Tech News

Flipkart, which competes with Amazon in India, is doubling down on an area where it has established a clear lead: Fashion. On Thursday, the Flipkart Group announced it had invested $35 million in Arvind Fashions for a significant minority stake in one the decades-old Indian firm’s subsidiaries as the Walmart -owned firm looks to tighten

Earlier today, Intel offered some key insight into Thunderbolt 4, following an initial unveil at CES back in January. The latest version of the connection standard isn’t actually faster than its predecessor (still offering up the same 40 gbps as its predecessor), but there are some key improvements on-board, including some updated system requirements. Here’s

Scott Salandy-Defour used to make frequent stops at a battery manufacturer in southern China for his energy startup based in Hong Kong. The appeal of Hong Kong, he said, is its adjacency to the plentiful electronics suppliers in the Pearl River Delta, as well as the city’s amenities for foreign entrepreneurs, be it its well-established

There’s new leadership at troubled startup Magic Leap, Uber launches grocery delivery and Palantir files to go public. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 7, 2020. The big story: Magic Leap has a new CEO Can Peggy Johnson, the former vice president of business development at Microsoft, turn things around for Magic Leap? The augmented/mixed

K Fund is officially outing its fund II today, which sits at €70 million, up from €50 million the first time around. The remit remains the same, however: targeting Spanish startups with an international outlook, the seed-stage firm plans to invest from €200,000 to €2 million, writing first checks in 25-30 companies. A portion of

You may have noticed that The Daily Crunch is publishing about six hours later than usual. Do not be alarmed! We decided that sending the newsletter later in the day was a better fit for the TechCrunch news cycle — hopefully, there will be fewer days when we hit Publish and then groan when we see

Paytm, India’s most valuable startup, and its co-founder and chief executive, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, announced on Monday they have reached an agreement to acquire general insurer Raheja QBE for a sum of $76 million as the financial services startup looks to tap the nation’s booming insurance market. Sharma is acquiring Raheja QBE through QorQl Pvt. Ltd,

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B. I’m

Facebook, which reaches more users than any other international firm in India, has identified a new area of opportunity to further spread its tentacles in the world’s second largest internet market. On Sunday, the social juggernaut announced it had partnered with the Central Board of Secondary Education, a government body that oversees education in private

Rocket Lab is launching a rideshare mission today which includes seven small satellites from a number of different companies, including primary payload provider Canon, which is flying a satellite equipped with the camera-maker’s Earth imaging technology, including high-res photo capture equipment. The Electron rocket that Rocket Lab is flying today will also carry five Planet

Computer vision summit CVPR has just (virtually) taken place, and like other CV-focused conferences, there are quite a few interesting papers. More than I could possibly write up individually, in fact, so I’ve collected the most promising ones from major companies here. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Microsoft all shared papers at the conference — and

Tesla has opened up reservations for its all-electric Cybertruck to customers in China, a move that will test the market’s appetite for a massive, futuristic truck. The reservations page on Tesla’s China website was first posted in Reddit channel r/teslamotors by user u/aaronhry. Electrek also reported on the Reddit post. The Cybertruck, which was unveiled

Jump bikes are returning to London — this time through its new owner Lime . London is the first city in Europe to see Jump bikes return since Uber offloaded the company to Lime in a complex deal that unfolded in May. Lime raised $170 million in a funding round led by Uber, along with

Hundreds of alleged drug dealers and other criminals are in custody today after police in Europe infiltrated an encrypted chat system reportedly used by thousands to discuss illegal operations. The total failure of this ostensibly secure method of communication will likely have a chilling effect on the shadowy industry of crime-focused tech. “Operation Venetic” was

OurPeople, the U.K. startup that’s built a team communication and engagement platform for desk-less workers, has raised $2 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Alpine Meridian, an investment firm that specialises in digital media, e-commerce and healthcare, and entrepreneur Robert Neveu, who also joins OurPeople as managing partner. It brings total funding

T-Mobile today announced that it has closed a deal that divests Sprint’s pre-paid businesses, including Boost and Virgin Mobile. The news finds Dish entering the wireless carrier game in earnest, courtesy of the $1.4 billion deal. The whole thing was, of course, a key part of T-Mobile’s bid to merge with Sprint. It was a

Beyond Meat is starting to hit supermarket shelves in China after it first entered the country in April by supplying Starbucks’ plant-based menu. Within weeks, it had also forayed into select KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut outlets — all under the Yum China empire. China, the world’s biggest market for meat consumption, has seen

Jamf, the Apple device management company, filed to go public today. Jamf might not be a household name, but the Minnesota company has been around since 2002 helping companies manage their Apple equipment. In the early days, that was Apple computers. Later it expanded to also manage iPhones and iPads. The company launched at a

Facebook Avatars, which lets users customize a virtual lookalike of themselves for use as stickers in chat and comments, is now available in India, the social juggernaut’s biggest market by users account. The American firm said Tuesday it had launched Avatars to India as more social interaction moves online amid a nationwide lockdown in the

Lululemon today announced plans to acquire home exercise startup Mirror, for $500 million. The fitness apparel company noted its plans by way of a press release, noting that it hopes to close the sale by the end of the second fiscal quarter of this year. The deal comes at a time when home workout solutions

Extra Crunch is now live in Romania. That adds to our existing support in Europe in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, and U.K.. There’s been reason to be bullish on Romania’s technology sector for some time. A TechCrunch op-ed called the country the “Silicon Valley of Transylvania” in 2016, noting that

Hey everybody, welcome back to Week in Review. Last week, I wrote about Apple’s App Store controversy, which I’m kind of revisiting this week through the lens of how Apple’s WWDC announcements tease a change to what apps fundamentally look like in the future. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get

<span class=”featured__span-first-words”>Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. While the US tech industry relentlessly tries to do business with the rest of the world, this week it became further embroiled in national politics. High-skill immigration visas have been suspended until the

Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian is leaving Initialized Capital, the investment firm he co-founded in 2011 with Garry Tan, as first reported by Axios and confirmed by TechCrunch. The move comes weeks after Ohanian publicly stepped down from the Reddit board of directors, with Y Combinator president Michael Seibel taking his spot. Ohanian launched Initialized Capital

With the game industry booming, more entrepreneurs are evaluating where to base their new startup or open a new office for their existing company. The U.S. government’s block on H1-B and L-1 visas will encourage American game startups to add an office abroad much sooner than they otherwise would have. But where? This spring, I

Indian online learning startup Byju’s has added one more high-profile name to the list of its backers: Bond. In a statement on Friday, Bangalore-based Byju’s said it had raised an undisclosed amount from the VC fund co-founded by Mary Meeker. The first-female founded VC firm’s check valued the nine-year-old Indian startup at $10.5 billion, according

Waymo’s self-driving software footprint is expanding — this time in a partnership with Volvo Car Group. The two companies announced Thursday an “exclusive” partnership to integrate Waymo’s self-driving software into a new electric vehicle designed for ride-hailing. Volvo and Waymo provided just a few details on the partnership and what this might actually look like

TikTok is announcing to advertisers that it’s open for business. The company is today officially introducing a new brand and platform called “TikTok For Business” that will serve as the home for all its current and future marketing solutions for brands. At launch, the site will include access to TikTok ad formats, including its marque

Think you’ve found a way to consistently brick someone’s PS4, or make it run code that it shouldn’t? Sony wants to know — and now they’re willing to pay. This morning Sony announced that it’s opening its bug bounty program to the public, and will pay for newly discovered bugs and exploits that impact either