Casual mobile games have reached a fever pitch of interest with consumers, and so too with investors, who are rushing to back the biggest and most promising startups building these quick hits of engagement and diversion. In the latest development, a startup out of London called Tripledot — the company behind a popular Solitaire app, […]

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Online language learning continues to be a huge opportunity for startups, with the most engaging experiences meeting a surge of interest from consumers looking for more productivity out of the hours that they spend on their smartphones. In one of the more recent developments, a language learning app called EWA — which has built a […]

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There’s no shortage of digital banks in Nigeria and, in general, in Africa. As the region continues to experience rapid growth in mobile usage and the corresponding growing young population, these fintechs think this is the right time to provide financial services to every market category, from the banked to the unbanked. We’ve covered a […]

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Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new vertical fund exclusively focused on opportunities in the games industry. The new $600 million fund brings a pool of dedicated capital and a new internal structure dedicated to sourcing deals inside the games vertical. The new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including its […]

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Apple’s Vision Pro hasn’t exactly reshaped the market, but the company isn’t giving up on headsets that combine the digital and real worlds. A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple’s next big mixed reality release could come as early as next year, with the launch of a Vision headset costing around $2,000 […]

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Penguin Random House, the trade publisher, is adding language to the copyright pages of its books to prohibit the use of those books to train AI. The Bookseller reports that new books and reprints of older titles from the publisher will now include the statement, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced […]

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Drone-maker DJI filed a lawsuit Friday against the U.S. Department of Defense over its inclusion on a DoD list of “Chinese military companies.” A DJI spokesperson said the company filed the suit after “attempting to engage with the DoD for more than sixteen months” and deciding “it had no alternative other than to seek relief […]

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Uber and Lyft need to do more to support disabled passengers, especially those who are blind or visually impaired, according to protesters who gathered outside the companies’ headquarters on October 15. Wired spoke to protesters who shared stories about drivers passing them by or refusing to let them bring their guide dogs on a ride. […]

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AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer. The WSJ […]

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Software engineers, developers, and academic researchers have serious concerns about transcriptions from OpenAI’s Whisper, according to a report in the Associated Press. While there’s been no shortage of discussion around generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate — basically, to make stuff up — it’s a bit surprising that this is an issue in transcription, where you’d […]

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For its most recent Camp, VC and accelerator Betaworks was on the lookout for startups building native applications made possible by AI. The program was first announced in May. To explain this focus, managing partner John Borthwick wrote at the time that while things like AI chatbots and writing assistants exist, “we aren’t yet living […]

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After a chip manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) was found inside a Huawei processor, the U.S. Department of Commerce has ordered the company to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers, according to a report in Reuters. Huawei faces significant trade restrictions from the U.S., so the pause on shipments is supposed […]

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UNest, a fintech startup that provides financial planning tools for parents saving on behalf of their children, announced today that it raised $26 million in Series B funding led by The Artemis Fund. Existing investor Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures participated alongside new investors including Franklin Templeton, Launchpad Capital, AltaIR Capital, OneWay Ventures, Unlock Venture Partners […]

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Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, we took a break from contextualization for some guides to consumption. This week, we’re looking at what’s happening in the mind of one Jack Dorsey. You can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. the big thing While […]

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The NFT auction marketplace OpenSea had a blockbuster 2021 and as a result is seeing its private valuation grow more quickly than almost any other startup. The crypto firm announced late Tuesday that it closed a $300 million Series C round led by Paradigm and Coatue. The raise valued the startup at a massive $13.3 […]

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Companies across the board are fighting to recruit and retain employees as the war for talent rages on. Employee benefits are no longer viewed as a cookie-cutter, standard set of offerings — rather, they are valuable tools employers can use to differentiate themselves from competitors and attract top candidates. Forma, which just changed its name […]

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In 2010, Bastian Gotter invested up to $200,000 into IROKOtv, an African video-on-demand company Jason Njoku, his friend and co-founder, launched in Lagos, Nigeria. For the next couple of years, Gotter, as CFO, was instrumental in turning IROKO — after raising over $30 million from VCs, including Tiger Global — into a household name in […]

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A plan which would see a corporate entity trademark the term “Web5” has been put to rest after much backlash. Late Tuesday night, TBD, the Bitcoin-focused division of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block (formerly Square), announced an ill-thought-out plan to trademark the term, which refers to its vision for a decentralized, privacy-focused iteration of the […]

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Square said there was “no evidence” a cyberattack caused an outage that left customers and small businesses unable to use the payment giant’s technology on Thursday through early-Friday. The payments technology giant said in a post-mortem of the daylong outage that the outage was caused by a DNS issue. DNS, or domain name system, is […]

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Jack Dorsey’s Block (the company formerly known as Square) announced today that it is releasing its hardware Bitcoin wallet, Bitkey, in 95 countries. However, users can only preorder the device at the moment, with shipping starting in early 2024. The device will cost $150 USD. Block’s pitch to Bitcoin holders is that using a self-custodial […]

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Frugal founders and savvy shoppers take heed. TechCrunch Disrupt, which takes place in person on October 18–20 — and online October 21 — can be a serious boon to your business. But our early-bird pricing disappears in a cloud of ruffled feathers on Friday, July 29 at 11:59 p.m. PT. You have just 48 hours […]

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We’re T-minus 24 hours until the TechCrunch Disrupt early bird flies south and takes up to $1,300 in savings with it. If you’re serious about realizing your startup dreams, you need to be kind to your bottom line. Disrupt is packed with many long-tail opportunities, but this one ends in just 24 hours. Buy your […]

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We’re coming down to the wire, folks. Your chance to save early-bird pricing on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt ends this Friday. Our three-day flagship tech startup conference offers superior ROI at full price, but why spend more when you don’t have to? To-do today: Buy your early-bird pass to TechCrunch Disrupt by Friday, August 5 […]

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It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep a lid on the gory details of a third party app audit that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally pledged would be carried out, back in 2018, as he sought to […]

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Yahoo, otherwise known as the company that pays my salary (full disclosure: Yahoo owns TC), today announced that it’s spinning off Vespa, the big data serving engine, into an independent venture. Jon Bratseth, previously a VP architect in the big data and AI group at Yahoo and one of the main contributors to Vespa, has […]

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It’s no secret that a massive digital transformation is happening within financial services companies and amid the growing number of non-financial outfits that are also adding financial products to their offerings. Still, Sheel Mohnot, who was formerly a general partner at the fintech fund of 500 Startups, and Jake Gibson, co-founder of personal finance startup […]

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Weezy — an on-demand supermarket that delivers groceries in as fast as 15 minutes — has raised $20 million in a Series A funding led by New York-based venture capital fund Left Lane Capital. Also participating were U.K.-based fund DN Capital, earlier investors Heartcore Capital and angel investors, notably Chris Muhr, the Groupon founder. Although […]

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Like other financial sectors in Latin America, the retail investing space is getting a facelift by local tech startups that are cashing in on the untapped potential for democratizing asset management in the region. One of those startups is Chilean-based Fintual, which today announced a $15 million round led by Kaszek Ventures, the largest fund […]

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Gamification and social hooks have become cornerstones across every category of consumer apps these days, and today one that’s using these to build out a new e-commerce platform in Europe is announcing a seed round to give its growth a boost. Blidz — a social shopping app that offers big discounts (many items in categories […]

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Raising venture capital is rarely an easy lift for startups, but 2022 is turning out to be a more challenging year than we’ve seen for some time. As venture capital continues its slowdown after an aggressive 2020 and record-breaking 2021, it’s clear that early-stage founders looking for their first dollars will require a new approach. […]

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Groupon has laid off another 500 employees in a bid to cut costs, the company said in an SEC filing last week. The e-commerce company had cut 500 jobs — nearly 15% of its workforce then — in August 2022. The company said this new set of layoffs will be spread across the first two […]

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A dozen years ago, Groupon shot to fame popularizing the online group buying format, confidently rejecting a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and instead going public with a $17.8 billion market cap. The company today says it has 14 million active users, but almost consistently for the last decade, its financial position has been […]

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Adyen lost $13 billion in market cap last month when investors scrambled to sell shares after the payments company missed quarterly revenue targets. But it’s not the only one facing the music in fintech. Shares in SumUp, a privately-held European payment technology business that focuses on point-of-sale transactions, are currently being sold in inside sales […]

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On Friday 28 February at 4.30am Sydney time, PwC will host its second global forum to students around the world.

Australia dropped six places to 15th position - the largest drop out of the 27 OECD countries measured.

The workplace gender gap is at its widest among the expat community with only one in four Australian females currently working overseas, PwC People Business Partner Jonathan Dunlea said today while launching a new report.

The key to Japan's economic future lies in growing it's engagement with the countries on its doorstep, according to a PwC report released today.

The pace and scale of disruption in the power and utilities sector is happening faster than expected.

Two young Australian innovators are ready to take their ventures to the next level after sharing in $20,000 in seed funding from PwC during a live pitching event held by the Foundation for Young Australians.

At PwC we have put significant effort into generating a national conversation about Australia's tax system and the need to improve it.

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.

PwC’s asset management leader, Ken Woo, said Japan’s commitment to creating a regional market for managed funds represents a ‘tipping point’ in terms of momentum for the initiative.

A new PwC survey has found that 70 per cent of major Australian companies are planning to enter new joint ventures or strategic alliances to drive growth from the Chinese market.

Regulation, compliance, and price pressure are slowing access to potentially life-saving new medicines, and undermining industry confidence in the current listing process.

The PwC network reported total global gross revenues of US$35.4 billion for the fiscal year ended on 30 June 2015.

PwC partner and financial services leader Julie Coates said the Federal Government's response to the Financial System Inquiry Report was encouraging.

The number of detected cyber security incidents in Australia was the highest worldwide in the last 12 months with an increase of 109 percent, compared to a 38.5 percent increase globally.

Thirty-five of the ASX 200 companies saw a turnover in Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 2014, almost 35 percent more than the global average, including 8 unplanned succession events which cost $8 billion in foregone shareholder value

PwC has been appointed as a Skills Service Organisation by the Federal Department of Education and Training to work with Industry Reference Committees to develop modern and relevant training packages.

Australia's next generation of family business leaders is more confident and better prepared for senior roles than two years ago, but is also experiencing more challenges, both inside the firm and in the wider business landscape.