This startup believes mobile apps for businesses should work more like consumer apps

Have you noticed the massive gap between consumer and business apps on your phone? While consumer apps are both beautifully designed and easy to use, business apps are simply painful to use. A European startup is developing a suite of B2B apps that are designed for mobile first because phones have become the main computers … Read more

Accel earnestly rethinks early-stage startup investing in India

By any benchmark, Accel is among the top venture firms in India. With nearly two dozen Indian unicorn startups, including several category leaders, Accel’s track record speaks for itself. But yet, the partners leading the firm’s early-stage accelerator program, called Atoms, are uncharacteristically introspective about their learnings and the changes they have been implementing to … Read more

PayPal backs Indonesian insurance startup Qoala in $47M funding

PayPal Ventures’ latest investment is in an Indonesian startup that provides personal insurance products covering a variety of risks, including accidents, phone screen damage, and ticket cancellations. Qoala has secured $47 million in a new round co-led by PayPal Ventures and MassMutual Ventures, the five-year-old startup said Wednesday. MUFG Innovation Partners, Omidyar Network as well … Read more

Synctera is the latest banking-as-a-service startup to lay off staff

Banking-as-a-service startup (BaaS) Synctera has conducted a restructuring that has resulted in a staff reduction, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. While Synctera did not share how many employees were impacted, a report in Fintech Business Weekly pegs the number to be about 17 people, or about 15% of the company. Doing the math, that means … Read more

Bankrupt EV startup Arrival sold its assets to Canoo

Bankrupt commercial EV startup Arrival has sold some of its assets, including advanced manufacturing equipment to Canoo, another struggling startup trying to build and sell electric vehicles. The acquisition, which was touted as a cost-saving measure that will reduce capital expenditures by 20%, comes as Canoo struggles to move beyond prototypes toward commercial production. Canoo … Read more

FTX estate sells majority stake in startup Anthropic for $884 million

In this photo illustration, Anthropic logo is seen on a smartphone screen. Pavlo Gonchar | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images Bankrupt crypto exchange FTX has struck a deal with a consortium of buyers to sell the majority of its stake in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic for $884 million, according to a filing submitted … Read more

Another autonomous vehicle startup shutters, Zoox expands driverless testing and investor fervor for AI escalates

TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. I spent a few days in Austin … Read more

Y Combinator’s Chief Startup Whisperer Is Demoting Himself

When Michael Seibel lost his position at the startup incubator Y Combinator, he didn’t find out in typical tech industry fashion, which might entail an email calling him to a Zoom meeting where the bad news would be delivered. He did it to himself. Today Seibel is announcing that he’s stepping down as YC’s managing … Read more

A Startup Will Try to Mine Helium-3 on the Moon

Two of Blue Origin’s earliest employees, former president Rob Meyerson and chief architect Gary Lai, have started a company that seeks to extract helium-3 from the lunar surface, return it to Earth, and sell it for applications here. The company has been operating in stealth since its founding in 2022, but it emerged on Wednesday … Read more

Apple acquires AI startup specializing in overlooking manufacturing components

Apple has added another AI startup to its acquisition list with Canada-based DarwinAI, which specializes in vision-based tech to observe components during manufacturing to improve efficiency, Bloomberg reported. While Apple or DarwinAI haven’t announced this deal, several members of the startup’s team joined Apple’s machine learning teams in January, as per their LinkedIn profiles. DarwinAI … Read more