Mark Zuckberg and Priscilla Chan have penned a response to an open letter sent last week by a group of over 140 scientists who are working on projects funded by the Chan Zuckberberg Initiative. The letter, included in full below, expressed concerns about how Facebook manages misinformation and harmful, offensive and discriminatory language toward specific […]
Volkswagen has started to sell a home-charging device as the automaker prepares to bring its new ID family of electric vehicles to market. The ID.3 is the first electric vehicle under the ID label and will only be sold in Europe. Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be […]
BLCK VC is on a mission to double the number of Black venture capitalists out there by 2024. The reason behind it shouldn’t need explaining — only 2% of all partner-level VCs are Black, and 81% of VC firms don’t have a single Black partner. It’s no surprise then, that the startup ecosystem that is […]
Facebook is reportedly getting into the venture capital game, but for young entrepreneurs working in social media, ignoring or deleting that particular friend request could be the right call. According to a report in Axios, the company is building up a corporate fund under the auspices of its “New Product Experimentation” team, which launched last […]
Snap announces a bunch of new features, Moderna prepares for the final-stage trial of its coronavirus vaccine and Sony shows off the PlayStation 5. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 12, 2020. 1. Snapchat debuts Minis, bite-sized third-party apps that live inside chat Snap Minis are lightweight third-party programs that users can quickly pull up […]
Are you an early stage founder? Then listen up, because we created TC Early Stage just for you. This two-day virtual conference takes place on July 21-22. We’ll provide the details below, but first things first. Early bird tickets cost just $199 for early-stage founders, but this sweet deal flies south on June 26 at […]
The digitally face-swapped videos known as deepfakes aren’t going anywhere, but if platforms want to be able to keep an eye on them, they need to find them first. Doing so was the object of Facebook’s “Deepfake Detection Challenge,” launched last year. After months of competition the winners have emerged, and they’re… better than guessing. […]
In March, the Computex organizers delayed the trade show from June to late-September. At the time, the realities of COVID-19 were sinking in for many in the international community, while the trade show’s home of Taipei was dealing with a new flareup of the novel coronavirus. At the time, late-September also felt like a fairly […]
Fresh off a $100 million Series C funding round, molecular diagnostics startup Cue Health has more good news — it has received an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its rapid, point-of-care COVID-19 test. The company got a $13 million grant from BARDA in March to help it scale its development and deployment of rapid diagnostics, […]
Pipo Saude, a Brazilian provider of healthcare services for businesses and their employees, has raised $4.6 million in a new round of funding to expand its footprint in Brazil. “The company’s platform offers recommendations for the healthcare products that fit the team, enabling businesses to improve the quality of life of their employees,” said chief […]
The unicorns are still at it, Vision Fund 2 or no Vision Fund 2. This week, Instacart announced that it has raised fresh capital at a valuation north of $13 billion. And, on the tail of that news item, DoorDash is looking to add more cash at a valuation that could stretch to a pre-money […]
May marked another extremely strong month for gaming sales, according to the latest figures from NPD. Between software, hardware, accessories and game cards, Americans spent around $977 million. That’s a 57% jump since the year prior and the highest it’s been for the month since 2008, when the country was feeling the strain of the […]
Extra Crunch Live, TechCrunch’s chat series for Extra Crunch members, is tacking toward founders after bringing on a host of investors: on Thursday, June 18, Plaid CEO Zach Perret will join us for a conversation. Plaid, known for APIs that connect fintech applications with users’ bank accounts, came to prominence in late 2018 when it […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. After a pretty busy week on the show we’re here with our regular Friday episode, which means lots of venture rounds and new venture capital funds to dig into. Thankfully we had our full contingent on hand: Danny […]
Facebook wants to be the go-to platform for all of your social needs, but a big move it made last month to take ownership in the world of GIFs — the short, looping videos that people use to convey sentiments in online conversations — may not go as it hopes. The UK Competition and Markets […]
Byta, the music sharing service for pre-releases and other use cases where there is a need to share sound files privately, has picked up around $1.4 million in seed funding. The round was led by the Canada Media Fund, with participation from of private investors. They include musician Scott Kannberg, one of the original members […]
Asynchronous chat apps like Slack have done their best to kill email, but maybe the key to chat replacing email is just making email look like chat? That’s the idea of Spike, a productivity startup that has built an email app that organizes emails into chat bubbles with an interface that encourages users to keep […]
Companies increasingly recognize that one of the greatest stresses for their employees is financial wellness. Even at innovative tech startups, people typically bump up against the limits of how much they know about wealth management pretty fast. But providing financial education to a workforce, which has become increasingly common, is largely useless as most employees […]
Zoom, the wildly successful video chat service that has been a ubiquitous feature of life during the COVID-19 pandemic, said that it shut down three accounts at the request of the Chinese government for holding memorials for the victims of China’s violent suppression of peaceful protests at Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989. As Axios […]
