Welcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Today I look at where funding for Verkor’s gigafactory is coming from. I also have some thoughts on developer portals, 3D-printed prefabs and quick…
The U.S. Air Force denied a recent request from Varda Space Industries to land its capsule at a Utah training area, pushing back the startup’s plans to show off the fruits of its in-space manufacturing, TechCrunch has learned. The company is also still awaiting a reentry license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, a USAF…
The U.S. Air Force denied a recent request from Varda Space Industries to land its capsule at a Utah training area, pushing back the startup’s plans to show off the fruits of its in-space manufacturing, TechCrunch has learned. The company is also still awaiting a reentry license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, a USAF…
The U.S. Air Force denied a recent request from Varda Space Industries to land its capsule at a Utah training area, pushing back the startup’s plans to show off the fruits of its in-space manufacturing, TechCrunch has learned. The company is also still awaiting a reentry license from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration, a USAF…
Tom Chavez is the co-founder of super{set}, a startup studio; the chair of the Ethical Tech Project, a think and do tank; and the CEO and co-founder of Boombox.io. When Elon Musk announced the team behind his new artificial intelligence company xAI last month, whose mission is reportedly to “understand the true nature of the…
It’s been a long time coming but TikTok has finally been found in breach of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in relation to its handling of children’s data. Under the decision issued today by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), the video sharing platform has been reprimanded and fined €345 million (~$379M).…
Meta on Friday disputed a media report that claimed the social giant was exploring bringing ads on the popular messaging app WhatsApp. Financial Times reported that some teams at Meta had evaluated whether to show ads in lists of conversations with contacts on the WhatsApp home screen. In a statement, WhatsApp said it was neither…
Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe provided more details Thursday on the company’s plans to update the hardware in its EVs next year — under a program internally called Peregrine — that he says will result in major cost savings. One of the biggest payoffs? Changing the electronic control unit (ECU) architecture inside its EVs, Scaringe emphasized…
This morning, data and AI giant Databricks said it had raised a new $500 million funding round from venture capitalists, crossover capital funds, and strategic investors. The new cash values Databricks at $43 billion, a material step-up from its last private valuation set in 2021, when the company was worth $38 billion. The Exchange explores…
OpenAI is set to open its first office in the European Union (EU) and make several strategic hires, as the company prepares for regulatory headwinds. The ChatGPT-maker says that it plans to open its third office, after San Francisco and London which it announced in June, in Ireland, which has emerged as almost a second…
