Dailyhunt buys Magzter: VerSe Innovation, which owns Indian news aggregator Dailyhunt, is buying New York-headquartered Magzter. Magzter is a digital newsstand app that offers all-you-can-eat access to magazines, and has more than a million paying subscribers. Read More
AirChat is an interesting social experiment: AirChat, a new project by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder exec Brian Norgard, is a neat blend of Twitter and Clubhouse. Amanda Silberling takes an in-depth look at the app, how large it stands to become, and if it can avoid the fate of Clubhouse. Read More
Master finance basics with Mercury's VP of finance, Dan Kang, at TechCrunch Early Stage: Early Stage is next week, and I am beyond stoked to get my backside to Boston for the event. See you soon! Read More
If you don't want scathing reviews, make better products: The Humane AI pin is a neat idea, but most reviewers agree that it doesn't live up to its potential in its first iteration, and it's also rather expensive. However, YouTuber Marques Brownlee's critique of the device was criticized for being too harsh and potentially damaging to the company. Brownlee does not agree, of course. Still the saga makes for an interesting look at the culture of toxic positivity on the Internet, and who is allowed to air their criticisms. Read More
Orbex wants to help the EU retain space capabilities: There are several space launch companies today, but the EU's sovereign launch abilities are sadly lacking. UK-based small launch startup Orbex wants to fill that void, and it has just raised $20.7 million in a Series D to do so. The company said it may make larger rockets in the future, too. Read More
Bellwether wants to ring the alarm bell when the weather goes bad: AI is useful for scanning lots of data and finding stuff that humans might miss or can't simply find. Bellwether, an Alphabet X project, wants to use AI to find wildfires and floods, quickly, which sounds like a pretty ideal use case for the tech. Very cool and much needed. Read More
Waymo robotaxis get stuck, block SF onramp: While zipping around San Francisco, seven Waymo robotaxis got bamboozled by a road closure and traffic cones, causing them to get stuck and block a freeway onramp. The saga stopped traffic for a bit. Stuff like this is going to keep happening, but it doesn't bother me at all because robotaxis are hella cool. Please bring the traffic cone issue to Providence. Read More
How climate tech startups can avoid the commercial valley of death: For many climate startups, coming up with an amazing piece of tech is not the battle; getting it into mass production is. The usual financiers of such first-of-its-kind facilities usually balk at the novelty of it. Climate nonprofit Prime Coalition is hoping to help solve that issue with a new program, Trellis Climate. Read More
