Author: TechCrunch News

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 economy in 2023 hit a few snags, as consumer spending last year dropped for the first time by 2% to $167 billion, according to data.ai’s “State of…

The price of food continues to go up and up, but surprisingly that hasn’t (yet?) played out as pressure on the wider restaurant industry. Now, a startup that’s building technology to serve that sector announced a supersized round of funding to nourish its growth. Restaurant365, which develops all-in-one restaurant management software, announced $135 million in…

As big tech companies are in a fierce race with each other to build generative AI tools, they are being cautious about giving their secrets away. In a move to prevent any of its data from ending up with competitors, Apple has restricted internal use of tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft-owned GitHub’s Copilot, a…

NASA has chosen a Blue Origin-led team to develop a second lunar landing system for the Artemis program, as the agency looks to provide competition with SpaceX and support long-term exploration of the moon. The winning team includes Lockheed Martin, Draper, Boeing, Astrobotic and Honeybee Robotics. The award includes an uncrewed demonstration landing and a…

Google has prevailed against another U.K. class-action style privacy lawsuit after a London court dismissed a lawsuit filed last year against the tech giant and its AI division, DeepMind, which had sought compensation for misuse of NHS patients’ medical records. The decision underscores the hurdles facing class-action style compensation claims for privacy breaches in the…

India’s Swiggy said on Thursday that its marquee food delivery business has become profitable, eclipsing its publicly-listed rival Zomato on another key metric a day before the firm is set to report its quarterly earnings. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup — which counts Prosus Ventures, SoftBank and Invesco among its backers — became profitable in March this…

Micron Technology said it will invest up to 500 billion yen ($3.6 billion) in Japan for the next few years with support from the Japanese government to up its game in next-generation memory chips.  The move indicates that the Japanese government is ambitiously pushing ahead with its semiconductor space resurgence and bringing chip technology into the…

As large language models from Western tech firms show the potential to disrupt everything from marketing, teaching, to coding, China is rushing to cultivate its home-grown AI pioneers by stepping up state support. Beijing is now seeking public opinion on a draft policy aimed at developing artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a category of AI…

Founders of Lifelong Online have bought back a majority ownership and control in the Indian house of brands from Thrasio in what appears to be a retreat for the “Amazon aggregator” from the key overseas market. Existing investors of Lifelong, Tanglin Venture Partners and Hero Enterprise, also increased their ownership in Lifelong Online. Thrasio will…

Egyptian fintech Axis has launched its digital payments platform to the North African market after securing a license from the apex bank, Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), for its open-loop mobile wallet, axisPay, which offers a digital banking alternative for small businesses and their employees.  This is coming almost 18 months after the startup received…