Lyft has been cutting fares in order to secure more riders, and it’s working. But that success has come with a (literal) cost. The ride-hail company reported Tuesday during its second quarter 2023 earnings an increase in riders and decrease in revenue per active rider. That discrepancy was fueled by a decision by the company to…
As organizations embrace cloud services — and are forced to confront changing regulations and data use standards — their ability to maintain control of data security frequently becomes strained. If they lose that control, the consequences can be quite severe. The average cost of a data breach is about $3.86 million (per IBM), and most…
Back in 2021 and early 2022, there was a flurry of VC interest in Southeast Asian investment apps. One of them was Singapore-based Endowus, which raised two rounds in rapid succession: a Series A in June 2021 followed just seven months later by $25.6 million in follow-on funding. Now two years later, despite a much…
It wasn’t the first, but for more than 10 years, Kickstarter has been synonymous with crowdfunding. We’re excited to announce that CEO Everette Taylor will join us on the Hardware Stage, September 21, at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. In a session called “Crowdfunding the Future,” we’ll discuss Taylor’s vision for the company. Crowdfunding itself may be…
Verizon dropped hundreds of millions on BlueJeans at the height of the pandemic lockdowns. Three years and some change later, the lesser-known video-conferencing app is done for, the telecom giant told users today. In a mass email, Verizon wrote that it “made the difficult decision to sunset our suite of BlueJeans products.” 9to5Google first reported…
Svatantra Microfin has reached an agreement to acquire Navi Group’s microfinancing unit Chaitanya India for about $178.5 million, the two firms said Tuesday, latest in a series of events at entrepreneur Sachin Bansal’s firm that has struggled to secure a banking license. Svatantra said it will become the second largest microlender in India — with…
Nvidia is partnering with AI startup Hugging Face to expand access to AI compute. Timed to coincide with the annual SIGGRAPH conference this week, Nvidia announced that it’ll support a new Hugging Face service, called Training Cluster as a Service, to simplify the creation of new and custom generative AI models for the enterprise. Set…
Google announced today it’s making its Messages by Google app more secure with improvements to RCS, or Rich Communication Services — a protocol aimed at replacing SMS that is more on par with the advanced features found in Apple’s iMessage. The company says it will now make RCS the default for both new and existing…
