Author: TechCrunch News

Amazon’s planned acquisition of iRobot is now under in-depth antitrust scrutiny in the European Union. The $1.7BN deal for the ecommerce behemoth to pick up the robot vacuum maker, announced just under a year ago, was cleared by competition regulators in the UK last month. But EU regulators are now stepping in for their own…

When it first appeared on the scene around ten years ago, Notion Capital was poised to take advantage of the oft-repeated phrase, “Software is eating the world.” In particular, it was aiming at what was then called the enterprise SaaS space. Several years on, and it’s capitalised on that thesis, investing in in more than…

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Here’s another edition of “Ask Sophie,”…

It was only a question of time, I suppose, before someone made a generative AI that can whisper sweet, sweet obscenities at you. Lovense – perhaps best known for its remote-controllable sex toys – this week announced its ChatGPT Pleasure Companion. The company’s newest innovation in sex tech is to do what everyone else seems…

Kentucky now requires that electric vehicle charging companies include Tesla’s charging plug if they want to secure federal funds from a state program to electrify highways, Reuters reports. The plan went into effect Friday, making Kentucky the first state to officially mandate Tesla’s charging technology. Texas and Washington have also shared plans that would require…

The Tesla Gigafactory planned to be built in Mexico should be seen, Bloomberg argues, “as a graduation moment for Mexican manufacturing.” And there’s hope that the CHIPS bill, which President Joe Biden promoted to supercharge semiconductor production in the U.S., will benefit its southern neighbor as well. While the prospect of new factories and more…

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and Dom are joined by Charles Baron, the co-founder and CMO at Farmers Business Network (FBN), a startup that offers a suite of online services to farmers. Baron talked about what led him — a former venture capitalist — to…

Dougs, a French accounting startup, has been around since 2015. It already generates $16.4 million (€15 million) in annual recurring revenue. And it’s a bootstrapped company, meaning that it hasn’t opened its capital and raised any funding from VC firms. But now, the company has decided to raise its first founding round. Dougs raised $27…

The United Arab Emirates has given Chinese autonomous driving company WeRide the first national license for self-driving vehicles. The permit allows WeRide to test its Level 4 autonomous vehicles on public roads throughout the country. Level 4 is a designation by SAE that means the vehicle can handle all aspects of driving in certain conditions…

Amazon has begun rolling out its custom electric delivery vans from Rivian in Europe, the e-commerce giant said Monday. This will be Rivian’s first commercial shipment of vans outside the United States. The first tranche of 300 vans will be seen on streets in Munich, Berlin and Dusseldorf in the coming weeks. Amazon already has…