CRISPR co-discoverer Jennifer Doudna was named a Nobel laureate in Chemistry today, sharing the honour with Emmanuelle Charpentier . We had the opportunity to speak to Doudna recently at our TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 event, and she shared her thoughts on CRISPR, and how it can be used to test and potentially treat COVID-19, as well […]
A European antitrust probe of chipmaker Broadcom has been settled at an impressive clip, a little over a year after formally kicking off. The Commission announced today it has accepted commitments from the U.S. chipmaker to suspend all existing agreements containing exclusivity or quasi-exclusivity arrangements and/or leveraging provisions concerning Systems-on-a-Chip (SoCs) for TV set-top boxes […]
Uber made headlines earlier this year when it offloaded Jump, the shared bike and scooter unit that once appeared to be a critical piece of its transportation. Despite that move, Uber still sees micromobility as “really important” to the company, according to Uber Director of Policy, Cities and Transportation Shin-pei Tsay, who joined TechCrunch on […]
Apple has added support for the Health Records feature of its Health app on iPhones in two new markets — the U.K. and Canada. The electronic medical records feature originally debuted in the U.S. in 2018, and the company says that it’s now supported by more than 500 institutions across that country. At its debut […]
The jury is still out on what might become the most viable business models for augmented reality technology, but in the meantime a startup out of the U.K. is betting one big area will be in vehicles, in the form of holographic displays. And today it is announcing a significant round of funding from strategic […]
Bespoken Spirits, a Silicon Valley spirits company that has developed a new data-driven process to accelerate the aging of whiskey and create specific flavors, today announced that it has raised a $2.6 million seed funding round. Investors include Clos de la Tech owner T.J. Rodgers and baseball’s Derek Jeter. The company was co-founded by former […]
Slack is holding its Frontiers conference this week — virtually like everyone else in 2020 — and it’s introducing some new features to make it easier to message between partners. It’s always a challenging to share information with people outside your organization, whether it’s collaboration or file sharing, or any of the things that trusted […]
It seems that no-code is the tech watchword of the year. It refers to the ability to create something that normally would require a developer to code, and replace it with dragging and dropping components instead, putting the task in reach of much less technical business users. Today Okta announced new no-code workflows that provide […]
At its (virtual) Kong Summit 2020, API platform Kong today announced the launch of Kong Konnect, its managed end-to-end cloud-native connectivity platform. The idea here is to give businesses a single service that allows them to manage the connectivity between their APIs and microservices and help developers and operators manage their workflows across Kong’s API […]
E-commerce has boomed this year, with more businesses and shoppers than ever before turning to websites and apps as a safer, socially distanced alternative during the current global health pandemic. Today, a startup that has built a platform to help individual companies and brands design better websites is announcing a round of growth funding to […]
Big tech has responded to the mammoth antitrust report put out by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee yesterday with blanket denials there’s any monopolistic behaviour or competitive imbalances to see here. Below is a quick run down of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google’s rebuttals. Among the committee’s (many) recommendations are structural separations and prohibitions on […]
Popular caller-identification service Truecaller has amassed 250 million monthly active users and 200 million daily active users, demonstrating an accelerated pace of growth in recent quarters even as a global pandemic has hurt most businesses, it said on Wednesday. The service, run by eponymous Stockholm-headquartered firm, allows users to avoid spam calls by identifying the […]
Language learning company Reverso is launching its desktop app for macOS and Windows. Like on mobile, it lets you access a translation dictionary and get examples in context. The company has attracted 40,000 downloads in two days. While Google Translate is massively successful, Reverso has managed to attract 20 million downloads on iOS and Android. […]
Femtech hardware maker Elvie has added a softer, hands-free breast pump that uses natural suction to its portfolio two years after launching its debut ‘next-gen’ connected breast pump. The Elvie Curve is described as “a wearable, silicone breast pump that allows for gentle hands-free expression when feeding or pumping from the other breast — or […]
In September 2020, Helsinki’s City Council approved plans for an expansion of the existing “Maria 01 Campus,” a former downtown hospital complex. Even before it starts spreading its acreage, the facility is already home to 120 startups and 12 venture capital funds. The campus is part-owned by the City of Helsinki and the Helsinki Enterprise […]
Samsung and three major contract manufacturing partners of Apple are among 16 firms to win $6.65 billion incentives under India’s federal plan to boost domestic smartphone production over the next five years. These companies had applied for the incentive program in August. In a statement Tuesday evening, Indian Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) […]
Greycroft, the New York and L.A.-based venture firm founded in 2006 by investors Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow, has closed on two new funds totaling $678 million in capital commitments. One of those funds is its sixth flagship early-stage fund and it closed with $310 million dollars. The firm also collected $368 million […]
The prospect of truly zero contact delivery seems closer — and more important — than ever with the pandemic changing how we think of last mile logistics. Autonomous delivery executives from FedEx, Postmates, and Refraction AI joined us to talk about the emerging field at TechCrunch Mobility 2020. FedEx VP of Advanced Technology and Innovation […]
Nvidia is in the process of acquiring chip designer Arm for $40 billion. Coincidentally, both companies are also holding their respective developer conferences this week. After he finished his keynote at the Arm DevSummit, I sat down with Arm CEO Simon Segars to talk about the acquisition and what it means for the company. Segars […]
Google rebrands G Suite, Apple announces its next event date and John McAfee is arrested. This is your Daily Crunch for October 6, 2020. The big story: G Suite becomes Google Workspace To a large extent, Google Workspace is just a rebranding of G Suite, complete with a new set of (less distinctive) logos for […]
