Technical

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 . Midweek? More like mid-weak! Okay, terrible pun, but we’re a little low energy in this heat wave today, so it kinda made sense. Oh! And good news, btw, we’re offering 15% off Disrupt tickets (excluding online or expo tickets) for you, our trusty Daily Crunch readers. Use promo code “DC” to claim your discount ! See you tomorrow!  — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Slumdog $5-illonnaire : Landa is the latest startup to attract venture capital, in this case $33 million, to democratize real estate ownership, Mary Ann writes. Its approach enables people to invest in the real estate sector, which is known for providing generational wealth, but in a less expensive, more fractional way, and in some cases, for as little as $5 initially. Snap, crackle and . . . fizzle : Despite the myriad of news and new revenue streams we’ve reported about ...

Lyft is facing a fresh batch of lawsuits from drivers and passengers who say they were sexually and physically assaulted during rides and accused the ride-hailing company of failing to protect its users. Seventeen lawsuits were filed in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin, according to Peiffer Wolf Carr Kane Conway & Wise, the law firm representing many of the victims. These are separate lawsuits and not a class-action. The lawsuits are requesting a jury trial and do not specify a specific financial award except that they’re seeking compensatory damages, including all expenses and wages owed, damages for future loss of earnings, reasonable attorneys’ fees, costs, and expenses and punitive damages. The lawsuits, 13 of which were from drivers and passengers who were sexually assaulted, allege that Lyft didn’t have proper safety measures to prevent such attacks and failed to adequately respond once the assau...

NASA has finalized an agreement with SpaceX to purchase five more astronaut transportation missions to and from the International Space Station, further entrenching the space company’s position as the prime services vendor for the space agency. The new contract — for the Crew-10, Crew-11, Crew-12, Crew-13 and Crew-14 missions — is valued at $1.4 billion. It brings the total contract value for all 14 transportation missions, part of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program, to $4.9 billion. The funds include use of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule to transport up to four astronauts, the Falcon 9 rocket for launch and all other return and recovery operations. NASA announced its intention to order the additional missions in June. The CCtCap program is under the aegis of the agency’s Commercial Crew Program, a series of public-private partnerships designed to develop domestic launch capabilities. NASA issued the original $2.6 billion contract to SpaceX in 2014. The spac...

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week’s guest Shiv Rao founded Abridge after experiencing how unnerving it can be to go through a medical emergency with a loved one — even for a practicing doctor like himself. So he and the Abridge team created an app that doesn’t just transcribe a conversation between doctor and patient but can summarize the important parts, pull out the next steps and even define any medical terms that were said so the patient walks away with all the information they need. The same technology helps doctors take better notes and alleviate the “pajama time” burnout by recording what happened in the appointment and synthesizing it in a format that is useful to a doctor. Darrell, Jordan and Shiv talk about the importance of making an impact at scale in the medical field. Subscribe to Found  to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: On  Twitter On  Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.co...

Two weeks ago, longtime venture capitalist Chris Olsen, a general partner and cofounder of Drive Capital in Columbus, Oh., settled into his seat for a board meeting for a portfolio company. It turned out to be a maddening exercise. “Two of the board members didn’t show up, and the company had a resolution on the agenda to pass the budget,” recalls an exasperated Olsen. A “junior person was there for the venture firm” — a co-investor in the startup — but that individual was “not allowed to vote because they’re not the board member. And so we had this dynamic where all of a sudden, the founder is like, ‘Well, wait a minute, so I can’t my budget approved because people aren’t showing up to my board meeting?'” Olsen calls the whole thing “super, super frustrating.” He also says that it isn’t the first time a board meeting hasn’t happened as planned lately. Asked whether he is routinely seeing co-investors showing up less frequently or canceling board meetings altogether, he says “I’...

When it comes to types of venture capital instruments, party rounds are as controversial as they come. A party round is an early-stage financing round, usually occurring between the pre-seed and Series A stages, that includes a laundry list – or “party” – of individual investors. It’s different from a more traditional round, which may look like it’s led by one or two institutional investors with a few participating investors also taking part. The investment vehicle has been around for over a decade and has been a subject of debate for just as long. The positives are obvious: With more investors on their cap table, startups have more avenues for distribution, introductions and advice throughout their lifecycle. The cons are more complicated. Is the party-round investment as helpful as capital from fewer, more commitment sources? Are there too many cooks in the kitchen? Is it a negative signal that this startup had to raise from dozens of people instead of one high-conviction partner? ...

Masha Bucher Contributor Share on Twitter Masha Bucher is the founder and general partner of Day One Ventures , an early stage venture capital firm that backs customer-focused startups and leads their communications. The contracting private tech markets are driving down the pricing and frequency of funding rounds, while inflation cuts into companies’ runways, meaning they are able to build less product and acquire fewer users with the money they raised. It’s true that VCs are doing more diligence and being more cautious with their decisions. Some want to make sure their existing founders have enough runway to weather this storm so they are prioritizing these companies. At the same time, there are hundreds of millions earmarked for early-stage companies , and firms such as Lightspeed, Collaborative Fund, CoinFund and Menlo Ventures have announced new funds in the last few weeks. Later-stage capital is now being redirected to earlier stages to avoid being exposed to one- t...

Women-led mobile gaming startup Robin Games raised funding around the idea of carving out a new niche in the market of “lifestyle gaming.” The idea, the company explained at the time of its 2020 public debut , was to create a fantasy gaming experience that’s more sophisticated and stylish — something more in line with the sort of content you’d typically find in a lifestyle magazine or Instagram influencer’s profile. Today, the startup is releasing its first title to tackle this concept with the launch of a mobile game, PLAYHOUSE, which combines both gameplay and shopping in one experience. Available on iOS and Android, PLAYHOUSE is a DIY design game that allows players to drag-and-drop furniture and décor into spaces to create original looks for rooms using elements like wall art, sofas, chairs, tables, plants and more. This alone doesn’t make the app unique — the interior design genre is a popular subgenre within the Simulation Games category on today’s app stores where competitors ...

Box reported fiscal Q2 2023 revenue of $246 million last week , up 15% from its year-ago result. While that pace was down slightly from the 18% growth Box posted in its prior quarter, the rate of expansion appears to be what the company fancies in terms of growth moving forward. That $246 million figure puts the company on a run rate of nearly $1 billion, a magic milestone for any SaaS company. What’s more, the company’s guidance for the current quarter of between $250 million and $252 million puts it over the top in terms of reaching a 10-figure run rate. By now, it’s well-known that Box has not had an easy time in the public markets. To get to today, it had to survive the slings and arrows of an activist investor , to pick an example, something that it has now come out the other side of. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/qF4yUMz

Amazon is lagging its chief rival Flipkart in India on several key metrics and struggling to make inroads in smaller Indian cities and towns, according to a scathing report by investment firm Sanford C. Bernstein. The American e-commerce giant’s 2021 gross merchandise value in the country, where it has deployed over $6.5 billion , stood between $18 billion to $20 billion, lagging Flipkart’s $23 billion, the analysts said in a report to clients Tuesday that was obtained by TechCrunch. India is a key overseas market for Amazon, where it competes with Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, which launched grocery shopping on WhatsApp this week , Walmart-owned Flipkart and social commerce startups SoftBank-backed Meesho and Tiger Global-backed DealShare . Amazon has so far offered “a weaker proposition in ‘new’ commerce” in the country, the report added. At stake is one of the world’s last great growth markets. The e-commerce spending in India, the world’s second largest internet market, ...

It’s an exciting day for Studio Ghibli fans — fans in the United States and Canada, that is. The majority of Studio Ghibli’s film catalog has just been released to major digital rental platforms, such as Apple TV , Amazon , Google Play , Microsoft  and Vudu, a report by Variety confirms. For the first time, Studio Ghibli’s films can finally be rented digitally in North America. Critically acclaimed titles like “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “My Neighbor Totoro,” “Kiki’s Delivery Service” and the award-winning “Spirited Away” will be available to rent for as low as $3.99. However, although Google Play lists the titles at a $5.99 price point, it has a sale where the titles are available to rent for just $3.99 at present. All films will be available in HD, and customers can rent original Japanese-language or English-dubbed versions. Other titles now available to rent are “Castle in the Sky,” “Ponyo,” “When Marnie Was There,” “Princess Mononoke,” “The Cat Returns,” “The Tale of The...

Kate Anthony started in the Lone Star State. It was there, in 2019, that she launched her app Euphoria , seeking to provide information and resources on gender-affirming care. She knew the stakes were going to be high, and as the state passed anti-trans legislation, she and her company were forced to flee. Settling in Denver, Anthony made a plan on what to do next. She decided to maintain business as usual while the fight for trans rights continues. She’s not alone in that decision. Many apps, if not all, that service the trans community are hyperexposed, under fire and seemingly undeterred. TechCrunch conducted a vibe check to see how trans entrepreneurs servicing their communities are navigating this moment. The Human Rights Campaign told TechCrunch that legislators in state houses have introduced 344 anti-LGBTQ+ bills this session, with more than 140 specifically targeting the trans community. “We will not allow these anti-trans people to bully us into giving information.” Ayd...

Initialized Capital was venture capitalist Garry Tan’s answer to a need first highlighted by Y Combinator. As a partner at the accelerator from 2010 to 2015, Tan spent time working with companies to better understand what they needed from investors after they graduated. “I literally built the seed fund that I wanted to exist for those companies,” he said in an interview over Zoom with TechCrunch. Today, Initialized Capital manages over $3.2 billion in assets under management and Tan is stepping back to return to the accelerator that was his muse — this time as the new chief executive and president of the entire institution. While Tan’s new gig is set to begin in January 2023, he sat down with TechCrunch to talk about his vision for the accelerator, its batches and his goals going forward. The investor is going to have a bigger scope. Initialized Capital just raised its largest fund to date last year and now works with over 200 active portfolio companies. YC, however, is operating at...

Fresh regulations are often met with skepticism from startup founders, but digital lenders in Kenya largely seem to be upbeat about the new Digital Credit Providers law, saying it will bring order to the sector. The chairman of the Digital Lenders Association of Kenya, Kevin Mutiso , sounded optimistic about the impending new regulatory environment, saying that it had already fostered investor confidence and will bolster growth in the sector. “The regulations have encouraged investors to come into our market, and I’m already aware of five new big players that have come in because of the new regulatory field. We are looking forward to being regulated and having a fair playing field,” Mutiso told TechCrunch. Mutiso added that the association’s 16 members — including the market-dominant Tala and Zenka — are awaiting the required licenses to be fully compliant. The regulations, set to come into effect on September 18, give Kenya’s apex bank, the Central Bank of Kenya, the requisite aut...

Al Yankovic, the 62-year-old parody artist known as Weird Al, is getting his own equally weird biopic this fall. The trailer for “WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story” gives a first look at the movie, exploring the wacky world of Weird Al, his hilarious cover songs and his Polka obsession. “WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story” premieres on The Roku Channel on November 4. The film will arguably be Roku’s biggest-ever original film, with well-known stars like Daniel Radcliffe playing Weird Al, Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna and Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey. “WEIRD: The Al Yankovic Story” will be an ambitious move for the streamer. The Roku Channel has been eager to expand its original programming slate, and the upcoming Al Yankovic biopic will likely be a hit for the free streaming service. Weird Al is a highly successful musician, having sold over 12 million albums and won five Grammy Awards. When looking at Roku’s growth, the streaming service needs to pick up the p...

Waymo, the autonomous vehicle developer under Alphabet, is opening up its driverless robotaxi service in downtown Phoenix to vetted local residents. People who have been accepted to Waymo’s “trusted tester” program are eligible to hail a driverless ride — meaning no human safety operator is behind the wheel — in a Jaguar I-Pace EV in downtown Phoenix. Waymo has branded these as “rider only” trips to denote that a human safety operator is not in the vehicle. Trusted testers sign non-disclosure agreements and cannot share their experiences on social media or with journalists. In May, Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov said on stage at TC Sessions: Mobility that the company had started allowing employees to hail a driverless ride — sans human operator — in the downtown Phoenix area. Opening it up to trusted testers is the next step before a wider public release. Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego posted a message (along with a video) on Twitter and Instagram marking the occasion. I had the opportu...

Following a preview in April, Microsoft this morning announced the general availability of virtual machines (VMs) on Azure featuring the Ampere Altra, a processor based on the Arm architecture. The first Azure VMs powered by Arm chips, Microsoft says that they’re accessible in 10 Azure regions today and can be included in Kubernetes clusters managed using Azure Kubernetes Service beginning on September 1. The Azure Arm-based VMs have up to 64 virtual CPU cores, 8 GB of memory per core and 40 Gbps of networking bandwidth as well as SSD local and attachable storage. Microsoft describes them as “engineered to efficiently run scale-out, cloud-native workloads,” including open source databases, Java and .NET applications and gaming, web, app and media servers. Preview releases of Windows 11 Pro and Enterprise and Linux OS distributions including Canonical Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Debian are available on the VMs day one, with support for Alma Li...

Millions around the world suffer strokes every year, and millions more are in recovery from one they’ve suffered. Regaining the use of affected limbs and capabilities is a long road, but one that can be shortened by intensive rehabilitation efforts — which Neurofenix has shown can take place in the home rather than during frequent trips to the hospital. Its Neuroball device and home therapy platform have led to $7 million in new funding to expand and deepen its platform. The problem with existing stroke rehabilitation techniques is not that they aren’t effective, but that they’re mostly located in hospitals and thus limit how often they can be engaged with. “For many, many years rehabilitation, especially neural rehabilitation, has been focused on big bulky equipment in facilities,” explained Guillem Singla, CEO and co-founder (with CTO Dimitrios Athanasiou) of Neurofenix. “We’ve extracted the essence of what needs to be done in neural rehabilitation: It has to be intensive, engagin...

We review a lot of headphones and earbuds here at TechCrunch, and most of them compete for the low- or mid-range of the earbud market. With price points ranging from $75 through $300 or so, they’re often awfully same-ish. The feature set is not dissimilar. They sound different, yes, but not by so much that you’d feel like your life would be ruined if you’d picked one set over the other. It’s a rare moment, then, that I get a piece of equipment shipped to me that breaks the mold. That’s precisely what happened with Angry Miao ‘s Cyberblade headphones. The base station (yes, there’s a base station) feels like it was carved out of steel and glass. The whole setup weighs in at a whopping 370 grams — that’s 13 ounces. It’s also rare that a company refuses to tell me what their price point is. Like much of Angry Miao’s line, this is a product that appears to be aimed at gamers — from the multicolor LED feast for your eyes, to the ludicrously fancy base station, to the carrying case for the ...