Tech

Sono Motors, the company building an electric vehicle that’s partially powered by the sun, debuted its flagship Sion in New York City this week as part of a multi-city tour throughout the U.S. The company aims to launch the $25,000 five-seater hatchback in Europe first — production is expected to start in the second half

A ‘Prevention of Future Deaths’ report following a U.K. coroner’s inquest into the suicide of British schoolgirl, Molly Russell, who killed herself almost five years ago after viewing content on social media websites that promoted self harm, has recommended the government looks at requiring age verification on sign-up to social platforms to ensure the separation

Framework is at the vanguard of a growing movement to make electronics more repair-friendly. Some have done so by choice and others have been…nudged in that direction by looming right to repair legislation across the globe. Framework, like Fairphone, is making that a core principle of its technology, without sacrificing the final project (check Devin’s

Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026. The joint venture from hardware, software and entertainment conglomerate Sony and automaker Honda to produce

Even the largest landfills in Indonesia are at (or nearing) capacity, and the government has set an ambitious target of 30% waste reduction by 2025. Waste4Change is one of the companies that wants to help by increasing rates of recycling and enabling better waste management. The startup, which currently manages more than 8,000 tons of

Venture debt was never meant to be used to bail a company out of financial trouble. And yet, when venture capitalists started to pull back from equity investing earlier this year because frothy market conditions made them realize that valuations were too high, it became a topic of discussion again. Across the industry, from founders

Lightrock, the London-based backer of neobank Niyo and “wood modification” company Kebony, has secured about $834 million (€860 million) for a new fund focused on climate tech. The private equity and venture firm plans to pump the money into startups in areas such as clean energy, decarbonization and sustainable agriculture. Lightrock will write checks as small

Net Purpose, a platform for sustainable investors, has raised $11 million in a Series A round led by ETF Partners, funding which will be used to expand its product and team, says the company. The company is benefitting from a shift to investing in sustainable products. According to the UN Principles for Responsible  Investment, $120

Meta keeps saying VR is the future, but everything it shows us is an inferior rehash of the things we already have. Its event today was, between assurances that everything is great in the Metaverse, a collection of tacit admissions that the best they can hope to do is ape a reality we are all

At Meta Connect 2022, the company’s annual developer conference for its VR efforts and Oculus hardware platform, the company announced a lot of stuff — but what it communicated more effectively than anything else was just how incredibly thirsty — one might even say desperate — Mark Zuckerberg is for his metaverse bet to pay

We are getting a more realistic update on the startup funding landscape in India, and as is true elsewhere, all the figures are in red in the South Asian market. Indian startups raised $3 billion in the quarter that ended in September, down 57% from the previous quarter and 80% year-over-year, market intelligence platform Tracxn

Founded 10 years ago, Konvy is now Thailand’s top beauty e-commerce platform. It plans to accelerate its omnichannel and international distribution with a new Series A of $10 million from Insignia Ventures Partners. Konvy was launched in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur QingGui Huang, who previously managed fashion e-commerce platforms in China. It now works with

In February, I received a letter from Chrysler saying that our 2017 Pacifica Hybrid was subject to a new recall. Several of the minivans had inexplicably caught fire and, given the evidence, the automaker suspected it might have to do with the high-voltage battery pack. The recall notice told us not to recharge the vehicle

U.S. president Joe Biden has signed an executive order attached to reupping a flagship data transfer agreement with the European Union — with the goal of making life easier for businesses that need to export EU user-data to the U.S. for processing. The White House announced the development in a statement today — saying that

What constitutes a big phone in 2022? It’s been a moving target for a number of years now — albeit a target that has been steadily moving in a single direction. It’s tough to determine the exact average display size, but most flagship smartphone screens generally fall somewhere between six and seven inches. In 2010,

For the first time, a Netflix movie is getting a one-week theatrical sneak preview event across 600 AMC, Regal and Cinemark theaters in the U.S. The historic deal marks the first time all three major theater chains have agreed to show a big-budget Netflix movie. Viewers will get a chance to watch “Glass Onion: A

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. I think it took maybe three days after I roasted our rather dry M&A season for the news cycle to prove me wrong. This week we saw Naver acquire Poshmark, Duolingo buy

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. Friday! How’s that for brevity in newsletter introductions? Let’s get to it so we can crack open a Liquid Death and let the week sag off into the murky distance of memory

FlyFeed claims it signed more than $10 million worth of contracts and closed a $3 million round of investment to launch its first insect farm in Vietnam, in its push to produce low-cost, high-nutrient protein for human consumption. The company was founded less than a year ago and is targeting the three billion people who

German electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) startup Volocopter conducted its first crewed public test flight in Italy Thursday morning. The flight launched from a vertiport built at Rome’s Fiumicino Airport, Italy’s first advanced air mobility (AAM) testing vertiport, during a two-day event meant to demonstrate what a service between the airport and the city

Google went all out today with a wall of launches of new hardware and tech. Here’s a collection of all the cool stuff Google launched, and you can watch the full event yourself if you have 90 minutes and a particularly deep curiosity streak for all things Google. Here is everything announced at the Made by

NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell revealed in a CNBC interview that Peacock added more than 2 million paid subscribers in the third quarter, bringing the total to over 15 million. The recent growth shows the streaming service is recovering from its slowdown at the end of the second quarter when Peacock stalled at 13 million paid

In South Korea, there are about 7.3 million small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) — defined as firms with less than 250 employees. Their workforces combined make up 83.1% of all corporation employees in the country, totaling about 17.1 million people, according to OECD data. To help meet SMEs’ financial needs in the country, Seoul-based fintech

Neeva, an ad-free search engine launched last year by a former engineer and executive best known for spearheading Google’s advertising tech business, is about to land in Europe. The Mountain View, California-based company officially launched a subscription-only search engine in its domestic U.S. market in June last year, later going on to add a free

Demo shows promise as EU revives talk of space-based solar power Tim De Chant 16 hours In our wireless world, wires are still the best way to move electricity from A to B. Wires are almost always cheaper and easier, at least from a technical perspective, but there are instances where wires may not be

The UK government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet — saying the data reform bill it had introduced in recent months is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the UK’s data protection regime, which remains based

An antitrust win for Amazon and Apple in Italy, where an appeals court has cancelled a multimillion-dollar penalty the pair were hit with last year for alleged collusion following an investigation into the reselling of Apple and (Apple-owned) Beats kit on Amazon’s Italian e-commerce marketplace. The original €203 million (total) penalty had already been reduced

Entertainment platform Fandom announced today its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands from media company Red Ventures, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide. While the financials of the deal were not disclosed in the official announcement, Fandom told TechCrunch that the deal cost somewhere

Prosus Ventures has called off the $4.7 billion merger of BillDesk it announced last year, saying “certain conditions precedent” were not fulfilled in a surprising development a month after the proposed acquisition received approval from the local antitrust watchdog. “Certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the 30 September 2022 long stop date, and the

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