News

Deeproute.ai, an autonomous vehicle startup with offices in Shenzhen and Fremont, California, unveiled an ambitious self-driving solution on Wednesday. The package, named DeepRoute-Driver 2.0, is a production-ready Level 4 system that costs approximately $10,000. The price tag is incredible given the hardware used: five solid-state lidar sensors, e

Better.com CEO Vishal Garg apparently realizes he’s done wrong. (As if the barrage of negative publicity wasn’t enough evidence of that.) Today, a letter to current employees was leaked on Blind by a verified Better employee. In the letter, Garg apologized for the way he (mis)handled the layoff news last week, writing: “I failed to show […

It’s been five years since the founding of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative’s Science program (not CZI itself, which is a year older), which has proven to be quite a generous patron of cutting-edge biotech science and research, and far from winding down, the organization is stepping on the gas as good outcomes from its grants […]

The bigger the impact, the bigger the problem — and likely the bigger the market opportunity and financial return. Impact is where the problems are.

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

The very day in Feb. 2020 that Credit Karma planned to announce that it had been acquired by Intuit for over $7 billion, the stock market tanked, spooked by news that a virus could start a pandemic.

“Amazon’s cloud arm, AWS, announced a new ‘top secret’ region this week, designed specifically for the U.S. government. It is Amazon’s second such region. The company now boasts “top secret” regions on the east and west coasts of the U.S. “AWS Top Secret-West is accredited to operate workloads at the Top Secret U.S. security classif

Better.com continues to find new ways to make itself look bad. This week, sources familiar with internal happenings within the company told TechCrunch the company’s VP of communications, Patrick Lenihan; head of public relations, Tanya Gillogley; and head of marketing, Melanie Hahn, have all submitted their resignations. Insider also reported the

Meta (formerly Facebook) has found a new way to avoid the app stores’ commissions on in-app purchases with the launch of a new website where people can buy “Stars” — the virtual items that allow fans to express their support for favorite creators during Facebook videos and livestreams. Typically, Stars are bought as in-app purchases […]

Users are reporting a widespread outage at Amazon Web Services, bringing down websites and backend services for organizations including the Associated Press, Disney+ and Vice.

The African tech scene woke up today to exciting news about the landmark acquisition of MainOne, one of the region’s most important and pivotal tech companies in the past decade, by Equinix, a U.S. multinational specializing in internet connection data centers. The story of MainOne starts with founder and CEO Funke Opeke moving back to […]

If USAID's NPI expands to work with tech companies, they can provide USAID with existing tools and solutions. Opening up NPI to for-profit businesses is the first step in doing so.

After a year away, we’re less than a month out from the next CES. Seeing as how it’s a hybrid event (as, we assume, most events will be, going forward), TechCrunch is taking a hybrid approach to the Consumer Electronics Show. We’ll be tackling the event both in person and remotely, and — as usual […]

“We’re not making fucking glamping tents for bros at Coachella,” Jeff Wilson, co-founder and CEO at Jupe is eager to reassure me, as he outlines his vision for the company. “At this point, food is a distribution problem, clothing is largely solved. There are about 1.5 billion people in the world that still don’t have […]

Buying camping gear is all about making tradeoffs. Lightweight backpacking gear may be perfect for trips where you carry everything with you but might not be quite as sturdy as the heavier options. Little luxury items can make a trip feel plush, but every dollar spent might make you a bit more wary to drop your pack and go for that lake swim.

The app economy will again set new records in 2021. According to a review of the global app ecosystem in 2021 by Sensor Tower, released today, first-time app installs grew to 143.6 billion during the year, a half percentage point higher than 2020, but consumer spending in apps is up a much larger 19.7% year […]

As Facebook transitions its corporate branding and organizes around a “metaverse” future, a number of high-profile execs have been leaving the company. Last week, former Messenger boss and current crypto czar David Marcus announced he was leaving at the end of the year. Today, Meta’s current chief of the Messenger division Stan Chudnovsky ann

There’s just one week left until TC Sessions: Space 2021 launches on December 14-15. If you haven’t secured your seat on this virtual mission that explores the trends, advances and opportunities in the rapidly evolving space industry, it’s time to get it done. Late registration pricing disappears on December 13 at 11:59 pm (PT). Buy […]

Last month, Netflix’s new gaming service became globally available across both iOS and Android with a debut lineup that included two “Stranger Things”-themed games and a few more casual gaming titles. Netflix has now expanded its lineup with three more games that are rolling out globally for both iOS and Android users. The first new title i

Twitter is trying out some changes to the way that users report tweets that they believe might break Twitter’s rules. Like most social media companies, Twitter has long relied on user reporting to flag potentially policy-violating tweets. But in its new imagining of that system those reports would provide the company with a richer picture […]