TechCrunch Industry News

As private companies like Axiom Space, Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX prepare to ferry private customers to the stars, a whole new market is opening up to train affluent would-be travelers for their future missions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lisbon-based food delivery startup Kitch hopes to hands back control to restaurants dogged by the mess of food delivery apps today, by aggregating the apps onto one tablet and platform. Restaurants then get one place to manage all their delivery orders, track couriers, and update their menus across all the delivery apps. It’s now raised […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Say what you will, Nothing has been doing a fine job milking its upcoming launch for all it’s worth. The company has spent the last several month’s teasing the arrival of its first product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Snack, a video-first mobile dating app designed with a younger generation in mind, is opening itself up to Gen Z investors. The startup today announced the launch of its own Gen Z Syndicate on AngelList, which will allow Gen Z community members, influencers, creators and others to participate in the company’s upcoming $2 million SAFE, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

E-bike startup Cowboy has launched the Cowboy 4, its newest generation of urban electric bikes. The bike will come in two different frames, a traditional frame, and a step-through. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Long-running German audio company Sennheiser today announced that it has found a buyer for its consumer brand. Swiss holding company Sonova — a giant in the hearing aid business — will be acquiring the brand in a deal expected to close by end of year. The deal will bring headphones and sound bars to Sonova’s […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In April, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead with its initial public offering and is now valued at nearly $6.4 billion. At that time, TechCrunch Senior Editor Alex Wilhelm caught up with founder and CEO Robert Reffkin to chat about his company’s debut in the market’s suddenly choppy waters for tech and tech-enabled debuts. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What would have been a celebratory earnings call in just about any other quarter ended on a somber note today, as Peloton CEO John Foley kicked things off with an apology. “We are a members-first organization,” the executive stated. “And that means for all of us at Peloton, the safety of our member community comes […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We tend to think of venture capital in tens or hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, so it’s refreshing to find Evening Fund, a new $2 million micro fund that focuses on small investments between $50,000 and $100,000 as it seeks to help young startups that may be struggling to find funding elsewhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New numbers from research firm Canalys point to continued growth for PCs in 2020/21, as the pandemic has forced many to rethink how – and where – they work. PC shipments have grown for four straight quarters. All told, the numbers (within which the firm lumps tablets, incidentally) grew 53% year over year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stride VC, a London-based seed investment fund, has raised its second fund, which will be £100M ($138.6M) – identical to its first fund. The fund will invest primarily in London startups but also look at select European opportunities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has launched 60 more of its Starlink internet broadband satellites — on ‘Star Wars Day,’ no less, and only five days after it launched the last batch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter Spaces, the company’s new live audio rooms feature, is opening up more broadly. The company announced today it’s making Twitter Spaces available to any account with 600 followers or more, including both iOS and Android users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Conventional wisdom over the last year has suggested that the pandemic has driven companies to the cloud much faster than they ever would have gone without that forcing event with some suggesting it has compressed years of transformation into months. This quarter’s cloud infrastructure revenue numbers appear to be proving that thesis correct. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facebook has announced a $10 million grant to support emergency response efforts in India and has rolled out its Vaccine Finder tool in the country as the South Asian nation grapples with the latest wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following a controversial ban on political discussions earlier this week, Basecamp employees are heading for the exits. The company employs around 60 people, and roughly a third of the company appears to have accepted buyouts to leave, many citing new company policies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two years ago, we talked with Lior Susan, the founder of now six-year-old Eclipse Ventures in Palo Alto, Ca. At the time, the outfit believed that the next big thing wasn’t another social network but instead the remaking of old-line industries through full tech stacks — including hardware, software and data — capable of bring […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Biden Labor Secretary Marty Walsh charged into the white hot issue of the gig economy Thursday, asserting that many people working without benefits in the gig economy should be classified as employees instead. In an interview with Reuters, Walsh said that the Department of Labor is “looking at” the gig economy, hinting that worker reclassification […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google today announced the launch of Grow with Google Career Readiness for Reentry. The initiative — created in partnership with nonprofits The Last Mile, Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), Defy Ventures, Fortune Society and The Ladies of Hope Ministries — is designed to offer job readiness and digital skill training for formerly incarcerated individuals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facebook has temporarily hidden all posts with hashtag “ResignModi” in India, days after the U.S. social juggernaut — along with Twitter — complied with an order from New Delhi to censor some posts critical of Indian government’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are lot of companies out there making robotic exoskeletons. In fact, it’s one of the more active categories in the space — and for good reason. These sorts of technologies have the ability to profoundly impact the future of how people work, move and rehabilitate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s a bunch of tablet news coming from Amazon this morning. Leading the way is the release of two new 10-inch devices: the Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 10 Plus. The former features a 1080p display with a bump in brightness, an unnamed eight-core processor and 3GB of RAM — a 50% jump over […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earth Day may have come and gone, but with apps like #8meals from the non-profit Habits of Waste, anyone can try and do their part to help reduce deforestation and rising greenhouse gas emissions by cutting meat out of their diets for just 8 meals a week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hailing company Lyft has sold off its autonomous vehicle unit to Toyota’s Woven Planet Holdings subsidiary for $550 million, the latest in a string of acquisitions spurred by the cost and lengthy timelines to commercialize autonomous vehicle technology. Under the acquisition agreement announced Tuesday, Lyft’s so-called Level 5 division will be folded into Woven Planet […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bobby Goodlatte has only been an investor for about a decade, but he appears to have already made tens of millions of dollars, contrary to the expectations of some traditional VCs who have privately, and publicly, griped that too many novice investors have flooded into the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ever since I read this Bloomberg story about how songs are engineered to go viral on TikTok, I’ve had one thought in my head – if you can call it that – it’s more of a noise, or impression:Â AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH Yes, it’s the sound of internally screaming. Just when I thought I understood how deeply […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The European Union’s lead data protection supervisor has called for remote biometric surveillance in public places to be banned outright under incoming AI legislation. The European Data Protection Supervisor’s (EDPS) intervention follows a proposal, put out by EU lawmakers on Wednesday, for a risk-based approach to regulating applications of artificial intelligence. The Commission’s legislative proposal […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple just announced the new iMac powered by Apple’s own M1 silicon. Among the numerous updates and upgrades is a new power brick that sports something special to Apple’s lineup: an Ethernet port. On the surface, this seems like a silly placement of a critical I/O port, but there’s a good chance this feature could […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The big news from today’s Spring Loaded event is, as anticipated, a new version of Apple’s high-end tablet. The new iPad Pro is the first in the line to adopt the M1 chip introduced on the company’s Mac line. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today’s Apple event, chock-full of the company’s products that will help decide whether the company meets, exceeds or undershoots Wall Street expectations for its future growth and performance, had little to no impact on its share price. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of the most popular running apps are still lagging behind on security and privacy. That’s the verdict from security researchers who examined the leading running apps five years apart and found only a few apps had improved — and not by much. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple has unveiled a new, colorful iMac today with an Apple-designed M1 chip. But that was just part of the story as the company used that opportunity to release new Mac accessories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise! It’s another Apple Event. Gone are the days of getting a few weeks’ notice before these events now that they’re entirely virtual (at least until 2022, most likely). Instead, the company just dropped the news last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been a strange few years for Fitbit. After defining the fitness tracking space, the company was a bit late to the smartwatch trend, but was still able to ride that wave to a rebound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

General Motors is joining the list of big automakers picking their horses in the race to develop better batteries for electric vehicles with its lead of a $139 million investment into the lithium-metal battery developer, SES. Volkswagen has QuantumScape; Ford has invested in SolidPower (along with Hyundai and BMW); and now with SES’ big backing […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Third-party hardware integration can be a tricky thing. Peloton this week raised some eyebrows by dropping Apple GymKit compatibility for its Bike Bootcamp program. Users were, naturally, quick to react. The situation left some wondering whether the move was a direct response to Apple’s recent entry into the home exercise market with Fitness+. A Peloton […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter has banned right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe, creator of political gotcha video producer Project Veritas, for violating its “platform manipulation and spam policy,” suggesting he was operating multiple accounts in an unsanctioned way. O’Keefe has already announced that he will sue the company for defamation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Good news, Bay Area! Apple Pay now works with Clipper cards. That means you can now use an iPhone or Apple Watch to pay for BART. Or Muni. Or Caltrain. Or the Ferry! Or (almost) any other transit-related thing you’d otherwise use the plastic Clipper card for. Clipper has a page outlining the Apple Pay […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Microsoft is understandably positioning the latest additions to its Surface line as productivity devices. Laptop sales, in particular, have jumped amid the pandemic, as many have scrambled to shift to a work from home setting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s been about a year and a half since Amazon released the first Echo Buds. I reviewed them when they arrived, and they were, I don’t know, fine, I guess. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple only dropped info about WWDC two weeks back, but the company just announced another event – this one happening much sooner. After Siri spilled the beans this morning, the company has officially confirmed its next event for April 20. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The new Surface Laptop was the marquee arrival in today’s Microsoft announcement, but boy howdy, the company also dropped a whole bunch of new accessories. It’s a pretty broad range of new devices, including some small updates to existing products and entirely new entries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Workflow automation has been one of the key trends this year so far, and Zoho, a company known for its suite of affordable business tools has joined the parade with a new low code workflow product called Qntrl. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cleo Capital, a venture capital firm founded in 2018 by Sarah Kunst, is raising up to $20 million for its second fund, according to a source familiar with the matter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Starting this week, some Domino’s customers in Houston can have a pizza delivered without ever interacting with a human. The pizza delivery giant said Monday it has partnered with autonomous delivery vehicle startup Nuro to allow select customers to have their pizzas dropped at their door via Nuro’s R2 robot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Security researchers say APKPure, a widely popular app for installing older or discontinued Android apps from outside of Google’s app store, contained malicious adware that flooded the victim’s device with unwanted ads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Historically, the transmasculine community has been neglected by the fashion world. But Both& is a new brand looking to offer clothing tailored specifically for transmasculine bodies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The coronavirus pandemic has increased our collective screen time, and that’s particularly true on mobile devices. According to a new report from mobile data and analytics firm App Annie, global consumers are now spending an average of 4.2 hours per day using apps on our smartphones, an increase of 30% from just two years prior. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When the pandemic arrived in the U.S. early last year, companies scrambled to figure out what to do with their long-standing, in-person developer events. For Apple and Microsoft, that meant going virtual – something companies have done with mixed results. For Google, it meant calling off I/O all together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yesterday we noted that Apple launched a new Find My Certification Asst. app, designed to test support for third-party hardware. Find My, of course, has been a long-standing feature for Apple’s own hardware like iPhones, AirPods and Macs, but back at WWDC, the company announced plans to open it up to manufacturers. Today the company […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices