Tech

A Google regulatory filing appears to have confirmed rumors in recent months that the European Union’s competition division is looking into how it operates its smartphone app store, the Play Store. However TechCrunch understands that no formal EU investigation into the Play Store has been opened at this stage. The SEC Form 10-Q, filed by

Smartphone shipment is often seen as the bellwether of China’s consumer spending, and right now, the picture isn’t very rosy. The world’s largest market for smartphones shipped 175.1 million handsets between January and August, marking a sharp 22.9% decline year-over-year, according to research from a state-backed institution. In August alone, shipments dropped 21.9% year-over-year. The

Elon Musk told Twitter employees Wednesday that he’s not planning on laying off 75% of staff when he takes over the company, Bloomberg reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.” This is a walk back from what Musk reportedly said last week. The celebrity executive denied the previously reported number when he addressed employees at

Last month, Egyptian B2B e-commerce platform Capiter made headlines after founders Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Nouh were ousted by its board as CEO and COO. The reasons were unclear, as both parties didn’t publicly comment on the situation; however, from various local news outlets, they ranged from mismanagement of funds to failure to report to

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. Wednesday, and we’re excited to bring you another round of our esteemed Daily Crunch newsletter. There’s a wide variety of morsels, nuggets, and other bite-sized delights, so let’s go! — Christine and

While hydrogen is still relatively niched as a fuel for electric vehicles, a startup in China is jumping ahead to embrace it for autonomous driving scenarios. WeRide, one of the most funded robotaxi operators in China with investors including Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance, said Tuesday it is joining hands with Hyundai to launch a “self-driving hydrogen-powered vehicle

Station F, the iconic startup campus in Paris, is revamping its Founders Program completely to turn it into an acceleration program. Founders who decide to join the accelerator will get many different benefits. They’ll also have to hand out a 1% equity stake to Station F. “We are changing the flagship program of Station F.

Apple has released iOS 16.1, iPad OS 16.1 and macOS 13, as it announced it would last week. The updates include a number of new features for iPhone, iPad and Mac devices, including the introduction of Continuity Camera, which allows iPhone owners to use their device as a webcam for their Macs. The iPad and

Marvel released the first trailer for “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” today, which gives fans a look at Jonathan Majors as Kang the Conqueror and, for some reason, Bill Murray. The superhero movie will premiere in theaters on February 17, 2023. Disney told TechCrunch that the film would likely stream on Disney+, but there’s no

Travel is back on the radar for investment, with consumers and business users both on the move again after a long pandemic period of staying in one place. Today, a startup called WeTravel — which builds tech for the specific needs of group travel — has raised $27 million, money that it will be using

Tech giants are increasingly looking for tech talent in Africa, where the number of developers reached 716,000 last year, up 3.8% from 2020, according to Google. In the last six months, Microsoft and Amazon have been on a recruitment drive that came along with enticing offers including relocation to their hubs in the U.S. and

Over the last 10 years startups in Africa’s off-grid solar sector have attracted over $2.3 billion in funding. However, the largest share of the financing has gone to just seven pay-as-you-go (pay-go) Africa-based scaleups, leaving hundreds of others in the early-stage struggling to fundraise, according to the newly released biennial Gogla-World Bank report. The seven

A new startup is setting out to help companies build and harness communities around their products, enabling them to side-step multiple disparate tools and manage everything in a single platform. Founded out of the Czech Republic in 2021, Talkbase launched out of stealth just a couple of weeks back, backed by $2 million in pre-seed funding

Taylor Swift’s latest album “Midnights” has dropped, and it might be setting a new standard for China’s digital music industry. Within a day of its release, the 13-track album, priced at 35 yuan, or $4.83, has racked up nearly 200,000 copies on Tencent’s QQ Music, one of the largest music streaming platforms in China. While

After attempting to sell its tech to large food service companies, cooking automation startup Jasper has shifted to direct-to-consumer. In a recent conversation, CEO Gunnar Froh told TechCrunch about the pivot and gave a general update on the company, a member of this year’s Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2022. When Gunnar founded Jasper several years

Sathya Elumalai was finding it hard to manage his mother’s health after she was diagnosed with four chronic conditions. Rather than guess her health status for the day, he decided to co-found Aidar Health, to get that information directly and reliably. In founding Aidar, Elumalai also created and launched MouthLab, a device it claims tracks

Propeller, a new climate-tech investor with a focus on the ocean, tells TechCrunch that it has hooked $100 million for its first seed fund. Co-founded by former HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan, the venture firm said in a statement that it backs and incubates startups in areas like ocean carbon removal, algae packaging, offshore wind, desalination

Sensat, a platform that helps physical infrastructure companies map and visualize all their data, has raised $20.5 million in a Series B round of funding. Founded in 2015, London-based Sensat is one of a number of so-called “digital twin” software companies that serve construction, mining, energy, and similar industries with tools to replicate their physical

More doom and gloom for smartphone manufacturers, as global smartphone shipments experience the third consecutive decline this year. Per numbers from Canalys, shipments dropped a lowly 9% last quarter, marking the worst Q3 for the category since 2014. Apple is a rare bright spot among the numbers, with some positive growth as the rest of

Beating expectations is worth something again Anna Heim 9 hours I don’t know if anyone’s really noticed, but Netflix had a pretty great third quarter, thank you very much. The streaming platform added 2.41 million subscribers when it only expected 1 million. It also beat analysts’ financial expectations, with $7.93 billion in revenue rather than

Equity goes live at TechCrunch Disrupt Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. And for the first time in the history of the show, the TechCrunch pod that opened up Disrupt on the big stage. Alex, Natasha and Mary Ann

In 2018, Neil D’Souza, a software engineer by trade and previously the VP of product development at Thinkstep, came to the realization that his ten-plus-year effort to solve enterprise product challenges in the areas of sustainability, compliance and risk were having little impact. The way he saw it, they took too long, which minimized their

As hundreds of thousands of EVs come to market over the next few years, demand for critical battery materials like lithium, graphite, nickel and cobalt has never been higher. Automakers are scrambling to ensure their own supply of key raw materials and, in the process, reduce their reliance on China, the dominant force in the

Members of the European Parliament have lodged complaints against three tech giants, Amazon, Google and Meta, with the EU’s Transparency Register — aka, the oversight process that’s intended to track lobbying activity aimed at the bloc’s lawmakers — accusing the trio of breaching the lobbying transparency rules by using smaller front organizations to press their

Around late-September/early-October each year, I get a Slack message from Greg asking whether I’m interested in writing a gift guide (or two). “Sure,” I say, never anticipating just how much of a slog the next two months are going to be for hardware news/reviews. Putting together a roundup like that has the decided benefit of

Hi, friends! It’s time for another edition of Week in Review, the newsletter where we quickly recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the past seven days. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. most read LEGS: The company formerly known as Facebook held its Meta Connect conference this week, where

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week.

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. People leave jobs for all kinds of reasons, but when it’s a CFO departing a richly valued company as the company itself conducts layoffs, the exodus can be a sign of a