South Korea is headed for the moon. Last night, the country launched its first-ever lunar mission — in fact, its first-ever mission beyond low Earth orbit. Formerly called the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), the mission, managed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), is now named Danuri, a play on the Korean words for…
Astra CEO Chris Kemp told investors Thursday that the company will be no longer launch payloads with its current lightweight vehicle, Rocket 3, and will instead remanifest all launches on a considerably larger rocket that’s still under development. It’s a big change for the company, which has operated on the hunch that customers are willing…
File this post under the apt adage, “All good things must come to an end.” Tonight, the sun sets on early-bird pricing and your chance to save up to $1,300 on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco. It’s now o’clock: Buy your early-bird pass to TechCrunch Disrupt by 11:59 p.m. PDT…
Sub-Saharan Africa’s share of the global population without access to electricity stood at 77% in 2020, according to reports. Also, the average daily electricity supply in some of Africa’s largest cities is less than 12 hours. As a result, individuals and businesses find other options and substitutes, such as generators, to deal with their power…
Tesla held its annual shareholder meeting, which the company now refers to as its Cyber Roundup, Thursday at the Tesla Gigafactory Texas. The Cyber Roundup comes just a couple of weeks after Tesla reported its Q2 earnings, which showed quarterly revenue declines caused by production challenges, even as the company grew year-over-year. The agenda had 13 shareholder…
Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a climate-focused VC firm linked to some of Earth’s wealthiest individuals, has joined a $44 million bet on solar startup Terabase Energy. Terabase aims to rapidly build new solar farms “at the terawatt scale,” CEO Matt Campbell said in a statement. The startup claims its automated, on-site factory can already speed up…
Twitter announced today that all businesses with professional accounts can now display their location address, hours of operation and additional contact information on their profiles via its Location Spotlight feature. The social network says the feature also gives customers a way to reach businesses directly via phone, text, email or DMs. Prior to the expansion,…
Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle company valued at $8.5 billion as of late, has sued two former employees over alleged trade secret infringement. The lawsuit is arriving months after Frank (Zhenhao) Pan and Youhan Sun, two former technical leaders at Pony’s autonomous trucking business in the U.S., resigned to start a competitor called Qingtian Truck.…
TechCrunch Disrupt is back, in person on October 18–20 in San Francisco, and we want to remind university and college students that one minute can change the trajectory of your startup dreams. How? The possibility begins when you apply to the TechCrunch Student Pitch Competition (powered by Blackstone LaunchPad). Here’s how it works: Record a…
News that private equity group Thoma Bravo is buying Ping Identity for $2.8 billion in cash broke earlier today, marking the beginning of the end of Ping’s life as a public company (at least for now). Thoma Bravo will pay $28.50 per share in an all-cash transaction, a price that TechCrunch noted is a roughly…
