Author: TechCrunch News

Africa’s tech ecosystem just got a boost of attention, with South Africa’s TymeBank and Nigeria’s Moniepoint both raising funds in recent weeks at valuations of over $1 billion and joining the coveted unicorn pantheon. But those valuations don’t just reflect investor confidence. They signal the success they’ve had in taking disruptive fintech models originally developed…

Three crypto industry groups — the DeFi Education Fund, the Blockchain Association, and the Texas Blockchain Council — are suing the Internal Revenue Service to block new regulations that require decentralized finance (DeFi) entities to report customer information. The IRS has been finalizing crypto tax regulations as part of the Biden Administration’s Infrastructure Investment and…

We are at the dawn of a new space age. If you doubt, simply look back at the last year: From SpaceX’s historic catch of the Super Heavy booster to the record-breaking number of lunar landing attempts, this year was full of historic and ambitious missions and demonstrations. …

CES kicks off January 7. The annual Las Vegas event sets the tone of the year’s consumer electronics and automotive industries. As always, TechCrunch will be there, sniffing stories from the most exciting startups and tech giants. If you really want a piece of the action without paying for the hotel and flight…

Bench, a Canada-based accounting startup that offered software-as-a-service for small and medium-sized businesses, has abruptly shut down, according to a notice posted on its website.   “We regret to inform you that as of December 27, 2024, the Bench platform will no longer be accessible,” the notice reads…

The data-loss startup says it was targeted as part of a “wider campaign to target Chrome extension developers.” © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

If there was one phrase that captured the vibe and theme of 2024 — at least in the transportation sector — it was “business whiplash.” Legacy automakers changed direction on their all-EVs-or-bust strategy, startups pivoted, and some Silicon Valley VCs and executives adjusted their views on a changing political landscape in which they now are…

DeepSeek V3 can handle a range of text-based workloads and tasks, like coding, translating, and writing essays and emails from a descriptive prompt. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only…

ChatGPT, Sora, and OpenAI’s developer-facing API were down on Thursday for more than four hours. OpenAI says it started experiencing a major outage at 11 a.m. PT, but now says its services are slowly coming back online as of 3:16 p.m. PT. Frequent users of ChatGPT may recall that the service went down earlier this…

Once a startup has raised its seed round, the perennial question becomes how much should the founders pay themselves and their first few employees? Kruze Consulting, a CPA firm that specializes in venture-backed startups, recently analyzed average salary ranges for over 450 seed-stage startups and shared that data with TechCrunch…