Startup founders, brace yourself for a phenomenal opportunity. TechCrunch, in partnership with cela, will host eleven — count ‘em eleven — accelerators in Digital Startup Alley at Disrupt 2020. It gets better: they’re accepting applications for their upcoming virtual accelerator programs, and this is your chance to interview with them. Do you want in on […]
The mobility sector has been abuzz with activity in the past decade, from the rise of ride hailing and the sudden explosion of shared electric scooters and bikes to the pursuit to commercialize moonshots like automated vehicles and flying cars. At the center of this evolving industry are the investors, who are tapped into a […]
Arcadia, the company that gives homeowners and renters a way to offset their carbon footprints through renewable energy credits and clean power developments, is now pitching its services to businesses as an employee benefit. Companies can offset their employees carbon footprints or subsidize their power bills using Arcadia’s services, the company said. It’s a response […]
Between the IPO buzz and a raft of new federal contracts for COVID-19 work, it’s been a year of big moves for Palantir. Now, the company is making a more literal one: decamping from its Palo Alto headquarters to Denver, Colorado. The decision to relocate its Palo Alto headquarters, first reported by the Denver Business […]
A California appeals court judge has granted Uber and Lyft’s emergency stay. This means the preliminary injunction that sought to force companies to reclassify their drivers as employees will not go into effect this Friday. The court is now reviewing Uber and Lyft’s appeal to overturn the trial court’s ruling. Oral arguments in the case […]
The U.S. market has no real frontrunner poised to claim TikTok’s throne if the app is banned in the country. According to Trump’s executive order, TikTok’s owner ByteDance has to divest of TikTok’s U.S. operations or the app will be banned from the U.S. market on November 12. A number of companies have considered the […]
Eric Hippeau is the founding partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures, whose portfolio companies include the likes of Axios, BuzzFeed, Casper, Warby Parker, Allbirds, DocSend, Fundera, Everlane, Giphy, Genius and the recently acquired fitness company Mirror. It would not be an overstatement to say that Hippeau is well-positioned to discuss startups across a wide spectrum of […]
When Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella introduced Saqib Shaikh on stage at BUILD in 2016, he was obviously moved by the engineer’s “passion and empathy,” which Nadella said, “is going to change the world.” That assessment was on the mark because Shaikh went on to co-found the mobile app Seeing AI, which is a showcase for […]
Valued at over $60 billion and used by millions each day for work and staying in touch with friends and family, the COVID-19 pandemic has helped make Zoom one of the most popular and relevant enterprise applications. On one level, its surge to the top can be summed up in three words: “It just works.” […]
There are a number of tech companies that either directly work with law enforcement agencies, or supply their tech to them. Amazon’s doorbell camera company Ring has partnered with more than 1,300 police departments and Amazon Web Services sells its product to U.S. Immigration and Customers Enforcement. Meanwhile, Google sells its G Suite tools to […]
Although the media industry is currently in the midst of a long-overdue reckoning over diversity, representation and racism, Morgan DeBaun and Angie Nwandu have been building a more diverse digital media landscape for years. And we’re excited to welcome them to Disrupt 2020 this September. DeBaun co-founded Blavity, a digital media company focused on Black […]
One of President Trump’s former top political advisors was arrested in connection with a crowdfunding scheme to build a U.S. border wall, according to charges unsealed by federal prosecutors Thursday. Steve Bannon is one of four individuals named in the indictment who now face charges for conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to commit […]
You’d be hard pressed to hang out with a designer and not hear the name Figma . The company behind the largely browser-based design tool has made a huge splash in the past few years, building a massive war chest with more than $130 million from investors like A16Z, Sequoia, Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Index. […]
Volkswagen has started series production of the ID.4, an all-electric SUV and the first under the automaker’s new ID label to be headed to the United States. Series production of the ID.4 kicked off Thursday at the company’s Zwickau factory in Germany ahead of the vehicle’s world premiere that is scheduled for September. The ID.4 […]
Lyft is planning to suspend its ridesharing operations in California beginning tonight at 11:59 pm PT, unless it receives a stay from the Court of Appeals today. “We don’t want to suspend operations,” Lyft wrote in a blog post. “We are going to keep up the fight for a benefits model that works for all […]
Startups are rebounding. Venture capitalists are open for business. And during the pandemic, the pace of dealmaking has not slowed down. But how is this new era of uncertainty impacting underrepresented founders? Has startup-land become more inclusive, or do warm intros still dictate who gets a meeting and the way a deal closes? To talk […]
Apple is well known for picking up smaller startups on the hush-hush to augment its business, and today news leaked out about the latest of these… nearly two years after the fact. Sometime between 2018 and 2019, the iPhone giant reportedly acquired and shut down Camerai, an augmented reality and computer vision company based out […]
Blue Origin and the members of its “national team” — Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper — have delivered a full-scale engineering prototype of their human lunar lander to NASA for the agency to examine and review as it readies to build the real thing for eventual use in NASA’s Artemis program moon missions. The […]
George Sehremelis is building what he calls a “social news network,” with the aim of combating the spread of misinformation and fake news online. “My goal has always been to make an impact on the 2020 election,” Sehremelis told me — a tall order, particularly when the big social networks are struggling to solve these […]
Yalochat, a five-year-old, Mexico City-based conversational commerce platform that enables customers like Coca-Cola and Walmart to upsell, collect payments and provide better service to their own customers over WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and WeChat in China, has closed on $15 million in Series B funding led by B Capital Group. Sierra Ventures, which led a $10 […]
