Tech

Our global search continues, and today, we’re urging early-stage startups across Africa to apply for the Startup Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2023. The application window closes on May 15 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Africa: The Startup Battlefield 200 wants your startups SB 200 is the startup world’s preeminent competition, and it has a global reach.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. May the twoth be with you — we never did understand that joke, to be honest. Maybe one of y’all can explain it to us. There’s still a bit of time left

The future is very much yet to be written about vertical farming. In many ways, the technology presents hope in the midst of rising food safety concerns, aging populations and potential environmental collapse. It’s also an intensely hard row to hoe, as it were. Early companies in the space are going to be the ones

In this increasingly AI-driven era, creative and media teams will probably need to employ the technology to up their game on analyzing their creative assets and A/B testing — or someone else will simply beat them to the punch. Alison is a startup out of Israel that analyzes creative work, such as typeface characters, colors,

The prospect of contacting a satellite to send a text or contact emergency services may soon be an effortless reality as startups move from proof of concept to actual product. Canadians on the Rogers network, which just inked a deal with Lynk, will get direct satellite-phone connections across the country; and not to be outdone,

Warner Bros. Discovery has found a new partner to bring HBO content to India: Mukesh Ambani-backed Viacom18. HBO Original, Max Original and other Warner Bros. television series will arrive on JioCinema next month and will air shows “on the same day as the U.S.,” Warner Bros. and Viacom18 said in a statement. The “exclusive” content

There are oodles of advantages to having a diverse workforce, but, as inBeta founder James Nash points out, you can’t simply take your homogenous workforce, add diversity, stir and hope for the best. Often, something subtle gets in the way of diversity at startups: Companies depend on employee referrals in the beginning, but if a

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. Tech’s guiding principles these days aren’t too difficult to find: discipline, focus and cash conservation. But I’ve always found those same focuses to be especially in conflict with

States have taxed motorists at the pump for more than a century. Yet, as electric cars gain ground, what happens when folks stop refueling altogether? State lawmakers are increasingly imposing annual fees on EV owners, arguing they should pay up because they still rely on public infrastructure to get around. Texas is on track to

A few days after OpenAI announced a set of privacy controls for its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, the service has been made available again to users in Italy — resolving (for now) an early regulatory suspension in one of the European Union’s 27 Member States, even as a local probe of its compliance with the

If you find smartphone notifications annoying enough already thanks to their skill at exploiting the full range of distraction options available, whether dropping a banner from above or sprinkling pox-like red balls over your homescreen icons so as to lodge like grit in the eye, you should prepare yourself for even less subtle demands bubbling

YouTube Music is officially adding podcasts to its platform in the United States on Android, iOS and the web. The rollout comes a few months after YouTube podcasting head Kai Chuk revealed that podcasts would be added to YouTube Music soon. The update allows users watching podcasts on the main app to continue listening to them

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Thursday is here — how in the world did that happen? Those days, they just keep on coming. If you’re still on the fence about whether you want to come along to

Or: Big tech companies are more cloud-dependent than you thought Alex Wilhelm 7 hours It’s earnings season, that time of the quarter when we get to judge how well public tech firms are fulfilling all the lofty promises they’ve been making. So far this week, we’ve heard from Microsoft and Alphabet (Google) and Meta (Facebook),

About two-dozen venture capital firms say they are teaming up to “build a robust movement” in the VC business to combat the climate crisis. The group calls itself the Venture Climate Alliance, or VCA. The coalition counts well-known tech investors, including Kleiner Perkins, Tiger Global and Union Square Ventures as members, and said in a

The energy-intensive process of separating and purifying chemicals and gases is a big reason why industries like plastic manufacturing cause so much pollution. UniSieve wants to reduce their carbon emissions and operational costs with its tech, which uses a high-precision membrane with special crystals that can filter specific molecules and ions. Today the Zurich-based startup

DJI has spent the last several years doubling down on its imagining prowess — tripling down as it were, in this case. Makes sense. Aside from the underlying fun of flying these things around, all of the most immediate consumer/prosumer applications revolve around picture taking and video. The new Mavic 3 Pro embraces the prosumer

After the stunning success of “Squid Game” in 2021, Netflix is doubling down on South Korea in hopes of another home run out of the country’s entertainment industry. The U.S. streaming giant said Tuesday that it plans to invest $2.5 billion in South Korea over the next four years to produce TV series, movies and

ZEBOX, an international accelerator network founded by shipping conglomerate CMA CGM to introduce more tech innovation into the supply chain industry, announced today the launch of its APAC headquarters. Based in Singapore, ZEBOX Asia will also look at markets like Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Japan and Korea. The APAC hub is backed by Enterprise Singapore, a

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. As Twitter continues its absolutely farcical march toward its own demise, we are grabbing the popcorn to watch the fire blaze. In other news: Happy Monday, folks! — Christine and Haje The

The Arctic is melting, while hurricanes, blizzards and heat waves leave millions of people and animals in disarray. Lisa Lambert, the head of National Grid’s CVC National Grid Partners, told TechCrunch+ that environmental and social concerns should be top of mind right now for any smart investor. “Not because it’s the right thing to do,

EU lawmakers in the European parliament are closing in on how to tackle generative AI as they work to fix their negotiating position so that the next stage of legislative talks can kick off in the coming months. The hope then is that a final consensus on the bloc’s draft law for regulating AI can

At a certain point, the market will, indeed, stabilize. It has to. Demand for new smartphones has been consistently down for some time now, but the phones themselves are, obviously, here to stay. This is how we arrive at surveys that suggest people would give up shampooing or lose a finger rather than go without

As Twitter’s legacy blue check mark system finally comes to an end, the social network’s new paid-for verification system is causing more than a little chaos, with CEO Elon Musk himself stepping in to pay for some celebrities’ verification when they refuse to do so. However, another little nugget to emerge from the carnage today

If someone said “startup” while we were playing a word association game, I’d respond with “fundraising.” (I bet you would, too.) Asking people for money is a key aspect of every founder’s journey, but Techstars Managing Director Collin Wallace says it can also “accelerate your demise.” For example, raising a round to rev up engineering,

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hey, TechCrunchers, happy Friday. I hope this is your favorite time of day because Haje and I really enjoy bringing you the news of the day written by the fabulous people we

A newish leadership team is taking over at Arcimoto, a Eugene, Oregon–based startup that makes doorless, three-wheeled electric vehicles. On Thursday, the company said that board member Chris Dawson will step in as CEO, replacing interim CEO Jesse Fittipaldi. Arcimoto added that Fittipaldi will stick around as president and report to Dawson going forward. Two

Microsoft has kickstarted settlement discussions with European not-for-profit trade association Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE), some six months after CISPE filed an antitrust complaint alleging that Microsoft was using its dominance in business software to tether customers to its Azure cloud platform. The news comes less than a month after news emerged that Microsoft

When you think Canon, you might think cameras, scanners, printers and such. At CES this year, the company did a stride toward the softer side of tech, taking a broader view of what imaging means. Today, the VR calling software the company showed off back in January is available to you — if you have