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WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has reportedly cashed out of over $700 million ahead of its IPO

Adam Neumann, the co-founder and chief executive of the international real estate co-working startup WeWork has reportedly cashed out of more than $700 million from his company ahead of its initial public offering. The size and timing of the payouts, made through a mix of stock sales and loans secured by his equity in the company, […]




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Daily Crunch: Airbnb offers housing for healthcare workers

Airbnb says it will subsidize housing for 100,000 workers at the front lines of COVID-19 care, Groupon gets a new CEO and Stripe invests in a universal checkout startup. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 26, 2020. 1. Airbnb to provide free or subsidized housing for 100,000 COVID-19 healthcare workers Airbnb’s effort will work by […]




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Data shows which tech roles might be most vulnerable amid layoffs

Layoffs are having a big impact on industries across the board due to COVID-19. This week alone news came out of massive cuts for TripAdvisor, Lyft, and reportedly Juul and Uber. But according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi, the cuts have affected certain job roles more than others. Sales and customer success roles are the most […]




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New studio Modern Games acquires Beasts of Balance

Modern Games is a new studio working to create games that combine physical and digital play. The company was founded by husband-and-wife team Justin and Amanda Kifer — serial entrepreneurs who previously launched companies including Citizen Local (acquired by MyLife in 2011) and Fidgetly, a fidget spinner company that also created a motion controller for […]




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Daily Crunch: Uber and Airbnb lay off thousands

Uber and Airbnb are cutting significant portions of their workforce, Microsoft announces new Surface devices and we talk to Apple Craig Federighi about the new iPad cursor. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 6, 2020. 1. Uber is laying off 3,700 as rides plummet due to COVID-19 In an SEC filing, Uber disclosed plans to […]




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Original Content podcast: ‘Waco’ offers a surprising look at a real-world tragedy

“Waco,” a Paramount Network series that recently started streaming on Netflix, dramatizes the tragic real-life standoff between the FBI, the ATF and the Branch Davidians. A couple of your Original Content podcast hosts only had a fuzzy idea of what actually went down in Waco, Texas in 1993. And all of us were surprised by […]




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Call for renewed government focus on achieving fiscal balance and sustainably cutting the costs of doing business - 17 Feb

Governments must apply renewed focus to achieve fiscal balance and sustainably reduce the cost of delivery.




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Big City thinking needs Big City analytics: Identifying Sydney's Centres of Gravity - 7 Apr

Greater Sydney generates 23% of the Nation's GDP and will be a city of 8 million, up from 4 million, in the next 40 years.




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Demand for Stem Skills Will Generate The Next Wave of Growth - 30 Apr

While technology and innovation are transforming our economy, they are also the solution to our workforce and growth challenge.




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Global Mine 2015: gloves come off as top 40 prepare for brawl - 5 Jun

The global mining industry's fight for value and free cash flow has descended into a brawl, after 2014 saw the world's 40 largest miners ramp up production, slash capital spending, and rein in costs.




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Plan to save the sight of 32,000 Indigenous Australians will generate millions - 1 Sep

The eyesight of more than 32,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would be saved if the Government invested just $227 million over 10 years, a new report has found.




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Obesity to affect one-third of Australians and cost $88b by 2025 - 14 Oct

The economic impact of obesity will reach $87.7 billion and affect one-third of Australians by 2025 based on current trends and without further intervention.




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Australia behind in getting ahead of digital disruption - 20 Oct

Australia lags behind the world's best corporate performers in all ten indicators of digital intelligence needed to drive financial performance.




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PwC named a 2015 Employer of Choice for Gender Equality - 6 Nov

PwC Australia is pleased to announce it was selected by The Workplace Gender Equality Agency WGEA as one of 90 organisations in Australia as an Employer of Choice in 2015.




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Innovation Agenda Puts Meat on the Bones of the Rhetoric - 08 Dec

Australia is facing a growth problem, and the best way to spark growth is to create a bedrock for innovation and support businesses to disrupt themselves and take risks.




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Make or break year for the future prosperity of Australia - 20 Jan

Australian CEOs are less confident about their companies' growth prospects than a year ago, and less optimistic about growth in the global economy, according to a PwC report released today.




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PwC invests in the tech talent of tomorrow - 01 Feb

Twenty tech entrepreneurs have been chosen for a new accelerator program run by PwC and backed by some of Australia's largest corporates that aims to rapidly scale Australia's most promising science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education initiatives.




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Global market for commercial applications of drone technology valued at over US$127bn - 11 May

The emerging global market for business services using drone technology is valued at over US$127 billion with the drone revolution disrupting industries ranging from agriculture to filmmaking.




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Who's the fairest of them all? Australian entertainment & media industry needs diversity to grow - 8 June

A lack of diversity in Australia's media and entertainment workforce in terms of ethnicity, gender, age and thinking is dragging on the industry's growth, according to a PwC report released today.




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Microsoft makes it easier to get started with Windows Virtual Desktops

Microsoft today announced a slew of updates to various parts of its Microsoft 365 ecosystem. A lot of these aren’t all that exciting (though that obviously depends on your level of enthusiasm for products like Microsoft Endpoint Manager), but the overall thrust behind this update is to make life easier for the IT admins that […]




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Microsoft’s Visual Studio Online code editor is now Visual Studio Codespaces and gets a price drop

About a year ago, Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online, its online code editor based on the popular Visual Studio Code project. It’s basically a full code editor and hosted environment that lives in your browser. Today, the company announced that it is changing the name of this service to Visual Studio Codespaces. It’s also dropping […]




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Microsoft opens registration for its free, online Build 2020 developer conference

Microsoft has now opened registration for the virtual edition of its online-only Build 2020 developer conference, which will take place from May 19 to 20. Typically, the event draws more than 6,000 developers, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, that’s obviously not an option. In contrast to Google, which completely scrapped its I/O developer conference […]




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IBM and Red Hat expand their telco, edge and AI enterprise offerings

At its Think Digital conference, IBM and Red Hat today announced a number of new services that all center around 5G edge and AI. The fact that the company is focusing on these two areas doesn’t come as a surprise, given that both edge and AI are two of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise computing. […]




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EIA forecasts U.S. crude oil production to decline because of low oil prices (4/15/2020)

In the April 2020 update of its Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), released on April 7, and before a recently announced agreement by oil producing countries to limit production, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts that U.S. crude oil production will average 11.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2020, a 4% decline from the 2019 production levels. Crude oil production will average 11.0 million b/d in 2021, a 6% decline from 2020 (Figure 1). If realized, the STEO 2020 production decline would mark the first annual decrease since 2016. The majority of the forecasted production decline occurs between the first and fourth quarters of 2020, dropping from 12.7 million b/d to 11 million b/d (13%) and remaining around that level through 2021. The forecast did not incorporate the April 12 joint announcement by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and several other non-OPEC countries to reduce crude oil production. These production reductions may significantly affect global balances and could provide upward price pressure that would affect U.S. crude oil drilling and production. ...




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WTI crude oil futures prices fell below zero because of low liquidity and limited available storage (4/22/2020)

On Monday, April 20, 2020, New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil front-month futures prices fell below zero dollars per barrel (b)—at one point, trading at -$40.32/b (Figure 1)—and remained below zero for part of the following trading day. Monday marked the first time the price for the WTI futures contract fell below zero since trading began in 1983. Negative prices in commodity markets are very rare, but when they occur they typically indicate high transactions costs and significant infrastructure constraints. In this case, the WTI front-month futures contract was for May 2020 delivery, and the contract was set to expire on April 21, 2020. Unless they have made other arrangements ahead of time, market participants that hold WTI futures contracts to expiration must take physical delivery of WTI crude oil in Cushing, Oklahoma. Typically, most market participants close any futures contracts ahead of expiration through cash settlement in order to avoid taking physical delivery, and only about 1% of contracts are physically settled. The extreme market events of April 20 and April 21 were driven by several factors, including the inability of contract holders to find other market participants to sell the futures contracts. In addition, in this case, the scarcity of available crude oil storage meant several market participants sold their futures contracts at negative prices, in effect paying a counterparty to close out of the contracts. ...




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Tumblr now removes reblogs in violation of its hate-speech policy, not just the original posts

Tumblr is making a change to how it deals with hate speech on its blogging platform. The company announced today it will also remove the reblogs (repostings) from any blogs that were suspended for violating its policies around hate speech. Already, the company says it’s identified nearly 1,000 blogs that were banned for blatant violations […]




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CRV’s Saar Gur wants to invest in a new wave of games built for VR, Twitch and Zoom

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass. His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment […]



















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What will Tumblr become under the ownership of tech’s only Goldilocks founder?

This week, Automattic revealed it has signed all the paperwork to acquire Tumblr from Verizon, including its full staff of 200. Tumblr has undergone quite a journey since its headline-grabbing acquisition by Marissa Mayer’s Yahoo in 2013 for $1.1 billion, but after six years of neglect, its latest move is its first real start since […]





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How Zhihu has become one of China’s biggest hubs for experts

Zhihu may not be as well known outside of China as WeChat or ByteDance’s Douyin, but over the past eight years, it has cultivated a reputation for being one of the country’s most trustworthy social media platforms. Originally launched as a question-and-answer site similar to Quora, Zhihu has grown to be a central hub for […]




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The latest version of Yahoo Mail helps users find attachments and deals

Yahoo Mail is getting a mobile update, with new versions of the iOS and Android app launching today. Many of you probably haven’t tried out Yahoo Mail in years, but Senior Director of Product Management Josh Jacobson noted that it’s one of the top productivity apps in the Apple App Store, where it has been […]




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Lyft shares rally 14% after it reports Q1 revenue growth of 23% to $955.7M

Fresh off of a large round of layoffs, Lyft reported its Q1 results this afternoon. The ride-hailing company disclosed that it generated revenue of $955.7 million in the first three months of 2020, up 23% from its year-ago Q1 revenue result of $776 million. The company’s net loss of $398.1 million was also an improvement […]




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Citing revenue declines, Airbnb cuts 1,900 jobs, or around 25% of its global workforce

This afternoon Airbnb, a well-known private company that connects travelers with places to stay, announced that it was laying off around a quarter of its workforce. The company cited revenue declines and a need to curtail costs in a memo that TechCrunch viewed. In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the […]




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Deep Render raises £1.6M for image compression tech that mimics ‘neural processes of the human eye’

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]




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Uber leads $170M Lime investment, offloads Jump to Lime

Lime has announced that it has raised a $170 million funding round. Uber is the leading investor with existing investors Alphabet, Bain Capital Ventures, GV and others also participating. The Information first reported on the new funding round before the official announcement. As part of the deal, Lime is also acquiring Uber’s micromobility subsidiary Jump. […]