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Parker, a well-funded startup offering corporate credit cards and banking services for e-commerce businesses, has filed for bankruptcy and is widely reported to have shut down. The startup was part of Y Combinator’s winter 2019 cohort, and its Series A was led by Valar Ventures. Parker came out of stealth in 2023, touting a corporate credit that it said was designed for use by e-commerce companies. At the time, co-founder and CEO Yacine Sibous said the startup’s “secret sauce” was an underwriting process that could properly assess e-commerce cash flows. “We imagined building better financial products for e-commerce founders with…
General Motors has reached a privacy-related settlement with a group of law enforcement agencies led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Back in 2024, The New York Times reported that automakers including GM were sharing information about their customers’ driving behavior with insurance companies, and that some customers were concerned that their insurance rates had gone up as a result. The settlement announcement from Bonta’s office similarly alleges that GM sold “the names, contact information, geolocation data, and driving behavior data of hundreds of thousands of Californians” to Verisk Analytics and LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which are both data brokers. Bonta’s…
In an increasingly AI-driven and digital world, analog instant film and retro-style cameras remain popular, fueled by a combination of both nostalgia and charm. Instant cameras, in particular, stand out for their simplicity and an experience that has remained largely unchanged over time. Fujifilm’s $175 Instax Wide 400 builds on the familiar instant photography experience and expands it with a wider format. As someone who appreciates simple, easy-to-use instant cameras and often shoots with an Instax Square, I was interested in trying a model that offers larger prints and support for landscape photography. The Instax Wide 400 is built for…
Nvidia continues to be a major investor in the AI ecosystem, committing more than $40 billion to equity investments in AI companies — and that’s just in these early months of 2026, according to CNBC. Much of that total comes from a single bet, a $30 billion investment in OpenAI. But CNBC reports that the chipmaker has also announced seven multi-billion dollar investments in publicly traded companies, most recently deals to invest up to $3.2 billion in glassmaker Corning and up to $2.1 billion in data center operator IREN. We’ve previously rounded up Nvidia’s investments in AI startups, including 67…
Cramming for finals is bad enough without the platform you use to do your schoolwork suddenly shutting down. Unfortunately for countless students across the US, that’s exactly what they faced on Thursday after Canvas went into “maintenance mode” following a ransomware attack on education tech firm Instructure. Hackers using the name ShinyHunters claimed responsibility for the breach, and experts say the chaos they caused shows how far these actors will go to extort their victims.Did you know that Google Chrome includes an automatic download of the Gemini Nano AI model? If not, you wouldn’t be alone. People who use Google’s…
Unlike the other glasses I tested, Even doesn’t sell a subscription plan; everything’s included out of the box.The only downside I could find with the G2 is that it is largely devoid of offline features, so the glasses have to be connected to the internet to do much of anything. Considering the G2’s capabilities, it’s a trade-off I am more than happy to make.Other Captioning Glasses I TestedThere are plenty of capable captioning eyeglasses on the market, but they are surprisingly similar in both looks and features. While many are quite capable, none had the combination of power and affordability…
While major motor shows in Europe and the United States are being forced to downsize or change their format, those in China continue to expand.With 1,451 vehicles on display, including 181 world premieres, the 2026 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2026 (also known as Auto China 2026) has become the largest auto show in history—and that’s in terms of both exhibition space and the number of vehicles on display.This fact itself reflects a shift in the center of gravity of the automotive industry, but that’s not all. A much larger structural transformation is actually taking place in China today.Previously, the focus…
A large part of Airbnb’s Q1 2026 earnings call was dedicated to talking about how the company is using AI tools for coding, customer support, and search. Notably, the company claimed that 60% of the code its engineers produced in the quarter was written by AI — echoing comments by others like Google, Microsoft, and Spotify, which have all talked about AI accelerating their programming. Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky noted that the company finds AI particularly helpful for building tools for its API partners who manage their properties using different software. “API partners say they want to be better hosts…
After years of hints and preparation, the Uber-backed electric bike and scooter rental startup Lime has filed for an initial public offering. The company, which is incorporated as Neutron Holdings, Inc., has eyed the public markets for at least five years. CEO Wayne Ting last spoke to TechCrunch in 2023 about the prospect of an IPO, noting at the time that Lime had the economics, the growth, and the profitability to take the startup public. All that was required was proper market conditions. That day has apparently arrived. The company intends to list on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol “LIME.”…
If you’re planning to raise a Series A in the next 12 to 24 months, the rules you think you’re playing by may already be outdated. Series A isn’t just harder — it’s slower, more selective, and increasingly unforgiving. The bar has shifted, and many founders are still optimizing for a version of the market that no longer exists. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, taking place October 13-15 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, one session on the Builders Stage cuts directly into that gap, led by some of the VCs shaping the next funding cycle: The Series A in 2027. This isn’t a retrospective. It’s a forward-looking breakdown of what it will actually take to raise in the next funding cycle…
Peter Williams, a veteran cybersecurity executive who was the head of the hacking and surveillance tech division of U.S. defense contractor L3Harris, has been ordered to pay $10 million to his former employer. Williams was the central figure in one of the worst leaks of advanced hacking tools in the history of the United States and its closest allies. On Wednesday, a judge ordered Williams to pay that amount in restitution on top of the $1.3 million he had already been ordered to pay to L3Harris. Williams, a 39-year-old Australian citizen who previously worked in one of Australia’s intelligence agencies,…
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Avride, a robotaxi company that has partnered with Uber, after identifying more than a dozen crashes and one minor injury. The safety regulator’s Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) said all 16 crashes that it has identified have to do with “the competence of” Avride’s self-driving system, which has apparently struggled with changing lanes, responding to other vehicles in the same lane, and responding to stationary objects. All of the crashes have come while the Avride vehicles were under the supervision of a safety monitor in the driver’s seat.…
As families across the U.S. prepare to celebrate Mother’s Day this Sunday, Allison Stern is looking beyond the single day of appreciation. Stern just closed $10 million in commitments for her debut early-stage fund, Mother Ventures, which focuses exclusively on the mother as a consumer. “In the U.S., moms are responsible for 85% of household purchases and have $2.4 trillion in spending power,” Stern (pictured below) told TechCrunch. “The numbers say that moms are the buyers, and they really are a very unique economic engine.” Stern, a mother of two, is tapping into that spending clout by backing startups that…
EVP, GM, or CMO—why pick one when you can be all three? In this episode of Marketing Vanguard, Keisha Taylor Starr, EVP, CMO, and general manager of Scripps Networks at The E.W. Scripps Company, proves that intersectionality and a diverse skillset can take your marketing game to the next level. Tune in for their discussion on how strategic repositioning can drive record-breaking audience engagement, why marketers must balance creative risk with financial rigor and the leadership moves required to shape an industry built for diverse voices. What you’ll learn: How to transition from CMO to General Manager by gaining P&L ownership Why sports…
San Francisco real estate has never been very accessible. But the record sales happening right now in the city’s high-end market are testing the upper limits of what even this famously unaffordable city thought was possible. Consider a six-bedroom, 5,700-square-foot home in Cow Hollow, one of San Francisco’s most coveted neighborhoods. It was listed two weeks ago at $7.95 million, so, not cheap. It just sold for $15 million. The sellers, who bought the property for $7.8 million in the summer of 2020 as the pandemic was pushing residents out of cities, nearly doubled their money in under six years.…
The red-light therapy market shows no signs of slowing down. According to Fortune Business Insights, the industry is projected to grow from $1.21 billion in 2026 to $1.76 billion by 2034. Riding that wave is Hong Kong-based Megelin, which is currently running its largest Mother’s Day sale yet, offering major discounts on most of its LED devices and select electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) tools.I’ve been testing the Duo Lux Laser & LED Light Therapy Mask for the past two weeks as part of a six-week trial. While I’m still forming my final verdict, I already have some early thoughts (more…