Thousands of Chinese users suddenly found themselves unable to access Clubhouse on early Monday evening as the country prepared to start the week-long Lunar New Year holiday. Inside WeChat groups, Clubhouse users rushed to report the situation and help each other with ways to get back onto the red hot Read more…
Phable, a three-year-old healthtech startup that is serving patients with chronic illnesses in India, has raised $12 million in a new financing round as it looks to scale in the world’s second most populated nation. Manipal Hospitals, one of the largest healthcare providers in India, led the Series A round Read more…
We often hear about companies working to improve the customer experience, but for IT their customers are the company’s employees. Nexthink, a late stage startup that wants to help IT serve its internal constituents better, announced a $180 million Series D today on a healthy $1.1 billion valuation. The firm, Read more…
Elon Musk notified the world that he would be donating $100 million to pursue new technologies for carbon capture, methods through which carbon dioxide can be actively extracted from the atmosphere as a means to help stave off climate change. As TechCrunch reported in January when he made the tweet, Read more…
Boss Ken Murphy has asked Chancellor Rishi Sunak for a “level playing field” when it comes to tax. Source: BBC
BBC Click’s Lara Lewington talks to the co-founder of Wikipedia Jimmy Wales. Source: BBC
Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com could face greater scrutiny from state regulators. Source: BBC
VerSe Innovation, the parent firm of popular news and entertainment app Dailyhunt and short video app Josh, said on Monday it has raised over $100 million as part of a Series H financing round from Qatar Investment Authority and Glade Brook Capital Partners. The announcement follows another $100 million+ investment Read more…
ByteDance is bringing its battle with archrival Tencent to the court at a time when the Chinese government moves to curve the power of the country’s internet behemoths. The Beijing Intellectual Property Court has permitted a ByteDance lawsuit brought against Tencent to proceed, a ByteDance spokesperson confirmed with TechCrunch. Upstart Read more…
A growing number of firms are using artificial intelligence to pass or fail jobseekers. Source: BBC
Chinese users have been joining Clubhouse to discuss Uighurs and Taiwan without being censored. Source: BBC
Harry Stebbings, the podcaster-turned-VC, is stepping down as a partner of Stride.VC, the London-based venture capital firm he co-founded with Fred Destin, formerly of Accel. In a series of tweets, Destin said that Stebbings won’t be involved in Stride’s second fund (though he’ll remain a partner in fund one), and Read more…
Amazon has been accused of paying less business rates tax than British bricks and mortar retailers. Source: BBC
On Friday, the National Labor Relations Board rejected Amazon’s attempt to delay a union vote set to begin on Monday, February 8. For many, the online giant’s bid was seen as a stalling tactic, including a motion to demand votes take place in-person — a clear health risk, as the Read more…
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our <a href=”https://forms.gle/k4Ji2Ch7zdrn7o2p6”>survey of VCs in Belfast and Northern Ireland will capture how things are faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know Read more…
As Jeff Bezos prepares to step aside from the e-commerce juggernaut, we look at Amazon’s success in charts. Source: BBC
David Rowntree warned if streaming is not reformed it could be “terminal” for the music industry. Source: BBC
Some TikTok creators have been giving investment advice in the wake of the GameStop frenzy. Source: BBC
We crawled into an abandoned school bus, trespassed through dilapidated hallways, dodged fleeting thunderstorms and wandered through empty streets of Chinatown late into the evening. For two summery weeks, I couldn’t have been happier. New York City was in lockdown. I’d been quarantined in my dinky apartment, disheartened and restless. Read more…
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Read more…