TechCrunch Industry News

NFTs are being used for far more than just proving you own a JPEG on the internet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Union Square Ventures (USV), the 19-year-old, New York-based venture firm, has raised $275 million for its eighth early-stage fund and $350 million for its fourth opportunity fund, the firm announced in a blog post yesterday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okra Solar walked away with the trophy and a giant check at our 2019 Shenzhen Hardware Battlefield event. It’s a moment happily eternalized in a new press release announcing the renewable energy startup’s $2.1 million new round (it’s a nice photo. I used it on this post, too). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Airbnb is going all in on the “live anywhere, work anywhere” philosophy that much of the business world has been forced to adopt, committing to full-time remote work for most employees and a handful of perks like 90 days of international work/travel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was last year that we covered the $11.2M fundraise for Sienna Network, the ‘privacy decentralized’ startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks to the explosion of low- and no-code development tools, building web apps from scratch has become easier — and cheaper — than it once was. But sophisticated search and navigation functions can complicate the process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Smallstep founder and CEO Mike Malone calls big, distributed systems his happy place, but these systems involve a lot of machine-to-machine communications, an area identity vendors haven’t been able to solve. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I’ve been covering Apple in various capacities for a long time now. Over the years, I don’t know that I’ve seen an announcement from the company as unexpected and warmly received as Self Service Repair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

General Motors expects full-year 2022 expenses at Cruise, the automaker’s autonomous driving subsidiary, to be approximately $2 billion, according to GM’s chief financial officer Paul Jacobson. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Online payment methods can be expensive for merchants, who have to pay between 2% and 8% of every sale to debit and credit card, ewallet and BNPL facilitators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You’ve got to hand it to Miso — the company knows how to sell the sizzle, as they say in the meat-cooking business. The robotics firm has been striking high-profile deals with some of the U.S.’s biggest fast food chains, from White Castle to Panera Bread. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reliance Industries “cannot implement” its $3.4 billion deal to acquire several parts of retail chain Future Group after secured creditors rejected the offer earlier this week, India’s most valuable firm said in a stock exchange filing on Saturday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As unlikely as it may have once seemed, reports indicate Elon Musk may actually end up the owner of a newly-private Twitter after all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Months after cutting half its staff, edtech startup Flockjay has landed on a new vision for how to disrupt tech sales: start from the inside, out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Snap released its first quarter financial results for 2022 today, affirming that it’s growing faster than its fellow US-based competitors Facebook (now Meta) and Twitter. Meta reported its first loss in daily active users (DAUs) last quarter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Immigrants to a new country can often be cash-rich. The problem is, is that they have no credit history in their new country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drones can be dangerous, and we’ve seen consumer-grade drones used for all sorts of nefarious purposes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been a wild few years for the home fitness industry. Few consumer technologies were better positioned to ride the pandemic to new heights. There’s been some leveling off of late, of course. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After months of teasers and a slow drip of information, BMW today announced its new i7 xDrive60, the first all-electric version of its full-size luxury sedan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last April, Facebook announced a suite of new audio products, including new support for podcasts and a Clubhouse live audio competitor, which was an indication that it was taking the threat from other audio platforms more seriously. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A European music streamer, Deezer is going public via a SPAC deal, valuing the Spotify competitor at $1.1 billion. Deezer will merge with the “blank-check” company I2PO, which is headed by former WarnerMedia executive Iris Knobloch. Founded in 2007, the company previously tried to IPO in 2015, only to reverse course and raise Series E […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TeamSnap, a web service for managing recreational and competitive sports teams and groups, announced the launch of its all-in-one multi-program management system for youth sports organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The parent company of Dungeons & Dragons publisher Wizards of the Coast will buy D&D Beyond, the role-playing game’s popular digital suite of tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Peloton announced today that it’s increasing the price of its subscription fees in the United States and Canada. Starting June 1, the cost of the company’s all-access plan fee is increasing from $39 to $44 in the United States and from $49 to $55 in Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Swiggy has led a $180 million financing round into bike taxi startup Rapido as the Indian food delivery giant looks to broaden its fleet network across the country, the two firms said on Friday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As we found during the pandemic, food and beverage distribution is critical, but most food wholesalers’ sales remain manually operated. Post-covid, food wholesalers are fast digitizing their operations, but many still rely on legacy backend systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tinder today is launching a new feature called Festival Mode designed to help users connect ahead of their plans to attend concerts or larger music festivals, like The Governors Ball, Bonnaroo, Stagecoach, EDC Las Vegas, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

E-commerce today is played out wherever a consumer sees something and wants it — be it on a company’s site or app, a social media feed, a marketplace, a search, or an advert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nursing shortages were a problem well before our hospitals were rocked by a pandemic. Two years in and overloaded systems have further contributed to burnout, stress and other factors plaguing the people we rely on for our own well-being. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Prelude, a Washington D.C-based startup that helps organizations harden their cyber defenses through the use of autonomous red-teaming, has secured $24 million in Series A funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Miso made a name for itself with the hamburger-cooking robot, Flippy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Elon Musk is not joining Twitter’s board, the social network’s chief executive Parag Agrawal said, in a surprising reversal following last week’s announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive had been appointed to the panel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Perforce Software has been building developer tools since 1995, a long time in the tech world. The company was acquired by Clearlake Capital in 2018, and over the last several years has been modernizing and expanding its reach through acquisition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sure you can run machines to decarbonize the air, but where’s the fun in that when you can invite mother nature to do the work for you? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sometimes, new Twitter features can be divisive — we’ve made our feelings clear about the edit button, which is apparently in the works. But we can (hopefully) all agree that simple accessibility features are a good thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CertiK, a Web3 and blockchain security company, has raised $88 million in its latest round, bringing its valuation to $2 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re still wrapping your head around the idea of self-driving cars, get ready for something that might seem even wilder: self-driving construction equipment exists, and it’s already out there digging away on job sites. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Global digital payments giant Visa has opened up an innovation studio in Kenya, its first in Africa and sixth globally, after posts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rivian produced 2,553 vehicles in the first quarter, putting it on course to meet its production goal of 25,000 EVs this year, the company said Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon is finally taking decisive action on its Kuiper communications satellite constellation, securing the rights to as many as 83 launches from United Launch Alliance, Arianespace, and of course Blue Origin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Late last year, Peloton announced Guide. The set-top system is an effort to reach a broader slice of the market with a lower cost alternative to its line of bikes and treadmills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Global logistics and package delivery company UPS will leverage Jumia’s network across Africa to grow its reach across the continent, following a new partnership announced today that gives it access to the e-commerce firm’s last mile delivery infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He’s used Twitter to poll people apparently to make major business decisions. He’s had his hand figuratively slapped (more than once) by regulators over how he’s used the social platform to potentially manipulate the markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Joe Biden will trigger the Defense Production Act to secure U.S. sources of critical minerals and materials like lithium, nickel, cobalt, graphite and manganese that are used to make batteries for electric vehicles and energy storage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You just know your battery will kick the bucket at the worst possible time, right when you’ve perfected your sick, hella nar-nar skateboard tricks, bruh. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We’ve known Mojo Vision’s journey to market was going to be a long and deliberate one since we saw an early prototype in Las Vegas a number of CESes ago. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tumblr is expanding its tip jar feature by introducing blog-level tipping for its iOS and web applications, the company announced on Wednesday. The company rolled out its tip jar feature last month allowing users to leave tips on posts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Air. I love it, you love it. We’re all out here walking around in it all day, filling our lungs and blood with the stuff. We can’t get enough of it. But that beautiful, wonderful, life-saving air that you, me and your pet chinchilla all need is bad sometimes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here’s a bummer of a statistic for you: Around 30% of bee colonies disappear every year. Scientists coined the phrase “colony collapse disorder” (CCD) to describe what’s been a devastating ongoing trend in the world’s bee population. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Celonis moves into Microsoft ecosystem with Process Analytics Factory acquisition Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices