, the event tested how far corporate governance could be twisted while leaving a company worth buying in the eyes of public shareholders. And with Asana, its direct listing was […]
SpaceX will provide an update about what’s happening with their Starship spacecraft in roughly three weeks, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. Starship is a next-generation, fully reusable spacecraft that the company is developing with the aim of replacing all of their launch vehicles, including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, for missions both to […]
As smoke from fires chokes the skies in the western U.S. and pollution chokes much of the world, air quality has become yet another issue for civilization to address. Industrialization and natural disasters wrought by climate change are spewing more toxic matter into the air, and governments around the world are racing to monitor what […]
Yaw Aning named Malomo, the service he launched for small businesses to turn their order-tracking services into branded customer experiences, as a tribute to his mother, who was a small business owner herself. “Malomo” means flowers in Swahili and it was the name of Aning’s mother’s small soap-making business which she built over the years […]
Zynga announced in August that it would be acquiring Istanbul-based Rollic, developer and publisher of hyper-casual gaming hits like Go Knots 3D and Tangle Master 3D. Today, it says the deal has closed. To be clear, Zynga doesn’t completely own Rollic yet. Instead, it has purchased 80% of the company for approximately $180 million in […]
American stocks are selling in the wake of President Trump, and members of his family and a key staff member, testing positive for COVID-19. The news, which came overnight, is weighing heavily on all major American indices, but heaviest on tech shares. As of the time of writing, here’s where the mess stands: Dow Jones […]
