TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 takes place on September 19–21 in San Francisco and — if you don’t already know — it’s the startup world’s big tent. It draws founders, investors, CEOs, tech professionals, scientists, policy makers, researchers and entrepreneurs. It’s where you’ll find inspiration, gain knowledge, forge new relationships and discover tools...
The cultivated meat industry’s known struggles will take time to sort out, and maybe that’s OK
The Wall Street Journal went under the hood of the lab-grown meat industry, also known as cultivated or cell-cultured meat, and the struggles within.
The Journal particularly homed in on what’s going on at UPSIDE Foods, which received a blessing from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration related to its process for making cultivated chicken, essentially...
Warm intros are awful for diversity, so why do investors keep insisting on them?
There are oodles of advantages to having a diverse workforce, but, as inBeta founder James Nash points out, you can’t simply take your homogenous workforce, add diversity, stir and hope for the best.
Often, something subtle gets in the way of diversity at startups: Companies depend on employee referrals in the beginning, but if a startup’s makeup is...
‘Buy American’ shouldn’t block our progress toward ‘Internet for All’
Kim Keenan Contributor
Share on Twitter
The first female co-chair of the DC-based Internet Innovation Alliance, Kim Keenan has fought for digital equity for more than a decade, previously serving as president and CEO of the Multicultural Media, Telecom & Internet Council (MMTC) and as general counsel and secretary of the NAACP.
The finish...
Elon exposes his burner, Tile embraces the cat life, and Elizabeth Holmes avoids prison
Hey, TechCrunch people. If you’re looking for a recap of the week’s news in tech, you’ve come to the right place. It’s Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap column. Glad to have you.
Before we get on with the meat of it, a PSA that tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 are available now. Disrupt, of course, is TechCrunch’s flagship in-person...
Pitch for the check you want
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.
Tech’s guiding principles these days aren’t too difficult to find: discipline,...
EV owners in Texas face $200 annual fee
States have taxed motorists at the pump for more than a century. Yet, as electric cars gain ground, what happens when folks stop refueling altogether?
State lawmakers are increasingly imposing annual fees on EV owners, arguing they should pay up because they still rely on public infrastructure to get around. Texas is on track to become the latest state...
Satellite-to-phone race heats up with voice calls and cross-Canada access
The prospect of contacting a satellite to send a text or contact emergency services may soon be an effortless reality as startups move from proof of concept to actual product. Canadians on the Rogers network, which just inked a deal with Lynk, will get direct satellite-phone connections across the country; and not to be outdone, AST SpaceMobile claims...
A claw machine does not a robotic gripper make
A refrain I hear from a lot of startups is that there’s “no need to rethink the gripper.” It’s something I appreciate from an economic standpoint. It’s expensive, resource intensive and both your time and money are probably best spent elsewhere when there are already so many...
#NotMyAI and other TC news
Snapchat Rolled out their generative AI chatbot, My AI to their 750 million monthly users so it feels like the right time to pause and ask whether we’re ready for the real thing – and ready or not, whether anybody wants one. This week on the TechCrunch Podcast, we’re talking to TechCrunch reporter Amanda Silberling about making robot friends on...
Upward and onward
The future is very much yet to be written about vertical farming. In many ways, the technology presents hope in the midst of rising food safety concerns, aging populations and potential environmental collapse. It’s also an intensely hard row to hoe, as it were. Early companies in the space are going to be the ones focused on driving down unit economics...
After initially defying the global slowdown, African startups’ first quarter venture results fall
The recent, and now past, venture capital boom was a global affair. While traditionally busy markets like North America and Europe benefited from the explosion in capital, other regions with more nascent startup scenes also saw big gains in their ability to attract funding....
Microsoft makes its AI-powered Designer tool available in preview
Today, Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s AI-powered design tool, launched in public preview with an expanded set of features.
Announced in October, Designer is a Canva-like web app that can generate designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, invitations, graphics and...
Pinterest announces multi-year ads partnership with Amazon alongside earnings beat
Pinterest today announced a multi-year strategic ad partnership with Amazon aimed at bringing more brands and relevant products to its platform. The new deal will make the e-commerce giant Pinterest’s first-ever partner on third-party ads, the company said in a blog post shared alongside the company’s first-quarter earnings beat.
The partnership is...
YouTube Music officially rolls out podcasts for listeners in the US
YouTube Music is officially adding podcasts to its platform in the United States on Android, iOS and the web. The rollout comes a few months after YouTube podcasting head Kai Chuk revealed that podcasts would be added to YouTube Music soon.
The update allows users watching...
Replit, the web-based IDE developing a GitHub Copilot competitor, raises $100M
Investors continue to pump money into generative AI tech. Case in point, Replit, an IDE startup developing a code-generating AI-powered tool called Ghostwriter, this week raised nearly $100 million ($97.4 million) at a $1.16 billion post-money valuation.
Andreessen Horowitz...
Bipartisan Senate bill would ban social media algorithms for minors
In a bipartisan effort to “protect kids from harm,” an unlikely cohort of senators introduced a bill that would restrict minors’ access to social media, as well as ban companies from using algorithms to recommend content to minors.
Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Chris Murphy (D-Conn), Katie Britt (R-Ala) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark) introduced the...
