The new Extra Crunch Live series is taking flight this week. Today we’re talking to Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Ted Wang. This Thursday we’re keeping the parade of well-known investors coming, when Charles Hudson will join Natasha Mascarenhas and I for a deep-dive into all things pre-seed and seed. Extra Crunch Live Episode 2: […]

Emerging economies that have long tested investors’ patience say they need fresh help

Calastone reports record inflows throughout April after heavy redemptions in March

US private equity firm plans further share in group shaken by fallout from Luckin Coffee scandal

Many put a company’s economic recovery before ESG commitments in coronavirus crisis

Pardoning cronies is offensive but precedented. Using DoJ to go after enemies is Nixonian

Will environmental and social initiatives survive Covid-19? Our specialists answered your questions

Few investors went into this crisis with a portfolio they were entirely happy with

Countries in region issue debt at close to fastest rate in a decade due to pandemic

Ruffer precious metal and Baillie Gifford tech vehicles shine during market turbulence

French group braced for revenue losses this quarter despite reopening most of its China factories

World’s largest auto group enjoys earnings boost and increases dividend

Blume says industry faces supply constraints because of production ‘bottleneck’

US carmaker raises spending on EV and autonomous vehicles to $20bn by 2025

Jingye to keep close contact with Paris as it completes takeover and saves 3,200 jobs

Battery maker Livent says industry is looking to diversify away from China

PSA and Fiat Chrysler to shut factories as demand tumbles and supply chains disrupted

Group faces large fines if it fails to sell enough battery-powered vehicles in 2020

Heavy toll on jobs through lay-offs and cuts in pay and hours as one of region’s key industries comes to ‘abrupt halt’

German supplier scraps outlook and warns smaller contractors could go out of business

Ministers’ challenge to manufacturers sets basic specifications that are not suitable to task, say experts 

Big carmakers say small companies must be protected from collapse or factories may remain shut

Soueast Motor and GAC take advantage of rules favouring locally made vehicles

Idan Ofer’s Kenon offloads shares to majority owner Baoneng in $237m deal

Tesla appears to be ramping up installations of its solar tile roofs in the San Francisco Bay area and will eventually roll out to Europe and China, according to CEO Elon Musk, who, in a series of tweets, provided the first substantial update since the company launched the third iteration of its product in October. […]

Commercial aviation isn’t typically the place to look if you’re after carbon-light initiatives. Jet fuel isn’t generally very green, and airplanes burn a lot of it when traversing the skies. But supersonic flight startup Boom wants to change the perception of commercial aviation as an emissions-costly prospect, starting with their testing development program for the […]

Panasonic said it will stop producing solar cells and modules at Tesla’s factory in Buffalo, N.Y., ending a four-year joint venture with the electric automaker.  Nikkei Asian Review was the first to report that Panasonic planned to end its production agreement with Tesla . Panasonic has since issued an announcement to explain its decision. Tesla […]

Across the U.S., sustainable microgrids are emerging as a vital tool in the fight against climate change and increasingly common natural disasters.

Microsoft is embarking on a new sustainability initiative as part of its overall approach to support environmental protection measures, with a project it calls the “Planetary Computer.” This will actually be a computing endeavor that uses aggregated global environmental data collected from a number of sources as its input, and that will seek to employ […]

NASA and Planet have deemed their pilot partnership a success, and the result is that NASA will extend its contract with Planet to provide the company’s satellite imagery of Earth to all research programs funded by the agency. NASA had signed an initial contract last April with Planet to provide Planet imagery to a team […]

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]

Since announcing the commercial availability of Spot, Boston Dynamics has presented a range of different gigs for the robot, from construction to telepresence. Last month, the company announced it was partnering with local hospitals interested in using the platform to perform remote visits for COVID-19 victims. Turns out the global pandemic has spurred all manner […]

Target makes another acquisition, social platforms struggle with a “Plandemic” conspiracy video and Boston Dynamics’ robot Spot encourages social distancing. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 8, 2020. 1. Target to acquire same-day delivery tech from Deliv Target, which already owns on-demand delivery service Shipt, is in the process of acquiring technology assets from same-day […]

After months of testing, Facebook’s redesign is finally official. Announced last year at F8, the more minimalist approach to its desktop design has been rolled out in waves. In March, the company added an option to try out the new version. Users could switch back and leave feedback for why they had done so. This […]

Tesla is aiming to ramp up “limited operations” at its factory in Fremont, Calif., a decision that puts the company and its CEO Elon Musk in direct conflict with a stay-at-home order in Alameda County. Update: On Friday, Alameda County health officials said the automaker was told not to reopen. Employees received two emails — […]

As the infrastructure for developing games becomes more advanced, studios have turned to buying best-in-class technology from others instead of building everything from scratch (often with inferior quality). This shift underpinned Unity’s rise as the most popular game engine. The current focus on games as ever-evolving social hubs that can remain popular for a decade […]

Uber has pushed its target to achieve a measure of profitability to a quarter in 2021, reversing a decision made just three months ago to move up the goal to the end of this year. Uber will miss its target to reach an adjusted EBITDA quarterly profit in the fourth period of 2020, CFO Nelson […]

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 […]

We’re not letting this pandemic disrupt Disrupt SF 2020. Like any determined early-stage startup founder, we’re adapting and moving forward. Can’t join us in person on September 14-16? No problem. Take advantage of Digital Startup Alley, a completely new way to disrupt. Place your startup in front of influential movers and shakers and keep your […]

Chris Lynch, a founder and former general partner at Boston-based seed-stage fund Accomplice, remembers “VC Mountain in Waltham.” Back then, entrepreneurs on funding quests would visit a building overlooking the Waltham Reservoir near Boston where they pitched to a few investors: Matrix Partners, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. “And if they didn’t invest in […]

A data breach at the U.S. Marshals Service exposed the personal information of current and former prisoners, TechCrunch has learned. A letter sent to those affected, and obtained by TechCrunch, said the Justice Department notified the U.S. Marshals on December 30, 2019 of a data breach affecting a public-facing server storing personal information on current […]

Given the endless drumbeat of layoff announcements — with deep cuts by Airbnb and Uber garnering much of the industry’s attention this week — it’s reasonable to wonder: what happens to all of the talent that’s being laid off? How does the changing supply and demand balance impact pay? Is anyone safe in this market? […]

Amazon is bringing a year’s worth of free, live and on-demand cooking classes to tens of millions of Amazon Fire TV and Fire tablet owners across the U.S., thanks to an expanded collaboration with Discovery’s Food Network Kitchen. The subscription service launched last fall as a flagship app for Amazon’s Alexa-powered Echo Show, bringing daily […]

A number of UK computer security and privacy experts have signed an open letter raising transparency and mission creep concerns about the national approach to develop a coronavirus contacts tracing app. The letter, signed by 177 academics, follows a similar letter earlier this month signed by around 300 academics from across the world, who urged […]

Security researchers are sounding the alarm over a newly discovered Android malware that targets banking apps and cryptocurrency wallets. The malware, which researchers at security firm Cybereason recently discovered and called EventBot, masquerades as a legitimate Android app — like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Word for Android — which abuses Android’s in-built accessibility features to […]

During this pandemic, many organizations are offering free or drastically cheaper courses to help people skill-up for when we eventually get out of lock-down. There are numerous outlets if you want to learn to code from, for instance, Freecodecamp or the Free Fridays scheme from General Assembly. And for gamers, Gamedev.tv has taken 80% off […]

Facebook Messenger could soon automatically tell your closest friends you’re at the gym, driving or in Tokyo. Messenger has been spotted prototyping a ported version of the Instagram close friends-only Threads app’s Auto Status option that launched in October. The unreleased Messenger feature would use your location, accelerometer and battery life to determine what you’re […]

What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life. It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share and chat […]

Voice-based social networks and gaming as a new form of identity were among the top emerging trends in consumer social startups, according to an Extra Crunch survey of top social tech investors. Meanwhile, anonymity and dating apps with a superfluous twist were spaces where investors were most pessimistic. Extra Crunch assembled a list of the […]

Could avatars that show what co-workers are up to save work-from-home teams from constant distraction and loneliness? That’s the idea behind Pragli, the Bitmoji for the enterprise. It’s a virtual office app that makes you actually feel like you’re in the same building. Pragli uses avatars to signal whether co-workers are at their desk, away, […]