Author: TechCrunch News

The slowdown was inevitable, of course. Nothing stays hot forever — especially in this industry. By tech standards, smartphones have had a good run, but the last few years have seen device makers searching for the magic bullet to help the sales slide reverse course. The arrival of 5G was a nice reprieve, but next-generation…

Japanese marketing tech firm Geniee, part of the SoftBank Group, has paid about $70 million in cash to acquire the revenue optimization platform Zelto (formerly known as AdPushup), a person familiar with the matter said, delivering 40 times return to a number of angel investors in the startup that began its journey in India. The…

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Welcome back to the TechCrunch Podcast, where I’m standing in for Darrell while he’s honeymooning with his lady love. This week, I sat down with Amanda Silberling and Mary Ann Azevedo to talk through some of their interesting stories. You can listen below or subscribe in iTunes or Spotify to get new episodes delivered weekly…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. G’day, friends! Good to spend some time with you again. Come spend some time with our finely crafted words and god-awful puns. It’s a service we provide. — Christine and Haje The…

Twitter’s paid plan Twitter Blue is now available to more than 20 new countries in Europe. These countries include Netherlands, Poland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden, Romania, Czech Republic, Finland, Denmark, Greece, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Slovakia, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta, and Cyprus. This expansion makes the social network’s subscription service available in more than…

Camilla Tenn is senior public relations strategist at cross-border communications agency Eleven International. It’s only been a couple of months since OpenAI’s ChatGPT exploded into the public consciousness, and it already feels like our news feeds will never be the same again. Whether it’s headlines about AI startups securing massive funding rounds or Twitter threads…

India’s central bank has slapped Amazon Pay’s India unit with a fine of over $373,300 for non-compliance with local guidelines surrounding know your customer and prepaid payment instruments norms. The Reserve Bank of India said in a statement (PDF) that Amazon Pay (India) was non-compliant with certain provisions of the guidelines on prepaid payment instruments…

Austin-based venture firm 8VC, led by controversial Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, has raised $880 million in its fifth fund. In a blog post published today, Lonsdale — who serves as 8VC’s general partner — said that his firm’s mission is “to fix a broken world.” While he did not specify which industries the new fund…

The big, giant message Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other execs tried to impart during its four-hour Tesla Investor Day was how the company would be the driver of a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Investors, at least those active after the market closed, weren’t impressed perhaps because it lacked that…