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Daily Crunch: IBM names new CEO
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Arvind Krishna will replace Ginni Rometty as IBM CEO in April
Krishna, IBM’s senior vice president for cloud and cognitive software, will take over on April 6 after a couple months of transition. Rometty will remain with the company as chairman of the board.
Krishna reportedly drove the massive $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat at the end of 2018, and there was some speculation at the time that Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst was the heir apparent. Instead, the board went with a more seasoned IBM insider for the job, while naming Whitehurst as president.
2. Apple’s redesigned Maps app is available across the US, adds real-time transit for Miami
The redesigned app will include more accurate information overall as well as comprehensive views of roads, buildings, parks, airports, malls and other public places. It will also bring Look Around to more cities and real-time transit to Miami.
3. Social media boosting service exposed thousands of Instagram passwords
The company, Social Captain, says it helps thousands of users to grow their Instagram follower counts by connecting their accounts to its platform. But TechCrunch learned this week Social Captain was storing the passwords of linked Instagram accounts in unencrypted plaintext.
4. Elon Musk just dropped an EDM track on SoundCloud
That is a real headline and I probably don’t need to say much else. Listen to the track, or don’t.
5. Being a child actress prepared me for a career in venture capital
Crystal McKellar played Becky Slater on “The Wonder Years,” and she writes about how that experience prepared her to be a managing partner at Anathem Ventures. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
6. Moda Operandi, an online marketplace for high-end fashion, raises $100M led by NEA and Apax
High-end fashion might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about online shopping, but it has actually been a ripe market for the e-commerce industry.
7. Why Sony’s PlayStation Vue failed
Vue launched in March 2015, offering live and on-demand content from more than 85 channels, including many local broadcast stations. But it failed to catch on with a broader audience, despite — or perhaps, because of — its integration with Sony’s PS3 and PS4 devices, and it shut down this week. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: VMware completes Pivotal acquisition
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition
VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained myself from using a “pivotal” pun here. You’re welcome.)
The acquisition — first announced in August — helps the company in its transformation from a pure virtual machine supplier into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside the acquisitions of Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year.
2. Spotify to ‘pause’ running political ads, citing lack of proper review
The company told us that starting early next year, it will stop selling political ads: “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”
3. ‘The Mandalorian’ returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020
The last episode of the first season of “The Mandalorian” went live on Disney+ on Friday, and showrunner Jon Favreau wasted very little time confirming when we can expect season two of the smash hit to land: next fall.
4. 2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital
The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Here’s an overview of the 2019 market events that capped off a decade in African tech.
5. Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million
Maxar’s goal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDA’s Canadian operations — responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, respectively.
6. Cloud gaming is the future of game monetization, not gameplay
Lucas Matney argues that as is so often the case with the next big thing in tech, cloud streaming is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform, rather than the entire platform itself. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
Equity took the week off, but we kept Original Content going with a review of Netflix’s new fantasy show “The Witcher.”
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Daily Crunch: The startups we lost in 2019
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Remembering the startups we lost in 2019
This year’s batch doesn’t include any story quite as spectacular as last year’s big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.
And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn’t make it to the finish line.
2. Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government
For those following Huawei’s substantial rise over the past several years, it’ll come as no surprise that the Chinese government played an important role in fostering the hardware maker. Even so, the actual numbers behind the ascent are still a bit jaw-dropping — at least according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.
3. Russia starts testing its own internal internet
Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, however.
4. Fintech’s next decade will look radically different
Nik Milanovic argues that in the next 10 years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous, as it both moves into the background and creates a centralized place where our money is managed for us.
5. Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India’s proposed intermediary liability rules
Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that operates Wikipedia, is urging the Indian government to rethink proposed changes to the nation’s intermediary liability rules. Under the proposal, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT requires “intermediary” apps — a category that includes any service with more than 5 million users — to set up a local office and have a senior executive in the nation who can be held responsible for any legal issues.
6. The FAA proposes remote ID technology for drones
According to the FAA, the “next exciting step in safe drone integration” aims to offer a kind of license plate analog to identify the approximately 1.5 million drones currently registered with the governmental body.
7. The year of the gig worker uprising
2019 was a momentous year for gig workers. While the likes of Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash rely on these workers for their respective core services, the pay does not match how much those workers are worth — which is a lot. It’s this issue that lies at the root of gig workers’ demands. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Travis Kalanick is leaving Uber’s board
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Uber founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the company’s board of directors
Uber founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick will officially resign from the board as of December 31, to “focus on his new business and philanthropic endeavors,” according to a company press release.
Kalanick, who was forced out as Uber CEO and eventually replaced by Dara Khosrowshahi, has been in the process of selling off his considerable ownership stake in the company. In fact, it looks like Kalanick has now sold all his remaining stock.
2. Plenty of Fish app was leaking users’ hidden names and postal codes
Dating app Plenty of Fish has pushed out a fix for its app after a security researcher found it was leaking information that users had set to “private” on their profiles. Before the fix, the app was silently returning users’ first names and postal ZIP codes, according to The App Analyst.
3. As DraftKings finds an exit, a reminder of what could have been
DraftKings, a betting service focused on fantasy sports, will go public via a reverse merger. Not too long ago DraftKings and its erstwhile rival FanDuel were ubiquitous on television; now the two companies are fractions of what they once were. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
4. Gift Guide: 13 last-minute subscription gifts for the people you totally didn’t forget
It’s too late to order things online, and brick-and-mortar stores are either closed for the week or absolutely slammed. So what can you do? Subscriptions!
5. Fyre Festival meets Mr. Bone Saw
Connie Loizos looks at the controversy around the three-day-long MDL Beast Festival in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The event, promoted by a number of celebrities and social media influencers, aimed to promote the efforts of its de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (known as MBS).
6. A false start for foldables in 2019
A year from now, the Samsung Galaxy Fold’s turbulent takeoff may well be a footnote in the largest story of foldables. For now, however, it’s an important caveat that will come up in every conversation about the nascent product category. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
7. Micro-angelo? This 3D-printed ‘David’ is just one millimeter tall
3D printing has proven itself useful in so many industries that it’s no longer necessary to show off, but some people just can’t help themselves. Case in point: this millimeter-tall rendition of Michelangelo’s famous “David” printed with copper using a newly developed technique.
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Daily Crunch: Facebook acquires a cloud gaming startup
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Facebook acquires Madrid-based cloud gaming startup PlayGiga
Facebook is building out its gaming business — earlier this year, the company added its Gaming hub to the main navigation menu. And last month, it agreed to buy Beat Games, developer of popular virtual reality title Beat Saber.
PlayGiga, meanwhile has been working with telcos to create streaming game technology for 5G. It also developed a gaming-as-a-service platform, using Intel’s Visual Cloud platform, that will enable telcos and communication service providers to offer streaming games to their customers.
2. TiVo merges with technology licensor Xperi in $3 billion deal
Earlier this year, TiVo said it was preparing to split itself into two — a product and IP business — in order to make itself more attractive to buyers. Today, the company announced those plans have been put on hold as it has instead merged with technology licensor Xperi Corporation, in a $3 billion deal.
3. Spotify prototypes Tastebuds to revive social music discovery
Tastebuds (discovered by reverse engineering master Jane Manchun Wong) is designed to let users explore the music taste profiles of their friends. It will live as a navigation option alongside your Library and Home/Browse sections.
4. Uber’s ride-hailing business hit with ban in Germany
In Germany, Uber’s ride-hailing business works exclusively with professional and licensed private-hire vehicle companies — so the court ban essentially outlaws Uber’s current model in the country.
5. Snackpass snags $21M to let you earn friends free takeout
Sending people Snackpass rewards became a new way to flirt or show gratitude at Yale. And through the Venmo-esque Snackpass social feed, users could keep up with a fresh form of gossip while discovering restaurants.
6. PayPal completes GoPay acquisition, allowing the payments platform to enter China
Though China’s payment market today is led by local players, including eWallet providers like AliPay and WeChat Pay, there’s room for PayPal to grow in a market where digital payments per year are counted in the trillions, not billions, of dollars.
7. Tesla’s record stock price shows its investment in energy storage is finally paying off
A little over a year after sparking a legal firestorm for musing that he would take Tesla private for $420, Elon Musk is probably glad he didn’t. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Apple adds new iPhone parental controls
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. The iPhone’s new parental controls can limit who kids can call, text and FaceTime and when
With the release of iOS 13.3, parents will for the first time be able to set limits over who kids can talk to and text with during certain hours of the day. These limits will apply across phone calls, Messages and FaceTime.
In practice, this means parents could stop their child from texting friends late at night or during the school day. It also allows parents to manage the child’s iCloud contacts remotely.
2. Pear, whose seed-stage bets are followed closely, just raised $160 million for its third fund
That’s more than twice the $75 million that the firm raised for its second fund in 2016 and triple the $50 million it raised for its debut fund back in 2013.
3. Uber guarantees space for skis and snowboards with Uber Ski feature
Starting on December 17 in select cities, an Uber Ski icon will pop up on the app, allowing passengers to order a ride with confirmed extra space or a ski/snowboarding rack. Nundu Janakiram, Uber’s head of rider experience, said to expect more features like this.
4. Accel and Index back Tines, as the cybersecurity startup adds another $11M to its Series A
Founded in February 2018 by ex-eBay, PayPal and DocuSign security engineer Eoin Hinchy, Tines automates many of the repetitive manual tasks faced by security analysts so they can focus on other high-priority work.
5. How Station F is boosting the French tech ecosystem
Three years after unveiling Station F at Disrupt, its director, Roxanne Varza, came back to our stage to provide an update on the world’s biggest startup campus, where there are now 1,000 companies at work.
6. Hyperproof wants to make it easier to comply with GDPR and other regulations
As companies try to figure out how to comply with regulations like GDPR, ISO or Sarbanes Oxley, Hyperproof is launching a new product to workflows that will allow them to gain compliance in a more organized way.
7. Introducing ‘Dear Sophie,’ an advice column for US-bound immigrant employees
Dear Sophie is a collaborative forum hosted by Extra Crunch and curated by Sophie Alcorn, who is certified as a specialist attorney in immigration and nationality law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization.
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Daily Crunch: Away’s CEO is stepping down
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Away CEO is stepping down in light of reports of toxic culture
Steph Korey is stepping down from her role as CEO, although she will remain on-board as executive chairman. She’ll be replaced by Lululemon COO Stuart Haselden.
The timing of the announcement comes just a few days after The Verge published an in-depth story about management practices at the luggage startup, which included extensive quotes from Korey’s Slack messages. However, the company says that the executive search has been underway for months.
2. VSCO acquires video editing startup Rylo
The photo-sharing app behind the 2019 meme craze “VSCO girls” has acquired Rylo, a video editing startup founded by the original developer of Instagram’s Hyperlapse. Founded in 2015, Rylo is best known for its 360° camera capable of creating cinematic video in 5.8K resolution.
The company already announced its plans for the program — allowing cardholders to purchase a new iPhone, then pay it back over 24 months with no interest — but now it’s actually opening up to all Apple Card customers. In addition, Apple is sweetening the deal with 6% back on all Apple purchases made from December 10 through December 31.
4. India proposes new rules to access its citizens’ data
India has proposed new rules that would require companies to obtain consent from Indian citizens before collecting and processing their personal data. At the same time, the new rules also state that companies would have to hand over “non-personal” user data to the government, which would also hold the power to collect any data about its citizens without consent.
5. Waze adds unplowed road reporting feature for better awareness of winter driving hazards
Waze says it developed this update after it received a recommendation from the Virginia Department of Transportation, working with the municipal agency through its “Waze for Cities Data” partnership and data-sharing program.
6. Jiji raises $21M for its Africa online classifieds business
Buyers and sellers use Jiji to make purchases ranging from real estate to car sales. The classifieds site says it has 2 million listings on its Africa platforms and hit 8 million unique monthly users in 2018.
7. AWS is sick of waiting for your company to move to the cloud
AWS held its annual re:Invent customer conference last week in Las Vegas, where CEO Andy Jassy made it clear he’s tired of the slow pace of change inside the enterprise. The company also announced some big bets designed to accelerate cloud adoption. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
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Daily Crunch: Imgur launches an app for gaming memes
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. 300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app
Melee, the company’s first app beyond its flagship product, lets users subscribe to the games from which they love to get memes and gameplay clips. You also can scroll through a popular post’s feed if you’re curious about unfamiliar games.
If you’re worried about the risk that gaming communities might turn toxic, Imgur says Melee has multiple layers of community and staff moderation, will remove obscene content and won’t tolerate bullying.
2. SpaceX nears milestone on key crew launch system test
SpaceX is keeping relatively close to schedule on one of the bold timelines pronounced by its CEO Elon Musk. Specifically, the company notes that it has now completed seven system tests of the latest, upgraded version of the parachutes it plans to use with its Crew Dragon capsule when it launches with astronauts on-board.
3. Flipkart leads $60M investment in logistics startup Shadowfax
Shadowfax operates a business-to-business logistics network in more than 300 cities in India. The startup works with neighborhood stores to use their real estate to store inventory, and with a large network of freelancers for delivery.
4. A Sprint contractor left thousands of US cell phone bills on the internet by mistake
A contractor working for cell giant Sprint stored hundreds of thousands of cell phone bills for AT&T, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) and T-Mobile subscribers on an unprotected cloud server.
5. How to build or invest in a startup without paying capital gains tax
Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) presents a significant tax savings opportunity for people who create and invest in small businesses. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
6. Volvo invests in autonomous vehicle operating system startup Apex.AI though its VC arm
Apex.AI is working on developing a robotic operating system qualified for use in production automobiles. Its offerings include a set of simple-to-integrate APIs that can give automakers and others access to fully certified autonomous mobility technology.
7. Check out the prizes for TC Hackathon at Disrupt Berlin
One team gets $5,000, but we’ve got additional prizes from a range of sponsors. Also: This is next week!
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Daily Crunch: TikTok starts experimenting with commerce
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. TikTok tests social commerce
The short-form video app said it’s allowing some users to add links to e-commerce sites (or any other destination) to their profile, while also offering creators the ability to easily send their viewers to shopping websites.
On their own, these changes might not sound that dramatic, and parent company ByteDance characterizes them as experiments. But it could eventually lead TikTok to become a major force in commerce — and to follow the lead of Instagram, where “link in bio” has become one of the most common promotional messages.
2. Despite bans, Giphy still hosts self-harm, hate speech and child sex abuse content
A new report from Israeli online child protection startup L1ght has uncovered a host of toxic content hiding within the popular GIF-sharing community, including illegal child abuse content, depictions of rape and other toxic imagery associated with topics like white supremacy and hate speech.
3. Lyft is ceasing scooter operations in six cities and laying off 20 employees
Lyft notified employees today that it’s pulling its scooters from six markets: Nashville, San Antonio, Atlanta, the Phoenix area, Dallas and Columbus. A spokesperson told us, “We’re choosing to focus on the markets where we can have the biggest impact.”
4. Takeaways from Nvidia’s latest quarterly earnings
After yesterday’s earnings report, Wall Street seems to have barely budged on the stock price — everyone’s waiting for resolution on some of the key questions facing the company. (Extra Crunch membership required.)
5. Virgin Galactic begins ‘Astronaut Readiness Program’ for first paying customers
The program is being run out of the global headquarters of Under Armour, Virgin Galactic’s partner for its official astronaut uniforms. The training, with instruction from Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses and Chief Pilot Dave Mackay, is required for all Virgin Galactic passengers.
6. AWS confirms reports it will challenge JEDI contract award to Microsoft
In a statement, an Amazon spokesperson suggested that there was possible bias in the selection process: “AWS is uniquely experienced and qualified to provide the critical technology the U.S. military needs, and remains committed to supporting the DoD’s modernization efforts.”
7. SoftBank Vision Fund’s Carolina Brochado is coming to Disrupt Berlin
At SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Brochado focuses on fintech, digital health and marketplace startups. Some of her past investments with both Atomico and SoftBank include LendInvest, Gympass, Hinge Health, Ontruck and Rekki.
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Daily Crunch: Adobe launches Photoshop for iPad
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here.
1. Adobe Photoshop arrives on the iPad
Adobe has released Photoshop for the iPad, making good on an announcement that it made last October.
The tablet version of the popular photo-editing software is free to download, and includes a 30-day free trial. After that it’s $9.99 per month via in-app purchase, or you can get access as part of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription.
2. Cortana wants to be your personal executive assistant and read your emails to you, too
At its Ignite conference, Microsoft announced a number of new features that help Cortana to become even more useful in your day-to-day work, all of which fit into the company’s overall vision of AI as a tool that is helpful and augments human intelligence.
3. Apple commits $2.5 billion to address California’s housing crisis and homelessness issues
The investment includes a $1 billion commitment to an affordable housing investment fund, $1 billion toward a first-time homebuyer mortgage assistance fund and $300 million in Apple-owned land that will be made available for affordable housing.
4. A startup just launched red wine to the International Space Station to age for 12 months
The wine isn’t being sent just to help the ISS astronauts relax. Instead, it’s part of an experiment that will study how the aging process for wine is affected by a microgravity, space-based environment.
5. Lemonade gets a nastygram from Deutsche Telekom over its use of magenta, says it will fight
Deutsche Telekom’s German lawyers have sent a letter to AI insurance startup Lemonade, demanding it cease using magenta — a color that appears across Lemonade’s logo and marketing material — globally.
6. Where tech companies should look to expand
Zillow’s Cheryl Young says the company has analyzed data to determine the best markets that provide fertile environments for startups or tech companies looking to put down stakes for their next office.
7. This week’s TechCrunch podcasts
On the latest episode of Equity, Alex and Kate discuss Sam Altman’s investment in Quill, a company that could eventually challenge Slack. And on Original Content, we review the Netflix series “Living with Yourself,” in which Paul Rudd plays two different versions of the same man.
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