The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has selected Astrobotic, Intuitive Machines, and Orbit Beyond as the first three private companies to deliver science and technology payloads under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) as part of its Artemis program. In an announcement yesterday, the administration said that each lander will carry NASA-provided payloads to conduct science

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a newsletter published every Saturday that dives into the week’s noteworthy venture capital deals, funds and trends. Before I dive into this week’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about the sudden uptick in beverage startup rounds. Before that, I noted an alternative to

There’s a whole lot of ocean on this planet, and we don’t have much of an idea what’s at the bottom of most of it. That could change with the craft and techniques created during the Ocean Discovery Xprize, which had teams competing to map the sea floor quickly, precisely, and autonomously. The winner just

Reeling from the ongoing U.S.-China trade war, Chinese technology giant Huawei has found itself in yet another dilemma: How to pursue internal communications with its own U.S. employees? For now, the company has ordered its Chinese employees to bar technical meetings with their U.S. contacts and sent home the American workers deployed in research and

If you’re a cannabis investor or a founder working on a cannabis-related startup, you’ve probably heard of Poseidon Asset Management. The San Francisco-based investment firm is one of very few that is focused narrowly on the industry, which remains fairly insular for now. Poseidon has also been at it longer than most outfits, having begun

UK telecoms regulator Ofcom has published a new joint report and stat-fest on Internet attitudes and usage with the national data protection watchdog, the ICO — a quantitative study to be published annually which they’re calling the Online Nation report. The new structure hints at the direction of travel for online regulation in the UK,

Netflix’s chief content officer Ted Sarandos said the streaming service (which is spending billions of dollars on an ever-growing catalog of original content) will “rethink [its] whole investment in Georgia” if a recently-signed abortion law goes into effect. Sarandos’ statement was first published in Variety. The industry publication said it reached out to the major studios

Away from the limelight of urban cities, where an increasingly growing number of firms are fighting for a piece of India’s digital payments market, a South Korean startup’s app is quietly helping millions of Indians pay digitally and enjoy many financial services for the first time. The app, called True Balance, began its life as

When FireEye reported its earnings last month, the outlook was a little light, so the security vendor decided to be proactive and make a big purchase. Today, the company announced it has acquired Verodin for $250 million. The deal closed today. The startup had raised over $33 million since it opened its doors 5 years

A legal challenge to the EU-US Privacy Shield, a mechanism used by thousands of companies to authorize data transfers from the European Union to the US, will be heard by Europe’s top court this summer. The General Court of the EU has set a date of July 1 and 2 to hear the complaint brought

  Most people wouldn’t think too much of a computer crammed into a briefcase — but if it’s one of the few remaining examples of the first computer ever built by Apple? That’s a whole different story. An original Apple I from 1976 — as hand-built by Steve Wozniak — just sold for £371,260 (or

Planning to join us and more than 1,200 other startuppers at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December? That’s great news, but this is even better; you can save €200 off the super-early-bird ticket price if you sign up for our mailing list. Here’s the catch: You must sign up before registration officially opens, and that

Six years ago, British intelligence officers walked into the offices of The Guardian newspaper in London and demanded its staff destroy computers they believed stored highly classified documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In the basement of the newspaper’s offices, editors used angle-grinders and drills to destroy the computers in an effort to render

Last week, Trump signed an executive order that enabled the federal government to prohibit U.S. companies from buying telecom equipment from foreign companies at their discretion. This week, the full damage began to feel apparent to China’s fastest-growing smartphone powerhouse, Huawei. American companies, at the behest of Trump and company, began turning on the Chinese

This week, the Equity duo of Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm convened to get some quick hits in about Slack’s WORK, Luckin Coffee and Sam Altman’s departure from Y Combinator. They then dug a bit deeper into the money around food: DoorDash and Sun Basket both raised this week. And what is a discussion about

The U.S-China trade war is increasingly influencing tech. Huawei has suffered a turbulent past week with key suppliers pausing work with the company, and now China’s largest chipmaker is planning to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) announced in a filing published Friday that it plans to delist next

Ryan Graves, a longtime Uber employee and former chief executive officer, has resigned from the company’s board of directors, effective Monday. The newly-public company announced the departure on Friday afternoon. Ron Sugar, the company’s independent chairperson of the board, wrote in the filing that Graves was key in shaping what Uber is today.  “As a

Binance, the world’s most prominent crypto exchange, says it is close to adding a much-anticipated margin trading feature to its service following weeks of speculation. The company tweeted confirmation of the upcoming feature in a screenshot which subtly teases the imminent arrival of margin trading options. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (pictured above) first revealed that

Snap has brought on its first-ever diversity and inclusion lead, former Google Director of Diversity Strategy Oona King. In a memo sent to Snap employees today, Snap Chief People Officer Lara Sweet announced King’s hiring. Although Snap is late in the game of hiring a diversity lead and has yet to release a diversity report,

The only way to beat laziness is with guilt, and so that’s what Future sells. It assigns you an actual human trainer who builds personalized workout plans and message you throughout the day to make sure you’re doing them. It even gives you an Apple Watch to track your activity and ensure you’re not lying.

Music streaming giant Spotify has notified an unspecified number of users that the company has reset their account password, but has left dozens of users asking why. In an email, some Spotify users were told their password was reset “due to detected suspicious activity,” but gave no further details. Anyone else getting emails from Spotify

Indonesia is the latest nation to hit the hammer on social media after the government restricted the use of WhatsApp and Instagram following deadly riots yesterday. Numerous Indonesia-based users are today reporting difficulties sending multimedia messages via WhatsApp, which is one of the country’s most popular chat apps, while the hashtag #instagramdown is trending among

Tired of noisy music venues where you can hardly see the stage? SoFar Sounds puts on concerts in people’s living rooms where fans pay $15 to $30 to sit silently on the floor and truly listen. Nearly 1 million guests have attended SoFar’s more than 20,000 gigs. Having attended a half dozen of the shows,

It’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon this week and in the slew of announcements, one name stood out: Atlassian . The company is best known as the maker of tools that allow developers to work more efficiently and now as a cloud infrastructure provider. In this age of containerization, though, even Atlassian can bask in the glory

Quadric.io, a startup founded by some of the folks behind the once-secretive bitcoin mining operation “21E6,” has raised $15 million in a Series A round that will fund the development of a supercomputer designed for autonomous systems.   The round was led by automotive Tier 1 supplier DENSO and its semiconductor products arm NSITEXE, which will also

Huawei has finally gone on the record about a ban on its use of Android, but the company’s long-term strategy on mobile still remains unclear. In an effort to appease its worried customer base, the embattled Chinese company said today that it will continue to provide security updates and after-sales support to its existing lineup

Life is short, difficult and, most likely, ultimately meaningless. In this age of immediate fan service, it’s important to remember that you can’t always get what you want. That goes double when it comes to the final season of a beloved television series (I’m looking at you, The Wire). TV, like life, rarely has a

Welcome back to another transcribed edition of Equity, the wildly popular TechCrunch podcast that digs deep into the week’s news about … equity. There were no IPOs this week so there was only one episode, but it was jam-packed with news about direct-to-consumer scooters, luggage funding and fake meat. This is where tech has taken

How an immigration crackdown is hurting UK startups Our European correspondent Natasha Lomas spent the past few weeks investigating what’s been happening to immigrant founders and tech talent in the UK, who have been receiving more scrutiny from the Home Office in recent months. Natasha zooms in on Metail, a virtual fitting room startup, and

The two people who sat down in reception without an appointment would not leave the startup’s office until the end of the day. Two months later, a letter followed informing the company it had been suspended from the United Kingdom’s register of licensed sponsors, the database of companies the government has approved to employee foreign