Raqeem 24

Kai Kloepfer started biometric “smart” gun startup Biofire as a science fair project after the Aurora, Colorado, mass shooting in 2012 brought the U.S.’s gun violence problem close to home. Kloepfer began thinking of ways to solve the problem using what he knows: technology. Twelve years later, that project has turned into Biofire, a firearms […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2jRtS

In March 2008, a roboticist in winter wear gave Big Dog a big kick for the camera. The buzzing DARPA-funded robot stumbled, but quickly regained its footing amid the snowy parking lot. “PLEASE DO NOT KICK THE WALKING PROTOTYPE DEATH MECH,” pleads the video’s top comment. “IT WILL REMEMBER.” “Creepy as hell,” notes another. “Imagine […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2hvvQ

Oregon may soon become the latest state to pass right-to-repair legislation. Last month, Google lent its support in an open letter, calling Senate Bill 1596 “a compelling model for other states to follow.” The bill, sponsored by a sextet of state senators and representatives, was inspired in part by California SB 244, which Governor Gavin […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2hgKc

Papaya Global bought a Super Bowl ad slot with the hope of the commercial driving brand recognition for the software company. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2g7xH

20PRODUCT includes a group of eight people who come from companies like Shopify, Nubank, Spotify, Snap, LinkedIn, Ramp, Match and Xiaomi. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2fvpr

Could 2024 be the year for fintech IPOs? Quite possibly, according to F-Prime Capital’s State of Fintech 2024 report. F-Prime — a VC firm with over $4.5 billion in assets under management that tracks the performance of emerging, publicly traded and privately held financial technology companies — naturally remains bullish on the fintech space, noting that: […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2fPNN

Getaround, a company that helps vehicle owners rent out their cars, trucks and SUVs to other peers, is cutting 30% of its North American workforce as part of a restructuring. The company said in a statement it will restructure its workforce and operations to reduce costs in hopes of extending its cash runway and accelerating […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2f9Cf

Your phone’s camera is as much software as it is hardware, and Glass is hoping to improve both. But while its wild anamorphic lens creeps to market, the company (running on $9.3 million in new money) has released an AI-powered camera upgrade that it says vastly improves image quality — without any weird AI upscaling […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2ck5j

Is the grass greener on the other side? We’re not sure, but the sky is most certainly bluer. It’s been more than a year since Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, leading people to set up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (which has already shuttered operations) and Spill have been presented as potential […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2cWwV

Attentive.ai, a startup building vertical software for landscaping and construction services in the U.S., has raised $7 million in a new funding round as it looks to enhance its AI-led offerings and expand them to more businesses. Led by Vertex Ventures Southeast Asia and India, the all-equity Series A round, which follows the earlier $5 […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2c8Vs

The post-Twitter era has spurred the development and further growth of numerous social networks that prioritize brief posts, from open source standbys like Mastodon to new decentralized concepts like Bluesky, and those from smaller startups like Post, Spill, and Spoutible, to those from tech giants like Meta, which launched the Twitter-like Threads. While this is […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2c002

Bluesky opened to the public yesterday after launching in an invite-only beta last year. Getting on Bluesky might not be as exciting as it was when people were selling invites on eBay for $400 a pop, but there’s still a lot of curiosity around the decentralized, open source social app. In the last day, Bluesky […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2ZzzB

It’s not every day that a new VC firm comes out of stealth. This time, Varsity is announcing its first fund. Founded by a former Société Générale executive and two VC investors who worked at Serena Capital, Varsity has already raised €70 million ($75 million at today’s exchange rate) to back early stage startups across […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2ZpBw

Ex-Tesla and Ford Advanced EV development boss Alan Clarke is leading a Ford skunkworks project to develop a low-cost electric vehicle, TechCrunch has learned. Ford CEO Jim Farley made a brief reference Tuesday during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call that a “skunkworks” team had been created to create a “low-cost” EV platform. TechCrunch has since […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2ZQ7D

The foundational vocabulary of any new medium is inherited from that of its predecessor. Take, for instance, the early days of television, when so many shows were effectively radio programs caught on film. The new medium’s success is dependent on the development of its own vocabulary, distinguishing itself from earlier paradigms. In the case of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2ZFWP

Everbridge's deal shows that startups shouldn't expect their valuations to be salvaged that much by cash generation if their growth is all but zero. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2Y9pp

Late last year, Spotify began offering 15 hours of monthly audiobook listening to its Premium subscribers in select markets, including the U.S. Now the company says the new service is the second-largest audiobook provider behind Amazon-owned Audible — something Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said was notable “given how entrenched the legacy players are.” During its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2XyvX

Early stage European venture capital (VC) firm Episode 1 has closed its third fund at £76 million ($95 million), as the London-based investor turns to in-house “data-driven deal sourcing tools” to find the next big thing. Founded in 2013, Episode 1 has a handful of exits to its name from the 70 or so companies […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2XT9f

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. Happy Monday, everyone! © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2XFWZ

If you listen to a lot of podcasts, there is a chance you might remember funny tidbits and are wondering… “Wait, who talked about eating fries with sriracha again?” or more serious questions. To look for the answers, you have to first find the podcast and then search through their transcripts. Dexa is trying to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2VnBy

Snapchat maker Snap is the latest tech company to conduct layoffs with its newly announced plans for a 10% workforce reduction, the company said on Monday. The layoffs would impact roughly 500-plus employees, based on headcount figures Snap released in November 2023, when it saw small-scale layoffs of its then north of 5,000 employees. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2VYMl

Samsung Electronics executive chairman Jay Y. Lee has been declared not guilty on the charge of stock price manipulation and accounting fraud related to the merger of Samsung affiliates in 2015, a South Korean Court ruled on Monday. In the November hearing, prosecutors had called for Lee to be in jail for five years and a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2V2ff

Felicis, the 16-year-old Bay Area-based early-stage venture firm, has a reputation for investing globally. Indeed, firm founder Aydin Senkut — who spent a handful of years at Google as a product manager in its earlier days — was born in Turkey and talks often of the hustle he sees in founders around the world. Felicis […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2TpYh

Naboo, a French company that was created just a couple of years ago, is trying to create a modern online experience for company seminar planning. The startup recently raised an $8 million funding round (€7.5 million) and already processes more than $1.5 million in transaction volume per month. On paper, Naboo is quite simple. It’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2SLY7

Shares of Paytm plunged 10% on Monday, the third consecutive session of declines, touching an all-time low of 438.35 Indian rupees (or $5.28) after the RBI’s clampdown last week looks to have had a more extensive impact than previously anticipated. The trading was halted after Paytm’s shares fell 10%, the artificial limit put on its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2S5f2

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility – your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week, read about autonomous vehicle company […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2RYqt

A survey of TechCrunch readers reveals that while the spot ETFs may boost bitcoin's price, they may not be attracting many people who don't own bitcoin. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2RK9J

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the week in tech that was. And, boy, was it a week. Lots happened — let’s dig in. As layoffs in tech picked up, the Vision Pro, Apple’s attempt at an AR headset, launched with hundreds of apps right out the gate. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2Pr2J

VCs have long supported fast-fashion companies but the controversies and lawsuits they draw makes them riskier investments. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2PZyH

In 2000, Paradox Press published “Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology Are Revolutionizing an Art Form.” The book was Scott McCloud’s follow-up to his seminal 1993 work, “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art.” Where the earlier title explored the history and visual language of sequential art, the second volume finds the medium at a crossroads. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2P2dw

The much-hyped Apple Vision Pro headset has begun arriving for those who preordered it, or is available for a test drive for those wanting to give it an in-person demo. Billed as the future of spatial computing, the AR/VR headset might not be for everyone based on its hefty $3,499 price tag and lack of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2NnRC

Controversies and PR headaches weren’t enough to dissuade Spotify from re-upping its agreement with podcaster Joe Rogan, whose show over the past couple of years drove divisions among music fans and artists alike and even prompted some big names, like Neil Young, to pull their catalogs from the streaming service. Regardless, the show remained popular […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2MGHf

For the last several quarters we’ve seen a lull in the expansion of the cloud infrastructure market, with lower growth numbers than we’ve been accustomed to seeing in the past. That changed this quarter thanks in large part to interest in generative AI. The new revenue wave began just last year, driven by the ChatGPT […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2M1lZ

Well, that was fast. A settlement has been reached just two days after district attorneys from 25 California counties filed a lawsuit against Tesla over allegations the automaker repeatedly mishandled hazardous waste at its facilities throughout the state. Tesla has agreed to pay $1.3 million in civil penalties and $200,000 to reimburse the costs of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2LVRC

Instagram Threads now has more than 130 million monthly active users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings today. The text-based social networking app is one of the many new projects that have sprung up in the wake of Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now called X, where it competes with […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2LFzP

Google Maps is introducing a generative AI feature to help you discover new places, the company announced today. Using large language models (LLMs), the new feature analyzes the over 250 million locations on Google Maps and contributions from over 300 million Local Guides to pull up suggestions based on what you’re looking for. For instance, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2Jmpx

Hello and welcome back to the third edition of the new and improved TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2JZBC

At its WWDC 2023 conference, Apple took the wraps off the Vision Pro, its long-rumored augmented reality (AR) headset. The Vision Pro is one of Apple’s most ambitious products to date — one year in the making and packed with technology, including a new operating system, visionOS, that might just warrant the sky-high price tag. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2JC1q

Antitrust enforcers on both sides of the Atlantic are grappling to get a handle on AI, a conference in Brussels heard yesterday. It’s a moment that demands “extraordinary vigilance” and clear-sighted focus on how the market works, suggested top US competition law enforcers. From the European side, antitrust enforcers sounded more hesitant over how to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2J2x9

Snap and the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) are recalling the company’s discontinued Pixy drone and telling owners to stop using it or charging the batteries because of a fire hazard. This comes after the safety agency received “four reports of the battery overheating and bulging, resulting in one minor battery fire and one minor […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2H2PQ

For years, Google (or any other search engine) has been the main gateway for people to discover websites and other content. The Browser Company, which makes the Arc Browser, is on a quest to change that by building an AI that surfs the web for you and gets you the results while bypassing search engines. […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2Grz1

Apple’s brand-new Vision Pro headset has lost one of its competitive advantages over rivals, as Meta announced today that it, too, will add support for spatial video playback on its more affordable Meta Quest. Spatial video, also known as stereoscopic videos, are videos Apple customers themselves can film with any iPhone 15 Pro or iPhone […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2GTLh

U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA has ordered federal agencies to urgently disconnect Ivanti VPN appliances given the risk of malicious exploitation due to multiple software flaws. In an update to an emergency directive first published last week, CISA is now mandating that all federal civilian executive branch agencies — a list that includes the Homeland Security […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2GJz2

In 2019, Apple announced it would start sending some security researchers a “special” version of the iPhone designed to be used to find vulnerabilities, which could then be reported to Apple so the company could fix them. In 2020, the company started shipping the devices, which are designed to have some security features disabled, making […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2FJ6B

Polygon Labs, the team focused on building the layer-2 blockchain Polygon, has laid off 60 employees, or about 19% of its staff, according to a post published Thursday by CEO Marc Boiron. The Polygon chain is one of the biggest layer-2 blockchains focused on scaling Ethereum. It has assisted over 2.44 billion transactions, deployed over […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2F5v6

Google said today that YouTube now has more than 100 million paid users across YouTube Music and YouTube Premium. This number is up from the 80 million paid users the company mentioned in November 2022. Earlier this week, during its Q4 2023 earnings call, Sundar Pichai said that Google’s subscription business — which includes YouTube’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2DcPw

Fortnite maker Epic Games is preparing to fight Apple in court over how Apple has chosen to comply with a court order that required the tech giant to change its App Store rules. In the antitrust case filed by Epic Games, a district court judge in Northern California ruled that app developers should be able […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2DP9L

Activist investors are coming for Etsy. Elliott Management, the investment management firm known for its aggressive governance tactics, has built a roughly 13% position in Etsy’s stock, CNBC reports — a mix of shares and options. It makes Elliott Etsy’s largest investor after Vanguard, which has an 11% share, and the asset management giant BlackRock […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2BxGx

Probabl isn’t your average AI startup as this new French company is an Inria spin-off company that revolves around an open-source data science library called scikit-learn — Inria is a well-known French technology research institute. As for scikit-learn, with more than 45,000 stars on GitHub, this Python module is widely used by machine learning teams […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T2BjHG

The pace is picking up for the Apple Vison Pro apps ahead of the spatial computing device’s Friday launch as developers ready their apps for the new platform. While just last week, only 150-plus apps had been specifically designed for the Vision Pro so far, according to a third-party analysis of the App Store, Apple […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. http://dlvr.it/T29zfH