When Christian Lawless founded Conversion Capital in 2015, fintech was only starting to take off. But Lawless, who started the venture firm after serving in leadership positions in capital markets at Lehman Brothers and Barclays, had a vision that financial services infrastructure would be unbundled as companies moved critical operating infrastructure to the cloud. Lawless […]
Latest Technology News Tech Crunch
Conversion Capital locks down its biggest fund ever to back early-stage fintech and infrastructure startups
Cloud
Nura brings its killer audio tech to a pair of pro earbuds
Few consumer electronics categories matured as quickly as wireless earbuds. We went from the first good implementation of the technology to near ubiquity, seemingly overnight. Suddenly a good pair is cheap and they seem to be everywhere. It’s precisely for this reason that it’s become nearly impossible to distinguish yourself from the masses of companies […]
Gadgets
Democrats ‘exploring’ legislation to protect data in reproductive health apps
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Tuesday that Democrats are considering the introduction of legislation that could protect the abortion rights of citizens. Notably, her letter addressed to Democrats pointed out that the legislation would also work on securing user data of reproductive apps. “Our Caucus has been exploring avenues to protect the […]
Apps
Mukesh Ambani steps down from Reliance Jio, son named chairman
Akash Ambani, the eldest son of Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani, will replace his father as the chairman of Reliance’s digital empire Jio in what analysts view as a leadership transition in one of Asia’s wealthiest families. Reliance Jio said in an exchange filing that Mukesh Ambani has resigned from his director role at the unit, […]
Asia
Tesla veterans’ Industrial Next picks up $12M to automate EV production
Elon Musk is unabashed about his obsession with manufacturing. Over the years, Tesla has gradually gained recognition in the manufacturing world through improving its production quality. Now two Tesla veterans want to share their smart factory know-how to other automakers through a nascent startup. Industrial Next, founded by Allen Pan, who was Tesla’s autonomous factory […]
Artificial Intelligence
Rocket Lab launches NASA’s CAPSTONE satellite on its scouting mission for a lunar space station
NASA’s CAPSTONE mission, which will chart a new orbit around the Moon which will hopefully be used for a future crewed lunar space station, is underway after a successful launch on Tuesday morning. Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle delivered the CAPSTONE satellite, which is roughly the size of a large microwave oven, to Earth orbit […]
Aerospace
Egyptian healthtech startup Vezeeta cuts 10% of 500-person staff
Vezeeta, a healthtech startup operating in the Middle East and Africa, reportedly laid off about 10% of its staff last week. The number of affected employees isn’t known; however, multiple sources who posted the news on LinkedIn, including affected employees, revealed that up to 50 people were let go. Vezeeta has almost 500 employees, according to […]
Africa
Google launches Advanced API Security to protect APIs from growing threats
Google today announced a preview of Advanced API Security, a new product headed to Google Cloud that’s designed to detect security threats as they relate to APIs. Built on Apigee, Google’s platform for API management, the company says that customers can request access starting today. Short for “application programming interface,” APIs are documented connections between […]
Apps
Speechmatics raises $62M for its inclusive approach to speech-to-text AI
Last week I wrote about an AI startup that’s building technology that can alter, in real time, the accent of someone’s speech. But what if the AI goal instead is to make it possible for people speaking in whatever way they do, to be understood just as they are, and to remove some of the […]
Apps
India delays strict new VPN rules by 3 months
India will give VPN providers and cloud service operators an additional three months to comply with new rules that require they maintain names and addresses of their customers and their IP addresses, giving some relief to firms as many scramble to follow the new guidelines and some explore the option of leaving the South Asian […]
Asia
Watch Rocket Lab launch NASA’s CAPSTONE mission to the moon live
After repeated delays, the microwaved oven-sized CubeSat known as CAPSTONE may finally start its long journey to the moon. With this launch, NASA aims to begin the first chapter of its ambitious Artemis program, and lay the groundwork for what would be a first in human history: an orbiting crewed platform around the moon. Before […]
Space
Google Cloud’s new sustainability platform aims to bring enterprise climate goals down to earth
If you ask most executives if they want to do the right thing by the planet, chances are they are going to say yes, even if they don’t know exactly what that involves. Some companies could exaggerate their intentions in a process known as “greenwashing,” but companies with more honorable motives need tools to help […]
Climate
Waymo, UPS, others pressure Gov. Newsom to allow autonomous trucking in California
Waymo, Aurora, UPS and Luminar are among a group of 34 autonomous vehicle developers, California business organizations, and automotive and logistics companies that have signed an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom asking him to revisit the California Department of Motor Vehicles’s 2015 prohibition on the operation of autonomous trucks in the state. California began […]
Automotive
Degreed’s co-founder is back at the company he left…with the startup he built
Edtech up-skilling platform Degreed has acquired Learn In, which creates talent resource hubs for employers to better spin up education services for their teams. While we’d nearly always cover a notable acquisition in a relevant tech sector, the extra interesting bit here is a personnel one: both companies were co-founded by the same entrepreneur, David […]
Education
These four iconic European founders plan to kick the asses of VCs who never started a company
Until recently, Taavet Hinrikus, co-founder of Wise, and Sten Tamkivi, co-founder of Teleport, had banded together as a sort of “mini Angel brand” known as “Taavet+Sten.” Tamkivi has done around 50 angel deals, Hinrikus has, reportedly, done as many as 150. But they were effectively pooling their personal capital as angel investors. However, evidently this […]
Europe
Daily Crunch: Truth Social says federal grand jury probe could block its planned SPAC merger
Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.
TC
Max Q: Acronyms rule everything around me
Welcome back to Max Q. In this issue: NASA sees a future for nuclear energy on the moon; Epsilon3 closes funding for space industry OS; News from AWS, SpaceX and more
Space
Robinhood almost imploded during the GameStop meme stock chaos
The House Committee on Financial Services released a report late last week offering a harrowing glimpse inside Robinhood during the frenzy around Gamestop stock early last year. The stock trading and investing app was blindsided by the surge in interest from the first big “meme stock” after Redditors and other retail investors rallied around $GME […]
Apps
At NASA’s Lunabotics competition, students design mining robots for the moon
If this year’s Lunabotics competition is any indication, there’s a bright future ahead for the surface of the moon — and below it. The NASA-hosted challenge recently saw 39 teams of university students building lunar mining robots, which were tasked with digging up rocks in simulated regolith (the material making up the lunar surface) at […]
Aerospace
Google backs Progcap, a startup delivering working capital to small retailers in India
Google has invested in Progcap, an Indian startup that provides working capital to small and medium-sized businesses, the firms said Tuesday, making a new push into a category that has attracted the attention of Facebook and Amazon in recent years. The investment is part of a $40 million fresh funding Progcap has raised, it said. […]
Asia