Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Friday, more like Fri-yay! It's April 29, 2022, we're here with the latest headlines, but honestly our brains are mostly focused on all the hardcore fun we're going to have this weekend. Like doing laundry, napping, playing with our pets, reading a book for a while and sleeping in. I know, we're old and boring, deal with it. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Selling Tesla, getting a pretty tweet deal: Everyone's favorite social media-acquiring billionaire is selling $4 billion worth of Tesla stock and supposedly has a new Twitter CEO lined up. He also shared that he has the beginnings of a plan for how to monetize tweets.
• Wait, companies have to make money? Robinhood's stock price is going off a cliff as competition gets stiff and its business model is more and more skew-whiff.
• Home is where the benefits are: Airbnb employees received a fun surprise this week when the company told employees it was instituting a "live anywhere, work anywhere" philosophy. Want to work in the office? You got it. Want to keep working from home? No problem. Want to move to a foreign country and work from there? Yes, but only up to 90 days every year. We guess even they had to draw a line somewhere.

Startups and VC

Civilian drone manufacturer DJI and the Ukrainian and Russian governments continue their spat. Most recently, DJI suspends sales in Ukraine and Russia in an apparent attempt to appear more neutral.

We were particularly enthralled this morning by Jim Motavalli's feature article about bidirectional charging. In other words: If the power goes out, what does it take to power your house from your car's batteries?

Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine, I'm on the pavement, reading news with wonderment:

• They grow up so fast: That feeling when you really want to plow some cash into a startup, but they're just a little bit too young? Yeah, Techstars hates that too, and it debuts a new fund aimed at investing in earlier-stage companies.
• Do I look like I know what a JPEG is: Revise raises $3.5 million to give NFTs powers beyond just being a pretty picture.
• The Game of Phones: Vercom, who wants to be a competitor to the likes of Twilio and Sinch, acquires marketing automation MailerLite for $90 million.

Charged with billions in capital, meet the 9 startups developing tomorrow's batteries today

In his first TechCrunch+ article, Senior Climate Writer Tim De Chant examined nine startups optimizing EV battery technology that have collectively raised just over $4 billion in the last 18 months.

Improving tech like solid-state batteries, replacing specific chemical components and using hybrid chemistries are just a few of the techniques startups are deploying to unlock benefits like reducing weight while increasing range and safety.

“But cars and trucks won't be the only thing touched by the battery revolution that'll occur over the next few years,” he writes.

“Like many advances, better, lighter and longer-lasting batteries will drive changes in our lives that are both unexpected and welcome.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

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Big Tech Inc.

We're going on a bit of a roller coaster ride in terms of good news versus not, so keep your hands and legs inside the newsletter, and you'll be good.

• Amazon's crown is slipping: In the kingdom of the public cloud, we note that Amazon is an "undisputed king," but Microsoft is poised to storm the castle. Amazon continues to hold court, controlling a third of the public cloud for years, but Microsoft has been quietly amassing a public cloud army that now accounts for 22%, up from 20% last year.
• And Amazon's earnings, not so good: Shares of the company were down to a two-year low on the news that the company reported a first-quarter loss attributed to "inflationary and supply chain pressures."
• Apple has a different earnings take: In today's fruit news, Apple reported some record-breaking services revenue figures that increased 17% from last year to reach $19.8 billion. There are a lot of reasons for the good quarter, including selling a lot of iPhones, computers and watches.
• Netflix made some layoffs: Some of Tudum's editorial staff found themselves laid off yesterday. Tudum, you might remember, is Netflix's in-house publication that only started five months ago. While Netflix said Tudum was not shutting down, it is moving forward without an editorial manager and at least seven others.

• Associate Director of Web and Digital Strategy at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, USA)
• Software Developer at GOVERNMENT BRANDS HOLDCO INC (Marblehead, MA, USA)
• Product Support Engineer at Veeva (Dublin, OH, USA)
• Azure Cloud Engineer at Medtelligent (Chicago, IL, USA)
• Programmer Analyst at Midway University (Midway, KY, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

Friday, more like Fri-yay! It's April 29, 2022, we're here with the latest headlines, but honestly our brains are mostly focused on all the hardcore fun we're going to have this weekend. Like doing laundry, napping, playing with our pets, reading a book for a while and sleeping in. I know, we're old and boring, deal with it. — Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Selling Tesla, getting a pretty tweet deal: Everyone's favorite social media-acquiring billionaire is selling $4 billion worth of Tesla stock and supposedly has a new Twitter CEO lined up. He also shared that he has the beginnings of a plan for how to monetize tweets.
• Wait, companies have to make money? Robinhood's stock price is going off a cliff as competition gets stiff and its business model is more and more skew-whiff.
• Home is where the benefits are: Airbnb employees received a fun surprise this week when the company told employees it was instituting a "live anywhere, work anywhere" philosophy. Want to work in the office? You got it. Want to keep working from home? No problem. Want to move to a foreign country and work from there? Yes, but only up to 90 days every year. We guess even they had to draw a line somewhere.

Startups and VC

Civilian drone manufacturer DJI and the Ukrainian and Russian governments continue their spat. Most recently, DJI suspends sales in Ukraine and Russia in an apparent attempt to appear more neutral.

We were particularly enthralled this morning by Jim Motavalli's feature article about bidirectional charging. In other words: If the power goes out, what does it take to power your house from your car's batteries?

Johnny’s in the basement, mixin’ up the medicine, I'm on the pavement, reading news with wonderment:

• They grow up so fast: That feeling when you really want to plow some cash into a startup, but they're just a little bit too young? Yeah, Techstars hates that too, and it debuts a new fund aimed at investing in earlier-stage companies.
• Do I look like I know what a JPEG is: Revise raises $3.5 million to give NFTs powers beyond just being a pretty picture.
• The Game of Phones: Vercom, who wants to be a competitor to the likes of Twilio and Sinch, acquires marketing automation MailerLite for $90 million.

Charged with billions in capital, meet the 9 startups developing tomorrow's batteries today

In his first TechCrunch+ article, Senior Climate Writer Tim De Chant examined nine startups optimizing EV battery technology that have collectively raised just over $4 billion in the last 18 months.

Improving tech like solid-state batteries, replacing specific chemical components and using hybrid chemistries are just a few of the techniques startups are deploying to unlock benefits like reducing weight while increasing range and safety.

“But cars and trucks won't be the only thing touched by the battery revolution that'll occur over the next few years,” he writes.

“Like many advances, better, lighter and longer-lasting batteries will drive changes in our lives that are both unexpected and welcome.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

We're going on a bit of a roller coaster ride in terms of good news versus not, so keep your hands and legs inside the newsletter, and you'll be good.

• Amazon's crown is slipping: In the kingdom of the public cloud, we note that Amazon is an "undisputed king," but Microsoft is poised to storm the castle. Amazon continues to hold court, controlling a third of the public cloud for years, but Microsoft has been quietly amassing a public cloud army that now accounts for 22%, up from 20% last year.
• And Amazon's earnings, not so good: Shares of the company were down to a two-year low on the news that the company reported a first-quarter loss attributed to "inflationary and supply chain pressures."
• Apple has a different earnings take: In today's fruit news, Apple reported some record-breaking services revenue figures that increased 17% from last year to reach $19.8 billion. There are a lot of reasons for the good quarter, including selling a lot of iPhones, computers and watches.
• Netflix made some layoffs: Some of Tudum's editorial staff found themselves laid off yesterday. Tudum, you might remember, is Netflix's in-house publication that only started five months ago. While Netflix said Tudum was not shutting down, it is moving forward without an editorial manager and at least seven others.

• Associate Director of Web and Digital Strategy at Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College (Hanover, New Hampshire, USA)
• Software Developer at GOVERNMENT BRANDS HOLDCO INC (Marblehead, MA, USA)
• Product Support Engineer at Veeva (Dublin, OH, USA)
• Azure Cloud Engineer at Medtelligent (Chicago, IL, USA)
• Programmer Analyst at Midway University (Midway, KY, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

It's Thursday, April 28, 2022, and Haje's blood pressure is slowly returning to what passes for normal after raging about Social Security numbers for a few minutes. Look, it's hard to get used to the quirks and foibles of a new country, OK? Nobody tell him about how healthcare works in this country, please; we'd never hear the end of it.

In other news, TechCrunch has a shiny new fintech newsletter launching on Sunday. Sign up today so you don't miss it this weekend! The third ep of our crypto and blockchain podcast, "Chain Reaction," is out today, so fill your ears with the dulcet tones of Lucas and Anita's calming voices.

Friday tomorrow, woohoo! – Christine and Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Twitter admits it overcounted accounts: Hey guess what? Twitter announced its first-quarter earnings today. And it didn't count right, revealing that it was reporting more users than it really had — by nearly 2 million — something Sarah points out is "a predicament that may have encouraged the company to more seriously consider its acceptance of Elon Musk's proposal to take the company private in a $44 billion deal." Meanwhile, Alex looked into what the acquisition could mean for Twitter’s advertising revenue.
• Death and taxes are indeed certain: It's not every day that we get to quote Ben Franklin in a story, but in this case, it's tied to technology making it easier for us to do things like pay our taxes. To that point, mobile tax-filing app Taxfix brought in a $220 million round to become a unicorn. Taxes are not always easy, so it's good to have someone who knows what to do. We like how CEO Martin Ott put it, "We've hacked the brain of a tax accountant into codes."
• There's a Google of Russia: Its name is Yandex, and it's selling its media division to, get this, a company called VKontakte, which is considered "the local Facebook equivalent." Not sure it gets better than that. This is news Natasha was following for a month now, and she reports the sale was fallout from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which resulted in many companies reassessing their media assets.

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Startups and VC

One of our favorite things about putting the Daily Crunch together is that we get to cheer on our colleagues and read their fantastic work. Today, it's a Kyle-o-rama. He wrote about how Synthesis AI raised $17 million to create synthetic data to improve computer vision and how payroll provider Symmetrical.ai raised $18.5 million to make employee payouts smoother. CommandBar landed $19 million to continue creating a search-and-browse plugin for web apps, and Deepset raised $14 million to help companies build natural-language processing apps. Kyle, your fingers must be exhausted — go treat yourself to a cup of coffee and a round of baseball or something.

We love Christine's story of Lemon Perfect's investor journey with the queen bee: Two years after Lemon Perfect was spotted in Beyoncé’s limo, the superstar is now a backer.

Also! We kicked off a series of pitch deck teardowns, and we are looking for startups that want to have their pitch decks reviewed. Get involved!

More news than you can shake a cap table at:

• Shuffle off your mortal oil: BlocPower wants to evict fossil fuels one building at a time, replacing them with greener alternatives.
• Wuthering Writes: Just when you thought you had learned to ignore marketing copy, Movable Ink comes along with customized marketing content and a $55 million sack of cash to build a content-generating AI.
• If you want it done properly, you gotta do it your shelf: Oware is streamlining Pakistan’s supply chain, powered by a $3.3 million seed round.
• Without a car in the world: Post-pandemic, used car platforms are booming, and Spotawheel just raised €100 million. It is active in Poland and Greece and about to launch in Romania.
• More vrooms, less fumes: Dat Bike is the creator of Vietnam’s first domestic electric motorbike, and we are a little bit in love with the cafe-racer styling.

GV's Frederique Dame on product-market fit: 'You have one chance at a good experience'

In a fireside chat at TechCrunch Early Stage, Frederique Dame, an investing partner at GV who previously led product and engineering teams at Uber, Yahoo and Smugmug, shared her thoughts about product-market fit.

Dame addressed several issues, including the need to collect customer data as early as possible, strategies for iterating and testing without tapping engineering resources, and, notably, why founders should make themselves vulnerable when pitching investors:

“Trust me with what you don't know or what's not working” she said, “because once we invest, we're going to have to work on this stuff anyway.”

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

Get your popcorn ready: We already talked about Google and Facebook in the Top 3, so let's start off this section with a little bit of Amazon. The company launched its movie rental service in India, with over 40 original and co-produced shows and movies that will enable customers to get early access to both Indian and foreign movies.

Rounding up some earnings: Today's earnings are brought to you by the letter "T," which rhymes with "P," and that spells Peacock, which added 4 million paid subscribers. Meta’s metaverse is not doing so hot, but Facebook gained users.

Ac(quisi)tion news: It looks like Microsoft will be adding another company to its family. Activision Blizzard shareholders voted to approve the sale. Meanwhile, Hackerone acquired PullRequest, a YC-backed company that will give the bug bounty company some code-review skills.

Judge sides with Elon Musk: He is probably going to win with the Twitter deal, but he can definitely put a checkmark in the "win" category here. A Delaware judge ruled in his favor following a lawsuit brought by Tesla shareholders that accused Musk of coercing Tesla's board into buying SolarCity back in 2016.

Oh Snap!: Our reporters were busy covering Snap today in assorted stories we will bullet below. We would like to highlight that it created a new gadget that will have you forgetting what a selfie stick is. Pixy, Snap's mini drone, is your camera when you don't have anyone else to hold your phone. Also:

• Snap offers Lens Cloud for developers
• New in-app AR shopping tools for retailers
• Snapchat adds new assistive devices for bitmoji avatars
• Snap and Live Nation come together on AR experiences at concerts, festivals
• Snapchat's new 'Director Mode' will have you becoming a video creator in no time

• Product Support Engineer at Veeva (Dublin, OH, USA)
• Azure Cloud Engineer at Medtelligent (Chicago, IL, USA)
• Programmer Analyst at Midway University (Midway, KY, USA)
• Tech Infrastructure Architect / DevOps at Opolis (Denver, CO, USA)
• Senior Web Developer, Department of Advancement (R0004541) at Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, NC, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.