India has emerged as one of the fastest growing smartphone markets in the last decade, reporting growth each quarter even as handset shipments slowed or declined elsewhere globally. But the world’s second largest smartphone is beginning to feel the coronavirus heat, too. The Indian smartphone market grew by a modest 4% year-over-year in the quarter […]
Billionaire. Entrepreneur. Investor. Shark. Mark Cuban is one of tech’s best-known entrepreneurs, so we are amped to have him join us for an upcoming Extra Crunch Live, our virtual speaker series that connects the brightest minds in tech directly with our Extra Crunch audience. Starting out as a salesman for one of Dallas’s earliest PC […]
Angling for a slice of the multi-billion dollar Medicare Advantage market with a pitch to integrate holistic medical practitioners into its network of service providers has netted Clever Care Health Plan some big backers and a huge market opportunity, the company says. The company has raised $23 million in a new round of funding from […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had a choice of all sorts of news, but as we cut the show together as a group Danny pushed all the funding rounds up. So, when Alex and Natasha jumped into the show […]
Instant messaging service Telegram has amassed 400 million monthly active users, it said today, up from 300 million active users the seven-year-old service disclosed to the SEC last October. The service — founded by Pavel Durov, who also created Russian social networking site VK — said it adds about 1.5 million users each day and […]
Singapore-based Igloo, formerly known as Axinan, has raised $8.2 million as the insurance-tech startup looks to broaden its foothold in half a dozen Southeast Asian markets and Australia. InVent, a corporate venture capital arm of telecommunications firm Intouch Holdings, led Igloo’s extended Series A round, the startup told TechCrunch. Existing investors Openspace Ventures, a venture […]
Trying to raise money for a startup is never a walk in the park. Still, there are good times, there are bad times, and there is right now, a moment of uncertainty unlike anything that most of us have experienced in our lifetimes. Even if a startup breezed through a fundraise before the world was […]
Gogoro, the Taiwanese company known for its electric scooters, announced a new ebike brand that will go on sale in the United States first. Details about the ebike, called Eeyo, haven’t been released yet, but it is noteworthy because it marks Gogoro’s first product launch in the U.S. Eeyo be available for purchase in the […]
On Thursday, the House passed the newest federal stimulus package aimed at providing financial relief for businesses and institutions hit hard by the COVID-19 crisis. The bill lingered in the Senate for two weeks of debates, with Republicans seeking to pass a less comprehensive version of the legislation and Democrats working to weave other funding […]
Prompted by Jeff Bezos’s plans to test all Amazon employees for the virus that causes COVID-19, we wondered whether employers can mandate employee testing, regardless of symptoms. The issue pits public safety against personal privacy, but limited testing availability has rendered the question somewhat moot. But as the World Health Organization and U.S. Centers for […]
Tesla has added Hiromichi Mizuno as a new member to its board of directors and audit committee — the former chief investment officer of Japan’s $1.5 trillion pension fund and a longtime opponent of common market practices like short selling. With Mizuno’s appointment the Tesla board now has 10 members, including Oracle founder, chairman and […]
Is “Too Hot to Handle” the dumbest show on Netflix … or the most diabolically brilliant? The reality TV series brings a group of twentysomethings together on a secluded tropical retreat, then — after a brief getting-to-know-you period — warns them that anything even coming close to sex will result in a reduction of the […]
Representatives from the government and the utility managing the power of Los Angeles are proposing a sweeping infrastructure package worth roughly $150 billion centered on the broad electrification of transportation and industry. Drafted by the Los Angeles-based public-private Transportation Electrification Partnership, a collaboration between the Office of Mayor Eric Garcetti, Southern California Edison, the Los […]
Leaked images obtained by TechCrunch reveal that Google considered and designed a feature that would let people donate money to websites to help support news publishers, bloggers and musicians. But Google scrapped the idea and chose not to build out the product, despite these kinds of businesses and creators often struggling to earn revenue. Last […]
The FCC has finally gotten around to updating its 15-year-old orbital debris rules, adding new requirements and streamlining the approval process. With hundreds of satellites going up every year into increasingly crowded orbits, these rules are more important than ever. In stating the necessity for mitigating the accumulation of orbital debris, the FCC noted that […]
U.S. companies rely on Mexican manufacturers for goods ranging from automotive and aerospace parts, to avocados and other produce, to electronics and furniture. But the trucking system that transports these things across the border relies on an inefficient mix of paper, phone calls, faxes and too many stakeholders who drive up costs. These snarls congesting […]
Fresh off a successful earnings report, Snap announced today that it was looking to raise $750 million in a new debt offering. This upcoming offering will consist of $750 million in convertible senior notes that will mature May 1, 2025. It will be a private placement to qualified institutional buyers and Snap is looking to […]
Digits, a fintech startup hailing from the same team that built and sold Crashlytics to Twitter, is officially launching today after two years of development. It’s also announcing a $22 million Series B round of funding led by GV, as it makes its public debut. While the company had been fairly quiet about product details […]
With another major round of COVID-19 federal financial assistance around the corner, two lawmakers in states with previously booming cannabis businesses are asking for the federal government to bring the industry in from the cold. The legislation, proposed by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Ed Perlmutter (D-CO), would make cannabis companies eligible for the Paycheck […]
Instacart’s aggressive hiring spree is continuing due to COVID-19 shelter in place orders. Today, the company announced it is adding 250,000 more shoppers to meet consumer demand, and to help the company return to “one-hour and same-day delivery,” according to a statement. Along with the hiring announcement, Instacart is implementing a slew of new policies, […]
