I wanted to write an essay about Microsoft and TikTok today, because I was effectively a full-time reporter covering the software giant when it hired Satya Nadella in 2014. But, everyone else has already done that and, frankly, there’s a more pressing financial topic for us to parse. Let’s take a minute to take stock […]
Not that YOU would use these resources, but it might be fun to look at them in a hypothetical, “haha what if I were to expose gross injustices?” kind of way.
Snapchat is taking aim at TikTok. The company announced today it will begin testing a new feature that lets Snapchat users set their Snaps to music, similar to TikTok’s app. The feature may allow Snapchat to capitalize on the fracturing of the TikTok audience, who have been exploring alternative apps as the Trump administration weighs […]
Back in January, Robert Playter became the CEO of Boston Dynamics. It was a momentous occasion, marking the company’s first new CEO since its founding in the early 1990s when the company was founded by Marc Raibert. The move came during what was already a transitional period for the company, which is why we are […]
Josh Jensen bought his first house in Peoria, Ill., when he was 23. He sold the house to pay for business school and over the course of his tech career — first as a mechanical engineer and then as an executive for startup companies — Jensen and his wife bought, renovated and flipped several homes. […]
Surprise. The latest version of Google’s budget Pixel device will be one of the first two to get its next-gen technology. It’s an odd strategy, to be sure, but sometimes roadmaps work out like that, I guess. You can read basically everything you need to know about the Pixel 4a in my review here. It’s […]
The Pixel line has always felt like more of an underdog product than one should reasonably expect from a corporation as massive as Google. After years of partnerships and Nexus devices, when Google finally did enter the smartphone market in earnest, it found itself attempting to chip away at an already mature category — an […]
Facebook launched two 12-week accelerator programs for startups on Monday as the social juggernaut looks for new ideas and solutions to expand its commerce and connectivity efforts. Facebook’s Commerce Accelerator will select 60 startups from the EMEA and LATAM regions for the program, the company said. The startups that make the cut will explore building […]
Mobile banking startup Varo is becoming its own bank. The company announced on Friday it has been granted a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and secured regulatory approvals from the FDIC and Federal Reserve to open Varo Bank, N.A. The news follows Varo’s recent close on an […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can […]
“The app that you use the most on your phone and you don’t realize it is your keyboard,” says Christophe Barre, the co-founder and chief executive of OneKey. A member of Y Combinator’s most recent cohort, OneKey has a plan to make work easier on mobile devices by turning the keyboard into a new way […]
Historically, podcasts have been focused on appealing to as many listeners as possible. But Artifact, a new YC-backed company launching today, has a different idea. It all started when co-founder and CEO Ross Chanin lost his grandfather. He found himself wishing he’d spent more time asking him about his life. At the same time, he […]
Companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat that are making vegetable-based meat substitutes have captured the imagination and wallets of consumers, but so far, there’s been no real corollary for the seafood industry. Now, a startup coming from Y Combinator’s summer cohort, Kuleana, is hoping it can swim in those waters. While new businesses like […]
Facebook has branded a legal order to globally block a number of Brazilian accounts linked to the spread of political disinformation targeting the country’s 2018 election as “extreme”, claiming it poses a threat to freedom of expression outside the country. The tech giant is simultaneously complying with the block order — beginning Saturday after it […]
Adobe’s work on a technical solution to combat online misinformation at scale, still in its early stages, is taking some big steps toward its lofty goal of becoming an industry standard. The project was first announced last November, and now the team is out with a whitepaper going into the nuts and bolts about how […]
ByteDance is not backing down from its ambitions to become a global technology powerhouse, even as TikTok loses its largest market (India) and faces insurmountable challenges in the U.S. But some in China are blasting the Beijing-based company as too accommodating and yielding to U.S. demands. ByteDance said it will “remain committed to our vision […]
Virgin Galactic is making strides toward its goal of creating high-speed commercial aircraft that operates a little closer to Earth than its existing passenger spacecraft. The company revealed the initial design of the commercial passenger airplane it’s creating that’s designed to fly at speeds in excess of Mach 3 — faster than the average cruising […]
Incumbent banks acquiring fintechs is nothing new, and amidst the coronavirus crisis, we can likely expect to see that trend continue. The latest such move comes from publicly listed Metro Bank, which today has announced its intention to purchase peer-to-peer lender RateSetter for up to £12 million. Pending approval by U.K. regulators, Metro Bank is […]
Google said on Monday it will invest $450 million in ADT and work with the Florida-headquartered firm’s 20,000 technicians to sell and install the search giant’s Nest family of smart home products. As part of the long-term investment — which is granting Google a 6.6% stake in ADT — the two companies will first attempt […]
