Tech

A federal appeals court froze the FDA’s ban on Juul products Friday after the company sought an emergency administrative stay. On Thursday, the U.S. regulator took sweeping action against the e-cigarette maker, effectively killing its access to the U.S. market. The temporary stay will be in place essentially to buy time until the case can

Vibrant Planet — which is creating an “operating system for forest restoration” — comes as a pleasant surprise, and not one I expected. Climate tech, while relatively new, has settled into two camps: hardware and software. And while Vibrant Planet is definitely a software play — from its cloud focus to its per-seat licenses, it’s

The era of commercial autonomous robotaxi service is here — Cruise officially became the first company to offer faired rides to the general public in a major city as of late Wednesday. The milestone comes after Cruise received official approval from the California Public Utilities Commission in early June to operate driverless in a commercial

Another strike against use of Google Analytics in Europe: The Italian data protection authority has found a local web publisher’s use of the popular analytics tool to be non-compliant with EU data protection rules owing to user data being transferred to the U.S. — a country that lacks an equivalent legal framework to protect the

The axe has fallen for e-cigarette maker Juul. The FDA ordered the company to stop selling and distributing its ubiquitous vaping devices in the U.S. Thursday, a dramatic end for a company that dominated the e-cigarette market and was valued at $38 billion at the top of its game. Juul will no longer be able

As video-led podcasts become highly favored by listeners, Podcastle, which was primarily an audio recording and editing studio, is introducing a new feature that enables podcasters to conduct high-resolution video interviews or solo recordings. Now, Podcastle will allow users to invite and video record up to ten guests through the Chrome browser or the Podcastle mobile

Florence Healthcare, which creates software that connects clinical trial sites, sponsors and contract research organizations, announced today that it has raised a $27 million Series C-1 led by Insight Partners. Insight Partners is known for its ScaleUp program that helps its portfolio companies grow rapidly. Florence Healthcare, which has now raised $114.1 million to date,

The buy now, pay later (BNPL) market, estimated to be worth $120 billion in 2021, has grown significantly over the last few years. But for most of its rise to virtual checkout prominence, BNPL largely targeted everyday consumer goods like clothes from Urban Outfitters or a Peloton. Now, the credit method is moving beyond its

Google announced today that Fitbit is introducing a new premium feature called “Sleep Profile,” which will offer users a new longitudinal analysis of sleep patterns while making sleep data easier to interpret. The new Sleep Profile feature will analyze sleep across 10 key metrics, including new data points like bedtime consistency, the time before sound

Google News is refreshing its desktop site with a new design that allows you to track global and local news on one screen. The redesign puts Your Briefing, Local news, and Top Picks section on a single page in different columns so it’s easier to catch up with news on topics and regions you care

Barack and Michelle Obama are heading to Audible. On Tuesday, the Amazon-owned company announced an exclusive multiyear first-look production deal with the former first couple’s Higher Ground media company. The deal comes after it came out that the Obamas and Spotify had decided not to extend their exclusive podcast partnership beyond the end of 2022.

It’s pretty annoying to go through CAPTCHA verification where you have to identify weird squiggly letters or click on images of the boat till there are none left — just to prove that you’re not a robot. Apple might be getting rid of this problem with a new feature in the upcoming iOS 16 and

Vahak is not only an open marketplace for truckers, but it also provides drivers with services like healthcare and discounted fuel cards. The Bangalore-based company announced today it has raised a $14 million Series A. The round was led by Nexus Partners, with participation from Foundamental, iSeed Ventures, Leo Capital, RTP Global and Tital Capital.

India’s market regulator fined Reliance and two of its officers on Monday for not properly disclosing Facebook’s $5.7 billion investment into Jio Platforms in April 2020. The Securities and Exchange Board of India said that media had reported about the then-impending deal in March itself, which prompted the shares of the group company to rise.

Iran’s relationship with the crypto mining sector is a love-hate one. The government is again restricting crypto mining activity as it tries to ease the strain on the country’s power supply, despite knowing the promise of crypto as a way to evade international sanctions. Electricity to all 118 government-authorized mining operators in Iran will be

It’s been a rough week for the crypto community as top tokens have seen massive selloffs, pushing some in the space to double down while leaving others to take stock off how the industry got to this point and what widely accepted truths need to be re-evaluated as the crypto internet matures. There haven’t been

This week on the TechCrunch Podcast our host, I talk with Bill Gates (yes, that Bill Gates) about whether we can still avoid climate disaster, the importance of crypto, and Elon Musk’s time management and social media skills. That conversation is an edited version of the full chat (which you can view here if you’re

As several Apple stores across the country fight to unionize, workers in Towson, Maryland became the first to win formal recognition. Out of 110 eligible employees, the union received 65 yes votes and 33 no votes. This historic victory comes after concentrated efforts from Apple to discourage its retail workers from unionizing. Last month, the

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we talked about layoffs and the Winklevoss rock gods. This week, we’re looking at a new layer of crypto doom and gloom. Get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday by subscribing on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. crash redux We’ve talked crypto crashes a couple times already in the

For years, startups addressing the recycling crisis labored in relative anonymity. But for those who have stuck with it — or survived the lean times — investors are now rewarding them with growing support, three founders told me this week at TC Sessions: Climate 2022 in Berkeley. “It’s been very hard to raise in the

Forgive me if I’m over here, in the corner, having vibrant flashbacks to the Commodore 64, my very first computer. Today, Pentaform launches its AbacusBasic, a computer built into a keyboard. It comes with Windows 10 and everything you need to do computer-y things. You still need a monitor, but there are a few solutions

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. There we go, today it’s Friday! We’re planning to spend some quality time with a headset and a collection of amazing TechCrunch podcasts — here’s our roundup of this week’s episodes, enthusiastically

Tory Reiss Contributor Tory Reiss is co-founder and CEO of Equi. When my co-founders and I started Equi, we each committed to putting 80% of our liquid net worth into the investment platform we were building. It made sense because we had initially built the product for ourselves. We knew what investment strategies would yield

Huobi Thailand will shut down its exchange permanently on July 1, according to an announcement posted on its website. This marks the exchange’s short-lived ambition in the Southeast Asian country where crypto adoption is flourishing. According to blockchain analysis company Chainalysis, Thailand has one of the world’s highest adoption rates of DeFi, or decentralized financial

Stephanie Capouch Contributor As VP of marketing at Terminus, Stephanie Capouch serves the brand, content and customer marketing organization. Traditionally, sales and marketing teams have relied on tactics like lead capture forms, landing and generic web pages, and follow-up outreach to connect with and convert prospects to sales. This onerous process requires an average of

The European Commission has just taken the wraps off a beefed up industry Code of Practice for tackling online disinformation across the EU. Signatories to the Code — who include tech giants like Google, Meta, TikTok and Amazon-owned Twitch but also smaller players like Clubhouse and Vimeo, among a number of other industry, adtech and

Brad Feld, a venture capitalist of 25 years an author of several books, has just republished a book that first came out in 2013 and to which Feld, with the help of coauthors Matt Blumberg and Mahendra Ramsinghani, has added quite a bit for this new, second edition. Called Startup Boards:A Field Guide to Building

On the face of it, data from the first year of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s project to track the safety of advanced driver assistance systems look terrible for Tesla. Its electric vehicles were involved in 70% of the reported crashes involving Level 2 technologies, 60% of those resulting in serious injuries, and nearly

Project A Ventures launched 10 years ago in Berlin when a handful of a ex-Rocket Internet players decided they’d try their own hand at this startup stuff. Since then they’ve done pretty well, investing early in some of the biggest European tech companies, such as Trade Republic, Kry, sennder, WorldRemit, Spryker, and Voi. The VC has

Platform9, which bills itself as an “open distributed cloud company,” today announced that it closed a $26 million funding round led by Celesta Capital with participation from Cota Capital, NGP Capital and other investors. CEO Bhaskar Gorti said that the new cash will be used to drive Platform9’s go-to-market strategy and product research and development,