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The global coronavirus pandemic has meant that there’s a widespread effort to develop and advance creative solutions to new problems, like worldwide shortages of necessary front-line medical equipment. One piece of gear that’s necessary for protecting the health of medical workers treating COVID-19 patients are N95 respirator masks, which are masks that specifically filter out […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 1:30 pm
DLR, German’s space agency and NASA equivalent, is doing what it can to support the global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) used by frontline healthcare workers in their efforts to treat those affected by COVID-19. DLR announced that it has successfully tested converting its on-site 3D printers, typically used for producing aerospace-grade parts, to […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 12:47 pm
While economic conditions and the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic may not make for the best atmosphere for raising funding, some companies are still announcing round closures with significant money committed. Cambridge-based ElevateBio, for instance, revealed a $170 million Series B funding on Monday, with participation from new investors The Invus Group, Surveyor Capital, EDBI, and […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 12:18 pm
The coronavirus pandemic has all but halted a lot of business activity, but today comes news of a deal that underscores how M&A is still happening in some sectors despite (not because of) everything else going on. One.com — the big hosting provider in Europe with around 1.5 million customers, itself acquired just over a […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 11:54 am
Online learning looks likely to be a key beneficiary of the social distancing and quarantine measures that are being applied around the world as countries grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, this looks set to buoy some relative veterans of the space. To wit: Preply, a 2013-founded tutoring marketplace, is today announcing a $10 […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 11:30 am
Air Doctor, the health tech startup that connects travellers with local doctors, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Kamet Ventures (the AXA-backed venture builder), and The Phoenix Insurance Company. Founded in 2016, Air Doctor aims to empower travellers who get sick when abroad and need non-emergency advice or […]
Posted on 30 March 2020 | 7:00 am
Hello folks, welcome back (or hi for the first time) to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to the all the ways people and packages move around this world. I’m your host, Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I also have started to publish a shorter version of the newsletter on TechCrunch . That’s […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 10:41 pm
Lawmakers and security experts have long warned of security flaws in the underbelly of the world’s cell networks. Now a whistleblower says the Saudi government is exploiting those flaws to track its citizens across the U.S. as part of a “systematic” surveillance campaign. It’s the latest tactic by the Saudi kingdom to spy on its […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 10:38 pm
Only a few days after saying that he would like to see the country “opened up and raring to go by Easter” and maybe relax rules for at least some parts of the U.S. sooner than later, President Trump today announced that he is extending the government’s social distancing guidelines through April 30. “Nothing would […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 10:37 pm
Microsoft is pulling out of an investment in an Israeli facial recognition technology developer as part of a broader policy shift to halt any minority investments in facial recognition startups, the company announced late last week. The decision to withdraw its investment from AnyVision, an Israeli company developing facial recognition software, came as a result […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 9:28 pm
On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, the leading U.S. authority on the COVID-19 pandemic made some grim predictions about the course of the novel coronavirus as it rages through communities within the United States. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and emerging face of American […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 5:02 pm
Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren may have ended her 2020 presidential run, but the tech used to drive her campaign will live on. Members of her staff announced they would make public the top apps and digital tools developed in Warren’s bid to become the Democratic nominee for president. “In our work, we leaned heavily on […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 3:01 pm
After the shutdown, the testing and tracing. “Trace, test and treat is the mantra … no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement” in South Korea. “To suppress and control the epidemic, countries must isolate, test, treat and trace,” say WHO. But what does “tracing” look like exactly? In Singapore, they use a “TraceTogether” […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 1:00 pm
The North American International Auto Show, which was scheduled for June in Detroit, has been canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and the city prepares to repurpose the TCF Center into a temporary field hospital. NAIAS is held each year in the TCF Center, formerly known as the Cobo Center. Organizers said they […]
Posted on 29 March 2020 | 2:08 am
TechCrunch is out hunting for bright spots in the startup world as we all come to grips with the pandemic — particularly where checks are actually being written despite everything. D2C is back to the future First up this week, we surveyed top direct-to-consumer investors, and they seemed pretty optimistic despite the struggles of some […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 6:00 pm
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry saw a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 3:20 pm
Netflix’s “Tiger King” is a docuseries focusing on the man who calls himself Joe Exotic — owner of a private park full of tigers and other big cats. We learn in the opening minutes of the first episode that he’s been accused of hiring a contract killer to murder an animal rights activist. A documentary […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 2:08 pm
The relationship between the United Kingdom and Australia is not usually a flashpoint in international relations. After all, the two allies share a common language, ancestry, and monarch. So what caused a dustup recently that saw a senior Australian parliamentarian rebuke the British foreign secretary, and for a group of Australian MPs to then cancel […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 1:30 pm
There’s a new COVID-19 test from healthcare technology maker Abbott that looks to be the fastest yet in terms of producing results, and that can do so on the spot right at point-of-care, without requiring a round trip to a lab. This test for the novel coronavirus causing the current global pandemic has received emergency […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 3:38 am
StockX, the high-flying resale marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of sneakers, streetwear, handbags and other collectible items, has seen its fortune rise along with the $6 billion global sneaker resale market, which is part of the broader $100 billion sneaker category. In fact, the company, which was assigned a billion dollar valuation last year, […]
Posted on 28 March 2020 | 1:07 am