The WTO Secretariat has published a new information note looking at how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected e-commerce, including the implications for cross-border trade. It notes the increased use of e-commerce as consumers adapt to lockdowns and social distancing measures and draws attention to several challenges, such as the need to bridge the digital divide within and across countries.

The COVID-19 pandemic crisis has underlined the need for greater multilateral cooperation, including the need to improve the global trading system, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said on 7 May. Speaking at a webinar hosted by the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning, DDG Wolff said trade will play an important role in Africa’s economic recovery from the crisis, particularly through increased intra-African trade.

In remarks delivered to a virtual meeting on 7 May hosted by the Foreign Trade Authority of Saudi Arabia, Deputy Director-General Alan Wolff said governments must step up international cooperation to respond to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. For the multilateral trading system, this includes addressing measures to deal with the global health emergency, cooperation to support the needed economic recovery, and assuring the system is more resilient and effective in underwriting future global economic growth. DDG Wolff’s remarks are below

A new report issued by the WTO on 8 May seeks to help least developed countries (LDCs) better understand the trade-related implications of graduation from LDC status. The product of a joint effort between the WTO and the Enhanced Integrated Framework (EIF), “Trade Impacts of LDC Graduation” looks at how graduation may affect LDCs’ participation in world trade, including their access to export markets, and implications for their WTO commitments.

Some of the best real-time insights into Tesla and its global fleet of electric vehicles — outside the confines of its Silicon Valley headquarters — might be through the lens of TezLab, a tiny upstart in Brooklyn. Now, a little more than two years after its founding, TezLab is on the verge of hitting what […]

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, […]

High-priced, handmade boutique sports cars typically make their debut where the well-heeled and the media gather. Pagani took a different approach this time around. The Italian supercar manufacturer unveiled its new nearly $3.5 million Huayra Roadster BC in CSR2, the mobile game produced by Zynga . The physical car will eventually get its moment. Pagani […]

By the end of 2019, the global gaming market is estimated to be worth $152 billion, with 45% of that, $68.5 billion, coming directly from mobile games.

Growth means different things at different companies, but correctly identifying avenues for sustainable and scalable growth is a universal priority.

Impossible Foods made huge waves in the food industry when it came up with a way of isolating and using “heme” molecules from plants to mimic the blood found in animal meat (also comprised of heme), bringing a new depth of flavor to its vegetarian burger. This week at CES, the company is presenting the […]

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]

The worlds of virtual and augmented reality have yet to land on the applications and hardware to truly spark mass-market, consumer interest in the space, but in the meantime, a startup building mixed reality services for business users has raised a round of funding, underscoring the opportunity in enterprise. Spatial, which has developed a “holographic” […]

TC Early Stage SF goes down on April 28, and we are getting pretty damn excited about it! The show will bring together 50+ experts across startup core competencies, such as fundraising, operations and marketing. We’ll hear from VCs on how to create the perfect pitch deck and how to identify the right investors for […]

Efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 have led to a global economic downturn, but the gaming industry is booming. With hundreds of millions of people sequestered in their homes, game usage has spiked. And while the economic repercussions will persist after people cease physical distancing, gaming is positioned to fare well during a recession. […]

This evening’s Square E3 press was…something. After more than an hour of Final Fantasy remasters, the publisher closed things out with far and away its most eagerly awaited game. Licensing some white hot IP, the RPG masters at Square are offering up their own take on Earth’s mightiest heroes. Bay Area-based Crystal Dynamics addressed what […]

DoorDash has reached an agreement with Square to purchase on-demand food delivery and catering business Caviar. DoorDash has agreed to pay Square $410 million in cash and preferred DoorDash stock. Square bought Caviar about five years ago in a deal worth about $90 million. Now, Caviar has found a new home with DoorDash, the on-demand […]

Credit cards have become all but ubiquitous for consumer transactions, and it isn’t hard to see why. By intermediating payments, networks like Visa allow buyers and sellers to exchange money for goods and services without knowing the financial risk profile of the counter-party. Rather than applying for credit at every merchant you shop at, you […]

November 2019 could mark when Nigeria (arguably) became Africa’s unofficial capital for fintech investment and digital finance startups. The month saw $360 million invested in Nigerian-focused payment ventures. That is equivalent to roughly one-third of all the startup VC raised for the entire continent in 2018, according to Partech stats. A notable trend-within-the-trend is that […]

This morning Finix, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup selling payments tech to other businesses, announced that it has raised a $35 million Series B. Sequoia led the round, which also saw participation from new investors Activant Capital and Inspired Capital. Finix did not disclose a new valuation as part of its round, and declined to share […]

Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would write the terms of the deal in a term sheet and then pass that document to their […]

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might not spend six months a year in Africa, claims the real product development is under the hood and gives an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok. Today he tweeted, via Twitter’s investor relations account, a multi-pronged defense of his leadership and the company’s progress. The proclamations come […]

Smart rings are still a relatively young category in the wearable hardware world, but the Oura Ring seems to be a standout in terms of early success. The Oura Ring hardware is sleek and packed with sensors, allowing it to measure a user’s sleep patterns, take your body temperature and track activity, and now Oura […]

Jack Dorsey announced in a series of tweets today that he is shifting $1 billion in his Square equity to create a fund dedicated to COVID-19 relief. The Twitter and Square CEO is calling the fund Start Small and posting a tally of disbursements and recipients in a public spreadsheet. Dorsey said in his announcement […]

We’ve spent so long asking tech to turn its attention to real-world problems. Let’s not complain when they do so now. 

Fintech companies have been lobbying for weeks to be able to participate in the U.S. government’s emergency lending program for small businesses. Now those efforts have paid off, as PayPal, Intuit and Square have all been approved to participate in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program, which provides aid in the form […]

In recent years, fintech’s revolution has felt like a rising tide. Behemoths like Stripe and Square edged out banks while newbies like Brex nonchalantly raised nine-figure rounds. Today, however, the state of the financial technology industry feels more wobbly — some healthy startups in the genre are faring better than ever, while others are feeling […]

23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner, leading the firm’s U.S. business, is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that […]

EIA releases the findings of the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 with long-term projections of U.S. energy supply, demand, and prices, including cases with different assumptions about macroeconomic growth, world oil prices, and technological progress. The event will feature a presentation by EIA Administrator Dr. Linda Capuano followed by a panel discussion on the challenges and market trends facing the electricity sector.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released updated projections of future U.S. energy production and use in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) today.

EIA will present results from four alternative policy scenarios to the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) published in an Issue in Focus article. The article and the presentation will examine the potential effects of a range of alternative energy policies on the future U.S. electric power sector through 2050.

In the April Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), EIA forecasts that the United States will again become a net importer of crude oil and petroleum products in the third quarter of 2020 and remain a net importer in most months through the end of 2021. Fewer barrels are available for export as U.S. crude oil production continues to decline. In addition, net exports of petroleum products will be lowest in the third quarter of 2020, when U.S. refinery runs decline in response to lower demand for refined products.

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, […]

While plenty of tech stocks have seen their market caps dive in the past month, Groupon has taken a harder hit than most. The company’s share price has dropped more than 70% in the past five weeks. The reckoning came for Groupon’s leadership today with both CEO Rich Williams and COO Steve Krenzer ousted. In […]

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 […]

In the U.S., Robinhood has led the charge in upending the stock investing model through its mobile-first, minimal-step, commission-free trading platform. Now a startup out of Germany built on a similar premise is announcing a big round of funding from some top investors to continue its growth. Trade Republic — which lets people buy and sell […]

When Roger Lee, the co-founder of Human Interest, heard that San Francisco imposed shelter-in-place orders, he started blogging about layoff news and posting crowdsourced lists of employees who were laid off. His goal was to increase awareness about layoffs and give recruiters a place to search for candidates. However, one week and 40 startup 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 […]

Apple and Google ask for developer feedback on their contact tracing efforts, Facebook sees a “significant reduction” in ads and Microsoft makes life easier for IT managers. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 30, 2020. 1. Apple and Google release first seed of COVID-19 exposure notification API for contact tracing app developers This is a […]

Apple’s earnings show the impact of COVID-19, NVIDIA’s top scientist shares an open source ventilator design and Amazon anticipates big spending in the coming months. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 1, 2020. 1. iPhone sales are down, ahead of uncertain times for the industry Apple device sales have taken a hit, but the company’s […]

While global stay-at-home orders have been a blow to most companies, they’ve also created opportunities for businesses helping to keep people entertained. So if you’re a YouTube creator hoping to capture some additional eyeballs while everyone’s stuck at home, online video agency Butter Works has released an interactive report outlining the most promising topics for […]

We’ll admit it: Some of your Original Content podcast hosts are a little skeptical about improvised comedy. Of course, we can enjoy improv when it’s done well. It’s just that we’ve seen it done less well, often by friends who are so enthusiastic without being particularly funny. And our friends aside, live improv has rarely […]

As businesses struggle to reinvent themselves in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yelp is launching new features to help highlight these changes. For one thing, it’s adding a new information category called virtual service offerings, which will allow businesses to showcase the fact that they’re providing things like virtual consultations, classes, tours and performances. […]

Apple announces a new MacBook Pro, tech stocks take a dip and Uber Eats shuts down in seven markets. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 4, 2020. 1. The 13-inch MacBook Pro gets Apple’s much-improved keyboard Following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and 16-inch Pro, Apple’s 13-inch Pro model is finally getting the […]

Taika Waititi already reinvigorated the Thor franchise. Now he’s looking to do the same for Star Wars. Waititi is probably best-known for directing “Thor: Ragnarok” — easily the best of the Thor movies and one of the most delightful films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. More recently, he wrote and directed the Nazi comedy “Jojo […]

The world has changed dramatically since May 2019 when we last surveyed venture capitalists about the trends they were seeing in media, entertainment and gaming. Since then, COVID-19 and the resulting physical distancing measures have created plenty of demand for companies helping to inform and entertain us as we’re stuck at home. At the same […]

Tom Cruise is talking to SpaceX about taking the ultimate step to top his crazy movie stunts, Apple and Google’s exposure notification API will not provide access to detailed location data and we survey seven VCs about the new media landscape. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 5, 2020. 1. Tom Cruise reportedly talking to […]

Creatively was supposed to launch this summer, according to CEO Greg Gittrich. And then COVID-19 happened. “We made the decision to fast-track the launch when the pandemic hit, because we felt like launching as a beta would really help the creative community,” Gittrich told me. The startup was founded by Stacey Bendet and Joe Indriolo, […]

Burst Oral Care, a startup that sells an electric toothbrush boasting charcoal bristles and 33,000 sonic vibrations per minute, has raised a Series C of undisclosed size. Although we don’t know the amount of the round, the Series C was led by Goldman Sachs Growth Equity, and Burst says it more than doubled the valuation […]

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 […]

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 […]