The world’s hardware haven is taking a digital leap for pets. In May, China’s southern city Shenzhen announced that all dogs must be implanted with a chip, joining the rank of the U.K., Japan, Australia and a growing number of countries to make microchips mandatory for dogs. This week, city regulators began to set up injection […]
The latest startup to see an uplift in inbound interest flowing from the remote work boom triggered by the coronavirus pandemic is Berlin-based Everphone, which sells a ‘mobile as a service’ device rental package that caters to businesses needing to kit staff out with mobile hardware plus associated support. Everphone is announcing a €34 million […]
Flipkart on Tuesday launched a hyperlocal service in suburbs of Bangalore, four years after the e-commerce group abruptly concluded its previous foray into this category. The e-commerce group, owned by Walmart, said Flipkart Quick leverages the company’s supply chain infrastructure and a new location mapping technology framework to deliver more than 2,000 products across grocery, perishables, […]
Google today announced its plans to build a new subsea cable with landing points in New York in the U.S. and Bude, UK and Bilbao, Spain in Europe. The new cable, named after the pioneering computer scientist Grace Hopper, will join Google’s various other private subsea cables like Curie between the U.S. and South America, […]
Since being re-acquired from Nokia in 2018 by a group including its original founders and some of its original investors, health tech company Withings has been focused on evolving their offering of consumer health hardware to provide medical-grade data that can be shared with, and leveraged by healthcare professionals to deliver better, more personalized care. […]
It’s been seven years since Tencent picked up a 36.5% stake in Sogou to fend off rival Baidu in the online search market. The social and gaming giant is now offering to buy out and take private its long-time ally. NYSE-listed Sogou said this week it has received a preliminary non-binding proposal from Tencent to […]
That Vicariously app you might have seen pop up in your twitter feed via a little viral growth hacking has run aground on Twitter’s automation rules. We reached out about it after it started spamming my feed with ‘so and so has added you to a list’ notifications and Twitter says that the app is […]
Cross-border financial transactions are a major headache for individuals and large companies alike, who often have to deal with long wait times and high fees in order to send money to recipients in other countries. EMQ, a Hong Kong-based startup that develops network infrastructure to make international payments faster, announced today that it has raised […]
Early last year, excitement over the burgeoning cannabis industry was palpable in Silicon Valley, with a small number of venture firms writing their first checks to cannabis-related startups. Among them is the cross-border venture firm DCM, which even hosted an “inaugural” cannabis “tech summit” in May 2019 that drew so many investors that finding a […]
The bitcoin bulls are back in town. The price of bitcoin surged today by $1,268.19, reaching a six-month high of $11,203.90, or a one-day gain of 12.73%. It’s another indication of the resurgence of both investor interest in the technology and renewed confidence in its long-term prospects after a rough year of regulatory scrutiny and […]
The Berlin-based startup behind Tandem, an app for practicing a second language, has closed a £4.5 million (~$5.7 million) Series A round of financing to capitalize on growth opportunities it’s seeing as the coronavirus crisis continues to accelerate the switch to digital and online learning. With many higher education institutions going remote as a result […]
Apple is expanding its relationship with media mogul Oprah Winfrey. The company announced today its plans for a new series, “The Oprah Conversation,” which will feature timely discussions between Oprah and “newsmakers, thought leaders and masters of their craft” across a range of topics. The first few episodes will focus on conversations around race, given […]
Everyone wants more bandwidth from the skies, but it takes a lot of testing to turn laboratory research projects into real-world performant infrastructure. A number of new technologies, sometimes placed under the banner of “5G” and sometimes not, is embarking on that transition and being deployed in real-world scenarios. Those research trials are crucial for […]
Joseph Kitonga, the 23-year-old entrepreneur behind Vitable Health, first saw the need for a new kind of healthcare service growing up in Philadelphia and seeing the experience of the home healthcare workers who worked at his parents’ business. The Kitongas immigrated to the United States a decade ago and settled down in Philadelphia, where they […]
In three years Zachariah Reitano’s startup, Ro, has managed to hit a reported $1.5 billion valuation for its transformation from a company focused on treating erectile dysfunction to a telemedicine service for a range of elective and urgent care-focused treatments. Through Rory for women’s health, Roman for men’s health and Zero for smoking cessation, Reitano […]
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 paved the way for decades of incremental changes to the way buildings, businesses and laws accommodate people with a wide variety of disabilities. At 30 years old this week, the law’s effect on tech has been profound, but there’s still a lot of work to do. The ADA […]
According to a new court filing, multiple California state offices are actively investigating Amazon over worker safety concerns as the coronavirus continues to rage throughout the U.S. In the filing, reported by Reuters, San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman writes that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health and […]
“Tenet” has long been expected to be a bellwether for filmgoers’ readiness to return to theaters. Director Christopher Nolan is a blockbuster machine, and if anyone can get butts in seats amid the worst pandemic in modern memory, it’s probably him. And to be fair, the film really has served as a kind of litmus […]
BMW said it will offer the all-electric versions of X1 compact SUV and the 5 Series as part of the German automaker’s plans to have 25 electrified models in its portfolio by 2023. BMW didn’t say exactly when an all-electric X1 or 5 Series might be available (TechCrunch reached out and will update if we […]
Following earlier reporting, Google has confirmed that it will continue to allow employees to work from home through the end of June of next year. The company told TechCrunch that Sundar Pichai announced the plan in an email sent to staff earlier today. “To give employees the ability to plan ahead, we are extending our […]