Toyota’s surprise executive shakeup may disappoint investors

The 66-year-old Akio Toyoda may have resigned as president, but it appears likely that he'll still be in control.

Toyota’s surprise executive shakeup may disappoint investors by Tim De Chant originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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Daily Crunch: Stripe responds to report that it seeks to raise $2B with a terse ‘no comment’

Hello, friends, and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Daily Crunch: Stripe responds to report that it seeks to raise $2B with a terse ‘no comment’ by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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NASA’s ‘Mega Moon Rocket’ aced first flight and is ready for crewed Artemis II launch

The enormous Space Launch System passed its first test with flying colors, NASA’s preliminary analysis concludes, and the rocket and Orion capsule are good to go for their next mission: Artemis II, which will carry a crew to lunar orbit. After numerous delays and enormous cost overruns, some worried that the SLS (nicknamed the “Mega […]

NASA’s ‘Mega Moon Rocket’ aced first flight and is ready for crewed Artemis II launch by Devin Coldewey originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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What’s going on in the Dutch startup scene?

TechCrunch spoke with HRH Prince Constantijn at CES earlier this month about startup innovation in the Netherlands.

What’s going on in the Dutch startup scene? by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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The current legal cases against generative AI are just the beginning

As generative AI enters the mainstream, each new day brings a new lawsuit. Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI are currently being sued in a class action motion that accuses them of violating copyright law by allowing Copilot, a code-generating AI system trained on billions of lines of public code, to regurgitate licensed code snippets without providing […]

The current legal cases against generative AI are just the beginning by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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Uber Eats now shows you how much of your information is shared with delivery people

Uber Eats is introducing a new feature that shows users how much of their personal information is shared with their delivery person when they place an order on the app. The feature, which is called “View as Delivery Person,” is designed to add a level of transparency when ordering food via the app. The feature […]

Uber Eats now shows you how much of your information is shared with delivery people by Aisha Malik originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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Report: Stripe tried to raise more funding at a $55B-$60B valuation

When payments giant Stripe raised $600 million at a $95 billion valuation in 2021, it made headlines for raising capital at the highest-ever valuation for a privately-held startup. Defending that valuation appears to be proving challenging. The fintech company has reportedly approached investors about raising more capital — at least $2 billion — at a […]

Report: Stripe tried to raise more funding at a $55B-$60B valuation by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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Starling Medical’s new urine-testing device turns your toilet into a health tracker

The Houston-based company wants to prevent hospitalizations from chronic conditions, including urinary tract infections, diabetes and kidney disease.

Starling Medical’s new urine-testing device turns your toilet into a health tracker by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

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After mothballing Amazon Care, Amazon reenters tele-health with Amazon Clinic, a marketplace for third-party virtual consultants

The ink is not yet dry on Amazon’s $4 billion acquisition of OneMedical, but in the meantime, the online services giant is making one more move into telehealth, and into medical services overall, on its own steam. The company today is taking the wraps off of Amazon Clinic, which Amazon describes as a virtual health “storefront”: users can search for, connect with, and pay for telehealth care, addressing variety of conditions that are some of the more popular for telehealth consultations today.

Amazon Clinic is initially launching in 32 states in the U.S.. It does not work with health insurance and this point, and overall pricing will vary depending on providers, conditions, and location. (One example, connecting with a clinic for acne treatment in Nevada will cost around $40, and you get a choice of two providers whose different offers are provided in a comparative table. Another example, for pink eye (conjunctivitis) in New Jersey, has a wider price gap of between $30 and $48 between the two providers listed.)

Amazon Clinic appeared to leak out about a week ago when users spotted a video on YouTube that was then quickly removed as media picked up on the attention. Now, it is launching officially, and at a critical moment.


It’s only been a few months since Amazon shut down Amazon Care, which had been a telehealth service that it created for its own employees before stepping up plans to launch it nationwide and to third-party companies. And more generally, the company is, like many others in tech, feeling the economic pinch. It is reportedly gearing up to make a big round of layoffs, potentially 10,000 jobs and possibly this week; and additionally to that it’s been downsizing and cutting a number of its operations.

Amazon Clinic is about the company taking another pass at the healthcare market, and positioning itself as a player in what is a perpetual problem in the U.S.: how to bridge the gap between people needing medical help for ailments that are more complicated that a trip to the drug store, but might not justify expensive and time-consuming trips to the doctor.

(Other conditions it will cover addition to acne and pink eye include asthma refills, birth control, cold sores, dandruff, eczema, erectile dysfunction, eyelash growth, genital herpes, gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), hayfever, hyperlipidemia refills, hypertension refills, hypothyroidism refills, men’s hair loss, migraines, sinusitis, smoking cessation, urinary tract infections (UTIs), yeast infections and so on.)

Clinic is very much built in the Amazon mold. It’s a marketplace where third parties can leverage Amazon’s platform and reach to find customers, and Amazon can leverage third parties to quickly scale what offers to its consumers. And it helps Amazon extend the business funnel for other Amazon operations — in this case Amazon Pharmacy, which can fulfill any prescriptions that come out of Clinic consultations, and has reportedly not been as big of a boom in business as expected. (Users can fill Amazon Clinic scripts in other pharmacies, too.)


We’ve asked Amazon if it plans to provide its own in-house (private label, in e-commerce parlance) telehealth consultancy utalongside third parties, and what the plans are for further states, whether there are international ambitions, and if it will accept health insurance for Clinic in the future. It may well be that this is laying the groundwork for Amazon to link up what it is building here with OneMedical when that acquisition closes.


The bigger picture for Amazon Clinic is that the service will sit within Amazon’s bigger ambitions in the healthcare market. The company already has an online chemists, Amazon Pharmacy, which fulfills subscriptions and lets users additional buy over-the-counter drugs via Prime memberships that ship the items within two days.

Amazon also believes its new telehealth service addresses a gap in the market for providing users with health consultations for more minor ailments. Some situations need more direct physician involvement, which might be covered with One Medical or one’s existing healthcare coverage; some situations might be addressable by visiting a pharmacy on one’s own steam.

“But we also know that sometimes you just need a quick interaction with a clinician for a common health concern that can be easily addressed virtually,” the company noted in its blog post announcing the service.

Amazon has been making inroads, and laying out its ambitions, in healthcare for a number of years. Amazon Pharmacy was launched off the back of its acquisition of PillPack. And it’s been exploring healthcare as an enterprise opportunity, with integrations of Alexa into healthcare environments.


But Amazon Care is not the only step back it’s taken in its longer journey. In 2018, it formed a JV with JP Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway to build an employee healthcare operation, appointing a high-profile doctor to lead it. That service never appeared to take shape as expected and shut up shop in 2021.

We’ll update this piece as we learn more.

source: techcrunch.com

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Adobe snaps up Figma for $20B, taking out one of its biggest rivals in digital design

 

Big news in the world of digital creative technology: Adobe today announced that it would acquire Figma for $20 billion, taking out one of its biggest rivals in the realm of digital design.

Both the WSJ and Bloomberg reported earlier this morning that Adobe was close to announcing the deal to acquire Figma. In the end, Adobe confirmed the news to coincide with its quarterly earnings.

Those Q3 earnings saw the company post revenues of $4.43 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $3.40, which respectively met and exceeded analysts’ expectations. Nevertheless, the company said that it might need to finance this deal with a loan, and it provided a lukewarm outlook for the next quarter, with revenues expected to be $4.52 billion and EPS of $3.50, citing “the overall macroeconomic environment” and “FX headwinds”. Its stock is trading down nearly 10% pre-market open — one sign of how Adobe likely hoped the news of consolidating and taking out a rival could give it a boost.

Investors are not the only ones a little worried…

Source: Tech Crunch

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Google hits pause on Chrome and Chrome OS releases

Google  today announced that it is pausing upcoming Chrome and Chrome OS releases “due to adjusted work schedules.”

The company confirmed that we will still see security updates, though, which will get merged into version 80, the browser’s current stable release version. “We’ll continue to prioritize any updates related to security, which will be included in Chrome 80,” the team writes in today’s brief announcement.

Don’t expect any new feature updates anytime soon, though. Chrome version 81 is currently in beta testing and will likely remain in this channel for now. Like so much in this current situation, it’s unclear when Google plans to resume regular updates.

Earlier this week, Google also noted that Android app reviews will likely now take longer as the COVID-19 pandemic has reduced in-office staffing levels. The same holds true for YouTube. As YouTube  is taking measures to protect its staff, it says it’ll rely more on its AI algorithms to moderate content (which in turn will likely lead to more false positives and YouTube taking down more videos that weren’t actually violating its terms).

With most of Google (and other tech companies) now working from home, we’ll likely see more of these announcements in the future as the impact of this crisis becomes clearer in the coming weeks

Source: TechCrunch

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Facebook announces $100M grant program for small businesses

Regardless of how the COVID-19 pandemic plays out in the coming weeks and months, it has already been brutal for small businesses, with some forced to close for public safety, while others are taking a big hit in both revenue and access to credit.

So Facebook announced today that it’s creating a $100 million grant program for small businesses. Applications aren’t open yet, but the company says this will include both ad credits and cash grants that can be spent on operational costs like paying workers and paying rent. It will be available to up to 30,000 businesses in the 30-plus countries where Facebook operates.

Facebook has also created a Business Hub with tips and resources for businesses trying to survive during the outbreak.

“We want to do more,” said COO Sheryl Sandberg in a Facebook post. “Teams across our company are working every day to help businesses. We’re looking at additional ways to host virtual trainings – and will have more to share in the coming weeks – and we’re finding more ways to help people connect and learn to use technology through Blueprint, our free e-learning training program.”

In addition, the company announced today that it’s partnering with the Lenfest Institute for Journalism and the Local Media Association to offer a total of $1 million in grants for U.S. and Canadian newsrooms that need more resources to properly cover the pandemic. These individual grants will be for up to $5,000.

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Facebook, Reddit, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube issue joint statement on misinformation

Ian unprecedented move to reassure customers and flag the potential for misinformation about COVID-19 on their platforms, all of the major social media companies and their parent corporations issued a joint statement on their efforts.

“We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe,” the statement read.

Facebook Newsroom

✔@fbnewsroom

Joint Industry Statement from @Facebook, @google, @LinkedIn, @Microsoft, @reddit, @Twitter and @YouTube https://about.fb.com/news/2020/03/coronavirus/#joint-statement …

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1:02 AM - Mar 17, 2020

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Last week, U.S Chief Technology Officer Michael Michael Kratsios held a remote meeting with representatives from major tech companies on how to coordinate various efforts related to COVID-19, including fighting disnformation. The Washington Post and Politico reported that the White House asked Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Cisco and Twitter for help.

The World Health Organization’s director-general said last month that disinformation is as dangerous as COVID-19. During an address at the Munich Security conference on Feb. 15, almost a month before the WHO officially declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “We’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous.”

But tech companies aren’t just battling the spread of questionable posts by the public. They also have to contend with misleading information in several of President Donald Trump’s public statements on COVID-19, including his tweets and Facebook posts.

TechCrunch has contacted each of the companies in the joint statement for more details, and will update this post as we hear back from them.

In response to an email, a LinkedIn  spokesperson directed TechCrunch to a post published by the company on March 13, with links to information about finding trustworthy news sources and working remotely.

Facebook’s efforts to fight disinformation about COVID-19 have included information cards on Instagram and Facebook, that redirect to sources like the World Health Organization or local health authorities.

Source: Techcrunch

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Nvidia’s GTC developer event will be online-only over coronavirus fears

Nvidia has canceled the in-person portion of its GPU Technology Conference, which would have brought more than 10,000 people to San Jose three weeks from now. The company cited “growing concern over the coronavirus” for its decision, and said it will attempt to host as much of the content online as possible.

In an update to the GTC page, Nvidia explained:

“Jensen will still give a keynote. We will still share our announcements. And we’ll work to ensure our speakers can share their talks. But we’ll do this all online.”

The five-day event was scheduled to take place at the San Jose convention center starting on March 22. Some 250 companies would be exhibiting or attending in some form or another, presenting and hearing talks on the latest applications of GPUs and high performance computing.

Unfortunately, GTC has gone the way of the Game Developers Conferences, Mobile World Congress, F8, and numerous other major events that rightly worried that such a high concentration of international travelers might prove to be a breeding ground for the coronavirus currently spreading worldwide.

No doubt a good number of exhibitors and attendees were already canceling or questioning their attendance; Many companies have already restricted international travel for any reason at all.

Anyone who paid for a pass to GTC will receive a full refund, but Nvidia is hoping to salvage at least some of its programming.

“We will be working with our conference speakers to begin publishing their talks online beginning in the weeks ahead,” wrote the company in a blog post announcing the decision. “Additionally, for those in NVIDIA’s developer program, we plan to schedule availability with our researchers, engineers and solution architects to answer technical questions.”

All updates, including content, should appear on the GTC page going forward.

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Google cancels Cloud Next because of coronavirus

Google today announced that it is canceling the physical part of Cloud Next, its cloud-focused event and its largest annual conference by far with around 30,000 attendees, over concerns around the current spread of COVID-19.
Given all of the recent conference cancellations, this announcement doesn’t come as a huge surprise, especially after Facebook canceled its F8 developer conference only a few days ago.
Cloud Next was scheduled to run from Apri 6 to 8. Instead of the physical event, Google will now host an online event under the “Google Cloud Next ’20: Digital Connect” moniker. So there will still be keynotes and breakout sessions, as well as the ability to connect with experts.

“Innovation is in Google’s DNA and we are leveraging this strength to bring you an immersive and inspiring event this year without the risk of travel,” the company notes in today’s announcement.
The virtual event will be free and in an email to attendees, Google says that it will automatically refund all tickets to this year’s conference. It will also automatically cancel all hotel reservations made through its conference reservation system.
It now remains to be seen what happens to Google’s other major conference, I/O, which is slated to run from May 12 to 14 in Mountain View. The same holds true for Microsoft’s rival Build conference in Seattle, which is scheduled to start on May 19. These are the two premier annual news events for both companies, but given the current situation, nobody would be surprised if they got canceled, too.
Source: Techcrunch

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