TechCrunch Industry News

As the cannabis markets are maturing, we’re seeing new opportunities rise to the surface. JourneyOne ventures told TechCrunch it’s closed a $10 million fund and has started making its first few investments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The promise of STEAM robots, which are billed to increase children’s interest in science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM), has been around for years. The market is teeming with products from hardcore robotics scientists and their copycats. Many have faded away, but investor interest hasn’t died down, at least for one company coming from […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Volkswagen Group unveiled its ID.AERO concept in China on Monday — slated to serve as the inspiration behind the automaker’s flagship EV, and first-ever global all-electric sedan, next year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As companies grow they expose more of themselves online and become harder to defend in terms of cybersecurity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Any given year, the real unsung highlight of re:Mars are the dozen or so startups and researchers who show off their wares on the show floor. There are always a couple of cool projects that have somehow managed to escape our radar, thus far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Einride, the Swedish startup that wants to electrify the autonomous freight industry, will begin operating its purpose-built, self-driving pods on public roads in the U.S. this year as part of an existing partnership with General Electric Appliances (GEA). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Uber said on Thursday it has never explored exiting India, a key overseas market for several tech giants, dismissing a claim that it has had held discussions to sell the local unit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As part of its ongoing efforts to expand into e-commerce, Twitter today announced a new partnership with Shopify. The deal will see Twitter launching a sales channel app that will be made available to all of Shopify’s U.S. merchants through its app store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In mid-May, Wingcopter announced an extremely ambitious plan to deploy some 12,000 of its fixed-wing UAVs in Sub-Saharan Africa over the next half decade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Singapore-based Stashfin has raised $270 million in a new funding round as the neobanking platform, which currently only serves customers in India, looks to expand to Southeast Asia and other South Asian markets, it said Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NFT marketplace Magic Eden, launched just nine months ago, has raised $130 million in a Series B round co-led by Electric Capital and Greylock Partners, bringing its valuation to $1.6 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Iran’s relationship with the crypto mining sector is a love-hate one. The government is again restricting crypto mining activity as it tries to ease the strain on the country’s power supply, despite knowing the promise of crypto as a way to evade international sanctions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

RansomHouse, a ransomware gang, has claimed responsibility for the cyberattack on Shoprite, Africa’s largest retailer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Three months after announcing it would make a big push into software and enterprise, fintech giant Brex is apparently abandoning the very segment it started out to serve – small and medium-to-sized businesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The crypto gaming industry is continuing to grow in popularity as more capital is deployed in the space and traditional Web 2.0 gaming studios look to enter the web3 market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reddit announced Thursday that it would buy Spell, a platform for running machine learning experiments, for an undisclosed amount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google Maps is introducing a new widget for Android that will be another use for the functionality that helped make a name for Waze, the other driving and mapping app that Google acquired nearly a decade ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GreyNoise Intelligence, a Washington D.C.-based cybersecurity startup that analyses internet scanning traffic to help organizations separate threats from internet “background noise,” has landed $15 million in Series A funding to expand its threat collection capabilities and help protect organizations from emerging vulnerabilities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon Fire TV revealed an updated user interface that aims to improve the navigation experience for users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shared micromobility giant Lime is piloting electric motorbikes in Long Beach, California. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Overair, a California-based electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle startup, has secured $145 million in funding that will go towards the development of Butterfly, the company’s experimental aircraft prototype, by the second half of 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gaining a place on retail shelves is just the start to Magic Spoon's plan to evolve into an omnichannel brand that eventually goes beyond the cereal box. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cryptocurrency lender Celsius Network, recently valued at about $3 billion, told customers Sunday evening that it is pausing “withdrawals, swap, and transfers between accounts." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon won’t be bidding for the IPL media rights for the year 2023 to 2027, a person familiar with the matter said, leaving the hotly contested streaming auction to Disney and Reliance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duolingo, the Nasdaq-listed language learning app, is back in China’s Apple App Store and Android stores nearly a year after it disappeared from the country’s app stores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla has accused the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) of failing to conduct proper investigations before it sued Tesla for racial bias at its assembly plant, according to a petition filed Wednesday with California’s Office of Administrative Law (OAL). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is expanding a verification program for financial services ads that it launched in the UK last summer after seeing what it describes as a “pronounced decline” in reports of ads promoting financial scams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The startup’s “share-to-earn” data token model will reward users for contributing valuable information, which it will then use to help its model better pick stocks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Honor of Kings, the world’s largest mobile game made by China’s internet behemoth Tencent, is rolling out a global version by the end of this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At the end of last year, just before Christmas, Oracle made a big move when it announced it was acquiring electronic health records company Cerner for $28 billion, thrusting it quickly into the top enterprise deal for 2021, just under the wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bigger isn’t always better, but when the Looking Glass Factory announces a beast of a holographic display, it tickles our rods, cones and curiosity equally. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Online marketplace Etsy is launching a new Purchase Protection program for buyers and sellers on its platform, the company announced on Monday. Starting August 1st, buyers on Etsy will be eligible to receive a full refund for purchases that don’t match the item description, arrive damaged or don’t arrive at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has disabled businesses ability to use RCS for promotion in India, the company’s biggest market by users, following reports of rampant spam by some firms in a setback for the standard that the company is hoping to be the future of SMS messaging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Crypto platform Gemini has cut approximately 10% of its workforce, per co-founders and twin brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smartphone manufacturing giant Foxconn has confirmed that a ransomware attack in late May disrupted operations at one of its Mexico-based production plants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon is launching a new invite-based ordering experience for high-demand, low-supply products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Engineers are the bedrock of any tech product, and blockchains are no exception. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Venture capital firms continue to deploy and raise capital for crypto markets despite volatility in recent weeks, with Binance Labs closing a $500 million investment fund to focus on web3 and blockchain technology adoption. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Traditional venue photography providers like DEI Global, MagicMemories, Picsolve and Sharingbox are reliant on fixed equipment, permanent staffing costs, and on-site printed products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So-called “tech for good” accelerators addressing such worthy-sounding subjects as ESGs and SDGs have appeared in the last few years. Some observers have dismissed these efforts as scalable only put to a point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HitPay has almost everything SMEs need to run their businesses. In addition to being an online payment gateway, it also offers tools like point-of-sale software with card readers, plugins, payment links and no-code online stores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Given the likely global recession, small businesses are reaching for new kinds of financing. Thus, the Buy Now Pay Later business model is now expanding into this B2B world at a rate of knots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

India has withdrawn a warning that asked users to not share photocopies of their national biometric ID following a widespread uproar from users on social media, many of whom pointed that this is the first time they were hearing about such a possibility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joywell uses a proprietary microbial fermentation process to produce sweet proteins that are nearly identical to those found in exotic fruits and berries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Much of the world’s attention around blockchain is on the highs and lows of cryptocurrency values. Startups like FlexID remind us that distributed ledger technology has the potential to play other roles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fintech startup and alternative credit asset manager Viola Credit, has closed its latest $700 million fund which provides asset-based lending capital to FinTech, PropTech, and InsurTech startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite a gloomy outlook for crypto markets based on the past few weeks of token turbulence, venture capitalists looking to spend their way into a web3 future aren’t taking their foot off of the gas. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometimes when there is smoke, there is actually fire. Such was the case with the rumors of Broadcom’s interest in VMware this past weekend. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You probably know Dyson for their vacuums, or maybe that too-powerful dryer you’ve tentatively stuck your hands in while waiting for a flight. Maybe you’ve seen their hair dryers or fans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you grow this quickly, yes, you can raise capital for your software business like it's still 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices