Chatbots are alive and kicking. That’s the message from Quiq, an AI-powered conversational platform, which today revealed that it closed a $25 million Series C financing round led by Baird Capital. CEO Mike Myer says that the funding, whic…
Last August, TechCrunch noted TikTok was working to build its own augmented reality (AR) development platform called Effect House, which would allow creators to build AR effects for use in TikTok’s video app. Today, Effect House has offici…
Twitter quietly reversed a controversial decision the company implemented last week, restoring the text of since-deleted tweets embedded on external websites. The change was first spotted by Twitter user @RuinDig.
IndieWeb developer Kev…
A decade ago security researcher Barnaby Jack famously wirelessly hacked a hospital insulin pump live on stage in front of hundreds of people to demonstrate how easily it could be compromised to deliver a lethal dose of medication. In the …
Hello readers, and welcome back!
Last week, I wrote about the issues facing Axie Infinity in the wake of a $625 million heist. This week, I’m talking about Apple and crypto.
If you like my ramblings, follow me on Twitter and subscrib…
The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project started with a simple premise: that technology is increasingly intertwined with global affairs and that we ought to examine what that means for both. From crypto to climate, international development t…
Japanese tech giant Panasonic has confirmed its Canadian operations were hit by a cyberattack, less than six months after the company last fell victim to hackers.
In a statement provided to TechCrunch, Panasonic said that it was a victi…
Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the largest shareholder of Twitter, will no longer be joining the social media firm’s board, CEO Parag Agrawal said late Sunday, in a surprising reversal following last week’s announcement that the…
Zoom Video Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZM) today announced, at the CoSN2022 national conference, new features for education in response to requests from teachers and administrators. These features span Zoom's Chat and Meetings offerings …
2022 kicked off for NTF V tech entrepreneurs with two major networking events: the Africa Tech Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, and the global 4 Years From Now (4YFN) the leading start-up and innovation platform of the Mobile World Congress in Ba…
Google has shared how it’s using artificial intelligence, including its restaurant-calling Duplex tech, to try and keep business hours up to date on Google Maps. The company says that if it is confident enough in the AI’s prediction of wha…
One of the best things about a Samsung Galaxy phone is that it isn’t a “one size fits all” experience. Case in point: your phone’s font. If you’re not happy with the default choice, you can change it to something that’s easier to read or s…
Snap is launching a new Snapchat lens that can help you learn American Sign Language (ASL). It’s called ASL Alphabet Lens, and Snapchat is launching it in partnership with SignAll, a company that has built technology that can translate s…
Tencent, the world’s largest video games company, said it will shutter its game streaming platform Penguin Esports by June due to “changes in business strategies.”
Twitch-like Penguin Esports never achieved a substantial market share in…
TechTech demos are fun. They give us a look at what might one day be a commonplace, accessible technology in a package that some brave souls can choose to buy today.
When it comes to tech demos, Samsung is unmatched. It frequently bring…
Airbyte, the well-funded open source data integration platform, today announced that it has acquired Grouparoo, an open source startup that focuses on helping businesses sync data between their data warehouses and cloud-based tools. In man…
Sometimes, new Twitter features can be divisive — we’ve made our feelings clear about the edit button, which is apparently in the works. But we can (hopefully) all agree that simple accessibility features are a good thing.
For a while n…
Microsoft has successfully seized domains used by APT28, a state-sponsored group operated by Russian military intelligence, to target institutions in Ukraine.
The tech giant said in a blog post on Thursday that Strontium — Microsoft’s m…
Tesla opened its Austin, Texas-based Gigafactory on Thursday, a crucial step in the company’s delayed plans to begin production of its electric Cybertruck. To celebrate the opening, Tesla held an event, billed as a “Cyber Rodeo,” to which …
The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics.
It should come as no surprise that government bureaucracies move slowly. After all, over a year into i…
Didi Chixung, the Chinese ride-hailing giant, has today shut down its operations in South Africa (SA), a year after it launched in the country, marking its entry into the continent.
A Didi official in SA confirmed the closure to TechCru…
Lagos continues to take the lead in growing digital investments across Africa with the recent launch of MainOne’s (www.MainOne.net) new Data Center, “Lekki II” by the Executive Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babajide Sanwo-Olu. Following clo…
Proton, the Geneva, Switzerland-based startup behind the eponymous E2E encrypted webmail service ProtonMail, has acquired French startup SimpleLogin, which offers a freemium, open-source service for creating email aliases to let people shi…
Coinbase is adding support for the popular UPI payment instrument in India, making its eponymous cryptocurrency exchange functional in the world’s second-largest internet market for the first time.
The publicly listed firm, which began …
TikTok has once again delayed the timeline for opening its first data center in the European Union, in Dublin, Ireland — saying the facility is now not expected to be fully operational until next year.
The video-sharing social network h…
Google announced today that it’s rolling out a new “multisearch” feature that allows users to search using text and images at the same time via Google Lens, the company’s image recognition technology. Google first teased the functionality …
Samsung Electronics released Thursday its preliminary earnings for the first quarter of 2022.
The company said it forecasts to report consolidated revenue of $63.1 billion (77 trillion KRW) and an operating profit of about $11.6 billion…
The Indian conglomerate Tata Group, a $103 billion company whose business spans across multiple industries from salt, software, telecom to steel, is ready to embrace consumer technology. The 154-year-old giant has been working – and intern…
At its Cloud Data Summit, Google today announced the preview launch of BigLake, a new data lake storage engine that makes it easier for enterprises to analyze the data in their data warehouses and data lakes.
The idea here, at its core,…
Indian social media app Koo introduced a voluntary self-verification service to its users on Wednesday in an unusual step that it believes will bring credibility and trust on its platform.
The Bengaluru-headquartered startup said user…
Global digital payments giant Visa has opened up an innovation studio in Kenya, its first in Africa and sixth globally, after posts in Dubai, London, Miami, San Francisco and Singapore.
The studio will bring together developers, Visa’…
A month after stopping shipments to customers in Russia and Belarus, Intel has now suspended all business operations in Russia.
In a statement, the company said, “Intel continues to join the global community in condemning Russia’s war a…
Apparently it wasn’t just an April Fools’ joke or an errant Elon Musk tweet.
As any true blue Twitter user knows, the divide over the social network adding an edit button is the deepest ideological ravine of our time — and Twitter is po…
India has banned 22 YouTube “news” channels for spreading disinformation on subjects concerning the national security and public order. The banned YouTube channels had amassed a combined total of 2.6 billion viewers, New Delhi said.
The…
Over a decade ago, a group of employees at Yahoo were struggling to compete with Google Maps as the younger firm aggressively outspent its rivals and scaled its offering with a grand vision and unmatched risk-appetite.
“We didn’t have…
Twitter announced this morning via a tweet and a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that Elon Musk, best known for his work at PayPal, SpaceX, and Tesla, is joining the social network’s board of directors.
News brok…
Corsha, a Washington D.C-based cybersecurity startup, has secured a $12 million Series A investment to bring multi-factor authentication (MFA) to machine-to-machine API traffic.
APIs, which allow two applications on the internet to talk…
Tesla reported Saturday that it delivered more than 305,000 electric vehicles in the first quarter, a record-breaking figure that was inline with analyst expectations even as production suffered due to supply chain constraints and COVID-re…
India’s Mobile Premier League, or MPL, is in talks to raise capital from a number of investors including the crypto exchange FTX as the mobile gaming startup prepares to make a web3 push, three sources familiar with the matter told me.
…
Global logistics and package delivery company UPS will leverage Jumia’s network across Africa to grow its reach in the continent, following a new partnership announced today that gives it access to the e-commerce firm’s last-mile delivery …
Peanut, a social networking app for women, is launching a new “Peanut Pro” expansion designed to give women access to information from trusted experts. The company has partnered with 100 experts from its existing network, including doulas,…
It must be slightly intoxicating to be able to move markets. Imagine if your latest purchase of a stock or token sent the value of that security soaring simply because it became known that you made the trade.
Such is the case with Elon …
The Final Draw for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022TM was held in Doha Exhibition & Convention Center (DECC) on 1st April. As the official sponsor, Hisense displayed the 100L9G TriChroma Laser TV during the Official Draw Event, and demonstrat…
Today, Samsung announced a new self-repair program that will give Galaxy customers access to parts, tools, and guides to repair their own devices. The program is in collaboration with popular repair guides and parts website iFixit, which h…
Twitter has confirmed it’s “exploring” a new feature that would allow two account to co-author a single tweet, TechCrunch reports. App researcher Alessandro Paluzzi has been posting evidence of the feature’s development since at least Dece…
Apple has released iOS and iPadOS 15.4.1, an update that fixes some accessibility bugs, improves security, and fixes a battery drain bug that plagued some people’s phones and iPads after they updated to iOS 15.4.
It’s unclear how widesp…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.
Welcome to our Friday show! Our regular co-host Natasha was off this time, so Mary Ann and Alex lin…
Google announced a major update to Google Meet today that includes a number of long-requested features and plenty that you didn’t even know you needed. There is a long list here, but the main additions are likely in-meeting reactions to gi…
Amazon is introducing a new Alexa feature that will notify you if an item on your wishlist or in your shopping cart is about to go on sale, the company announced on Thursday. Alexa will now notify users up to 24 hours in advance of a deal …
Thousands, if not millions, of people could have lost money in the second largest crypto hack in history.
Ronin Network, a key platform powering the popular mobile game Axie Infinity, has had $615m (£467m) stolen.
…