TechCrunch Industry News

Hyundai and Kia have finally announced their plans to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) ports for their electric vehicles in the U.S. and Canada, joining the swells of automakers that have also promised to do so. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bolt.Earth, an Indian startup that offers charging infrastructure and software solutions for electric vehicles, has raised $20 million in a funding round to expand its presence within the South Asian nation and enter into new markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

X, formerly Twitter, has started cutting headlines from link cards on the iOS app and on the web. This means you will see just an image with the domain name of the link on the bottom left, which is easy to miss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The San Francisco Police Department is investigating an October 2 incident that left a woman stuck underneath a Cruise robotaxi after being hit by a human-driven vehicle. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investors have historically been skeptical of green hydrogen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Boston-based privacy and security startup Cloaked, launched its apps today to let users create unique proxy emails, phone numbers, and passwords for online accounts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Open banking, in which traditional banks release their data via application programming interfaces (APIs) to enable the development of new financial services for their consumers, has been one of the most significant disruptions in global payments over the past decade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Volkswagen’s $2.1 billion plan to launch a dedicated electric-vehicle factory in Wolfsburg, Germany is kaput. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just under a year ago, the buzzy new social app BeReal looked to be on the rise, with reportedly 20 million users launching the app every day to snap their candid photos. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX won its first contract for Starshield, the defense-focused version of its Starlink satellite internet service, from the U.S. Space Force. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a blow to Uber, DoorDash and Grubhub, a New York judge on Thursday ruled to allow the implementation of the minimum pay rate of $18 per hour for New York City’s food delivery workers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Almost eight years after former Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner launched a new browser for desktop users, his company named Vivaldi has introduced its iOS version today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, the company formerly known as Twitter will be profitable by early 2024. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has announced the launch of its earthquake alert system for Android devices in India. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After almost five months, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) has reached an agreement with Hollywood studios to end the writers strike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After launching its text-based social network Threads in July, Meta faced criticism as there was no way for users to delete their Threads account without deleting their Instagram account. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google announced this morning it will be shutting down its Google Podcasts app later in 2024 as part of its broader transition to move its streaming listeners over to YouTube Music. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Snapchat has a new advertising partner in Microsoft for the ads it’s inserting into its AI product, My AI, an AI chatbot introduced earlier this year to the wider Snapchat user base. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last month X CEO Linda Yaccarino confirmed that video calls would be coming to the app formerly known as Twitter as part of its transition into an “everything app.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The UK’s competition watchdog has signalled it’s preparing to greenlight a restructured proposal for Microsoft to acquire Activision. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta-owned Twitter rival Threads has finally added a way to switch between multiple accounts without logging out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Several years ago, Aleksander Caban, the co-founder of Carbon Studio, a Polish VR game developer, observed a major problem in modern game design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Autonomous trucking startup Waabi is committing billions of miles of driverless capacity to the Uber Freight network as part of a 10-year strategic partnership between the two companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Substack is overhauling its mobile app with a redesigned Home experience to boost discovery and engagement, the company announced on Wednesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airbnb is trying to crack down on fake listings by verifying all listings in its top five markets — US, Canada, Australia, UK, and France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Outschool, the online learning platform that offers kid-friendly academic and interest-based classes, announced today the launch of its AI Teaching Assistant, a tool for tutors to generate progress reports for their students. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.S. is famous (or infamous) for its litigiousness. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bird Buddy, the startup behind multiple AI-powered smart bird feeders, including the recently announced smart Hummingbird Feeder and Bird Bath, is today launching its latest product — and it’s not another bird feeder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lyft has agreed to pay a $10 million fine over a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charge that the ride-hailing company failed to disclose a board director’s role in the sale of $424 million worth of private shares before to its initial public offering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meta on Friday disputed a media report that claimed the social giant was exploring bringing ads on the popular messaging app WhatsApp. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

X, formerly Twitter, has launched government ID-based account verification for paid users to prevent impersonation and give them benefits such as “prioritized support.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Europe has far too few VCs created by former founders, or “Operators” as the industry often likes to call them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

San Francisco has formally requested state regulators redo an August hearing that expanded robotaxi permits for Cruise and Waymo, giving both companies permission to widen commercial operations throughout the city 24/7. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Telegram, the popular chat app with 800 million monthly active users, is rolling out a self-custodial crypto wallet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just a few hours after Apple unveiled the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro, France’s radiation watchdog (ANFR) released a public statement announcing that the iPhone 12 breaches radiation levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

ELSA, the English language learning platform, announced today it has raised $22.5 million in Series C funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After months of testing, TikTok has finally launched its e-commerce product, TikTok Shop, in the U.S — where it has more than 150 million users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ahead of Wednesday’s AI-focused private Congressional meeting with tech giants, Google this morning announced a new initiative aimed at supporting researchers and public policy solutions around AI with the debut of the Digital Futures Project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last week, the European Union named the six big tech companies that should be considered as gatekeepers in one way or another under the Digital Markets Act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is now rolling out Privacy Sandbox — its tech to replace third-party cookies — to all Chrome users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When BMW started charging an $18 per month subscription for heated seats in 2022, the backlash was swift and brutal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instagram users have been complaining for a while about the impersonal nature of the social network largely due to its algorithmic feed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the AI browser Aria launched on Opera in May to give users an easier way to search on the web, ask questions and write code. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Odds are if you know the name Arduino, it’s through its connection to the DIY community. Much like Raspberry Pi, the company built its reputation creating microcontrollers for hobbyists. But the last few years have seen it expanding that horizon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

MetaMask, the world’s biggest self-custodial hot (internet-connected) wallet with over 22 million users, has added the option for users to convert cryptocurrencies into fiats like USD, as a growing list of web3 players strive to make digital assets usable in the real world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Envisics, a UK-based holographics company building in-car technology that projects navigation, safety alerts and other data onto the inside of a windscreen, has closed a $100 million Series C round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Money laundering — the process of transferring assets around in order to disguise the illicit origin of the money behind them — has been a huge and growing business for years, used by terrorists to finance their work, criminals to wash their spoils, (some) fat cats to avoid taxes and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An institutional investor is suing Amazon and its board, including founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos, over hefty launch contracts they awarded to Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A global law enforcement operation this week took down and dismantled the notorious Qakbot botnet, touted as the largest U.S.-led financial and technical disruption of a botnet infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has removed a popular but controversial live video chat app Chamet from the Play Store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices