TechCrunch

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All the tech that got our attention at F1 Miami Grand Prix

All eyes are on Miami this weekend as the international glitterati arrives for the city’s inaugural Formula One Grand Prix. The European racing event has attracted American fans in droves, thanks to the “Netflix effect” of Formula 1: Drive to Survive ­– the successful franchise that’s spurred some of the most captivating rivalries in modern streaming and just been renewed for seasons 5 and 6.That in turn has attracted a new class of tech sponsors, including Google, Amazon, Dell and Oracle, that ...
2022.05.08
TechCrunch
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This Week in Apps: Fortnite’s back on iOS, TikTok’s new ad product, apps hit NewFronts

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy.The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the latest year-end reports. App Annie says global spending across iOS and Google Play is up to $135 billion in 2021, and that figure will likely be higher when its annual report, ...
2022.05.08
TechCrunch
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The Great Resignation, meet the Great Reset

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.The Great Resignation, the economic trend of people quitting their jobs in pursuit of other opportunities, has been greeted by a harsh reality: the Great Reset.This week, a spate of tech companies – largely those valued above $1 billion from their venture capital investors – announced reductions in their workforce. I wrote three layoff stories in fewe...
2022.05.08
TechCrunch
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A changing of the guard

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. When you start a project, it’s easy to get caught up in it. Then time passes and suddenly it’s been a half decade. Equity, a podcast I got to help start when I was wasn’t even working here, is one such project. So, too, is The Exchange.I started writing a daily markets column the d...
2022.05.08
TechCrunch
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Crypto investor and founder Jill Gunter on the increasingly heated competition between blockchains — and what it’ll take to win

Jill Gunter is no stranger to crypto — she’s seen the market through its ups and downs, conducting research on blockchain protocols, working at multiple crypto startups and co-founding her own, and investing as a crypto VC at Slow Ventures. Gunter first started following the crypto space in 2011, when she was working in the traditional finance world as a derivatives trader at Goldman Sachs and when Bitcoin was the only major layer-one blockchain.Since then, Gunter told TechCrunch&#82...
2022.05.08
TechCrunch
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ESPN+ debuts ‘McEnroe vs. McEnroe’, the first-ever tennis match between a real person and their virtual avatar

Premiering on May 7 at 10 PM ET on ESPN+, Michelob Ultra, in collaboration with tech and production company Unit 9, presents “McEnroe vs. McEnroe,” the world’s first tennis match to feature a real person versus a virtual player — both being a version of the entertaining, confrontational tennis player, John McEnroe. In the match, the real McEnroe will face off against his ultimate opponent—his younger self. In this case, a virtual player powered by A.I.The 45-minute film will showcase how t...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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As interest rates rise, startups and VCs are playing a new game

The era of free money is now officially behind us: The United States Federal Reserve raised a key interest rate benchmark by 0.50%, or 50 basis points, this week.Startups have long basked in the sun of effectively zero-cost money. As a result of a historic period of low rates, the comparative attractiveness of investing in bonds and other safer, if lower-yielding, assets was reduced, meaning investors around the world were looking for a place to park funds and have a shot at material incomes.Tec...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Chingona Ventures lands $52M to fund overlooked founders in massive markets

Chingona Ventures, a three-year-old, Chicago-based venture outfit that invests in pre-seed startups, primarily in the Midwest and primarily founded by overlooked individuals who are focused on massive markets, has closed a new fund with $52 million in capital commitments. Limited partners in the new fund include PayPal Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Melinda Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, Foundry Group, and the Office of the Illinois State Treasurer’s Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund, am...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Judge tosses Trump’s lawsuit over his lifetime Twitter ban

A federal judge in California dismissed Donald Trump’s lawsuit against Twitter Friday, dimming at least one avenue the former president and prolific tweeter might have used to get back to his platform of choice.Trump’s argument that the social media company and its then-chief executive Jack Dorsey violated his right to free speech failed to convince Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California, to put it lightly.“Plaintiffs’ main claim is that defendants have “cens...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Daily Crunch: Fairly stagnant since April launch, Coinbase NFT sales volume is under $700K

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here.Friday, May 6, is here. The only thing important about that is the “Friday” part – and we are eager and curious to see what this weekend has in store for us, because this week had many of our colleagues using expletives in their reporting, case in point this report by Natasha and Amanda describing all of the tech layoffs we’ve seen this week.Meanwhile, in the TechCru...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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The SEC gets seed funding

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Chain ReactionIn our Chain Reaction podcast this week, Anita and I chatted with Slow Ventures’ Jill Gunter on why there are so many dang blockchains out there and if we’re headed to a future where everything is built on a single ‘chain. More details below.Last week, we chatted a bit about the political isolation of Bitcoin that’s happening as a result of its energy footprint. In the podcast this week, we talked about how the Wikimedia Fou...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Need advice on navigating a tough startup market? Start here

The market for startup investment has changed. From the hottest year in startup venture capital history to a period of pessimism, how did we get to where we are today?The following digest of TechCrunch coverage looks to answer that question. We start with a historical run of stories beginning last December, threading through the start of the year until we reach the latest data from the VC ecosystem. Then we close with stories that have a few tips. Sound good? Let’s go.How we got to todayTh...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Post-pandemic reset leads to wave of layoffs in tech

Ok, maybe it is a reckoning.Over the past week, we’ve witnessed an alarming amount of layoffs across the startup ecosystem, from buzzy, big names like Cameo, OnDeck and Robinhood, to b2b platforms like Workrise and Thrasio. The common thread between most of these layoffs, according to founders, is that there’s been a shift in the market and a serious pivot in business is required. A pivot, that is, that hurts the employees that built your product up after high demand.A pullback has been in...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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TechCrunch+ roundup: Psychedelic investor survey, 6 issues VCs look for, hiring on a budget

Since the pandemic began, the percentage of American workers who have quit their jobs has reached a 20-year high. A Pew Research poll gathered their top three reasons:Not making enough moneyNo opportunities for advancementTired of unfair/disrespectful treatmentCompanies no longer compete on the basis of salary and benefits. Prospective hires are explicitly looking for environments where they can expand their skills while contributing to (and participating in) the company’s success.Last month at ...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Daniel Ek pumps $50 million into Spotify: ‘I believe our best days are ahead’

Spotify cofounder Daniel Ek said on Friday that he’s pouring $50 million into the music streaming service, driving its stock price up by more than 3% to a high of $108.98 per share during regular trading hours. The momentary rise, however, is a blip on the radar for Spotify, which has taken a beating this year—in part over its recent, weaker-than-expected growth forecasts (just like plenty of other streaming and software firms).As for the reasoning behind EK’s purchase, the Spotify C...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Ava sets the example for universal live captioning and raises $10M to keep building

When we last checked in with AI-powered captioning service Ava, they had just raised a seed round and it was six months into a pandemic that would reshape how we all work together. 18 months later they have investors banging on their door following huge growth, and aim to keep showing the tech industry how deaf and hard of hearing people ought to be included in the hybrid workplace.The company’s tools provide instant captions for any voice the user hears, whether that’s in a video ca...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Consumers and data are driving changes in the insurance sector: Where are we headed?

Jason Paau Contributor Jason Paau is senior director of program management at digital consultancy Publicis Sapient. He has extensive experience in the telecom, financial and energy services domains. The demand for more and enhanced automated experiences in our daily lives is growing, and the insurance sector is no exception. In recent years, a new crop of insurtech startups has embraced this approach to improve efficiency and experience for the customer, while better cal...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Simone Giertz goes from projects to products

“I’m happy to not be royalty,” Simone Giertz laughs. “I’m happy to be a women who does things.”YouTube’s one-time Queen of Shitty Robots didn’t renounce her crown so much as outgrow it. A few years back, the time came to put away the breakfast machine, the lipstick robot and the Styrofoam mannequin head that slams into a keyboard and kind of rolls back and forth in a rough approximation of internet commenting.“It just started feeling disingenuous,” she explains. “If I’m not proud of it, what sho...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Partner breakout sessions will drop serious knowledge at TC Sessions: Mobility 2022

We’re less than two weeks away from kicking off TC Sessions: Mobility 2022. Our first in-person mobility event since 2019 — holy cats! — takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California, followed by an online event on May 20. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with hundreds of your peers and hear about, see and test drive the latest mobility tech. Buy your pass by May 15, and you’ll save $200.We’ve packed this multi-day summit with more than 30 presentations from mobility tech and transport...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Meta is integrating its Horizon Venues live events app into Horizon Worlds

Meta announced today that it’s integrating its Horizon Venues event experience into its social virtual reality Horizon Worlds platform. Horizon Venues is currently a separate app dedicated to attending live events in VR that uses the same avatars as Horizon Worlds. On June 6, users will be able to attend these live events directly within Horizon Worlds and the standalone Venues app will be discontinued.“You’ll be able to catch your favorite marquee shows, from live sporting events to...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Coinbase’s NFT marketplace is off to a lackluster start

It’s been a little over two weeks since Coinbase launched its highly anticipated NFT marketplace for select waitlisted beta users. Earlier this week, the company opened the service up to the public – and digital collectibles trading has been sluggish.Coinbase’s exchange has 24-hour volume of $3.2 billion and almost 2.5 million weekly visits, according to CoinMarketCap. Since launching on April 20, Coinbase NFT volume has reached sales worth $668,668 across a small pool of 1,287 users, according ...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Volunteer at TC Sessions: Mobility for a free Disrupt Pass

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and raring to go big — returning live and in-person — for year number four. It’s a two-day deep dive featuring the best, brightest and most intriguing founders, engineers, investors, regulators and technologists dedicated to transforming the way we move people and packages around the globe!Here’s where you come into the picture. We’re looking for incredible volunteers. Sign up to volunteer for work exchange, and not only will you get a behind-the-scenes look at how ...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Codenotary launches a full-stack monitoring solution for Kubernetes and VMware environments

Codenotary, the company behind the immutable immudb open-source database and a software supply chain security service built on top of it, today announced that it is also adding a full-stack Kubernetes and VMware vSphere monitoring service for operations and DevOps teams on top of that. Basically, while the company’s previous offering — Codenotary Cloud — focused on securing the software supply chain, it is now extending its service into monitoring production systems with the la...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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Watch the latest TechCrunch Live event on building a better mobility fintech startup

This week Rachel Holt from Construct Capital and Kevin Bennet from GoCaribou spoke with Kirsten Korsec, TechCrunch’s transportation editor. This TechCrunch Live event was the first our month dedicated to mobility startups — and that includes TechCrunch’s Session: Mobility event this month.Kevin Bennett started his auto financing company in 2016. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in early 2022 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relat...
2022.05.07
TechCrunch
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24 hours left to save $200 on passes to TC Sessions: Climate 2022

We know all you climate-crisis warriors out there are busy trying to save the planet. But take five minutes right now to save $200 on a pass to TC Sessions: Climate 2022 (featuring the Extreme Tech Challenge 2022 Global Finals).Pro Tip: You have just 24 hours left to save $200 on the price of admission. Buy your TC Sessions: Climate pass by 11:59 pm (PT) on May 6.More than 1,000 of your colleagues — the top climate-focused scientists, founders, engineers, VCs and more — will arrive at UC Berkele...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Spotify Stations has left the station

Spotify Stations, the streaming service’s lightweight listening app offering easy access to curated playlists, is shutting down on May 16. The company told TechCrunch that the app and web player will no longer be available after this date. The Stations app was originally designed for those who want a more radio-like experience, rather than having to seek out music or customize their own playlists. Spotify Stations first launched in Australia in 2018 and later rolled out in the United States in 2...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Stripe is playing checkers with Plaid

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.The crew was back at full-speed, and maybe even full excitement meets exhaustion, this week.  Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and Mary Ann Azevedo were on the mic with moral and edit support from the wonderful Grace. If we had to give this episode it’s own autobiography we’d call it: “Drama, tech twitter and therapeutic moments in between.&#8...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Tomorrow Farms wants to revamp the pantry

Tomorrow Farms is fueling a sustainable food train with ingredients to turn the pantry and refrigerator staples we know now into foods that are better for us and kinder to animals and the planet.The company is poised to launch its first product later this month — co-founder and CEO Ben Berman was mum about what that would be — thanks in part to a $8.5 million seed round, led by Lowercarbon Capital, with participation by Maveron, Valor Siren Ventures, Simple Food Ventures, SV Angel and a group of...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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UK’s Big Tech regulator ‘to boost switching, cut killer acquisitions’

Just over a year after launching a dedicated unit focused on digital markets inside the national competition watchdog, the UK government has put some meat on the bones of what this new Big Tech regulator will focus on — including confirming it will have the ability to levy fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover if platform giants fail to comply with tailored codes of conduct.However the government still hasn’t confirmed exactly when it expects to legislate to empower the Digita...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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China’s EV darling Nio turns to Hong Kong and Singapore amid US delisting risk

Nio, an electric vehicle upstart from China, is planning to list its shares in Singapore, which will make the city-state the third base where it trades as geopolitical tensions between China and the US heighten.Nio said on Friday that it is seeking a secondary listing of its Class A ordinary shares “by way of introduction” on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited, a way to list securities already in issue on another exchange.The company’s shares will continue to be ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Lyft brings shared rides back to more U.S. cities in bid to win riders

Lyft is bringing back shared rides to San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Las Vegas and Atlanta this May, the company announced on Thursday, noting that the popular reduced fare service will be expanding to other markets in phases throughout the year.The company originally abandoned its carpooling service in March 2020 when the pandemic made it clear no one would want to ride in a small, enclosed space with other riders, let alone a Lyft driver. Last summer, Lyft brought back a limited version of s...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Haun Ventures leads $50M round in NFT startup Zora Labs

The NFT ecosystem continues to chug along, but the vast majority of volume is still moving through the centralized halls of NFT marketplace OpenSea, leaving crypto VCs eager to find new channels.Katie Haun’s new firm Haun Ventures has led its first deal in NFT startup Zora Labs. The $50 million funding round values the company at $600 million.Zora’s protocol allows artists and developers to create NFT marketplaces and collections. Zora has its own primary marketplace where users can ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Tony Fadell cleans out his garage

“Anyone want to see what I unearthed when I cleaned out my garage and found photos of everything I’ve ever made?” Tony Fadell tweeted in mid-April. It was a rhetorical question. Anyone with a passing interest in the last two decades of consumer hardware would jump at the opportunity to see what the man behind the iPod, iPhone and Nest Thermostat had stashed away in those giant Home Depot boxes.The literal garage cleaning preceded the metaphorical variety, with this week’s publication of “B...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Daily Crunch: Larry Ellison leads investor group chipping in $7.1B toward Musk’s Twitter buyout

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here.What’s a five-letter word containing ERUSS? You made the GUESS — USERS, that’s what — and tens of millions of them have joined The New York TIMES after its acquisition of Wordle, according to Amanda‘s REPORT. As LOYAL players, we ADORE it. – Christine and HajeThe TechCrunch Top 3Backing Elon: Like sands through the hourglass, we are learning more ev...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Lithium-ion recycler Li-Cycle lands $200 million to power future EVs

Metals and fossil fuels behemoth Glencore is pumping $200 million into battery recycler Li-Cycle as part of a larger, symbiotic supply deal inked by the two firms.Under the new agreement, the Swiss materials giant will ship burnt-out batteries and scraps to Li-Cycle, which will recover the high-demand metals so they can be reused in electric vehicle batteries and other applications.Li-Cycle uses a spoke-and-hub approach for recovering the materials. At their spoke facilities, they shred spent ba...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Lucid is raising prices on its luxury Air EV by as much as 13%

Lucid Group is the latest automaker to up the price of its electric vehicles.The company announced Thursday alongside its first-quarter earnings report that it was raising prices of the variants of its luxury Air sedan, beginning June 1. The price hikes push the base price of the Air sedan as much as 13%.All existing reservation holders will not experience price hikes, the company said, noting that updated pricing for Canada will be made public on June 1. Considering that Lucid disclosed it has ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Peloton reportedly looks to sell up to a 20% stake amid struggles

In February, Peloton CEO John Foley stepped down as the connected fitness pioneer cut 2,800 jobs. No one could say the news was unexpected. The firm was experiencing dramatic turmoil after flying high from pandemic sales and then falling back down to Earth. Add to that 2021’s massive product recall and you’ve got a rough couple of years for the executive.But even with former Spotify CFO Barry McCarthy stepping into the role, it seems the company isn’t out of the woods.“This appointment is the cu...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Fortnite is back on iOS through Xbox Cloud Gaming

Microsoft is throwing its weight behind Epic Games in the fight against Apple — and bringing Fortnite back to iOS in the process. The company announced Thursday that it had partnered with Epic to make Fortnite available on Apple devices through its game streaming service, Xbox Cloud Gaming.Fortnite is back, but you still won’t be able to just waltz into the App Store and ask for it. To play, you’ll need to hop onto Apple’s Safari browser and visit Xbox.com/play, a process that&...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Amazon Labor Union president tells Senate that workers’ rights aren’t a “Democrat or Republican” issue

Back in February, Amazon tried to arrest labor organizer Christian Smalls for bringing food to warehouse employees during a union drive. One unfathomably monumental labor victory later, and today, the New Yorker is speaking before the Senate and visiting President Joe Biden at the White House.Smalls, the Amazon Labor Union president who led the JFK8 warehouse’s historic union win, testified today in a hearing for the Senate Committee on the Budget. Chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT),...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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6 places where investors look for problems when you’re fundraising

Bill Petty Contributor Share on Twitter Bill Petty is a partner at Tercera. He is responsible for sourcing, executing and monitoring investments in third-wave services businesses. Are you a founder looking to raise capital? If so, before you open the door to potential investors, your financial house might need a little spring cleaning.As a growth equity investor, we meet with many founders who have a solid handle on the day-to-day operations of thei...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Mobility marketplaces and brake repair on TechCrunch Live

Walker Drewett founded NuBrakes in May 2019. According to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures, Drewett is building a high-growth business powered by a marketplace model, which is why Ghaffary led the company’s Series A. The product is simple: On-demand vehicle brake repair services. Join this episode to hear how Drewett raised capital and built NuBrakes on the learnings from his previous startup, NuWash (it’s on-demand car washes, of course).This event opens on May 25 at 11:30 am PT...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Twitter rolls out new Spaces features, including access to analytics for hosts

Twitter is rolling out a number of new features for its live audio Spaces product this week. The social media giant is giving hosts and co-hosts on iOS and Android access to analytics about their Spaces. For example, hosts and co-hosts can now get information about how many total live listeners tuned into the broadcast, how many times it was replayed and how many people spoke during the Space.The new analytics feature was first introduced as a test available to a select number of hosts in March,...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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‘Climate entrepreneurs deserve fast capital’: Enduring Planet unwraps a new fintech platform

Enduring Planet, a new fintech firm that exclusively funds climate entrepreneurs, is taking the wraps of its first product after securing $5 million in debt and equity financing.The company aims to deliver fast debt capital to startups and small businesses that focus on climate, such as by mitigating emissions or helping humanity adapt to the disastrous effects of burning fossil fuels. “When the world’s on fire, it’s pretty important that we move quickly, and not take six months to u...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Unusual Ventures just closed a $485M fund by promising hands-on (full-time) help

Unusual Ventures, a now 30-person outfit founded nearly five years ago by former Lightspeed Ventures investor John Vrionis and serial entrepreneur Jyoti Bansal, has closed its third fund with $485 million in capital commitments, Vrionis told us in conversation earlier this week.It’s not a huge step up from the $425 million that Unusual raised for its second fund in late 2019 and that’s very much by design, said Vrionis, who is the firm’s sole managing director but has bought ab...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Oops, I think they broke the blockchain

Hello and welcome back to the Chain Reaction podcast, where we unpack and explain the latest crypto news, drama and trends, breaking it down block by block for the crypto curious.On this week’s episode, we talked about the virtual land sale that (temporarily) broke the blockchain. Yuga Labs’ now-infamous NFT drop was — to put it lightly — chaotic. Users swarmed the sale like it was a Supreme drop in 2017, overwhelming the entire Ethereum network and resulting in lots of f...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Crypto gaming is growing, but can it reach people outside of the web3 world?

Last year was big for the play-to-earn gaming scene, which goes hand-in-hand with the crypto world, but as the games become more advanced and provide more opportunities for users, what’s next for the industry?Perhaps it’s building out the gaming experience or creating new openings for non-crypto-native players to enter the space, but there’s a range of opportunities and challenges for builders and gamers.“The goal is to bring the Web 2.0 traditional gaming masses to web3,” Alex Paley, co-f...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Budgeting and planning for your first digital product

Charles Fry Contributor Share on Twitter Charles Fry, CEO of CODE Exitos, is a technology entrepreneur and investor who has launched and grown successful companies in e-commerce, logistics and IT services. Whether it’s a new mobile, IoT or web3 product, the one question I’m asked almost always is: How much will it cost to build?I get this question often from entrepreneurs who know their business but don’t have experience creating software. Sin...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Knit picking

Going out on a limb here and guessing you don’t need me to tell you why we wanted to chat with Amazon at our upcoming robotics event. Well before we were discussing how the pandemic has radically transformed automation, the retail giant had already begun to transform the category.Amazon’s got hundreds of thousands of robots deployed in fulfillment centers across the country, with a push dating back to its 2012 acquisition of Kiva Systems. Wherever you happen to land on conversations about labor ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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On Deck cuts 25% of staff, scales back accelerator

On Deck, a tech company that connects founders to each other, capital and advice, has laid off 25% off its staff, per sources familiar with the company. The layoffs were announced today during an internal all hands meeting, and impacts about 72 people.Sources say that mostly operations and investing roles were impacted by layoffs. Severance packages were offered and include eight weeks of paid base salary, as well as 12 weeks of healthcare. It’s unclear if any executives were cut, but TechCrunch...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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The costs of driver incentives are weighing on Lyft, Uber

Lyft’s shares lost nearly a third of their value yesterday after the ride-hailing company reported its Q1 2022 results, despite the company beating market expectations for revenue.If you delve a little deeper, it seems the market was instead focused about something else entirely: Slightly soft guidance on revenue growth in Q2 2022 when compared to analyst expectations, as well as the cost of driver incentives — supply stimulants that impact the company’s economic profile.During the Lyft earnings...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Batteries have become VC and PE’s most electric investment opportunity

For the better part of a decade, VC firms and growth equity funds have plowed nearly $42 billion into battery technology startups across almost 1,700 deals, according to an analysis by PitchBook and TechCrunch. What’s more, about 75% of the investments in that period happened in the last two years alone.Venture capital firms aren’t unusual in the battery world. Five years ago, they reliably made 50 to 60 deals a quarter, which would be worth a few hundred million dollars in total. That started t...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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GPS signals could detect tsunamis better and faster than seismic sensors

GPS networks are already a crucial part of everyday life around the world, but an international team of scientists has found a new, potentially life-saving use for them: tsunami warnings.Researchers from University College London and universities across Japan studied the ability of the GPS network to detect tsunamis, concluding that instruments can indeed detect the destructive waves from space. They’ve also determined that GPS can provide more detailed information than current detection systems...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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iPhone users complain Apple Music is installing itself to the dock, booting out their other apps

An Apple Music bug is perplexing some iPhone owners. According to various reports, the Apple Music iOS app is installing itself directly to the iPhone’s dock when downloaded, instead of to the phone’s homescreen. It’s also kicking out other apps users had set up in their dock and taking their spot, which is not something apps would normally do. Some iPhone owners also found the bug was causing Apple Music to establish itself as the default music service for Siri requests, even ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
no title TechCrunch

As Roe v. Wade looms, should you delete your period-tracking app?

The U.S. Supreme Court is anticipated to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case which guaranteed a person’s constitutional right to abortion, allowing states to decide whether to heavily regulate or ban the procedure. This reported move, based on a leaked draft of an opinion that hasn’t yet been issued but would mean abortion rights would be protected in less than half of all U.S. states, has reignited the years-long conversation about the privacy — or lack thereof — of period-...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
no title TechCrunch

Facebook is shutting down its podcast service, discontinuing other audio products

Facebook is shutting down its podcast service on June 3rd barely a year after its launch. The social media giant told TechCrunch that it’s also going to discontinue its short-form audio Soundbites feature and its Audio hub in the coming weeks. Facebook will also integrate its Live Audio Rooms offering, which is its Clubhouse clone, into its Facebook Live experience. The company says this integration will allow for a more streamlined experience so that users will have the option to go live ...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Smart dumbbells? Sure, why not?

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb suggesting that dumbbells aren’t at the top of anyone’s list when it comes to connectivity. Heck, when you’ve got “dumb” in your name, you’re really operating at a disadvantage. Of course, given the smart home fitness explosion of the past several years, why not?Kabata joins a growing number of startups bringing connected strength training into the home. But while offerings like Tonal and Tempo are focused on larger solutions, the dumbbell is really the thin...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Pitch Deck Teardown: Momentum’s $5M seed pitch deck

Momentum pulled off what every entrepreneur dreams of: Last year, it closed a lead investor for its seed round — which our own Ron Miller covered at the time — without even creating a pitch deck. A minor investor in its previous round had been keeping a close eye on the company, and when it mentioned it was raising a round, the investor swooped in and convinced Momentum it was the right choice to lead the round.Once a lead was secured, Momentum created a pitch deck to fill out the ro...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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Workrise fixes API that spilled users’ personal information

Workforce management unicorn Workrise has fixed an exposed API that was spilling some users’ personal information.The Austin, Texas-based startup, which previously went by RigUp, was founded in 2014 as a marketplace for on-demand and skilled labor in the oil and gas industry. The company changed its name to Workrise in February 2021 to accommodate a broader set of energy sectors, like solar, construction and defense. By May 2021, Workrise said it had raised $300 million at a $2.9 billion v...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
no title TechCrunch

Fintech MainStreet cuts about 30% of staff, citing ‘incredibly rough market’

MainStreet, a startup that helps other startups uncover tax credits that was valued at $500 million last year, has laid off about 30% of its staff, according to a tweet from CEO Doug Ludlow.In that tweet, Ludlow said MainStreet “took the difficult step of reorganizing and restructuring the company” this week. He did not say if these cuts impacted all teams across the company or if any executives were laid off. He also did not state exactly how many employees are impacted by the move.Ludlow added...
2022.05.06
TechCrunch
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