Tech

When Microsoft, after a decade-long hiatus, relaunched its now 40-year-old Flight Simulator series in 2020, it reignited interest in a genre that had long been a mainstay of PC gaming. It’s one thing to marvel at the graphics of the new Flight Simulator, though, and another to try to play the game with mouse and

SiriusXM, the satellite radio company and Pandora owner, disclosed today it’s laying off 475 employees, representing 8% of its workforce. In an email sent to employees, CEO Jennifer Witz said the cuts would impact “nearly every department” across the company, and follow a review of SiriusXM’s operations announced in November that aimed to identify areas

Last month, Flutterwave, Africa’s largest startup by private valuation, was involved in a hack that resulted in over ₦2.9 billion (~$4.2 million) missing from its accounts, according to local tech publication Techpoint Africa. According to the documents seen by the publication and reviewed by TechCrunch, unknown actors transferred the funds across 28 accounts in 63 transactions

To be successful, a business needs to have a plan for revenue in the short term and profitability in the long. Early-stage founders might be tempted to come up with half a dozen ways the company could make money. Don’t fall into temptation: Five unproven solutions don’t make one actual solution. Having said that, sometimes

Honda bailed on the Clarity — its only hydrogen-powered car in the U.S. — but the automaker hasn’t quit on fuel cells. That’s the message Honda sent with a peculiar announcement today: It’s putting some old Clarity fuel cells back to work, combining them into a backup power system for its data center just south

Metaverse hype was hanging like a multicolored fog over the Mobile World Congress (MWC) connectivity trade show in Barcelona this week. Conference organizer, the GSMA’s, program pitched attendees into a smorgasbord of metaverse-themed discussions — most of which seemed designed to generate maximum FOMO, as a parade of tech evangelists took to the stage in

The slowdown was inevitable, of course. Nothing stays hot forever — especially in this industry. By tech standards, smartphones have had a good run, but the last few years have seen device makers searching for the magic bullet to help the sales slide reverse course. The arrival of 5G was a nice reprieve, but next-generation

Movies Anywhere, a previously Disney-backed app that lets users access their digitally owned movie collection from across services, is shutting down two features, “Screen Pass” and “Watch Together.” Screen Pass, which launched in 2020, allows you to loan out three movies per month within the app, which recipients can then watch for up to 72

Companies already have a wealth of tools at their disposal for headhunting technical talent, but a new startup wants to give recruiters a leg-up by bringing together the worlds of GitHub and LinkedIn to create a database of the most suitable candidates for a specific software development role — and it’s doing so by using

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The big, giant message Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other execs tried to impart during its four-hour Tesla Investor Day was how the company would be the driver of a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Investors, at least those active after the market closed, weren’t impressed perhaps because it lacked that

Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing (NLP) to generate insights from digital content, has raised €35 million ($37 million) in a round of funding to expand internationally. Despite a growing backlash against ESG efforts from some politicians and vocal executives, companies

At a session on the future of 6G during Mobile World Congress, expert speakers from companies such as Samsung, the European Space Agency and Telefonica came together to give their views about how 6G will play out. The first thing to note is that it’s not arriving anytime soon. The projections are that the likes

The Block-owned music streaming service TIDAL is shifting the way it pays artists after an experimental program failed to generate results. Unlike Spotify and other market leaders, which pay musicians small fractions (…of fractions) of pennies for each play, TIDAL has taken a more imaginative approach to artists payouts. The platform, which targets consumers who

StudentFinance, a European fintech that funds educational programs for individuals through so-called income share agreements, has raised €39 million ($41 million) in a Series A round of funding. Founded out of Spain in 2019, StudentFinance partners with educational institutions such as Ironhack and Le Wagon to help finance those looking to upskill into disciplines like software

When developers are building software with API access, they need to figure out how to bill users fairly for hitting the API gateway. A flat fee probably wouldn’t cover the heavy users and would be unfair to the lighter ones. Archetype, an early stage startup, has created a metering solution, so developers can bill on

The current battery boom might feel familiar to those who lived through the clean tech bubble that burst a decade ago, with an awful lot of money being invested in what are still nascent markets. But certainly they’re bigger this time around: The number of electric vehicles on the road has more than doubled in

Today marks exactly one year since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. This week, a majority of the members of the United Nations reiterated its demand that Russia “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine and called for a cessation of hostilities.” It would be

The Xiaomi 13 Pro flagship made a global debut today at Mobile World Congress (MWC)  in Barcelona. With this device — which was launched in China in December — the company is banking on a one-inch main sensor, Leica lenses and 120W fast charging. This is, in essence, a Samsung Galaxy S series competitor. Cameras

Shelley McKinley Contributor Shelley McKinley is chief legal officer at GitHub, home to more than 100 million software developers. Last week marked the first time the U.S. Supreme Court reviewed Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. In oral arguments in the Gonzalez v. Google case, important questions were raised about platform responsibility

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. First off, hello to all the new Startups Weekly subscribers who joined us after last week’s newsletter. I’m glad we all still resonate with a comeback

It’s Friday (or should I say, Fri-yay.) You’ve made it. Give yourself a pat on the back — and then go read the rest of this issue of Week in Review, TechCrunch’s newsletter summing up the past seven days in tech (sign up here to get it directly in your inbox every Saturday). I’ll continue

For an ecosystem that covers a majority of the planet, the oceans have basically been ignored by startups and investors alike. Sure, plenty of money is spent on ocean-based industries, but most of today’s marine investments are into either extractive industries like fishing or oil and gas, or activities like shipping, which aren’t extractive but

The first thing we ask Voicemod‘s CEO and co-founder, Jamie Bosch, when he picks up the phone to talk about a new funding round is not something we’re accustomed to asking — but our question may become the norm in the generative AI future that’s fast-flying at us: Is this your real voice? Bosch’s startup

In a word: “telecom.” Network and enterprise have long played a key part in Barcelona’s big mobile show, but more than ever, such topics are going to have an outsized role at the event. The consumer element appears to be taking an increasing back seat at the event, which kicks off in earnest next Monday.

Google has launched tests that block access to news content for some users in Canada in response to the Canadian government’s online news bill. Bill C-18, or the Online News Act, would require platforms like Facebook and Google to negotiate deals that would pay news publishers for their content. The bill is currently before the

Supply chain management software startup Slync, which was at one point valued at $240 million, hasn’t had the easiest go of it lately. Slync’s founder, Christopher Kirchner, was charged by the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this month for misappropriating $20 million from the company to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a

Byju’s is weighing whether to wind down WhiteHat Jr, a coding platform that it acquired over two years ago at an enterprise value of $300 million, as the edtech group looks to cut expenses and eliminate a business unit that has drawn considerable criticism to the firm. The Bengaluru-headquartered firm, India’s most valuable startup at

Around 39,000 people were killed in motor vehicle incidents in the USA in 2020 — and 6,200 of those deaths were pedestrians. Needless to say, those deaths aren’t just statistics: each has a ripple effect on families, loved ones and the wider communities. Viva is looking to tackle transportation impacts after raising $8.5 million in

Meet Carbon Maps, a new French startup that raised $4.3 million (€4 million) just a few weeks after its inception. The company is building a software-as-a-service platform for the food industry so that they can track the environmental impact of each of their products in their lineup. The platform can be used as a basis