Author: TechCrunch News

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration has issued a launch license to SpaceX for the Starship orbital flight test, which could now take place as soon as Monday. A 150-minute test window will open at 7:00 a.m. local time (CST), SpaceX said on its website. The long-awaited launch license came at the very end of business…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy Friday, our crunchiest of friends! Over the last few days, we’ve been telling you about all the cool stuff that’s happening at Disrupt. Well, guess what — we’re getting a hardware…

A slew of new funds indicate potential for dedicated pools for climate startups Venture capital activity around climate tech has been heating up in Africa despite the global VC funding cooldown. The continent’s climate tech startups secured over $860 million in equity funding, largely driven by clean energy technologies, representing 3.5x growth amid macroeconomic headwinds…

Emerging managers have been on the same rollercoaster as startups for the last few years. Funding to these young firms swelled in 2021 as venture was hot overall, but in line with the broader market, fundraising has slowed to a trickle since the beginning of 2022. The trend continued into 2023. New data from PitchBook…

If there was any question as to whether the Biden administration is serious about the electrification of the U.S. economy, this week’s announcement of new automotive emissions regulations should put that to rest — along with any doubts investors have about where they should direct their investments. The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing new rules…

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This week Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex enjoyed the warming climate and the fact that there are some positive vibes in the venture market as well. Hell, we even had a nine-figure round…

We’ve spent the last century and a half pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it’s clear that we’ll have to spend the coming decades removing a significant fraction of that. But then what do we do with it all? Some people are proposing pumping it underground. Others think we can make things from it,…

Spotify today is introducing new technology that will give radio broadcasters the ability to turn their existing audio content into podcasts, or what it’s calling “broadcast-to-podcast.” Based on IP Spotify acquired in late 2021 from an Australia-based podcast tech company Whooshkaa, the feature set will be integrated into Spotify’s enterprise podcast tech platform Megaphone, where it’s…

Spotify is embracing the iOS Lock Screen. The company announced today it’s introducing a new iPhone Lock Screen widget to all users running iOS 16 or later that allows you to tap on Spotify’s icon to launch the app directly before unlocking your phone. Support for Lock Screen widgets rolled out with iOS 16’s release…

At Meta Connect 2022, the tech giant announced a three-year partnership with NBCUniversal that would bring Peacock to the Meta Quest virtual reality headset. Today, the streaming app is now available on Meta Quest 2 and Meta Quest Pro devices. Subscribers can get Peacock in the Meta Store and stream 90,000 hours of movies and…