During the last two days, 20 startups pitched their companies as part of TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt 2022. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the brand-new Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home Battlefield Cup and $100,000. TechCrunch editors and expert judges winnowed them down to the…
Rivian has hired former Waymo executive James Philbin to lead autonomy and AI at the automaker, a new role that signals the company’s interest in automated driving technology. Philbin was director of software engineering for two years at Waymo. Before that, Philbin worked for five years at Amazon’s self-driving subsidiary Zoox, where he lead computer…
Following the launch of Apple’s iOS 16 update, Google’s YouTube Music becomes the latest to introduce an iOS 16 Lock Screen widget. “Recently Played” can be added to a user’s lock screen to quickly access recently played songs, albums, playlists and videos. There is a 2×1 widget that features the name of the song, album,…
Last year, MaxAB, the food and grocery B2B e-commerce and distribution platform serving a network of traditional retailers across Egypt and Morocco, raised its $55 million Series A in two tranches; the latter accompanied its acquisition of the Morocco-based and YC-backed WaysToCap. The moves signaled MaxAB’s ambition to dominate Egypt’s and North Africa’s B2B retail…
Whon Namkoong, the co-chief executive of Kakao, has resigned after a fire incident at a data center caused a mass outage over the weekend and disrupted several services at Kakao. Namkoong, who joined Kakao in 2015, was elevated to the co-CEO role this March. At a press conference Wednesday, he said the company will do…
At TechCrunch Disrupt, Netflix VP of Gaming Mike Verdu dropped two bits of news about the streaming giant’s foray into games. Verdu said that Netflix is “seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering.” The company will also open a new gaming studio in Southern California. “It’s a value add. We’re not asking you to subscribe as…
Activist investor Starboard Value announced this morning that it was taking a “significant stake” in Salesforce, per CNBC. A presentation on Starboard’s website confirmed the firm’s interest in Salesforce, as well as Wix and Splunk. The presentation looks at the company’s financial situation and concludes that it could be giving investors a better return. On…
Do Kwon says charges levelled against him by the South Korean prosecutors are not legitimate and politically motivated, sharing a rare update on what has become one of the most high profile events in the crypto industry this year in the aftermath of the $40 billion wipeout of his Terra blockchain. Kwon said he has…
The battery-electric Celestiq sedan, which starts “north of $300,000,” is tasked with more than restoring Cadillac to its former glory; it now must back executives’ bold claim to “reestablish the iconic brand as the standard of the world.” But with a price tag more than three times the average transaction price of a vehicle from…
This year was huge for the crypto developer space even though the digital asset market continues to wallow in a downturn, according to a new report by web3 developer platform Alchemy. Although the crypto market capitalization is down about 58% year to date, web3 developers are pouring into the space. The report found that developer…
