TechCrunch Industry News

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Brex brings on $150M in new cash in case of an ‘extended recession’ May 22, 2020

Show notes

Fast-growing fintech behemoth Brex is raising big money as its customer base itself — high-growth and spendy startups — is struggling. The company, which sells a credit card tailored for startups, today announced that it has raised $150 million in a Series C extension from a group of existing investors, including DST Global and Lone […]

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How to decode a data breach notice May 21, 2020

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Over the years I’ve seen hundreds, probably thousands, of data breach notifications warning that a company’s data was lost, stolen or left online for anyone to grab. Most of them look largely the same. It’s my job to decode what they actually mean for the victims whose information is put at risk. Data breach notifications […]

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Twitter is testing a feature that limits who can reply to your tweets May 21, 2020

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Twitter today acknowledged that it’s begun testing a new setting that let users limit who can reply to tweets. The setting was first noted earlier this year. Similar to Facebook’s post view settings, the current implementation features a small glove icon in the corner. Tapping on it brings up a “Who Can Reply?” window. From […]

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Polestar to open first U.S. stores in the second half of 2020 May 20, 2020

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Polestar’s first U.S. retail stores will open in Los Angeles, New York City and two locations in San Francisco later this year — the latest milestone for the automaker as it gets closer to bringing its all-electric vehicle to market. Polestar, which is jointly owned by Volvo Car Group and Zhejiang Geely Holding of China, […]

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The mystery of RGV2cw, Microsoft’s extremely nerdy secret message to developers May 20, 2020

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When he was still running Microsoft, Steve Ballmer caused quite the stir in the tech world by screaming “Developers! Developers! Developers!” Since the executive retired to spend more time with his basketball team, however, the tech giant’s current CEO is decidedly more…subtle in his approach. In the kickoff keynote to the first all-virtual build conference, […]

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A smart highlighter and artificial window are among Samsung’s latest C-Lab spinoffs May 19, 2020

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Samsung’s in-house incubator C-Lab has produced some of the more fascinating hardware devices in recent memory. Previous graduates have run the gamut from smart belts to augmented reality. The Samsung staff’s pet projects are not always the most practical, but they’re never not interesting. Per usual, the latest batch of graduates from the 9.5-year-old incubator […]

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As Jack Ma and SoftBank part ways, the open and globalized era of tech comes ever closer to an end May 19, 2020

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It would be one of the greatest startup investments of all time. Masayoshi Son, riding high in the klieg lights of the 1990s dot-com bubble, invested $20 million dollars into a fledgling Hong Kong-based startup called Alibaba. That $20 million investment into the Chinese ecommerce business would go on to be worth about $120 billion […]

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Hypnosis for health? Investors have placed a $1.1 million bet on Mindset Health that it can work May 18, 2020

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Chris and Alex Naoumidis came to hypnotherapy through dresses. As The New York Times reported last year, the two brothers initially started their careers as startup entrepreneurs with a peer-to-peer dress-sharing app for women. The Australian natives, overcome with doubt, about their ability to succeed in startupland and when apps didn’t work, their father suggested […]

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Unemployed Americans can get a free year of Headspace May 18, 2020

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Back in March, Headspace announced that it would offer free content to all COVID-19 frontline responders. Now the meditation app is expanding the offer to include all unemployed people in the U.S. You can go here to sign up, by entering information on your most recent job, including the employer’s name and the date you […]

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Cruise lays off 8% of workforce amid COVID-19, puts resources towards engineering May 15, 2020

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Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, automaker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, is laying off nearly 8% of its more than 1,800-member workforce today as it tries to reduce costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The layoffs will affect employees in Cruise’s product, marketing and […]

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