To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for June 25, 2021. We have a great block of startup news and Amazon coverage for you today. But before we get into all of that, […]
Podcast downloads have boomed over the last year, and Kayak co-founder and tech entrepreneur Paul English became an avid, daily listener. But anyone who loves podcasts knows that podcast discovery can be challenging. Even the top streaming apps like Apple Podcasts and Spotify lack robust discovery tools — so last week, when Spotify acquired the […]
After launching five years ago in the United States, Apple’s search advertising service finally arrived in mainland China this week. The feature, called Apple Search Ads, lets developers bid on an advertising slot based on users’ keyword search in the App Store, similar to how Google search ads work. JPMorgan previously estimated the giant’s annual […]
It’s hard to keep up with the fundraising spree in China’s autonomous driving industry these days. Guangzhou- and California-based robotaxi company WeRide, which counts Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance as one of its strategic investors, has raised over $600 million in just under five months from its Series B and C financing rounds. The four-year-old upstart said in […]
Chinese merchants selling on Amazon are having a moment. The scruffy exporters are used to roaming about suburban factory areas and dealing with constant cash flow strain, but suddenly they find themselves having coffee with top Chinese venture capital firms and investment representatives from internet giants, who come with big checks to hunt down the […]
MFast founders Phan Thanh Long and Phan Thanh Vinh MFast, a mobile app that lets Vietnamese users in remote areas access financial services, announced it has raised a $1.5 million pre-Series A today. The round was led by Do Ventures, with participation from JAFCO Asia. Launched in 2019 by fintech company Digipay, MFast says it […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Welcome back to the Daily Crunch for Friday, June 18. Congratulations! You’ve made it to the end of the week without Alexander, who will return bright-eyed on Monday. TechCrunch has the day […]
Ford has two electric vehicles in the pipeline — the E-Transit cargo van and F-150 Lighting Pro —aimed at commercial customers. Now, the automaker is rounding out its future EV commercial business with the acquisition of battery management and fleet monitoring software startup Electriphi. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Ford is betting that the […]
There have been plenty of pop-ups over the years, but tomorrow Google’s first store opens in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood. The brick and mortar model finds the company joining peers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and even Amazon, all of whom have a retail presence in Manhattan, including several just around the corner from Google’s new digs. […]