It’s safe to say WhatsApp didn’t have the ideal start to 2021. Less than a week into the new year, the Facebook-owned instant messaging app had already annoyed hundreds of thousands of users with its scary worded notification about a planned policy update. The backlash grew fast and millions of people, including several high-profile figures, […]
In April, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead with its initial public offering and is now valued at several billions of dollars. At that time, TechCrunch Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm caught up with founder and CEO Robert Reffkin to chat about his company’s debut in the market’s suddenly choppy waters for tech and tech-enabled […]
What would have been a celebratory earnings call in just about any other quarter ended on a somber note today, as Peloton CEO John Foley kicked things off with an apology. “We are a members-first organization,” the executive stated. “And that means for all of us at Peloton, the safety of our member community comes […]
Apple’s new AirTag item trackers are pretty small, but not quite small enough to slip into most wallets without adding an obvious bit of bulk. Fortunately, as one talented AirTag owner has found, that’s nothing you can’t fix with a heat gun, a bit of soldering and an understanding that you could totally fry your […]
Twitter today confirmed earlier reports that it’s testing a new Tip Jar feature. The new addition utilizes a number of different payment platforms, including PayPal, Venmo, Patreon, Cash App and Bandcamp (all region-dependent). “Tip Jar is an easy way to support the incredible voices that make up the conversation on Twitter,” the company wrote in […]
David Swensen, among the most highly regarded money managers in the world after growing Yale’s endowment from $1 billion when he joined as a 31-year-old former grad student of the school, to the second-largest school endowment in the country after Harvard, has passed away at age 67. The cause was cancer, which Swensen had been […]
Of the 22 million comments submitted to the FCC regarding 2017’s controversial rollback of net neutrality, some 18 million were fake, an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office has found. The broadband industry funded the fraudulent creation of about 8.5 million of those, while a 19-year-old college student submitted 7.7 million, and the […]
Orbital launch company Virgin Orbit has scheduled its next mission to space. Virgin Orbit will be returning its LauncherOne rocket to orbit in June to deliver payloads for the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program, SatRevolution and the Royal Netherlands Air Force. The manifest includes three CubeSat satellites as part of the DoD’s Rapid […]
Chinese electric vehicle maker Nio has chosen Norway — an EV hotspot — for its first foray into international markets. Nio Norway will offer a European version of ES8, Nio’s flagship electric SUV, to Norwegian customers from September this year. The ET7 sedan will follow in 2022. “The decision to have Norway as our first […]
Months after Apple’s App Store introduced privacy labels for apps, Google announced its own mobile app marketplace, Google Play, will follow suit. The company today pre-announced its plans to introduce a new “safety” section in Google Play, rolling out next year, which will require app developers to share what sort of data their apps collect, […]
TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield is one of the most popular parts of our annual TechCrunch Disrupt conference which is happening on September 21-23 this year. Now we’re very excited to reveal one of the fine people who will be judging Startup Battlefield at this year’s all-virtual event in September: Shauntel Garvey, a general partner at Reach Capital, […]
Chromebooks have been having banner quarter after banner quarter for the past year. While PC and tablet sales in general have been doing well as people shifted to remote working and learning, Google’s operating system has been leading the charge, in terms of the growth. That’s due in large part to the company’s wins in […]
Shortening the diagnostic journey and reducing the associated costs was, until recently, a moonshot challenge, but is now within reach. Technology and AI advances are combining to make genetic testing accessible.
Calling all frazzled procrastinators, feet-draggers, lollygaggers and last-minute decision makers. The best price on passes to TC Sessions: Mobility 2021, which takes place on June 9, disappears in mere hours. It’s now o’clock, baby. Shift your EV into gear, hail a robotaxi or tell Mr. Scott to beam you up — whatever it takes to […]
If you ask Nik Bonaddio why he wanted to build a new mobile trivia app, his answer is simple. “In my life, I’ve got very few true passions: I love trivia and I love sports,” Bonaddio told me. “I’ve already started a sports company, so I’ve got to start a trivia company.” He isn’t kidding […]
This morning Metafy, a distributed startup building a marketplace to match gamers with instructors, announced that it has closed an additional $5.5 million to its $3.15 million seed round. Call it a seed-2, seed-extension or merely a baby Series A; Forerunner Ventures, DCM and Seven Seven Six led the round as a trio. Metafy’s model […]
TikTok is expanding its integrations with third-party apps. The company today announced the launch of two new tool sets for app developers, the TikTok Login Kit and Sound Kit, that will allow apps on mobile, web and consoles to authenticate users via their TikTok credentials, build experiences that leverage users’ TikTok videos and share music […]
Snap on Wednesday announced its plan to soon launch a Creator Marketplace, which will make it easier for businesses to find and partner with Snapchat creators, including Lens creators, AR creators and later, prominent Snapchat creators known as Snap Stars. At launch, the marketplace will focus on connecting brands and AR creators for AR ads. […]
