As other retailers begin the slow, cautious move to reopen, Microsoft has announced that will be permanently shutting down the vast majority of its retail stores. There are some exceptions, including flagships in urban hubs including London, New York City, Sydney and its own campus in Redmond, Washington, but the remainder of the locations are […]
Amazon has announced that it will acquire Zoox, a self-driving startup founded in 2014, which has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and which aims to develop autonomous driving technology, including vehicles, for the purposes of providing a full-stack solution for ride-hailing. Zoox will continue to exist as a standalone business according to Amazon’s announcement, […]
The direct-to-consumer health insurer Oscar has raised another $225 million in its latest, late-stage round of funding as its vision of tech-enabled health care services to drive down consumer costs becomes more and more of a reality. In an effort to prevent a patient’s potential exposure to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, most healthcare practices are […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a bit feisty, but that’s only because Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas and I were all in pretty good spirits. It would have been hard to not be, given how much good stuff there was to […]
Salt Lake City’s Spiff has announced a $10 million round of funding to expand the sales and marketing efforts for its service that automates commission payments for sales people. Some of the biggest names in startup tech are using the service to pay their sales force including Brex, Workfront, Algolia, and the publicly traded startup, […]
For Amazon, it’s never too late to try something in India. The e-commerce giant is exploring ways to further spread its tentacles in the largely offline, technology-free neighborhood stores in one of its key overseas markets. The American firm’s latest attempt is called “Smart Stores.” For this India-specific program, Amazon is providing physical stores with […]
Another brick in the wall for vacation rental platforms: Amsterdam is booting Airbnb and other such platforms from three districts in the city’s old center from July 1, further tightening its rules for such services. In other districts in the famous city of canals, vacation rentals will only be permitted with a permit from next Wednesday, […]
Indian online learning startup Byju’s has nearly doubled its valuation in a year as it adds one more high-profile name to the list of its backers: Bond. In a statement on Friday, Bangalore-based Byju’s said it had raised an undisclosed amount from the VC fund co-founded by Mary Meeker. The first female-founded VC firm’s check […]
Ford rolled out all the stops Thursday evening for the reveal of its all-new F-150 truck, right down to the splashy videos dominated by electric guitar riffs. Heck, the automaker even cast the sharp-tongued Denis Leary as its MC. Of course, none of that really matters. It’s all about what Ford has done to improve […]
Lordstown Motors unveiled Thursday a prototype of its electric future, a pickup truck with four in-wheel hub motors and a few other features all aimed squarely at attracting contractors and other buyers in the commercial market. The unveiling by this one-year-old Ohio startup didn’t get too deep into the details about the electric pickup truck […]
After closing stores across four states, this was no doubt a bit of an inevitable: Following reporting earlier today, Apple has confirmed that it will be shutting down an additional 14 stores in Florida, joining the two it closed last week. The company sent a statement to TechCrunch that is essentially identical to the one […]
Karat is a new startup promising to build better banking products for the creators who make a living on YouTube, Instagram, Twitch and other online platforms. Today it’s unveiling its first product — the Karat Black Card. The startup, which was part of accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 batch, is also announcing that it has […]
There are some wearables out there in the world that are making claims around COVID-19 and their ability to detect it, prevent it, certify that you don’t have it and more. But a new wearable device from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory might actually be able to do the most to prevent the spread of COVID-19 […]
There’s huge news today for Animal Crossing: New Horizons players still devoted to the most pleasantly addictive way to stay kind of sane stuck at home during the pandemic. In the biggest update yet to the Nintendo Switch hit, players will soon be able to explore the water around their island. Oh — and Gulliver […]
The fact that Apple takes a 30% cut of subscriptions purchased via the App Store isn’t news. But since the company threatened to boot email app Hey from the platform last week unless its developers paid the customary tribute, the tech world and lawmakers are giving Apple’s revenue share a harder look. Although Apple’s Senior […]
Virgin Galactic has passed a key milestone in its SpaceShipTwo qualification program. The company performed a glide flight, which means that it was flying its VSS Unity spacecraft unpowered in glide configuration, after its release from its carrier aircraft, a modified Boeing 747 called VMS Eve. This flight was the second such test flight that […]
Waymo’s self-driving software footprint is expanding — this time in a partnership with Volvo Car Group. The two companies announced Thursday an “exclusive” partnership to integrate Waymo’s self-driving software into a new electric vehicle designed for ride-hailing. Volvo and Waymo provided few details on the partnership and what this might actually look like except that […]
YouTube is taking direct aim at TikTok. The company announced on Wednesday it’s beginning to test a new feature on mobile that will allow users to record 15-second long multi-segment videos. That’s the same length as the default on TikTok as well as Instagram’s new TikTok clone, Reels. Users in the new YouTube experiment will […]
The latest version of iOS adds a few smart features intended for use by people with hearing and vision impairments, but some of which may be helpful to just about anybody. The most compelling new feature is perhaps Sound Recognition, which creates a notification whenever the phone detects one of a long list of common […]
As perennial front-runner for the title of probably-the-most-evil tech company, Amazon has a long way to go to rehabilitate its image as a take-no-prisoners, industry-consolidating wealth machine. In a bold effort to do so, the company announced today that it would buy the rights to Seattle’s KeyArena, an aging stadium currently under redevelopment in the […]
