Author: TechBrunch

Apple faces a deadline to submit more than 1 million documents related to recent changes to the App Store. On Friday, Judge Thomas S. Hixon rejected the company's attempt to extend that deadline, calling the request an “egregious act.” Therefore, Apple's deadline is still Monday, September 30th. “It's up to Apple how they meet the deadline, but Monday is certainly the deadline.” This is just the latest chapter in an ongoing legal dispute between Apple and Fortnite maker Epic Games, which is battling Apple's App Store rules. Apple almost won in U.S. District Court, but the court ordered the company…

For years, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have questioned Mark Zuckerberg's decision to invest tens of billions of dollars in Reality Labs. This week, Meta's wearables division unveiled a prototype of its Orion smart glasses. This is a form factor that the company believes could one day replace the iPhone. The idea seems crazy…but maybe a little less crazy than it was a week ago. Orion is a prototype headset that combines augmented reality, eye and hand tracking, generative AI, and a gesture-detecting wristband. Through its micro-LED projector and silicon carbide lenses (which are very expensive), Meta appears to have…

When the US Federal Reserve lowered interest rates by half a percentage point last week, it was good news for venture capitalists who back struggling startups, fintechs, and especially companies that rely on loans for cash flow to operate their businesses. Ta. These companies include corporate credit card providers like Ramp and Coast, which offer cards to fleet owners. Card companies make money from exchange rates, or transaction fees charged to merchants. “But they have to finance it with loans,” says Shel Mornaut, co-founder and general partner of fintech-focused firm Better Tomorrow Ventures. “The terms of that loan have gotten…

Apple's iPad comes with built-in productivity tools like Notes, Calendar, and Reminders, but if you want to maximize your productivity and explore new ways to organize your life, there are plenty of apps to help. While the iPad started out as a device that could be used to stream content and browse the web on the go, Apple has essentially made the iPad capable of handling a variety of tasks for personal, work, and school use. I changed it to a computer. As a result, there are many apps that can help you create a single place to organize your…

While online discussions tend to suggest that venture firms are retreating to the Bay Area and that San Francisco is the most important place to found a startup, Index Ventures is expanding its New York-based investment team. We are considering. Shardul Shah, a partner at Index Ventures, told TechCrunch that the company is currently looking to hire another New York-based investor, adding three or four new people to the team within the next year. He plans to add it. He is a positive addition to the current 10-member team. “For venture funds, that's hyper-growth,” Shah said, adding that Index is…

WordPress.org blocked hosting provider WP Engine earlier this week, but has lifted the ban until October 1st. This block prevented several sites from updating their plugins and themes, exposing them to potential security risks. WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg has been in a battle with WP Engine for over a week, blaming WP Engine's private equity investor Silver Lake. “We have heard from WP Engine customers who are frustrated that WP Engine does not allow updates, plugin directories, theme directories, and Openverse to work on their sites. It's sad to see this negatively affected,” Mullenweg said on the WordPress.org blog. “WP…

There is a lot of controversy going on in the world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites. The central issue is a dispute between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. WordPress technology is open source, free, and powers a huge portion of the internet (approximately 40% of websites). Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution. In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine “the cancer of WordPress.”…

ChatGPT usage is likely to become more expensive in the coming years. Citing an internal OpenAI document, the New York Times reports that OpenAI plans to increase the price of individual ChatGPT subscriptions from $20 per month to $22 per month by the end of the year. Further rapid growth is expected over the next five years. OpenAI expects to charge $44 per month for ChatGPT Plus by 2029. This aggressive move reflects pressure from investors to cut losses on OpenAI. According to the NY Times, the company's monthly revenue hit $300 million in August, but OpenAI is expected to…

Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Chao was released from U.S. custody on Friday after serving a four-month sentence in a low-security correctional facility. CZ's ruling is the result of a federal investigation that found Binance failed to prevent widespread criminal activity at the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. CZ pleaded guilty to the Justice Department's charges, paid a $50 million fine, and agreed to never serve as an executive at Binance again. Binance was forced to pay a $4.3 billion settlement to the U.S. government, the largest corporate fine in U.S. history. However, CZ still owns an estimated 90% stake in Binance,…

EV startup Canoo has added two new suppliers related to the drivetrains that power its electric vehicles, just weeks after the company began a major reorganization that included the resignation of its chief technology officer. is facing a lawsuit. According to a TechCrunch investigation, Canoo also parted ways with senior director of advanced vehicle engineering Christoph Kutner, who was the last remaining co-founder of the nine-person team that launched the startup in late 2017. Kuttner is one of nine co-founders who spun off from Faraday Future in late 2017 to launch Evelozcity, the original company behind Canoo. Those co-founders steadily…