Author: TechCrunch News

Lithium-ion batteries have come a long way, but in many ways they haven’t come far enough. They charge faster than ever before, but there’s still room for improvement. The materials they’re made of, particularly cobalt and nickel, are pricey and problematic. Researchers have been scrambling to find alternative materials, from manganese to sodium. Now they…

W elcome to the TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. We all make mistakes. But sometimes we forget that technology does, too — especially when it comes to AI, which is still in…

Wouldn’t you want to know what tech giants know about you? That’s exactly what Russian government hackers want, too. On Friday, Microsoft disclosed that the hacking group it calls Midnight Blizzard, also known as APT29 or Cozy Bear — and widely believed to be sponsored by the Russian government — hacked some corporate email accounts,…

As Amazon initiates job cuts across its entire business, including its streaming division, the e-commerce giant is now laying off employees within its Buy with Prime segment. “We regularly review the structure of our teams and make adjustments based on the needs of the business and, following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision…

This week, we’re taking a look at a pitch deck from Rypplzz (pronounced “ripples”), a spatial technology startup that recently raised $3 million. Rypplzz uses radio waves to provide location tracking since they are supposedly more precise and easier to work with than GPS. Venues, like museums and sporting arenas, can use its tech to…

A Barcelona-based company that works as a subcontractor for Meta, providing content moderation services for Facebook and Instagram, has been found by a court in Spain to be responsible for psychological damage suffered by a worker. The ruling, handed down Thursday, per local press reports, is the first time a court in Spain has found…

Want a huge jumpstart on your startup dream? This is no time to procrastinate. We have only seven days left of launch pricing to TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, taking place in Boston on April 25. Buy a $149 Founder pass or a $349 Investor pass and save $300 before prices increase on January 27. No…

Prashant Mahajan Contributor Prashant Mahajan is a veteran product manager-turned-entrepreneur and is the founder and CEO of Zeda.io. Prashant has worked with hundreds of product leaders and has built some of the most successful revenue-generating products on the market today. Anyone mad enough to launch a new product already knows the stats surrounding product failure.…

What does it take to raise your first round of funding? That’s just one of the many topics that will be featured at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 on April 25 in Boston. At this daylong event, experienced founders, VCs and startup experts will lead sessions focused on the building blocks that new and prospective founders…

Chapter 2 had 30,000 preorders in the first 30 hours Solana Mobile is swinging for the stars after it announced a second, cheaper web3 phone phone dubbed “Chapter 2” earlier this week. While its first handset, Saga, sold out like a budding avalanche — slow at first, then all at once in the U.S. and…