Author: TechBrunch
Andreessen Horowitz partner Joshua Lu knows that in the video game industry, there's never much rest. He experienced the heyday of mobile gaming as head of product at Zynga, where he worked on hits like Words with Friends. Then he worked on blockbuster titles like Diablo Immortal as vice president at Blizzard Entertainment. And then he learned to see games in a new dimension as director of product management at Meta, working on the VR game Horizon Worlds. “I had to unlearn what I thought were universal truths and learn entirely new ways of doing things,” Lu told TechCrunch. Lu…
There are 5 days left to purchase $200 off your student pass to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. This special offer ends September 6th at 11:59pm PST. Don't miss out! Now that classes are back in session, it's natural to feel pressured by increased expenses. Or maybe you've recently graduated and are looking for your first big job. Either scenario can be tough on your budget. More than 10,000 tech leaders are expected to attend Disrupt 2024, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30, making this the perfect opportunity to make influential connections and improve your chances of…
When the now-infamous Crowdstrike software update took down businesses around the world in July, lawsuits were inevitable — and they were, with Delta Airlines perhaps the most famous example being its lawsuit against the airline seeking $500 million in damages and hiring lawyer David Boies. Boyce's wide-ranging list of high-profile clients includes victims of Theranos, Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein, and Al Gore in the Bush v. Gore case over the 2000 presidential election results, and he also led the government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft in the 1990s. Even before Delta came forward, shareholders had filed a class action lawsuit…
Google has dominated search for so long that a U.S. District Court judge recently ruled that the company acted illegally to maintain its monopoly on online search. You've probably been using Google Search for as long as you can remember. Google Search has replaced the phone book and the encyclopedia. But just because Google runs the most popular search engine doesn't mean you have to use it. If you haven't considered search engines other than Google, you might be surprised to learn what others are out there. There are a lot of compelling alternatives to Google Search on the market.…
Customers of Indian cryptocurrency exchange WazirX, which was hacked for $234 million in July, are unlikely to get all of their funds back through the ongoing restructuring process, the company's legal counsel said on Monday. George Gwee, director of restructuring firm Kroll, which is working with Wajir X, said clients will not get back at least 43% of the money they have deposited with Wajir X. Last week, Wajir X sought six months of protection in the Singapore High Court while it restructures its debt. Gwee told reporters that the best-case scenario would be a return of “between 55% and…
Validus, a Singapore-based digital lending platform for SMEs, has secured a $50 million loan from HSBC under the ASEAN Growth Fund strategy. Validus will use the proceeds to support financial inclusion for Indonesian SMEs, addressing the challenges they face in accessing financial resources. According to the Indonesian Ministry of Economy, 64.2 million SMEs account for 61% of Indonesia's GDP, and the potential for growth is immense. These SMEs employ around 119.6 million people, which is 97% of the country's total workforce. However, only around 17.5 million SMEs are using the online ecosystem or e-commerce. According to a 2017 World Bank…
On August 5, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar stood before about 20 nervous new hires in the company's Washington, D.C., office and delivered the usual on-boarding speech about the company's mission and Palantir's history. But there was one thing that wouldn't have been clear to them a few years ago: Sankar was talking about the importance of a new wave of defense technology startups founded by people from Palantir, Tesla, and SpaceX. Its importance is ideological rather than financial — after all, the business Palantir gets from startups is tiny compared to government contracts — but you can't put a price…
On August 5, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar stood before about 20 nervous new hires in the company's Washington, D.C., offices and delivered the sort of speech you'd expect at a new-hire conference: the company's mission, Palantir's history, etc. But there was one thing that wouldn't have made sense a few years ago: Sankar was talking about the importance of a new wave of defense tech startups founded by ex-Palantir, Tesla, and SpaceX. Its importance is ideological rather than financial — after all, the business Palantir gets from startups is tiny compared to government contracts — but you can't put a…
As companies experiment with incorporating AI everywhere, one unexpected trend is that they are using AI to help their newfound army of bots better understand human emotions. It's a field known as “emotional AI,” and the technology is predicted to be a growing trend, according to a new Enterprise SaaS Emerging Tech Research report from PitchBook. Here's why: When companies deploy AI assistants for their executives and employees, and make AI chatbots their front-line sales and customer service reps, how can the AI perform well if it can't understand the difference between an angry “What does that mean?” and a…
The Jetsons premiered on September 23, 1962. The first episode, titled “Rosie the Robot,” was a sort of origin story for the character, depicting how overworked Jane decides to hire a housekeeper. 62 years after its premiere, Rosie remains an important pop culture touchstone that showcases the unrealized potential of domestic robots. That doesn't mean that robots won't be present in homes in 2024. iRobot says it has sold more than 50 million Roombas. But that's just a fraction of the total number of robot vacuums sold worldwide. Robot lawn mowers and pool cleaners are also popular, but their numbers…