Day: September 13, 2019

After being courted by seemingly every major entertainment and streaming company, Bad Robot has signed an exclusive deal with WarnerMedia. While the production company — led by Star Wars director J.J. Abrams and his wife/co-CEO Katie McGrath — was already working with Warner Bros. to create shows like “Castle Rock” and “Westworld,” this new deal […]

For decades space has been the play place for world powers, but the advent of (relatively) cheap and frequent rocket launches has opened it up for new business opportunities. But it’s still hard as hell, as early adopters of this orbital economy Tess Hatch of Bessemer Ventures, Swarm’s Sara Spangelo and OneWeb’s Adrian Steckel can […]

YouTube will no longer allow paid views and advertising to influence its YouTube Music Charts, the company announced this morning. Instead, it will calculate its rankings based only on view counts coming from organic plays. In addition, it’s changing its methodology for reporting on 24-hour record debuts to also only count views from organic sources, […]

In November 2020, America will go to the polls to vote in perhaps the most consequential election in a generation. The winner will lead the country amid great social, economic and ecological unrest. The 2020 election will be a referendum on both the current White House and the direction of the country at large. Nearly […]

We here at TechCrunch love a good flashback, like when Sebastian Thrun’s puppy, Charlie, was in the spotlight during Thrun’s fireside chat at Disrupt SF a few years ago. Sebastian Thrun (Udacity) at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2017 Since then, the serial entrepreneur and inventor seems to have doubled down on his vision of the future […]

Apple is changing how subscriptions work on its App Store. Before, any lapse in payment could cut off the customer from being able to use the app’s subscription-based features — and make it more difficult for the developer to reacquire that customer’s business in the future. Now, Apple says developers will have the option to […]

As biotechnology becomes more central to new innovations in healthcare, material science and manufacturing, one of the nation’s research hubs is getting a new accelerator called Petri to launch companies focused on the commercialization of new technologies. Backed by the Boston-based venture capital firm Pillar, Petri has a three-year $15 million commitment to back companies […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate and Alex were back to cover a lot of late-stage news, which they rounded up with some early-stage notes toward the end. As a reminder, come check out the show at Disrupt SF if you […]

The best medicine against online disinformation is an informed society that’s thinking critically. The problem is there are no shortcuts to universal education. Enter Finnish Public Broadcasting Company, Yle, which is hoping to harness the engagement power of gamification to accelerate awareness and understanding of troll tactics and help more people spot malicious internet fakes. […]

While tech giants like Google and Amazon build and invest in a multitude of artificial intelligence applications to grow their businesses, a startup has raised a big round of funding to help those that are not technology businesses by nature also jump into the AI fray. Element AI, the very well-funded, well-connected Canadian startup that […]