Toyota needs more than a secure and steady supply of batteries if it hopes to meet its ambitious global sales goal for electric vehicles. If it hopes to compete, the Japanese automaker will need better quality lithium-ion batteries that don’t squeeze profit margins. The automaker is turning to Chinese EV battery supplier CATL for the…
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Elon Musk’s Neuralink looks to begin outfitting human brains with faster input and output starting next year Musk said that in…
Nintendo already announced an entirely new Switch console this month, the Switch Lite, and now it’s bumping some of the specs on the existing Switch with a slightly updated version, spotted by The Verge. This update improves the hardware right where it counts when it comes to Switch portable playing power. The new model will…
Uber Air, the transportation company’s upcoming flying taxi service, needs vehicle partners in order to make it a reality. Karem Aircraft, which Uber partnered with last year, has just raised a $25 million Series A round for its new air taxi spin-off. The round was led by Korean industrial conglomerate Hanwha Systems. “Karem’s technology for…
A little-noticed startup financing trend has big implications for how VC firms evaluate companies raising Series A and B rounds More posts by this contributor Why startups can’t afford to ignore customer retention How startups can use data to grow smarter Round sizes are up. Valuations are up. There are more investors than ever hunting…
Senator Elizabeth Warren doesn’t seem too unhappy about being labeled “dangerous” by investor Peter Thiel . Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, Palantir and Founders Fund, made the comments in an interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, where he described most of the Democratic presidential field as “equally unimpressive” and called Warren “the dangerous one.” “I’m…
Grammarly, the popular grammar and spellcheck tool, is launching a major update to its browser extensions, web app and native desktop apps today. In its early days, Grammarly was all about the mechanics of writing correctly. With this update, the tool will go well beyond finding standard spelling, punctuation and grammar errors and add a…
Users of Amazon’s voice assistant will soon be able to talk to Alexa in Hindi. Amazon announced today that it has added a Hindi voice model to its Alexa Skills Kit for developers. Alexa developers can also update their existing published skills in India for Hindi. Amazon first revealed that it would add fluent Hindi…
SpaceX held a press conference on Monday to discuss the results of a months-long investigation conducted by itself and NASA into an anomaly that took place during a static fire test in April. The investigation found that the “anomaly” that occurred during the test was the result of oxidizer mixing with the helium component of…
Private equity firm Blackstone just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire mobile advertising company Vungle. The companies aren’t disclosing the financial terms, but as part of the transaction, Vungle has also reached a settlement with founder Zain Jaffer, who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the company earlier this year. “As a…
