More than a third of small and medium-sized businesses on Facebook in India expect cash flow to be a challenge for them as they navigate through the coronavirus pandemic in the next few months, according to a report by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Facebook, which reaches nearly every internet […]
The European Union’s top court has handed down its first decision on the bloc’s net neutrality rules — interpreting the law as precluding the use of commercial ‘zero rating’ by Internet services providers. ‘Zero rating’ refers to the practice of ISPs offering certain apps/services ‘tariff free’ by excluding their data consumption. It’s controversial because it […]
IBM today, for the first time, published its road map for the future of its quantum computing hardware. There is a lot to digest here, but the most important news in the short term is that the company believes it is on its way to building a quantum processor with more than 1,000 qubits — […]
Spotawheel, the “end-to-end” digital platform for buying a used car in Poland and Greece, has raised €10 million in debt and equity funding, as it sees a bounce-back from the slowdown witnessed as the coronavirus crisis took hold. Once again the new investment was led by VentureFriends, with participation from existing investor Velocity Partners, along […]
Since India enforced a lockdown across the country in late March, shutting schools and other public places, Bangalore-headquartered startup Byju’s has emerged as one of the quintessential platforms for school-going students in the world’s second largest internet market. It took the startup about four and a half years to amass 40 million students. Since the […]
Fintech startup Klarna has raised a mega-round of funding led by Silver Lake. The company is raising $650 million at a post-money valuation of $10.65 billion. Klarna says it is now the highest-valued private fintech company in Europe following today’s funding round. In addition to Silver Lake, GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund) and funds and […]
Meet Swan, a new French startup that wants to let other companies offer financial services by issuing cards, bank accounts and IBANs with just a few lines of codes. The company could be considered as a bank-as-a-service platform, like Treezor or solarisBank. Originally founded by startup studio eFounders, the startup just raised a $5.9M million […]
Homage, a Singapore-based caregiving and telehealth company, has taken a major step in its global expansion plan. The startup announced today that it has received strategic investment from Infocom, the Japanese information and communications technology company that runs one of the largest healthcare IT businesses in the country. Infocom’s solutions are used by more than […]
Even as Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, admits that climate change “is real” and that “the science is unambiguous and the need to act grows more urgent by the day” the platform appears unwilling to take steps to really stand up to the climate change denialism that circulates on its platform. The company […]
CashKaro, one of the leading cashback and coupon sites in India, will expand its range of services for e-commerce after raising $10 million in Series B funding, the New Delhi-based startup announced today. The round was led by Korea Investment Partners, with participation from returning investor Kalaari Capital. TechCrunch last covered CashKaro five years ago […]
When COVID-19 spread to the United States, the pandemic exposed two conflicting realities: a healthcare system that excels at high-cost, complex treatments while failing to provide sufficient access at the local level. That lack of access to public health infrastructure might be the country’s biggest challenge. It has also created opportunities for healthcare startups, founders […]
The pandemic has led to N95 masks quickly becoming one of the world’s most sought-after resources as essential workers burned through billions of them. New research could lead to an N95 that you can recharge rather than throw away — or even one that continuously tops itself up for maximum effectiveness. The proposed system, from […]
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into claims that Nikola Corp. is involved in an alleged “intricate fraud,” the latest development in a controversy that erupted last week just days after GM took an 11% stake in the newly public company. Bloomberg reported Monday that the U.S. agency was examining the company […]
In the middle of a pandemic, Airtable, the low-code startup, has actually had an excellent year. Just the other day, the company announced it had raised $185 million on a whopping $2.585 billion valuation. It also announced some new features that take it from the realm of pure no-code and deeper into low-code territory, which […]
Tech and Hollywood don’t cross-pollinate that often, but when it comes to Franklin Leonard’s way of looking at things, maybe they should. Leonard is best known as the creator of The Black List, a curated collection of the most underrated screenplays of the year. What began as a side project in 2005 is now a […]
A former Facebook data scientist dropped a detailed, damning memo on her last day there, calling the social network out for what she describes as an arbitrary, slow and generally inadequate response to fake accounts and activity affecting politics worldwide. BuzzFeed News acquired the full memo and has published excerpts in this report, which is […]
Today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020, leaders from three quantum computing startups joined TechCrunch editor Frederic Lardinois to discuss the future of the technology. IonQ CEO and president Peter Chapman suggested we could be as little as five years away from a desktop quantum computer, but not everyone agreed on that optimistic timeline. “I think within […]
After 17 years, Palantir is getting closer and closer to its public debut later this month. We’ve been covering different facets of the company’s direct listing process, including concerns about its governance and how insiders are accelerating the sale of their shares as the public markets date looms closer. Now, we have several major updates […]
What market selloff? Despite last week’s market declines, two big IPOs are rolling ahead this week, with Snowflake and JFrog both boosting their IPO price ranges this morning. The jump in expected pricing means each IPO will likely raise more capital, valuing the firms more richly than their initial ranges made clear. Snowflake’s first IPO […]
A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found. The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone’s […]
