TechCrunch Industry News

In another key moment for the growing tech labor movement, Glitch employees today announced that they have signed a collective bargaining agreement with the company. The move comes a year after the site’s workforce voted to join the Communications Workers of America Local 1101. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Facebook was ordered to pay $650 million Friday for running afoul of an Illinois law designed to protect the state’s residents from invasive privacy practices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of investors in Zagreb will capture how Croatia is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wall Street investors can be fickle beasts. Take Salesforce as an example. The CRM giant announced a $5.82 billion quarter when it reported earnings yesterday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lightspeed Venture Partners, the well-known Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed the likes of DoubleClick and Snapchat, is in the midst of hiring a new London-based investment partner as it looks to put down further ties to Europe, TechCrunch has learned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Newsela, a SaaS platform for K-12 instructional material backed by the likes of TCV, Kleiner Perkins, Reach Capital, and Owl Ventures, announced today that it has raised $100 million in a Series D round. The financing was led by new investor Franklin Templeton, and brings Newsela’s valuation to $1 billion. The new round is larger […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coinbase’s S-1 publicly dropped this morning with much anticipation. My colleague Alex Wilhelm has the high-level details, but there was one major wrinkle for the crypto trading darling: two of its early investors seem to be cutting down their stakes pre-IPO. Coinbase files to go public in a key listing for the cryptocurrency category The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oak HC/FT general partners Annie Lamont, Andrew Adams and Tricia Kemp invested in healthcare and fintech before the two sectors were mainstream, and today, as a result of that early intuition and a handful of key exits, the trio has over a billion dollars in new fund money to show for it. The firm announced […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Genealogy tracking online is a big business, and today comes some M&A news for one of the bigger names in the field. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Israel’s MyHeritage.com — which lets people test DNA and track their family lineage and has some 62 million users — is getting acquired by Francisco Partners, for […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twitter is running a new test that will ask users to pause and think before they tweet. According to the company’s announcement, when Twitter detects what appears to be a potentially harmful or offensive reply to someone else’s tweet, it will prompt you to consider revising your text instead of tweeting. Users whose tweets are […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A number of online creators and influencers have adopted mobile-friendly “link in bio” websites, like Linktree, to point their fans to their social profiles or other content they want to promote. Today, live streaming software company Streamlabs launched its own product in this market with its new mobile website builder Willow. Its tool differentiates itself […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Huawei’s first foldable feels like a distant memory. Announced in 2019, the company went back to the drawing board prior to release, as Samsung ran into its own much publicized issues with the innovative form factor. The Mate X was well-received among journalists — I had the opportunity to spend some time with it at […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Oslo and Norway will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Norway’s startup scene is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SpaceX is now in the business of flying people to space, and if all goes to plan, it’ll be the first to provide a trip for a crew made up entirely of private space tourists later this year. Now, we know who will join billionaire and Shift4Payments founder Jason Isaacman on that trip – St. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearpod, the Miami-based edtech company, is being acquired by Renaissance Holding Corp., a group that develops education technology. While Nearpod isn’t announcing the news until later this month, the information leaked to Yahoo! Finance yesterday, and a source inside the company confirmed the sale with TechCrunch this morning. The acquisition price, and further details, have […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

2020 was a weird year by any measure. Certainly it was a wild ride for those in the consumer electronics category. Take smartphones — first there were manufacturing delays out of China, followed by an across the board decrease in demand. There are lots of reasons contributing to the latter, but the simplest and most […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Wendell Brooks stepped down as managing partner and head of Intel Capital last August, Anthony Lin was named to replace him on an interim basis. At the time, it wasn’t clear if he would be given the role permanently, but today, six months later, the answer is known. In a letter to the firm’s […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Google has suspended the Trump 2020 campaign app from the Google Play Store for policy violations, the company confirmed, following a report from Android Police which noted the app was unable to load any content and appeared to have been taken down. Both the Android version of the app and its iOS counterpart have been […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amazon’s Day 1 Edition program pulled back the curtain ever-so-slightly on the company’s hardware development process. The initial class featured its Echo Frames smart glasses and Loop smart ring. Based on early user feedback, the company only opted to continue production on the former. But it takes the idea even further. The program is akin […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People who have spent time in jail or prison oftentimes face barriers to accessing stable jobs, housing and financial services. These types of barriers are a key driver of recidivism for the more than 600,000 people who are released from prison each year. Between 2005 and 2014, an estimated 68% of people released in 2005 […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trello, the Kanban board-centric project management tool acquired by Atlassian in 2017, today launched what is likely one of its most important updates in recent years. With significantly more than 50 million users, Trello is one of the most popular project management tools around and in many ways, it brought digital Kanban boards to the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nature’s Fynd, the food technology company with a new food offering cultivated from fungus found in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park, is releasing its first products for pre-order. Pitching both a non-dairy cream cheese and meatless breakfast patties, Nature’s Fynd had managed to attract some serious investors including Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Copenhagen and Denmark will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Denmark’s startup scene is […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GM revealed Sunday a refreshed Chevrolet Bolt EV and a new, bigger — yet still compact — crossover called the Chevrolet Bolt EUV as part of the automaker’s goal to introduce 30 electric vehicles in the next four years. The vehicles, which are expected to go on sale this summer, are like siblings: the pair […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Although the popular audio chat platform Clubhouse today includes a way to share your upcoming hangouts and events across social media, the resulting link that displays is fairly boring. A new link-sharing tool called ClubLink can help. The tool allows hosts to better promote their events by offering a more customized social media preview featuring […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead. In a conversation hosted by the Carnegie Endowment Thursday, Oversight Board co-chair and former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt painted a more expansive vision for the group that could go beyond making policy decisions […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apps saw record downloads and consumer spending in 2020, globally reaching somewhere around $111 billion to $112 billion, according to various estimates. But a growing part of that spend was subscription payments, a new report from Sensor Tower indicates. Last year, global subscription app revenue from the top 100 subscription apps (excluding games), climbed 34% […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What, you are no doubt asking, is a worm a blob? Well, it’s a blob of worms, obviously. More specifically, it’s a blob of California blackworms. It’s not a flock, nor a swam nor a school. It’s a big, undulating mass of a Lumbriculus variegatus tangled up, but somehow moving as one. Roboticists, of course, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you are a founder and launched a startup last February of 2020 just before the pandemic hit, then you may have felt like you were living the ultimate business nightmare. But if your company serves to stabilize the supply-chain business, then, in fact, you may have hit the ground running at just the right […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hyundai Motor Group is back with a new “walking car” robot that can use its wheels to roll along a path or stand up and navigate tougher terrain on its legs. This time, the concept is designed to carry cargo and is small enough to be carried by a drone. The TIGER robot — short […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SplashLearn, a 10-year-old U.S.-headquartered edtech startup that teaches children through a game-based curriculum, has raised $18 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand to more markets. San Francisco-based Owl Ventures led the Series C funding round in SplashLearn, and Accel, which had earlier invested $7 million in the startup’s Series B, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LanzaJet, the renewable jet fuel startup spun out from the longtime renewable and synthetic fuel manufacturer, LanzaTech, has inked a supply agreement with British Airways to supply the company with at least 7500 tons of fuel additive per yer. The deal marks the second agreement between the UK-based airline and a renewable jet fuels manufacturer […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We crawled into an abandoned school bus, trespassed through dilapidated hallways, dodged fleeting thunderstorms and wandered through empty streets of Chinatown late into the evening. For two summery weeks, I couldn’t have been happier. New York City was in lockdown. I’d been quarantined in my dinky apartment, disheartened and restless. I was anxious to do […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday. Inside WeChat groups, Clubhouse users rushed to report the situation and help each other with ways to get back onto the red hot live audio app. Audio drop-in […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Identity and access management service Okta today launched its new design system, both for its own corporate and brand use, but also as an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license. The Odyssey Design System, as the company calls it, is similar to the likes of Google’s Material Design or Microsoft’s Fluent Design. It may […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NASA has awarded Firefly Aerospace with a $93.3 million contract to take a lunar lander module loaded with experiments to the surface of the Moon. While the company will not be performing the launch itself, it will be providing the spacecraft and “Blue Ghost” lander for the 2023 mission. The space agency made the award […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The cloud infrastructure market in 2020 reflected society itself, with the richest companies getting richer and the ones at the bottom of the market getting poorer. It grew to $129 billion for the year, according to data from Synergy Research Group. That’s up from around $97 billion in 2019. Synergy also reported that the cloud […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Several high-level Apple services are experiencing issues and outages on Wednesday morning, Apple has confirmed. These issues are impacting a number of consumer-facing services including Apple Music and Radio, Apple Books, and the App Store platforms across both iOS devices and Mac. For some users, the services are down. For example, there were reports circulating […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The California Supreme Court today shot down the lawsuit filed by a group of rideshare drivers in California and the Service Employees International Union that alleged Proposition 22 violates the state’s constitution. “We are disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear our case, but make no mistake: we are not deterred in our […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Blockbuster news struck late this afternoon when Amazon announced that Jeff Bezos would be stepping back as CEO of Amazon, the company he built from a business in his garage to worldwide behemoth. As he takes on the role of executive chairman, his replacement will be none other than AWS CEO Andy Jassy. With Jassy […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In addition to AirPlay support for Fitness+, today’s iOS 14.5 developer beta is bringing some key new features to mobile operating system. At the top of the list is undoubtedly Apple Watch unlock for users wearing face coverings. The long-awaited feature arrives a year or so into a pandemic that has made face masks a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rocket launch company Astra, which just reached space this past December with a test launch from Alaska, will be going public on the NASDAQ via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) called Holicity. The recent SPAC craze has already extended to the New Space sector, and Virgin Galactic was among the in […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A week after introducing Time to Walk, Apple has released another software update aimed at expanding its Fitness+ footprint. With today’s arrival the developer seed of watchOS 7.4 and iOS 14.5, the company is adding a new feature that will make it possible to stream workouts to an AirPlay enabled TV – with some caveats. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

New space startup bluShift wants to bring a new kind of propellant to the small satellite launching market, with rockets powered by bio-derived rocket fuels. These differ from traditional fuels in that they offer safety advantages during handling, and ecological advantages during production and use. The startup has been working on its solid rocket biofuel […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Charlie, a personal finance app that began as a chatbot, is relaunching today with a revamped experience focused on the larger goal of helping everyday Americans get out of debt. To do so, Charlie presents users with a full picture of their current debt and how long it will take them to pay it off. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Few tech sectors had more to gain from the events of 2020 than home fitness. Interest in the category was swift, as gyms were declared one of the bigger problem areas amid the worldwide spread of Covid-19. Suddenly home workouts were more than just luxury. For YC-backed Aviron, it was the ideal time to pivot. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As Facebook and Apple begin to fire up more projects in the AR/VR world, Google has spent the last year shutting down most of their existing projects in that space. Today, the folks at Google announced they had ended active development of Tilt Brush, a VR painting app that was one of virtual reality’s early […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sony is making a play for the top end of the professional digital camera world, where videographers and sports photographers demand immaculate image quality at high resolutions in short order. The new Alpha 1 beats pretty much everything on the market on paper, but it’ll set you back a cool $6,500. This is, of course, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The top-line feature for Ring’s latest is no doubt its price. No way around that. At $60, it’s $40 cheaper than the standard Video Doorbell – and prices from there go up significantly, with the “Elite” running $350. Perhaps the company is feeling some pressure from the race the bottom for smart home hardware pricing. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GitLab, the increasingly popular DevOps platform, today announced a major update to its subscription model. The company is doing away with its $4/month Bronze/Starter package. Current users will be able to renew one more time at the existing price or move to a higher tier (and receive a significant discount for the first three years […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices