Author: TechBrunch

Payments giant Stripe has acquired four-year-old competitor Lemon Squeegee, the company announced on Friday. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Lemon Squeezy describes itself as the “merchant of record” that calculates and pays worldwide sales tax on digital products and handles legal procedures and fees in each country. It primarily serves SaaS and software businesses. In a post by X, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison announced the acquisition by saying, “Hello, @lmsqueezy! We're going to significantly expand merchant of record sales.” Chief Product Officer Will Gaybrick also said in his own post, “When people ask me, 'What should Stripe release…

Apple's iCloud Private Relay, which protects paying iCloud users from online trackers, has experienced an outage affecting major markets, restricting users' access to web services and apps that use their internet connection. TechCrunch understands that iCloud Private Relay downtime has been affecting some Apple users in markets including Europe, India, Japan and the U.S. since at least Thursday. The sporadic downtime has left users unable to access the web with the Safari browser and has reported internet connection issues with installed apps. Apple's System Status web page confirmed the latest iCloud Private Relay outage, saying the service may be “slow…

Welcome to Startups Weekly, your weekly dose of can't miss content from the startup world. To receive Startups Weekly in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This week we talk about Wiz's bold decision, a public VC battle, new capital in legal tech, and a16z's close call. Let's get started! This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Avishag Shaar-Yashuv / Wiz (Opens in new window), CC BY 2.0 (Opens in new window) license. Wizz Says No to Google: Turning down the search giant's $23 billion acquisition offer was not an easy decision for the fast-growing, four-year-old cybersecurity startup,…

According to a press release on Friday, Apple has signed onto a White House voluntary initiative to develop safe, secure and trustworthy AI. The company will soon introduce its generative AI product, Apple Intelligence, into its core products and bring generative AI to Apple's 2 billion users. Apple joins 15 other technology companies, including Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI, who committed to following the White House's ground rules for developing generative AI in July 2023. At the time, Apple did not reveal how deeply it planned to incorporate AI into iOS. But at WWDC in June, Apple…

X, formerly Twitter, has quietly introduced a change that appears to include user data in its Grok AI training pool by default, a move that was spotted by users of the platform on Friday. Grok is the name of a conversational AI, or large-scale language model (LLM), developed by Elon Musk's X as a rival to OpenAI's buzzy ChatGPT chatbot, but its selling point is said to be humor over political correctness. Those worried about X's information being fed to Musk's chatbot can learn more about how to turn off the feature here. The development caught the attention of X's…

TikTok is trying to take on YouTube Music and Shazam with a new feature called “Sound Search,” which lets users find sounds by singing, humming, or playing a song. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature is only available to some users in certain regions and isn't yet widely available. Sound Search gives you another way to find what you're looking for on the app, and on a platform where song-based trends change quickly, the tool also helps you find and understand current trends better. TikTok's sound search is similar to YouTube Music's song discovery tool, which lets you…

Skip emerged from stealth this week to announce a partnership with outdoor clothing specialist Arc'teryx. The deal marks the first to market launch of Skip's MO/GO technology, a “powered pant” that utilizes soft exoskeleton technology developed in-house at Alphabet's X Labs moonshot factory. MO/GO stands for “Mountain Goat” and is a hybrid soft/rigid exoskeleton system designed to increase the wearer's mobility while walking. Rather than actually walking, it provides 40% energy assistance to the quadriceps and hamstrings, reducing strain on the knees. Pre-orders for the technology will open this week, with shipments expected to begin later this year. MO/GO will…

Bing is the latest search engine to introduce generative AI into its results, and Microsoft has announced that it will be rolling out Bing-generated searches to a small number of users. The goal is to give users the answers they're looking for directly in the search results, potentially integrating information that users would otherwise have to click through to different websites to find. For example, Microsoft says that if you type “what is a spaghetti western,” you'll see an AI-generated summary of the genre's history and some examples of spaghetti western films. You may remember that Google unveiled its own…

Ledger, the French startup known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has launched a new mid-range device, the Ledger Flex. Currently selling for $249, the tiny hardware wallet features an E-Ink display that lets you navigate the interface and approve transactions with just a tap. Like all Ledger wallets, Ledger Flex is built around a Secure Element where your wallet's private key is safely stored, meaning even if your computer or phone is compromised, your crypto assets are safe because they can't leave your wallet without your private key. The alternative is to store your assets on a centralized crypto…

Welcome to a recap of Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about startups. This episode has a lot to offer, including a major fundraise, a potentially big acquisition gone wrong, and what happens when a fintech company suddenly stops serving certain customers. First up, Mary Ann Azevedo discussed Clio's huge funding round. The Canadian legal tech company raised $900 million at a $3 billion valuation. That's a huge amount of money any time, but especially in this market. Amazingly, the company continues to grow at a rapid pace, which is no easy feat at such a late stage. We discussed what's driving…