Twitter has picked April Fool’s Day, otherwise known as April 1, to start removing legacy blue checkmarks from the platform. Despite the significance of the day Twitter chose, the removal of legacy checkmarks has been anticipated for months now. Musk tweeted in December that the company would remove those checks “in a few months” because…
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Welcome back to Chain Reaction. It was a big week in the crypto world as the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission clamped down on major crypto companies like Coinbase and Tron…
Snap users are already quite familiar with the company’s expertise in AR thanks to Lenses and Filters. Now, the social media company is unveiling AR Enterprise Services (ARES) to offer those tools to businesses. As part of the launch, Snap is offering a “Shopping Suite” to brands that can help them get more customers. The…
The funding landscape remains very tough for technology startups, but there are still some pockets, and specific companies, driving a lot of interest right now among investors because they look like they’ll break through whatever current macroeconomic trends that are gripping the world. Today, a startup out of Munich called IntegrityNext announced that it has…
Southeast Asia’s mental health startups are getting more investor attention. Last week, Intellect announced a strategic investment from IHH Healthcare, Asia’s largest private healthcare group. Now Thoughtfull, another digital mental health platform focused on Asia, has raised $4 million in a pre-Series A round led by Sheares Healthcare Group. Sheares is a wholly-owned subsidiary of…
India has long harbored a strong entrepreneurial spirit, and it’s not uncommon to see people leaving jobs to set up their own businesses. A hallmark of that spirit is quite visible these days in the country’s flourishing startup ecosystem, which has expanded rapidly in the past few years, to say the least. However, the global…
Secure web gateways — network security services designed to help organizations enforce IT policies around Internet usage by blocking (or letting through) certain traffic — are one of the most common investments that organizations make in their cybersecurity profiles. But as a product that’s been around for decades, there remains a lot of room for…
If you plan to launch a new startup in France, Denmark or Sweden, there is a new seed fund looking for your pitch. Emblem is announcing today that it has raised nearly $54 million (€50 million) for a new European seed fund. And this is only the first close — the firm expects to raise…
Kakao Mobility, the ride-hailing subsidiary of South Korean messaging and internet giant Kakao, has made its first acquisition as it looks to raise its international profile. It has acquired Splyt, a startup out of London that works with apps in areas like travel, ride-hailing and finance to help them build out “super app” strategies by…
For most of the Information Age, companies that wanted to scale invested in server farms and hired teams to keep them running. At one of my first startup jobs, I walked in one day to find two sleeping co-workers who’d spent the night configuring servers at a co-locating facility 60 miles away. Soon after, when…
