Andy Rachleff founded Wealthfront a decade ago to give investors a better and smarter way to manage their wealth, building on core academic research showing that a carefully balanced portfolio of low-fee ETFs outperformed more aggressive strategies. Since then, the company has taken in billions of dollars of invested capital under management and expanded into […]
Facebook joined the growing ranks of companies publicly complaining about the 30% fee that Apple collects on payments made through its App Store. Those complaints came midway through a blog post about the social network’s new feature supporting paid online events. Facebook said that to support struggling businesses, it won’t be collecting any fees on those […]
Welcome back to Human Capital. This week, Uber and Lyft's legal battle against a California law pertaining to independent contractors continued, and Pinterest employees reached their breaking point.
Businesses will now be able to monetize online events on Facebook, thanks to a new feature that the social network is launching in the United States and 19 other countries today. In a call with reporters, Head of Facebook App Fidji Simo said that Facebook’s Events feature was designed for in-person events, but with the […]
Initialized Capital, the early-stage venture firm that got its start inside of Y Combinator almost a decade ago and spun out of the organization roughly five years later, has closed its newest fund, with $230 million in capital commitments, co-founder Garry Tan announced on Medium earlier today. The fund, its fifth, brings the assets that […]
NASA and SpaceX have set a specific target date for Crew-1, the first operational crewed mission for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Crew-1 will carry astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station, and will mark the first regular service mission of the Dragon spacecraft following its certification at […]
As the antitrust drumbeat continues to pound on tech giants, with Reuters reporting comments today from the U.S. Justice Department that it’s moving “full-tilt” on an investigation of platform giants including Google parent Alphabet, startups in Europe’s travel sector are dialing up their allegations of anti-competitive behavior against the search giant. Google has near complete […]
It’s a whole new playing field these days for music labels and publishers, and today one of the biggies made an acquisition to help it sharpen up its strategy to better understand what people want to see and hear online today. Warner Music — with a market cap of $15.4 billion, one of the big three […]
Facebook is going all-in on short-form videos. After flirting with the idea in Lasso, a TikTok-clone it tested in select markets, and adding a similar feature called Reels to Instagram recently, the company is exploring a new venue for this TikTok -esque experience: The big blue app. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it is […]
Pinterest employees are walking out today to demand change at the company. The walkout is directly in response to recent accusations of racial and gender discrimination at Pinterest. Organizers of the walkout are encouraging employees to post the following message in the #qanda and #pinployees-global channels on Slack: “I am [upset/angry/shocked/unhappy/whatever you’re feeling] about the […]
Thirty Madison, the New York-based startup developing a range of direct to consumer treatments for hair loss, migraines and chronic indigestion, has raised $47 million in new financing. After last week’s nearly $19 billion merger between Teladoc and Livongo, remote therapies and virtual care companies are all the rage among the healthcare industry, and Thirty […]
After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd and the subsequent racial justice uprising, many people in tech shouted from the rooftops that “Black Lives Matter,” despite having subpar representation of Black and Latinx folks at their companies. In some cases, these companies’ proclamations of “Black Lives Matter” felt especially performative in contrast to their respective stances […]
Robots primarily rely on two basic senses: vision and touch. But even the latter still has a long way to go to get up to the speed with the former. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are looking to hearing as a potential additional sense to help machines increase their perception of the world around them. […]
Before the coronavirus made edtech more relevant, companies in the sector were historically likely to see slow, low exits. Despite successful IPOs by 2U, Chegg and Instructure in the United States, public markets are not crowded with edtech companies. Some of the largest exits in the space include LinkedIn’s scoop of Lynda for a $1.5 […]
I enjoy driving the Polestar 2 more than the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 is more comfortable, seemingly better built and has a better infotainment system. In all the traditional automotive metrics, it’s a better car, and yet I find it hard to recommend it over the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 often […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had the full crew around once again — Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton, Chris Gates and myself. And as always, it was key to have the full crew as there was an ocean […]
Amazon has launched an online pharmacy in Bangalore, the capital of India’s southern Karnataka state, as the e-commerce group looks to spread its tentacles in more categories in one of its key overseas markets. The company said on Friday its new service, called Amazon Pharmacy, has started accepting orders for both over-the-counter and prescription-based medicines […]
The use of third party cookies for ad tracking and targeting by data broker giants Oracle and Salesforce is the focus of class action style litigation announced today in the UK and the Netherlands. The suits will argue that mass surveillance of Internet users to carry out real-time bidding ad auctions cannot possibly be compatible […]
After Epic Games picked a fight with Apple over the sizable chunk of fees the company takes on transactions in its mobile ecosystem, it looks like the Fortnite developer will be waging a war on two fronts. Epic added a direct payment option to its mobile game early Thursday, prompting Apple to remove Fortnite from […]
