Google appears to have disabled Google Translate in parts of China

Google appears to have disabled access to Google Translate in parts of China, redirecting visitors to the Hong Kong domain — which isn’t accessible from the mainland. According to users on Reddit and site archives viewed by TechCrunch, Google swapped the Google Translate interface...

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Is investor bullishness on embedded insurtech warranted?

Embedded insurance — selling coverage at the same time as another product or service — is on the rise. According to data platform Dealroom, it accounts for a growing share of all policies sold, and startups in this space raised nearly $800 million in 2021 alone. Having recently polled investors on all things insurtech, we were curious to know if the...

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How to watch Tesla AI Day 2022

Tesla AI Day is here — the company’s second-annual event designed to show off its progress in AI and robotics. Viewers should expect demos and updates on the Optimus robot, the Dojo supercomputer as well as its “Autopilot” advanced driver assistance system, along with the $15,000 upgrade known as FSD, or “Full Self Driving.” (Tesla vehicles are not...

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Twitch is testing ‘elevated chats’ that let you pay to highlight a message

Between recent drama around gambling and its controversial decision to take a bigger slice of the subscription revenue pie, it’s been a dramatic couple of weeks for Twitch. Now, the company says it’s testing one new way for streamers to bring in cash from their most committed...

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Show, don’t tell: Tips for robotics startups raising a Series B during a downturn

Jason Schoettler Contributor Share on Twitter Jason Schoettler is co-founder and managing partner of Calibrate Ventures. Raising a Series B for any startup is challenging right now, with many VCs pulling back on investments — funding for Series B rounds across all sectors fell 55% in August compared to a year earlier, for example. But raising...

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TechCrunch+ roundup: Insurtech investor survey, H-1B red flags, SaaS sales coaching

The demand for some services can be so high, it can insulate their providers against the vagaries of the market. During an economic downturn, consumers don’t cut back on pet food or toilet paper. Similarly, everyone needs insurance. Between 2016 and 2022, insurtech startups...

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The biggest moonshots from 500 Global’s latest Demo Day

It’s demo day season. This morning marked the kickoff of VC firm 500 Global’s Fall 2022 Demo Day, which saw over a dozen startups give their best pitches to prospective investors — and customers. Participants ran the gamut from fintech and sustainability to edtech and developer...

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Despite its many troubles, the insurtech market is ‘far from dead,’ investors say

When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. As the markets turned early this year, insurtech left most generalist investors’ playbooks almost as fast as Metromile...

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It’s a sprint, not a marathon

Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific...

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Tokenization is key to linking TradFi to the blockchain

As more and more traditional institutions begin to dabble in digital assets, some believe the best way for both old-school finance and decentralized finance (DeFi) to grow together is through a cross-chain world and tokenization. At Chainlink’s SmartCon 2022 conference, the “Bridging Traditional Finance and DeFi” panel discussed how interoperability...

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TikTok breaks records as top grossing app in Q3, as overall app store revenue declines

Consumers reduced their mobile app spending in the third quarter of 2022 by roughly 5%, but the social video app TikTok just delivered another record-breaking quarter on this front. For the fourth straight quarter in a row, TikTok continued its streak as the app that has ever...

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Tesla’s mythical Cybertruck will also be a temporary boat because why not

The Tesla Cybertruck is not yet in existence thanks to multiple delays. But when it does come, Elon Musk promises it will also have the ability to “briefly” act as a boat — if the need arises. “Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross...

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Google rolls out tool to request removal of personal info from search results, will later add proactive alerts

This spring, Google announced it would expand the types of personal information users could request to have removed from Google Search results to include contact information, like a phone number, address or email. At Google’s “Search On” event today, where the company unveiled...

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Google Search now queries Reddit and Quora in response to open-ended questions

In early April, software engineer Dmitri Kyle Brereton published a blog post — “Google Search Is Dying” — that struck a nerve. Now among the most upvoted threads of all time on Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum, the piece argues many users have become so dissatisfied with Google...

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Google is getting new sustainability features, including a fuel cost calculator

Google is adding several new sustainability features for Search, the company announced today at its Search On event. The search giant will start showing the annual fuel cost for cars in search results to help people who are in the market for a new car. Google will also show...

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