Safaricom’s Nairobi based Alpha innovation incubator may have an uncertain future, according to sources.

Is our age of ubiquitous smartphones and social media turning into an era of mass civil unrest? Two years after holding an independence referendum and unilaterally declaring independence in defiance of the Spanish state — then failing to gain recognition for la república and being forced to watch political leaders jailed or exiled — Catalonia’s […].

Swarm Technologies aims to connect smart devices around the world with a low-bandwidth but ever-present network provided by satellites — and it just got approval from the FCC to do so.

Airbnb may be another overvalued 'unicorn,' but it's no WeWork.  .

A lung condition apparently caused by vaping has been reported in every state but Alaska, the CDC has announced.

Nintendo’s North American Switch unit sales have already surpassed the lifetime worldwide unit sales of the Wii U.

Welcome to this edition of The Operators, a recurring Extra Crunch column produced by insiders with executive experience.

Although the market is still in its early stage with just a handful of neobanks with running services, the stage is set for an amusing upcoming battle.

Atlassian today announced that it has acquired Code Barrel, the makers of Automation for Jira, a low-code tool for easily automating many aspects of Jira that’s also one of the most popular add-ons for Jira Software and Jira Service Desk in Atlassian’s marketplace.

Bosch is set to launch a new AI-based sensor system to the International Space Station that could change the way astronauts and ground crew monitor the ISS’s continued healthy operation.

What do BMW, Tencent, Pokémon Go creator Niantic, movie director Jon Favreau and construction giant Skanska have in common? They’re all using the same platform to create their products.

A year ago, at a demo day south of San Francisco, we watched a number of recently formed startups pitch investors on their companies.

The fact that NVIDIA is updating its Shield TV hardware has already been telegraphed via FCC filing, but a leak earlier today paints much more of a detailed picture.

HBO’s streaming services have long succeeded on the strength of original programming, but in a post AT&T acquisition world, the company is having to create a streaming service supergroup of exceptional content to lure consumers into coughing up more cash.

China is exporting its social values, political ads are an important part of free expression, and the definition of dangerous speech must be kept in check, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg argued today.

Google Maps is starting to look a lot more like Waze. Google today announced a series of new features that will allow drivers using the Maps app on iOS to report accidents, speed traps, and traffic jams.

Juul has stopped selling a number of its flavored nicotine products — mango, creme, fruit and cucumber — in the U.

Secondary display companies are among the latest to get a taste of Sherlocking, after Apple introduced Sidecar as part of the recent Catalina update.

China’s industry ministry has add Tesla to a government list of approved automotive manufacturers, a designation that allows the electric automaker to begin producing vehicles in the country.

Since it was founded by journalist Jessica Lessin in 2013, The Information has stood out in the tech news landscape for its focus on an ad-free, subscription-driven business model (a focus that seems increasingly prescient).

The biggest wave in consumer products right now has all the hallmarks of another bubble of misplaced investor expectations and sadly lower margins.

Picking stuff up seems easy, right? It is – for humans with powerful brain computers that instantly and intuitively figure out everything needed to get the job done.

Venmo announced today its plans to launch its first-ever credit card.

IBM has been working with a number of different industries to help improve food safety with the help of blockchain technology.

A popular video downloader app for Android has been found generating fake ad clicks and unauthorized premium purchases from its users, according to a security firm.

Logitech recently introduced a new mouse and keyboard, the MX Master 3 ($99.

Amid a slew of updated hardware, Clips has gone missing from Google’s online store.

Snap today is announcing a new kind of advertising product, Dynamic Ads, that will help it to better attract ad dollars from retail, e-commerce, and other direct-to-consumer brands — a group that today thrives on Instagram.

As handset makers continue to work on ways of making smartphones more streamlined and sleek, while at the same time introducing new features that will get people buying more devices, a startup that is pioneering something called “software-defined” surfaces — essentially, using ultrasound and AI to turn any kind of material, and any kind of […].

Galaxy S10 users should be turn on some alternative security features as Samsung works to address a major flaw with the device’s in-screen fingerprint sensor.

The story behind ArsenalBio begins with Sean Parker’s Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.

The tech world has a lot to offer those with disabilities, but it can be hard to get investors excited about the accessibility space.

Work management platform Asana today announced the launch of a new feature that will take the work out of some of the most mundane and repetitive tasks on its platform.

Ekos, a Charlotte, NC startup that creates software to help craft breweries and other beverage companies organize their businesses, announced an $8 million Series A today led by Noro-Moseley Partners, an Atlanta  venture firm.

Clay Wilkes had already been retired for six years when he launched Galileo Financial Services in 2000.

Pendo, the late stage startup that helps companies understand how customers are interacting with their apps, announced a $100 million Series E investment today on a valuation of $1 billion.

Fintech has been a very popular area for venture investment, and this is particularly true in Europe.

TruTag Technologies, a company that creates microscopic, edible barcodes to authenticate medications, food, vaping pods and other products, has raised a $7.

China’s TikTok today launched an education program in India as the popular short-video app looks to expand its offering and assuage local authority in one of its biggest markets.

Winnow, the U. K.. startup that has developed smart kitchen tech to help commercial kitchens reduce food waste, is disclosing $12 million in Series B funding.

Proportunity, the startup that provides “help to buy”-style equity loans primarily for first time property buyers, has raised £2 million in additional funding.

Nigeria’s #StopRobbingUs campaign to curb police harassment of techies could grow into a formal lobbying group for the country’s tech sector, according to founders Bosun Tijani and Jason Njoku.

Zoho may be one of the most underrated tech companies. The 23-year-old company, which at this point offers more than 45 products, has never taken outside funding and has no ambition to go public, yet it’s highly profitable and runs its own data centers around the world.

Pensando, an edge computing startup founded by former Cisco engineers, came out of stealth mode today with an announcement that it has raised a $145 million Series C.

Rocket Lab has added another successful commercial launch to its track record: The rocket startup’s ‘As The Crow Flies’ mission took off today from its LC-1 launch site in New Zealand as planned.

Rocket Lab is launching its ninth Electron rocket today, with the launch set for 00:41 UTC (8:41 ET/5:41 PT).

In August, after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the venture-backed shoe startup Rothy’s, shoe giant Steven Madden filed a pre-emptive lawsuit asking a federal court to rule that its Rosy Flat shoes don’t copy design elements of the Point ballet flat that Rothy’s began selling soon after its 2016 launch.

MyGate, a Bangalore-based startup that offers security management and convenience service for guard-gated premises, said today it has bagged more than $50 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in the nation.

Over the past few years, gig economy companies and the treatment of their labor force has become a hot button issue for public and private sector debate.

Amazon seemingly didn’t realize what it had on its hands with the original Echo.

The solar system has another interstellar visitor, but there's no question of this one being an alien spacecraft.

The FrankOne coffee maker, fresh off a successful crowdfunding campaign, is now available for purchase, and I got a chance to test out one of the first run of these funky little gadgets.

This morning, the Justice Department announced that it had brought charges against the administrator and hundreds of users of the “world’s largest” child sexual exploitation marketplace on the dark web.

Does TiVo has a future beyond the DVR? Dave Shull certainly hopes so.

Netflix’s Q3 financial report has given the company’s stock a boost in after-hours trading, with profits significantly exceeding analyst expectations.

  Bone, one of the finest comics to ever hit the shelves, is getting a Netflix series.

Volvo Cars introduced Wednesday the XC40 Recharge, an all-electric vehicle that CTO Henrik Green described as “a car of firsts and a car of the future.

Shondaland, the production company founded by “Scandal” and “Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes, has signed a deal to create a new slate of podcasts for iHeartRadio over the next three years.

Volvo Cars used the unveiling of the XC40 Recharge, its first electric vehicle, to lay out an ambitious business strategy that includes introducing out a new EV every year through 2025 and slashing the carbon footprint of the lifecycle of every car and SUV it builds by 40%.

YouTube is partnering with Merchbar on a new integration that will allow artists to sell their official merchandise to their worldwide fans from a shelf just below the video.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission formally approved the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile in a 3-2 vote falling along party lines, The Verge reports.

Volvo Cars introduced Wednesday the XC40 Recharge, its first electric car under a new EV-focused brand that kicks off a company-wide shift towards electrification.

&Open is a startup with an unusual name, and one that fills an unusual niche in the business world.

What’s happening in consumer tech? At TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco last week, Extra Crunch managing editor Eric Eldon sat down with Andrew Chen, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

In our oceans the scale of disasters is measured in millions, billions, and trillions, while solutions amount to single digits: individuals or institutions working to impact a chosen issue with approaches often both brilliant and quixotic.

Hulu says it’s working on several product changes to make its service more personalized to viewers.

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories.

DoNotPay helps you get out of parking tickets, cancel forgotten subscriptions, and now it can call you when it’s your turn in a customer service phone queue.

Uber wants to become a super app by providing multiple services in a single app.

Autify, a platform that makes testing web application as easy as clicking a few buttons, has raised a $2.

Microsoft today announced two new open-source projects: Dapr, a portable, event-driven runtime that takes some of the complexity out of building microservices, and the Open Application Model (OAM), a specification that allows developers to define the resources their applications need to run on Kubernetes clusters and which Microsoft developed in cooperation with Alibaba Cloud.

The chief executive of Foursquare, one of the largest location data platforms on the internet, is calling on lawmakers to pass legislation to better regulate the wider location data industry amid abuses and misuses of consumers’ personal data.

Very few modern tech companies have executed on their mission as consistently, and at such a high level of quality as Analogue.

Instagram is slowly rolling out a new feature that will help better protect your personal data from being accessed by your long discarded, third-party applications — that is, any app you had once authorized to access your Instagram profile over the years.

Quentin Clark resigned a couple of weeks ago as the CTO of Dropbox at the same time that the storage company announced two other execs — Bharat Mediratta and Tim Young — were joining its leadership team in Clark’s stead.

A controversial UK government scheme to introduce mandatary age checks for accessing online pornography has been dropped — for now.

A day after NASA debuted the space suits set to be worn by the first woman on the moon, Virgin Galactic showed of its own gear at an event in New York.

The Justice Department says it’s dismantled one of the largest child exploitation sites on the dark web.

Canva, the Australian-based design tool maker, has today announced that it has raised an additional $10 million to bring its valuation to $3.

One of the major challenges facing engineers as they develop more agile robots is helping them move through space while avoiding collisions, especially in a dynamic environment.

NASA has a new contract extension in place with Boeing, which will cover rocket stages for its Space Launch System (SLS) beyond Artemis I and Artemis II, the missions covered under the current contract it holds with the aerospace company.

Live Caption, Google’s automatic captioning system first introduced at its I/O developer conference this May, is now officially available, alongside the launch of the new Pixel 4.

When Arianna Huffington stepped down from her role at the Huffington Post to start Thrive Global, she said the goal of her new business was to help a generation “avoid the burnout that all too often comes with success today.

Data privacy for apps is typically part of the purview of compliance teams — a model that isn’t always perfect, judging by the number of breaches and the extensive regulation that’s been (and still being) put in place to force companies and organizations to behave better.

Europe has ordered chipmaker Broadcom to stop applying exclusivity clauses in agreements with six of its major customers — imposing so called ‘interim measures’ based on preliminary findings from an ongoing antitrust investigation.

All Raise has established new chapters in Los Angeles and Boston.

A fully autonomous ship called the ‘Mayflower’ will make its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean next September, to mark the 400-year anniversary of the trip of the first Mayflower, which was very much not autonomous.

Amazon Pay users in India can now use voice command with Alexa to pay their utility, internet, mobile, and satellite cable TV bills, the e-commerce giant said on Wednesday.

What are the best strategies today for raising your startup’s first funding round, finding users and building your team? How can you best handle major new challenges like Brexit and global trade wars? These are the some of the key questions we will be answering this year at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, as part of a […].

Ebanx, the newly minted Brazilian financial services unicorn, expects to process $2 billion in payments by the end of the year and is looking to expand its offerings into domestic payments as it grows.

Deadline countdowns are relentless, and the application window to our TC Top Picks program is rapidly shrinking.

Booqed, a Hong Kong-based platform for booking short-term work spaces, announced today that it has raised $1.

Healx, a Cambridge, U. K.. -based startup using AI to help discover new treatments for rare diseases, has raised $56 million in Series B funding.

Databricks, the big data analytics service founded by the original developers of Apache Spark, today announced that it is bringing its Delta Lake open-source project for building data lakes to the Linux Foundation and under an open governance model.

Ebanx, the newly minted Brazilian financial services unicorn, expects to process $2 billion in payments by the end of the year and is looking to expand its offerings into domestic payments as it grows.

Two years after the release of the Home Mini, Google’s back with the sequel.

SpaceX has filed documents with the International Telecommunication Union, which governs international use of global bandwidth, to launch up to 30,000 more satellites for its Starlink global broadband constellation, SpaceNews reports.

LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social network for the working world with around 650 million users, is known best as a place where people connect with each other online either to build work connections, for recruitment, or for professional development.

If you haven’t heard, TechCrunch has officially launched a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and goods move from Point A to Point B — today and in the future — whether it’s by bike, bus, scooter, car, train, truck, flying car, robotaxi or rocket.

As cannabis dispensaries flourish across the country alongside the push to legalize medicinal and recreational marijuana use, demand for tools to manage the specificities of the weed retail business continues to increase.