TechCrunch Industry News

Discord announced new measures to bring its Android app into parity with its iOS counterpart today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We knew it was happening, but Meta has confirmed that its long-standing chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg has departed from her role as of yesterday (August 1). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TikTok parent company ByteDance filed a trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in May for a service called “TikTok Music.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Telecom operators in India bid slightly over $19 billion in the government auction for the 5G airwaves, the highest from them in any spectrum sale, as the world’s second-largest wireless market readies the rollout of improved and faster voice and data speeds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Umba, a US-based digital bank with a focus on emerging markets, has acquired a majority shareholding of Daraja, a Kenyan deposit-taking microfinance bank, for an undisclosed amount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter is increasing the price of its subscription service, Twitter Blue, from $2.99 to $4.99 per month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you feel like you’ve seen a lot of “Gmail redesign roll out” posts in the last few months, it’s not just you: Google has been teasing and testing features for new, integrated-view quick access to apps like Chat and Meet since the start of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The price of consumer goods has been soaring all around the world, creating a major budgeting headache for many people. Social commerce startup DealCart wants to make life easier for shoppers, at least in Pakistan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google Maps is introducing three features today in different categories including an aerial view of 100 landmarks, detailed cycling routes, and improved location sharing with notifications for the arrival and departure of your friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify’s push to complement its music streaming with a big move into podcasting and related content appears to be paying off, despite the ups and downs of operating in an uncertain economic and political climate and Spotify’s exit from its foray into hardware. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotnana, a self-proclaimed “travel-as-a-service” platform that targets corporations, travel management firms, and other technology companies with a cloud-based toolset for booking and managing travel, has raised $75 million in a series B round of funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last year was a pretty good one for Snyk, a Boston-based security company. It raised a hefty $530 million on a $8.5 billion valuation, and with that kind of money in the bank, it’s probably not surprising that it went shopping. In February, it bought developer-focused cloud security company Fugue for an undisclosed amount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Netflix’s app on iOS now has a signup button that will redirect you to its site so you can subscribe to one of its plans with the company paying no App Store fees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are plenty of autonomous driving vehicles testing on the roads of Shenzhen today: Pony.ai, Baidu, DeepRoute, AutoX, you name it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla suppliers traveling from Nuevo León, Mexico, to Texas now have their very own dedicated border patrol lane. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s probably hyperbole to credit Google’s Pixel A devices for single-handedly keeping the broader line alive during some admittedly lean times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After five years of research, Meati Foods is poised to begin shipping its plant-based meat product later this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just Eat Takeaway is cutting 390 jobs from its workforce in France, constituting part of a broader global restructuring effort as the food delivery giant looks to reverse its recent downturn. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Didi, the Chinese ride hailing behemoth that has undergone a year of regulatory overhaul, faces a fine of over 8 billion yuan ($1.28 billion) from the country’s authorities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is expanding its photo and canvas prints service to Europe and Canada. Google has offered printed photo books in the U.S. since 2017, a service that started rolling out in Europe the following year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t be introducing a previously announced new policy that would effectively ban developers from selling open source software on the Windows app store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If the reviews of the last completely necessary and not at all superfluous thing you bought on Amazon looked like so much copypasta, there’s a good reason. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HireArt, which TechCrunch previously described as a “resume-killing” jobs marketplace, today announced that it raised $26.25 million in a Series B financing round led by Three Fish Capital with participation from over a “half dozen” angel investors. CEO Nick Sedlet said that the cash will be put toward product development and more than doubling HireArt’s […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some estimates put the future mobility market at $178.7 billion by 2026, up from $78.1 billion two years ago. And there has been $400 billion worth of investments made into the sector over the past decade, with  $100 billion invested since 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The New York Times is turning the popular online word game Wordle into a board game by teaming up with toymaker Hasbro. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lightyear, a U.K. fintech startup that promises consumers commission-free trading on U.S. and European stocks, is officially extending into Europe from today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Plaid, the company building data transfer technologies to power fintech and digital finance products like smartphone-based wallets, today announced that it’s adding support for thousands of crypto exchanges to its data network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SendSprint, a money transfer startup based in the UK but with operations in the US and Nigeria, has been launched today with the unique selling point of a $5 flat fee for all transfers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Over the past 18 months, Inflection Points has been working in stealth mode to build out a crypto-focused employment and corporate training business and just secured $12.6 million in funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX’s Starship program encountered a setup after a test ended in a fiery explosion at its Boca Chica development facility in Texas on Monday night. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotify is expanding the ability to post video podcasts for creators in six new countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Brazil, and Mexico. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A company from China is ready to capture Japan’s demand for autonomous service vehicles as robots play an increasingly important role to address the aging society’s labor shortage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crypto owners tend to be more generous when donating to charity than other investors, research shows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Building wind and solar farms is an important part of building a new green grid, but a calm night stops their energy generation cold. It’s just as important to research and build green energy storage — and to that at scale requires federal intervention as soon as possible, suggests a new report from MIT. “The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Instacart announced today that it’s launching a new “Cart Star” rewards program for shoppers on its platform. The program will offer incentives in three tiers: gold, platinum and diamond. To qualify for Cart Star, shoppers need to accumulate points based on the number of orders they fulfill, earning 10 points per customer order they deliver. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More than a quarter of Americans say they would not buy an electric vehicle, according to a Consumer Reports survey released Thursday. Price, range and access to charging stations have remained as primary barriers to buying an EV. But Consumer Reports has identified a new factor: a lack of education around EVs. The survey of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pinterest announced today that it’s rolling out new merchant features, including product tagging on Pins and a Pinterest API for Shopping. The company says all of the new features are designed to make it easier for merchants to create engaging shopping experiences for users. With the new Pinterest API for Shopping, merchants will get access […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nothing, the consumer tech company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei and known for its aggressive marketing, unveils a non-fungible token project called Black Dot. Its fans are skeptical. Black Dot is a video clip featuring a rotating, transparent cube with a black dot bouncing off the walls inside and making a crispy, metallic sound. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mask Network, a Binance-backed startup that enables users to send cryptocurrencies and encrypted messages on established internet platforms like Twitter, has an ambitious goal: to become the corporate venture capital powerhouse in web3 as Tencent has done in web2. To that end, the five-year-old company recently completed the first close of its venture investment arm […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Glance, a subsidiary of adtech giant InMobi Group, is planning to launch its lock screen platform on Android smartphones in the U.S. within two months, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The startup is engaging with wireless carriers in the U.S. for partnerships and is gearing up to launch on several smartphone models […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some drone industry consolidation this morning as Ondas Holdings, the company behind Waltham, Massachusetts–based American Robotics announced its plans to acquire Airobotics. It’s admittedly been a few years since we covered the latter, when the Israeli firm announced a combined $28.5 million A/B round. To date, the company has raised $130 million since its 2014 […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to strip federal abortion rights in the U.S., many people are questioning how the apps they use every day might suddenly be turned against them. As concerns over the endless well of data that tech companies built an entire industry around mount, Google is taking at least […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three years after Facebook announced its ill-fated push into cryptocurrency, aka the Libra project, the tech giant has signalled another scaling back of its activity — announcing Friday that Novi, the digital wallet payments pilot it launched last October, will be ending on on September 1. In a statement provided to CoinDesk, the tech giant […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google said Thursday it will pay $90 million to settle a lawsuit with US developers that accused Google of abusing its power of app distribution and charging an unfair fee of 30% for app purchases and in-app purchases made through the Play Store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Software Freedom Conservancy, a not-for-profit organization that provides support and legal services for open source software projects, has called on the open source community to ditch GitHub after quitting the code-hosting and collaboration platform itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple announced Thursday that developers can now use a third-party payment system for the South Korea App Store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startup EV manufacturer Drako Motors previewed today the follow-up to its $1.25 million Drako GTE: the 2,000-horsepower Drako Dragon Super-SUV. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla has gutted the data annotation team working on Autopilot, laying off nearly 200 employees and shutting down the San Mateo, California office where they worked. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arzooo, an Indian startup that is attempting to bring the “best of e-commerce” to physical retail shops, has raised $70 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale its platform to more cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Democrats are considering the introduction of legislation that could protect the abortion rights of citizens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices