Tech News

Joe White will also act as consul-general to San Francisco when he takes on the role later this year. Source: BBC

An executive order was just issued from the White House regarding “the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Government.” Leaving aside the meritless presumption of the government’s own trustworthiness and that it is the software that has trust issues, the order is almost entirely hot air. The EO is like Read more…

Joe White MBE — a general partner of Entrepreneur First, a Greylock-backed early-stage deep tech fund — is leaving after being appointed as Her Majesty’s Consul-General, San Francisco, and Technology Envoy to the United States in a new, combined and powerful, role for the U.K. government. One of the key Read more…

Facial recognition software is getting better at dealing with masks, making the tech more versatile. Source: BBC

100,000 people are donating their smartphone power to scientists to help research into Covid-19. Source: BBC

Online shoppers are being warned of the risks of cyber-fraud during the festive season. Source: BBC

The Trump administration accuses the tech firm of favouring foreign workers in its hiring policy. Source: BBC

Google fires a leading researcher, Stripe launches a new banking service and WarnerMedia shakes up the theatrical business model. This is your Daily Crunch for December 3, 2020. The big story: Google fires co-lead of its Ethical AI team Timnit Gebru, a leading researcher in the field of ethics and Read more…

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back with not an Equity Shot or Dive of Monday, this is just the regular show! So, we got back to our roots by looking at a huge number Read more…

Esports One, a startup bringing the fantasy approach to esports, is announcing that it has raised an additional $4 million in funding. When I first wrote about Esports One in April, co-founder and COO Sharon Winter described it as the first “all-in-one fantasy platform” in the esports world, allowing you Read more…

Colton Pace Contributor Colton Pace is an investor at Fika Ventures. He previously held roles investing at Vulcan Capital and Madrona Venture Labs. More posts by this contributor A COVID-19 resilience test for B2B companies Like many things in life, building great businesses is all about timing. We’ve seen multibillion Read more…

Just a few weeks back, we learned that Apple would be launching an “App Store Small Business Program” that would reduce its fees from 30% to 15% for developers earning less than $1 million per year from the App Store. That program is starting to roll out now, with Apple Read more…

Fintech startup Stripe has announced an ambitious new product today called Stripe Treasury. The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their customers — the service is invite-only for now. This is part of Read more…

Realizing that modern, complex businesses can no longer be adequately managed using spreadsheet-style programs, the founders of Pigment decided there had to be a better solution. Their business forecasting platform has now raised a substantial Series A of $25.9 million, led by Blossom Capital. Also participating was New York-based FirstMark Read more…

San Francisco-based construction startup Versatile is announcing today that it has raised a $20 million Series A. The round was led by Insight Partners and Entree Capital, along with existing investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Root Ventures and Conductive Ventures. The round follows $8.5 million in funding, including a Read more…

Bizay, a marketplace for small-to-medium-sized businesses allowing them to create highly customized products (such as merchandise), has raised a $38.6 million (€32 million) funding round. The Series C financing round was co-led by investors Indico Capital and the European Investment Bank, with “strong support” from Iberis Capital and existing investors Read more…

Ultimate.ai, a virtual customer service agent builder, has closed a $20 million Series A round of funding, led by Omers Ventures with participation from Felicis Ventures and existing investors HV Capital, and Maki.vc — bringing its total raised to date to $25M+. The European startup’s flagship claim for the data-ingesting Read more…