Latest and Hotest Technology Updates

Good morning, you wonderful specimens of humanity! It's Friday, and I'm writing this from the hammock in my sunny North Oakland garden, so life ain't all that bad. (I can only assume that WFH stands for Work From Hammock).

This weekend, earmark a bit of time to apply to our Startup Battlefield 200. It gives you the chance to exhibit your startup for free at TechCrunch Disrupt in October and win the $100,000 prize. Applications close August 5, so get cracking!

Have a good one, and see you next week! — Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• You're looking more chipper already: Brian has been following the CHIPS Act moving through the government process. Today, the CHIPS Act staved off last-minute attempts by the GOP House leadership to derail its passage and will be on its way to POTUS's desk next. On TC+, Haje wonders whether the passage of the CHIPS Act could launch another US startup renaissance.
• Like YouTube, but shorter: TikTok and Instagram Stories have been eating into YouTube's numbers, and the Google-owned giant isn't loving it. The video platform just made a creator tool available that can turn YouTube videos into Shorts in a matter of moments, Sarah reports.
• Another bite of the Apple: Apple's third-quarter profits were a mixed bag, but iPhone revenue bucked the trend (even as smartphone shipments are down globally), with a 3% year-over-year revenue jump, Brian reports. Apple's computer division took a 10% haircut compared to last year's performance.

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Startups and VC

It's all go, go, go in the world of insurance. Mary Ann reports that Lemonade acquired Metromile and promptly laid off about 20% of its staff. Makes sense, of course, in a world where there's probably a fair amount of administrative and operational overlap between the two companies, but it's always sad to say goodbye to beloved colleagues.

And don't miss Aria's piece about how the Exploration Company is developing a brand-new reusable orbital spacecraft. "The [space] exploration ecosystem is going to change dramatically in the probably next 10 to 15 years," co-founder and CEO Hélène Huby explained. "If you make it happen, you have a huge advantage of being one of the first in the market."

A few more nuggets to take you into the weekend:

• Taking the fun out of everything: A startup is charging $1.99 to write strings to feed into platforms like DALL-E, and I despair for humanity. Come on, that's half the fun! No thanks at all to Kyle for making me seethe with confused anger this afternoon. Jerk.
• Making it rain down in Africa: Zedcrest Capital, a firm known for its debt and equity capital markets investments but who recently started dabbling in venture investments, has launched a $10 million “emergency fund” for African startups, aimed at pre-Series A stage companies, Tage reports.
• Driving lessons for industrial vehicles: Polymath Robotics launches to bring plug-and-play autonomy software to any industrial vehicle, Kirsten reports.
• The more you learn: You know what, I've never read one of Devin's articles that didn't make me go, “Huh! I didn't know that!” Today, Shinkei Systems' AI-guided fish harvesting robot gave me that moment of delight.

All my apes gone: Legal disputes at the intersection of IP and NFTs

When Andy Warhol appropriated images of Campbell’s Soup in 1962, he was lucky: For a host of reasons, the company decided not to sue him for infringing its trademark.

One wonders how the situation would have played out 60 years later if Warhol had minted a series of NFTs with the iconic soup labels, however.

In her latest TC+ post, CORPlaw founder Kristen Corpion examined “the most interesting and important IP legal issues that are currently impacting the creation, transfer and use of NFTs,” including trademark infringement, the first sale doctrine and why Seth Green ended up paying a $100,000 premium to buy back his stolen Bored Ape.

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

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

It's never gonna give you up. It'll make an effort to never let you down. It probably won't run around and desert you. But TikTok may be considering a music service, report Aisha and Ivan in an article that unfortunately falls short of the mandatory quota of musical puns. Don't worry, folks, I'll talk to her about it.

Meanwhile, Annie reports that Kenya is contemplating giving Facebook a smack with the ban-hammer, after the country's National Cohesion and Integration Commission finds that the social media platform isn't doing enough to clear out hate speech.

• Is multimedia coming to Twitter?: Looks like the social media platform is testing letting you post images, videos, and GIFs  all in the same tweet, Ivan reports.
• We don't want your steeenking ads: Roku misses the mark on its quarterly results, and blames advertising slowdown for coming up short, Lauren reports.
• Bank balance goes down, shares go up: Amazon reported its earnings and ran at a $2 billion loss. Seems like stonks love that sort of thing, because the share price went up, reports Lauren.
• For you, special price. For you, it's double: Twitter Blue gets a price hike from $2.99 to $4.99 per month, reports Ivan.
• Where do you take someone after a “peekaboo” accident? To ICU: Instagram pretty much copied BeReal for its Dual camera feature, but kinda missed the point along the way, Amanda explains.
• Is there anything they can't do?: Video memes, maybe music soon (see above) and now TikTok begins testing HTML5 minigames with a handful of partners, Sarah reports.

• Web Applications Developer (Hybrid Remote/In-Person) at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA, USA)
• Senior Enterprise Applications Developer (Hybrid Remote/In-Person) 2 Positions at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA, USA)
• IT Project Manager Senior Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA)
• Fullstack Engineer at Resemble AI (United States)
• Head of Engineering at Arise (United States)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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Good morning, you wonderful specimens of humanity! It's Friday, and I'm writing this from the hammock in my sunny North Oakland garden, so life ain't all that bad. (I can only assume that WFH stands for Work From Hammock).

This weekend, earmark a bit of time to apply to our Startup Battlefield 200. It gives you the chance to exhibit your startup for free at TechCrunch Disrupt in October and win the $100,000 prize. Applications close August 5, so get cracking!

Have a good one, and see you next week! — Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• You're looking more chipper already: Brian has been following the CHIPS Act moving through the government process. Today, the CHIPS Act staved off last-minute attempts by the GOP House leadership to derail its passage and will be on its way to POTUS's desk next. On TC+, Haje wonders whether the passage of the CHIPS Act could launch another US startup renaissance.
• Like YouTube, but shorter: TikTok and Instagram Stories have been eating into YouTube's numbers, and the Google-owned giant isn't loving it. The video platform just made a creator tool available that can turn YouTube videos into Shorts in a matter of moments, Sarah reports.
• Another bite of the Apple: Apple's third-quarter profits were a mixed bag, but iPhone revenue bucked the trend (even as smartphone shipments are down globally), with a 3% year-over-year revenue jump, Brian reports. Apple's computer division took a 10% haircut compared to last year's performance.

Siemens Xcelerator

Sponsored by Siemens AG

Siemens Xcelerator is a single digital business platform to accelerate your digital transformation with speed, ease and scale.

Learn More

Startups and VC

It's all go, go, go in the world of insurance. Mary Ann reports that Lemonade acquired Metromile and promptly laid off about 20% of its staff. Makes sense, of course, in a world where there's probably a fair amount of administrative and operational overlap between the two companies, but it's always sad to say goodbye to beloved colleagues.

And don't miss Aria's piece about how the Exploration Company is developing a brand-new reusable orbital spacecraft. "The [space] exploration ecosystem is going to change dramatically in the probably next 10 to 15 years," co-founder and CEO Hélène Huby explained. "If you make it happen, you have a huge advantage of being one of the first in the market."

A few more nuggets to take you into the weekend:

• Taking the fun out of everything: A startup is charging $1.99 to write strings to feed into platforms like DALL-E, and I despair for humanity. Come on, that's half the fun! No thanks at all to Kyle for making me seethe with confused anger this afternoon. Jerk.
• Making it rain down in Africa: Zedcrest Capital, a firm known for its debt and equity capital markets investments but who recently started dabbling in venture investments, has launched a $10 million “emergency fund” for African startups, aimed at pre-Series A stage companies, Tage reports.
• Driving lessons for industrial vehicles: Polymath Robotics launches to bring plug-and-play autonomy software to any industrial vehicle, Kirsten reports.
• The more you learn: You know what, I've never read one of Devin's articles that didn't make me go, “Huh! I didn't know that!” Today, Shinkei Systems' AI-guided fish harvesting robot gave me that moment of delight.

All my apes gone: Legal disputes at the intersection of IP and NFTs

When Andy Warhol appropriated images of Campbell’s Soup in 1962, he was lucky: For a host of reasons, the company decided not to sue him for infringing its trademark.

One wonders how the situation would have played out 60 years later if Warhol had minted a series of NFTs with the iconic soup labels, however.

In her latest TC+ post, CORPlaw founder Kristen Corpion examined “the most interesting and important IP legal issues that are currently impacting the creation, transfer and use of NFTs,” including trademark infringement, the first sale doctrine and why Seth Green ended up paying a $100,000 premium to buy back his stolen Bored Ape.

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

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

It's never gonna give you up. It'll make an effort to never let you down. It probably won't run around and desert you. But TikTok may be considering a music service, report Aisha and Ivan in an article that unfortunately falls short of the mandatory quota of musical puns. Don't worry, folks, I'll talk to her about it.

Meanwhile, Annie reports that Kenya is contemplating giving Facebook a smack with the ban-hammer, after the country's National Cohesion and Integration Commission finds that the social media platform isn't doing enough to clear out hate speech.

• Is multimedia coming to Twitter?: Looks like the social media platform is testing letting you post images, videos, and GIFs  all in the same tweet, Ivan reports.
• We don't want your steeenking ads: Roku misses the mark on its quarterly results, and blames advertising slowdown for coming up short, Lauren reports.
• Bank balance goes down, shares go up: Amazon reported its earnings and ran at a $2 billion loss. Seems like stonks love that sort of thing, because the share price went up, reports Lauren.
• For you, special price. For you, it's double: Twitter Blue gets a price hike from $2.99 to $4.99 per month, reports Ivan.
• Where do you take someone after a “peekaboo” accident? To ICU: Instagram pretty much copied BeReal for its Dual camera feature, but kinda missed the point along the way, Amanda explains.
• Is there anything they can't do?: Video memes, maybe music soon (see above) and now TikTok begins testing HTML5 minigames with a handful of partners, Sarah reports.

• Web Applications Developer (Hybrid Remote/In-Person) at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA, USA)
• Senior Enterprise Applications Developer (Hybrid Remote/In-Person) 2 Positions at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA, USA)
• IT Project Manager Senior Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA)
• Fullstack Engineer at Resemble AI (United States)
• Head of Engineering at Arise (United States)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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

Why, hello there, and welcome back to another installment of the Daily Crunch! It's lovely to have you here with me. Also, give Freelance Whales a listen. I discovered the band when I was going to play a different (also excellent) song, Freelance, for a friend. Gotta love a lucky coincidence. This is also, incidentally, how I discovered the band Queensrÿche — I was looking for some Freddie Mercury, but ended up with a new heavy metal band to love. What's your favorite accidental discovery?

Oh! And did you know — our Found podcast debuted its new mini-sodes, where they check in with past guests to see how founder life is going. In the first installment, Maggie Stamets speaks with our very first guest: Iman Abuzeid from Incredible Health, which helps nurses get connected to better jobs and career growth opportunities.

Okay, enough with the asides, we have serious tech bidniss news to share. Let's goo~oooooo — Haje

The TechCrunch Top 3

• Battleground: 0. Indian government: 1: It was unclear why the Indian government had ordered to block Battlegrounds Mobile India, Manish reports, but whatever the reason, Google yanked the game from the Play Store in India.
• The free-fall descent of Instagram: Amanda takes a closer look at Zuck's plans for Instagram and discovers that he wants to double the amount of “recommended content.” Suffice it to say that neither Amanda nor the author of this newsletter are effusive with enthusiasm.
• Dude, where's my truck: Even as Amazon starts delivering parcels with Rivian-made electric delivery vans, Kirsten reports that electric truck, SUV and van maker Rivian is starting the process of laying off 6% of its workforce.

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Startups and VC

Fly.io co-founder and CEO Kurt Mackey says that developers don't really understand the term “edge computing,” Ron reports. Today the company announced a $25 million Series B that it closed in June.

Co-founder of Evabot Rabi Gupta argues there's "a lot of clutter" in the corporate gifting space. He argues that many vendors do little more than send company-branded swag like T-shirts and thermoses, which don't exactly foster loyalty, Kyle reports. The company announced that it raised just under $11 million to make corporate gifting less of a mess.

We are now reaching a sort of tipping point where we will see many more commercial applications of natural language processing hit the market. A gold rush has begun of startups trying to build on this technology, with an arms race developing between the large language model providers, Mike reports.

Go on then, a few more:

• Development as a service: Raising $45 million at a $3.2 billion valuation, Retool is aiming to make custom software development as easy as buying premade software, Ingrid reported today.
• Boop, you've got money: South African startup Qwili raises $1.2 million to scale both its app and its low-cost NFC-enabled smartphone called Qwili Pula. It enables merchants to send and receive payments, reports Tage.
• It's a deal! It's a steal! It's the sale of the century. In fact, Nick, I think I'll keep it: DealCart announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in pre-seed funding just three months after their operational launch. Catherine reports that the company is focused on price-conscious Pakistani consumers.
• An index fund for houses: Nada is rolling out a property portfolio you can buy shares in, creating a de facto index fund for houses, Anita reports. The company aims to raise $75 million from retail investors by offering funds focused on new cities.
• Clickety-clack: Frederic got excited about Keychron's first Alice-style mechanical keyboard, concluding it was worth the wait.

Pitch Deck Teardown: Alto Pharmacy's $200 million Series E deck

If your company raises a $200 million Series E, it’s fair to debate whether you can still call it a startup.

Still: Convincing investors to part with enough money to produce your own sequel to “The Gray Man” is an impressive feat, which is why we were eager to review the deck that helped Alto Pharmacy close such a large round.

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

Read More

Big Tech Inc.

Instagram announced today that it will start prompting a random assortment of people on its platform in the United States to participate in an optional survey about their race and ethnicity, Aisha reports. The company says the survey will help it to better understand different experiences people may have on Instagram in order to ensure that the platform is fair and inclusive for all users.

According to a report, developers on the western side of London, U.K., may be prevented from working on larger multitenant properties due to the state of the electricity grid, and strains caused by nearby data centers, Paul reports. Bad news for people who had hopes that London might hit its growth trajectory of 65,000 new homes per year.

Yesterday, Ford reported $40+ billion in revenue, a 50% increase from the same period last year. The company also reported it was building 14,000 electric vehicles per month. Wall Street was positively surprised, sending shares up by as much as 6% in after-hours trading, Rebecca reports.

Grab a few more, why dontcha:

• Google Pixel Bud review: It's not hard to imagine the Google Pixel Buds Pro really impressing, Brian writes, but he’s disappointed that they seem to be a few years behind the curve.
• We've Already Come Too Far to End This Now: We are beyond psyched to see what interactive gaming company Immersive Gamebox will do with the plans it has to build a Squid Game experience with Netflix, Lauren reports.
• Sing me the money: Aisha reports that Snap launched a creator fund, which will start awarding independent musicians up to $100,000 per month.
• Skipping a generation: In China, smartphone sales drop sharply, reports Brian. Virtually all of the major players took a big hit compared to this time last year. Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi and Huawei all saw double-digit drops from Q2 2021.
• You get a lick of paint, too: Gmail rolls out its latest Material You redesign and search improvements to all users, Ivan writes.
• Meta as well face it, you're addicted to ads: For the first time in its history, Meta posts its first quarterly revenue decline, Amanda reports.
• Pass the gapple sauce: Apple has hired a 20-year veteran of supercar maker Lamborghini to work on the tech company's not-so-secret electric autonomous vehicle program, Kirsten writes.

• Senior Enterprise Applications Developer (Hybrid Remote/In-Person) 2 Positions at MiraCosta College (Oceanside, CA, USA)
• IT Project Manager Senior Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA)
• Fullstack Engineer at Resemble AI (United States)
• Head of Engineering at Arise (United States)
• Lead Developer, Collections - Digital at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, NY, USA)

See more jobs on CrunchBoard

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