Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, along with TechCrunch’s Neesha Tambe. Neesha is one of our best and is the leading light of the Startup Battlefield event at our yearly Disrupt conference. That made her the perfect guest — that’s precisely what we discussed on the show today. From a tight […]
UK’s AI strategy is ‘ambitious’ but needs funding to match, says Faculty’s Marc Warner
The U.K. published its first-ever national AI strategy this week. The decade-long commitment by the government to levelling up domestic artificial intelligence capabilities — by directing resource and attention toward skills, talent, compute power and data access — has been broadly welcomed by the country’s tech ecosystem, as you’d expect. But there is a question […]
Hungryroot co-founder’s new venture, Noops, a plant-based pudding startup, raises another $2M
Noops is going after the $50 billion snack foods market and plans to take on yogurt next.
Amazon is reportedly planning a wall-mounted Echo with a 15-inch display
Amazon is working on a number of new devices including an Echo with a 15-inch wall-mounted display, a soundbar, new Echo Auto technology and wearables, which could appear as early as next week.
Operations observability platform Avenue launches with $4M
Avenue is building a command center for operations teams.
Amazon assembles video streaming apps to fight with Netflix and Disney in India
Amazon has launched Prime Video Channels in India, allowing its customers to subscribe to eight streaming services including Discovery+ and Mubi from one hub (Prime Video website or app), the latest in a series of efforts by the U.S. giant to win customers in the South Asian nation. The new offering makes it easier for […]
As remote work becomes normal, Ukio raises $9M for premium long-term rentals
Startups have spent the last decade trying to offer every variation of Airbnb that they can imagine. But Ukio thinks it has found a way through the ever-growing tangle of housing rental competitors — and regulators — right as remote work becomes the norm. It offers rentals of one month or longer, featuring a turnkey […]
Latin America finds a champion in SoftBank Group International CEO Marcelo Claure
Since first announcing it was planting a stake in the ground in the region in early 2019, SoftBank — from its own balance sheet, it says — has plugged more than $5 billion into the region, and it expects that number to top $8 billion by year’s end.
Nintendo announced that Chris Pratt will play Mario on the big screen
It’s a me, Burt Macklin! Chris Pratt is voice acting as Mario in a feature film that Nintendo is working on with Illumination, the studio that made “Despicable Me.” Also, they didn’t tell us at Nintendo Direct who the new “Smash” fighter is. But we can’t be too disappointed, because apparently Anya Taylor-Joy is Peach, Jack […]
Daily Crunch: Cellino wins TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 2021
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