Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of…
Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast diving deep into stories, backgrounds and latest news with the biggest names in crypto. For this week’s episode, I interviewed Gwendolyn Regina, investment director at layer-1 blockchain BNB Chain. Prior to her current role, Regina worked at Facebook — or, as some call it now, Meta — building…
Emerging Indian social media app Slick left an internal database containing users’ personal information, including data of school-going children, publicly exposed to the internet for months. Since at least December 11, a database containing full names, mobile numbers, dates of birth, and profile pictures of Slick users was left online without a password. Bengaluru-based Slick…
Emerging Indian social media app Slick left an internal database containing users’ personal information, including data of school-going children, publicly exposed to the internet for months. Since at least December 11, a database containing full names, mobile numbers, dates of birth, and profile pictures of Slick users was left online without a password. Bengaluru-based Slick…
YouTube recently became the exclusive streaming rights holder of the NFL Sunday Ticket, a sports package that was reportedly bid on by other tech giants, Apple and Amazon. While YouTube will likely charge a high price for the NFL Sunday Ticket, there may be a more affordable YouTube offering for viewers that want access to…
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week, Natasha Mascarenhas, Mary Ann Azevedo and Rebecca Szkutak got on the mic Our deals of the week included a look at a large new fund focused on Africa, a startup raising big bucks to address…
India’s IT Ministry has lifted the ban on seven high-profile lending apps including PayU’s LazyPay, Kissht, KreditBee and Indiabulls Home Loans, according to a person familiar with the matter, providing some relief to the fintech industry that has been reeling with immense scrutiny in recent quarters. On Friday, the IT Ministry also lifted the ban…
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Bonjour, crunchy folks! It was a bit of a tense morning at TechCrunch HQ this morning: The news broke that the company that owns TechCrunch, Yahoo, announced it is laying off 20%…
Funding to U.S.-based AI companies with at least one woman founder has steadily increased over the past few years, according to Crunchbase data. Last year, such companies raised $3.61 billion out of the $23.5 billion allocated in total to U.S. AI startups, or around 15.38%. That is a steady year-over-year increase. In 2021, for example,…
Lunar, a neobank out of Denmark, last year raised money at a $2.2 billion valuation from a splashy set of investors that included Heartland, Kinnevik, Tencent, IDC Ventures and comedian Will Ferrell, to fill out its ambition to build a financial “super app.” Times being tough for startups right now, Lunar has raised yet again,…
