TechCrunch Industry News

Facebook confirms it’s testing a new QR code feature and payment links for use with Facebook Pay to make it easier for people in the U.S. to send or request money from one another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The last year has put a spotlight on mental health, and startup Real is looking to shake up the space with a product that makes group therapy available on-demand. Founded by CEO Ariela Safira, Real is inspired by a long-standing methodology in the world of mental health: Group therapy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two-year-old CRED has become the youngest Indian startup to be valued at $2 billion or higher. Bangalore-based CRED said on Tuesday it has raised $215 million in a new funding round — a Series D — that valued the Indian startup at $2.2 billion (post-money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple CEO Tim Cook dropped a few hints in an interview released Monday about the direction of the much-anticipated Apple car, including that autonomous vehicle technology will likely be a key feature. “The autonomy itself is a core technology, in my view,” Cook told Kara Swisher in an interview on the “Sway” podcast. “If you […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Underrepresented founders are the most undervalued asset class in the U.S. today, and investors are starting to realize that diversity is not charity -- it’s economic opportunity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meesho said on Monday it has raised $300 million in a new financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 as the Indian social commerce startup works to become the “single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to succeed online.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.S. consumers spent an average of $138 on iPhone apps last year, an increase of 38% year over year, largely driven by the pandemic impacts, according to new data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I use Feedly to work my way through each day’s stream of politics, tech, and media stories. Today, I am greeted with a picture of something called Feedly Cloud and the following message: Scheduled Maintenance Feedly will be back in less than 30 minutes. 60 minutes later, it still says that. Feedly is built on […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Launched in only November last year, the Craft Docs app — which was built from the ground up as an iOS app for collaborative documents — has secured an $8 million Series A round led by Creandum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The pandemic’s remarkable impact on the app industry has not slowed down in 2021. In fact, consumer spending in apps has hit a new record in the first quarter of this year, a new report from App Annie indicates. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple this morning announced that it will be returning to an all-virtual format for a second year. The company went online-only for the first time in 2020, as Covid-19 ground in-person events to a halt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two-and-a-half years later, the Nest Home Hub remains one of my favorite smart screens on the market. Maybe that’s a commentary on the rate of improvement in the category, or maybe Google just got things pretty right the first time out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Payment card network Visa has announced that transactions can be settled using USD Coin (USDC), a stablecoin powered by the Ethereum blockchain. Crypto.com is the first company to test the new capability with its own Visa-branded cards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Swiss automation and technology company ABB has announced a collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to create a cloud-based EV fleet management platform that it hopes will hasten the electrification of fleets. The platform, which the company says will help operators maintain business continuity as they switch to electric, will roll out in the second […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Boston Dynamics’ transition from a decades-long research robotics firm to a company that productizes and sells hardware has been a fascinating one to watch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Security researchers say a powerful new Android malware masquerading as a critical system update can take complete control of a victim’s device and steal their data. The malware was found bundled in an app that had to be installed outside of Google Play, the app store for Android devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Porsche has added its first all-electric vehicle, the Taycan sports sedan, to its subscription and short-term rental program as part of a broader expansion that aims to build a new customer base of U.S. owners. The German automaker said Thursday it is also expanding the Porsche Drive subscription and rental programs to five more cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sending money from the U.S. to Nigeria can be a painstaking process. For remittance platforms like Western Union, it will cost a transfer fee and take between one to five business days for money sent from a U.S. debit card to enter a Nigerian bank account. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eat Just, the purveyor of eggless eggs and mayonnaise and the first government-approved vendor of lab-grown chicken, has raised $200 million in a new round of funding, the company said. The funding was led by the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the state of Qatar, with additional participation from Charlesbank Capital Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When AWS CEO Andy Jassy announced in an email to employees yesterday that Tableau CEO Adam Selipsky was returning to run AWS, it was probably not the choice most considered. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cameras have long been the battleground on which the smartphone wars have been fought. Short of any left-field innovation like folding screens or strange form factors, that looks likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Year after year and generation after generation, companies tout imaging breakthroughs to set themselves apart. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As exciting as the entire Perseverance mission to Mars is, one of the events most looked forward to by us Earthlings must be the first flight of Ingenuity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearly five years after the launch of Pokémon Go, Niantic announced Monday that they are partnering with Nintendo to co-develop a new title based on the company’s Pikmin franchise. Niantic says the app is being developed in their Tokyo office and will launch later this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Biden didn’t campaign on getting tough against big tech, but his early actions are speaking louder than his words. The White House confirmed its intentions to nominate Lina Khan to the FTC Monday, sending a clear signal that his administration will break from the Silicon Valley-friendly precedents of the Obama era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brian Brackeen, the founder and former CEO of facial recognition startup Kairos, has made his way back to the company following his ouster in 2018. Brackeen is now chairing the company’s scientific advisory board, where he’ll help to address and eliminate issues of racial bias from the technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facebook’s hardware strategy often looks pretty opaque from the outside. The company has done fairly well with Oculus sales amid pandemic demand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chinese users of the instant messenger Signal knew that the good times wouldn’t last long. The app, which is used for encrypted conversations, is unavailable in mainland China as of the morning of March 16, a test by TechCrunch shows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now has announced some changes when it comes to subscription plans. Starting today, paid memberships now cost $9.99 per month, or $99.99 per year — they are now called ‘Priority’ memberships. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Security compliance may not be the hottest conversation starter, but it’s a critical and often grueling process that companies have to endure every year to show that their security practices are up to par. It’s a burden that bogs down startups more than others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

BMW plans to have 25 electrified cars in its lineup by 2025 and it’s taking a few more steps in this direction this year with the launch of the all-electric iX SUV and the i4 sedan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google is making changes to its parental control system, Family Link, that aims to better reflect parents’ changing views on children’s screen time. In the pre-pandemic world, parents were more likely to see screen time as something in need of restriction — they’d rather their kids get offline or go outside to play with friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bangalore’s fintech startup ecosystem is inching closer to delivering a new unicorn: CRED. Two-year-old CRED is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $200 million at about $2 billion valuation, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The COVID-19 pandemic boosted U.S. online shopping by $183 billion, accord to a new report by Adobe’s e-commerce division, released this morning. This figure represents the increase in online shopping during the months of March 2020, when the pandemic began in the U.S, through February 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s tweets are the subject of another lawsuit. A Tesla investor is suing the company board and Musk for continuing to send ‘erratic tweets’ that violate a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that requires oversight of his social media activities. The lawsuit, which was first reported by Bloomberg, claims […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Los-Angeles based startup Canoo revealed its newest — and now third — electric vehicle, a pickup truck that does away with the sharp corners and huge engine housing of both comparable EV trucks and legacy diesel pickups and is aimed at both commercial customers and weekend warrior-minded consumers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“It seems quite odd that no one has built the SpaceX equivalent for the ocean,” Anthony DiMare tells TechCrunch. “There’s no big, modern technology company that fits the space yet.” DiMare cofounded Bedrock Ocean Exploration last year, with Charles Chiau. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gather helps people, well, gather in virtual spaces for any reason, whether it be for weddings, magic conventions, or, just a regular day at work. Over the past few months, as remote workers look for better ways to interact with each other, the startup has quietly amassed more than 4 million users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Last month Jeff Bezos announced he would step down as CEO of Amazon later this year, moving into the executive chairman role, while passing the baton to AWS CEO Andy Jassy. Could Marc Benioff, co-founder, chairman and CEO at Salesforce be the next big-name executive to make a similar move? A Reuter’s story published on […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The U.S. Department of Defense is setting up a working group to focus on climate change The new group will be led by Joe Bryan, who was appointed as a Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense focused on climate earlier this year. The move is one of several steps that the Biden administration has […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Introduced in late-2019, the Move was a very Sonos approach to the Bluetooth speaker. It was an attempt to bring the company’s long-standing premium approach to a more portable form factor. Accordingly, the press photos feature a lot of shots of the product on porches and around pools. Today’s arrival of the Roam, however, takes […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arlan Hamilton, the Backstage Capital founder and managing partner, joined us at TC: Sessions Justice to chat about how she vets founders beyond Stanford signal, the changing role of venture capital, how raising money from the community, versus institutional LPs, can impact Backstage strategy. On what makes a founder make sense for Backstage Capital In […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Before kids graduate to the expansive virtual worlds in games like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, they often get their start in online social gaming with a game like Animal Jam. Here, kids learn to personalize their avatar, explore a world, chat with other players, and trade items in a safe environment with parental controls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is hosting a small virtual meetup this Thursday centered around Miami. We hope you can attend. It’s free. This is our first (virtual) field trip to Miami. Even though we can’t be there physically right now, it’ll sure feel like we are. All lights will be shining on the Magic City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chalk this up to inevitability. The iMac Pro is soon to be no more. First noted by 9to5Mac, TechCrunch has since confirmed with Apple that the company will stop selling the all-in-one once the current stock is depleted. One configuration of the desktop is still available through Apple’s site, listed as “While Supplies Last” and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter announced today it’s opening up its live audio chat rooms, known as Twitter Spaces, to users on Android. Previously, the experience was only open to select users on iOS following the product’s private beta launch in late December 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When I first wrote about Whatnot in February of last year, they were just getting started. Aiming to be the GOAT of collectible toys, they were focusing first on being the go-to trusted spot for buying and selling authenticated Funko Pop figurines. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX has launched another batch of its Starlink satellites –Â the usual complement of 60 of the low Earth orbit spacecraft, which will join the more than 1,000 already making up the existing constellation. This is the fifth launch of Starlink satellites for SpaceX this year, and the 20th overall. Earlier this year, SpaceX opened up […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Earlier this year, TikTok was spotted testing a new Q&A feature that would allow creators to more directly respond to their audience’s questions using either text or video. Today, the company has announced the feature is now available to all users globally. With the release of TikTok Q&A, as the feature is officially called, creators […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Late last night Oscar Health, a tech-enabled medical insurance provider, priced its IPO at $39 per share. The final price came in $1 per share above its raised IPO guidance; Oscar Health had originally targeted a $32-$34 per-share IPO price. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DJI has flirted with FPV goggles before, of course. The company got on the burgeoning FPV movement with the launch of its DJI Goggles back in 2016. It was a logical extension for the company that controls around 70% of the drone market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices