President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. government would replace the entire federal fleet of cars, trucks and SUVs with electric vehicles manufactured in the United States, a commitment tied to a broader campaign promise to create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry and supply chains. The commitment, if it bears out, […]
As the United Kingdom prepares to sharpen its focus on how it regulates big tech companies, Facebook is taking a big step up in the role it plays in presenting media to the U.K. public, and into how it works with the country’s media industry. Today it is launching Facebook News in the U.K., Facebook’s […]
If social networks and other platforms are to get a handle on disinformation, it’s not enough to know what it is — you have to know how people react to it. Researchers at MIT and Cornell have some surprising but subtle findings that may affect how Twitter and Facebook should go about treating this problematic […]
Twitter pilots a new tool to fight disinformation, Apple brings celebrity-guided walks to the Apple Watch and Clubhouses raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for January 25, 2021. The big story: Twitter unveils Birdwatch Twitter launched a new product today that it says will offer “a community-based approach to misinformation.” With Birdwatch, users will […]
This week, Latch becomes the latest company to join the SPAC parade. Founded in 2014, the New York-based company came out of stealth two years later, launching a smart lock system. Though, like many companies primarily known for hardware solutions, Latch says it’s more, offering a connected security software platform for owners of apartment buildings. […]
We believe one of the most important trends to gain traction in the last three years to be point-of-sale financing, now referred to as Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL).
A walk is, more often than not, a solitary experience. As far as the age of COVID-19 is concerned, that’s probably more bug than feature. It’s a way to escape the confines of a shutdown for a few glorious moments, to get some air and, for better or worse, reflect on the day that’s passed […]
Starting next month, Facebook will open up academic access to a dataset of 1.3 million political and social issue ads, including those that ran between August 3 and November 3, 2020 — Election Day in the U.S. Facebook’s Ad Library, launched in 2019, offers a searchable database of all ads running on Facebook and Instagram. […]
This morning, Qualtrics, a software company that tracks customer and employee sentiment, filed a new S-1 document. The new filing raises Qualtrics’ expected IPO price range, providing the Utah-based unicorn with a higher potential valuation in its impending debut. Qualtrics previously sold to SAP for $8 billion while on the path to going public; after […]
Former Facebook employee and current enfant terrible of high finance Chamath Palihapitiya is making news again with a $1.3 billion twofer SPAC and PIPE deal into the solar energy financing company, Sunlight Financial. Sunlight Financial is essentially a lending company that gives solar installers a way to provide loans to homeowners to finance solar power […]
Twitter is launching what it calls “a community-based approach to misinformation.” The Birdwatch project first came to light last fall thanks to product sleuth Jane Manchun Wong. Now Twitter has launched a pilot version via the Birdwatch website. The goal, as explained in a blog post by Twitter’s Vice President of Product Keith Coleman, is […]
In a year defined by economic and civil unrest, it should come as little surprise that workplace organizing has been on the upswing. The COVID-19 pandemic in particular (coupled with the ever-present effects of late capitalism) has brought long-standing questions of employment stability and safety to the forefront of many. Of course, much of this […]
As Google’s Privacy Sandbox remains under scrutiny over competition concerns, the tech giant has released an update claiming experimental ad-targeting techniques it’s developing as part of the plan to depreciate support for third-party cookies on its Chrome browser show results that are “nearly as effective as cookie-based approaches”. Google has been working on a technique […]
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Stockholm, and Sweden generally, will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. The deadline is the end of this week. We’d […]
Latch is an enterprise SaaS company that makes keyless-entry systems for buildings; Sunlight Financial offers point-of-sale financing for residential solar systems.
Goalsetter, a platform that helps parents teach their kids financial literacy, announced the raise of a $3.9 million seed round this morning, led by Astia. PNC Bank, Mastercard, U.S. Bank, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Elevate Capital, Portfolia’s First Step and Rising America Fund and Pipeline Angels also participated in the round. The round also saw […]
Liz Meyerdirk made a name for herself at Uber as the senior director and global head of business development for the company’s Uber Eats business and she’s now turning her attention to women’s health as the new chief executive of The Pill Club. The move comes at a perilous time for the remote delivery of […]
Virgin Orbit isn’t slowing down after joining the exclusive club of small launch companies that have made it to orbit — the company just announced that it’s flying a payload on behalf of the Royal Netherlands Air Force (RNAF). This is the first-ever satellite being put up by the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and it’s […]
A startup called BlackCart is tackling one of the key challenges with online shopping: an inability to try on or test out the merchandise before making a purchase. That company, which has now closed on $8.8 million in Series A funding, has built a try-before-you-buy platform that integrates with e-commerce storefronts, allowing customers to ship […]
Payments for consumers have made a huge shift to the online world in the last year, a time when they have moved more of their purchasing to the internet to minimize in-person transactions in the midst of a virus-based health pandemic. Today, a startup that has built a similar kind of payments infrastructure — but […]
