An Indian court rejected Future Group’s plea that sought to prevent its partner Amazon from interfering in — and blocking — the Indian retail giant’s $3.4 billion asset sale deal to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, delivering a glimmer of hope to the American e-commerce firm that has invested more than $6.5 billion in the world’s […]
SoftBank Investment Advisers may file as early as Monday to raise between $500 million and $600 million through an initial public offering of its first special purpose acquisition vehicle, reports Axios. SoftBank Investment Advisers manages the two Vision Funds and may continue leaning into SPACs, with two more reportedly in the works. Almost everything you […]
When Payam Banazadeh and his team started Capella Space in 2016, they had visions of providing private industry with a wealth of new data that they could use in all sorts of ways to create business opportunities and improve efficiencies. Four years later, Banazadeh is still waiting for that commercial opportunity. Capella is still successful. […]
Citizen Lab researchers say they have found evidence that dozens of journalists had their iPhones silently compromised with spyware known to be used by nation states. For more than the past year, London-based reporter Rania Dridi and at least 36 journalists, producers and executives working for the Al Jazeera news agency were targeted with a […]
Let’s be clear: “Songbird” is not a good movie. It’s hard to see how it could have been any good, since “Songbird” was written shortly after the pandemic began and filmed a few months later — so the filmmakers had to write a screenplay, shoot it in the midst of a pandemic and edit it, […]
Welcome back to Mixtape, the TechCrunch podcast that looks at the human element that powers technology. For this episode we spoke with Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at NYU; Mara Mills, associate professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU and co-director of the NYU Center for […]
Twitter is shutting down Periscope, the video app it acquired several years ago when Facebook Live threatened to lap the field. When we stream the Gillmor Gang sessions, we send them to Facebook, Twitter, and an unlisted embed on YouTube. At one point, we planned to stream the sessions live on TechCrunch, but for now […]
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Subscribe here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Sweet dreams are made of IPOs, so merry f****** Christmas We’re […]
This was quite the week for Pinterest and not in a good way. While the company settled the gender discrimination lawsuit brought forth by its former COO, the hefty $22.5 million settlement highlighted some of the tech industry’s inequities. Meanwhile, Airbnb outlined some new goals around diversity and inclusion, despite having not produced a diversity […]
I often begin calls with founders by asking why they’re willing to bet their livelihoods on an idea that will most likely fail. It’s a small hack that lets me see how vulnerable a founder is, and how much conviction they have behind their ideas. Sometimes, if they answer, it’s the lede of my story. […]
Yesterday the U.S. Department of Commerce included DJI among the 77 new entries on its ‘entity list.’ Precisely what this means for the company’s future in the States remains uncertain, but it has since responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment. “DJI is disappointed in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision,” a spokesperson for the drone […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android […]
Apple has placed its contract manufacturing partner Wistron on probation and won’t give the Taiwanese firm any new business until it takes “complete corrective actions” following lapses at its southern India plant earlier this month. The iPhone maker said on Saturday that its employees and independent auditors hired by the company to investigate the issues […]
It’s probably no wonder that when Founders Fund was still a very young venture firm, it brought aboard as its first principal Justin Fishner-Wolfson. Having nabbed two degrees from Stanford and spent two years as CEO of an organization that provides asset management services to the school’s student organizations, Fishner-Wolfson wasn’t shy about voicing his […]
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, as expected after an independent panel commissioned by the administration recommended its approval earlier this week. This is the second vaccine now authorized for use in the U.S. under EUA, after the Pfizer -BioNTech vaccine was approved […]
We interview the senior senator from Minnesota about fitness trackers, Sony pulls “Cyberpunk 2077” from the PlayStation Store and Indian delivery startup Zomato raises a massive round. This is your Daily Crunch for December 18, 2020. The big story: Amy Klobuchar discusses Amazon Halo concerns Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar recently wrote an open letter to […]
Headphones! They make a pretty solid gift any year, but they're an even better option when so many of us are stuck at home. It's hard to think (much less get anything done) when the background track of your life is a cacophony of conference calls and Zoom school.
The idea of satellites and other spacecraft being able to refuel, repair or even add new capabilities while in orbit has generally seemed like a “nice in theory” one, but as leaders from Maxar, Astroscale and Orbit Fab explained at TC Sessions: Space, 2021 will be the year that theory becomes reality — or at […]
After reading a review of Amazon’s new fitness tracker, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar penned an open letter. “Recent reports have raised concerns about the Halo’s access to this extensive personal and private health information,” the lawmaker wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “Among publicly available consumer health devices, the […]
