Tech

Video game consultant Rami Ismail was a bit sleepy in an early morning meeting, until his client said something particularly strange: “I’m really just looking for a way to get my game its Bigolas Dickolas moment.” “I had to absolutely wake up very fast to politely find a way to explain I had no idea

People in the U.S. reported $8.8 billion of financial fraud in 2022 to the Federal Trade Commission, and while the FTC received fewer reports, 2.4 million versus 2.9 million in 2021, the overall monetary figure is 30% higher than 2021. Bank transfer or payment fraud amounted to $1.6 billion in 2022. When you expand this

TechCrunch Disrupt is a global event, and the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort reflects the rich geographic genius the world has to offer. Although we’ve never had a startup from Antarctica, that’s probably just a matter of time. Right now, however, we’re looking at the countries that make up APAC and Oceania. APAC and Oceania: Join

Dutch startup Farmless has today announced that it has raised a €1.2 million pre-seed equity round at an undisclosed valuation to bring to our tables proteins created without the need for traditional farming operations. The climate crisis means that it has never been more pressing to develop alternative food sources in order to both protect

Last year we covered how late-stage tech backer Liquidity Group had raised $775M for its fintech platform from Apollo (private equity) and MUFG (a Japanese bank). Liquidity is part tech platform and part lender, using its technology to make decisions on deploying debt facilities and other financial solutions from $5M to 100M relatively quickly compared

This week, ten-year-old drone company ACSL announced plans to enter the U.S. commercial drone market. The firm has already taken a sizable bite out of the market in its native Japan, with a certification from the country’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, as well as a deal to provide disaster support for the

Amazon announced Monday the launch of its new unit Amazon MGM Studios Distribution, which will allow the company to license Amazon Originals and other titles to third-party media companies, which could include streaming services (free, ad-supported or subscription), cable TV as well as pay TV distribution. For the first time, titles such as “The Marvelous

We can all agree that data brokers are creepy and bad, and that in this age they have feasted upon our personal information like never before. Opting out is hard enough — which is why Optery is there to help — but as the data economy continues to evolve, we may want a more proactive

Invesco, which led Swiggy’s previous round, has marked down the Indian food delivery giant’s valuation in its holding to about $5.5 billion, according to a filing. This revised valuation, as of January 31, 2023, represents a striking 48.6% decrease from the $10.7 billion valuation Invesco had previously attributed to the startup during a funding round

Frontline is the latest startup grabbing VC dollars with a $6.4 million seed round Rebecca Szkutak 7 hours Wildfires, and the damage they cause, are a growing problem. The U.S. saw more than 66,000 wildfires in 2022 alone, and while many think of these natural disasters as largely a California problem, they burn all across

Netherlands-based Instruqt has a product allowing companies to more easily test how a new software would run inside their organization. After bootstrapping its way to growth, it has now raised €15 million in a Series A round led entirely by Blossom Capital. It’s much easier to sell a software product into a company if they

Look, I’m not going to sit here and pretend like the entire world didn’t know this was happening next week, but is a bit of theatrics too much to ask? Google learned a few years back that the best way to juice a product hype cycle is to “leak” the thing yourself, and here here

Warner Bros. Discovery announced Friday that its streaming business will turn a profit in 2023. The company previously said it expected to break even by 2024 and become profitable in 2025. “It is an important time for Warner Bros. Discovery. We’ve come through some major restructurings and have repositioned our businesses with greater precision and

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. Fri-Yay! If you’ve got some time on your hands today, get your Disrupt tickets — early-bird savings end in 7 days! Also, it seems a little daft to pick a fight against

Investors have raised expectations around SaaS profitability and growth since the downturn began. As a result, it’s even more important for founders to have a firm handle on the key metrics VCs are likely to consider before saying “yes” or “no.” In his latest TC+ article, Paris Heymann (partner, Index Ventures), shares formulas for calculating

When the SEC announced that it planned to require companies under its purview to disclose their climate-related risks and emissions, plenty of companies started publicly clutching their pearls. Tracking down the extent of their pollution would simply be either too expensive, too difficult or both, they said. No surprise there: Companies strike a similar tone

Well that was fast. The UK’s competition watchdog has announced an initial review of “AI foundational models”, such as the large language models (LLMs) which underpin OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s New Bing. Generative AI models which power AI art platforms such as OpenAI’s DALL-E or Midjourney will also likely fall in scope. The Competition and

Worldwide, about one in six people live with a disability. Whether through injury or illness, disability can manifest itself as an impediment to mobility. There have been fantastic advancements in communication and operational technologies, but there’s always room for improvement, and Augmental, an MIT Media Lab spinoff, thinks that it might be on to something

A coalition of more than 50 European consumer and digitals rights groups, smaller ISPs and broadcasters have inked their name to a joint statement urging EU policymakers and Member States to reject a controversial network fee proposal being lobbied for by major telcos in the region. They suggest any move to legislative for a mechanism

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