Daring Foods closed on $65 million in Series C funding Wednesday as the plant-based chicken startup launches its products into 3,000 Walmart stores nationally. Daring offers four plant-based chicken products, including Original, Lemon & Herb, Cajun and Breaded, that looks, cooks and tastes like its chicken counterpart. CEO Ross Mackay told TechCrunch that the goal
Month: October 2021
Protein biochemist Dr. Jasmin Hume was working in the alternative food space when she saw an opportunity to evolve technology so that our global food industry can reduce its reliance on animals. She started Shiru in 2019, and the company uses a “precision fermentation” process to create plant-based ingredients for food companies. The result has
Hark, all ye who pay attention to the stock market, for Elon Musk’s wheels-focused company broached the $1 trillion market cap threshold today. Yeah, it finally happened, so the Equity team quickly scrambled for the microphones. Chris put together the show, allowing Alex and Kirsten to dive into the matter. Kirsten, in case you aren’t
Matt Rogers built the first machine-learning thermostat as the co-founder of Nest. He was previously an engineer at Apple, where he helped build ten generations of the iPhone and the first iPad. He currently splits his time between Incite.org and a new company that he is developing. The best way to drive lasting change is
Derek Zaba is a partner at Sidley Austin’s Palo Alto office and co-chairs the firm’s Shareholder Activism practice. He counsels companies on a variety of matters, including activism defense/proxy contests, activism preparedness, takeover defenses, shareholder engagement and corporate governance. Sharon R. Flanagan Contributor Sharon R. Flanagan is the managing partner of Sidley Austin’s office in
Eric Kosmowski Contributor The climate measures in the budget reconciliation package now before the U.S. Congress could unlock an investment boom in clean energy, zero-carbon transportation and efficient manufacturing that would allow us, as a nation, to reverse the course of rising greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our future. Simultaneously, these investments will help the
Via Separations is a startup from a couple of MIT material science engineers who figured out a way to reduce the amount of energy required in a manufacturing process, resulting in lower carbon creation, lower energy usage and lower costs. Today, the company announced a $38 million Series B. The round was led by NGP
It makes sense that phone manufacturers are paying extra attention to how faces show up in photos, and the new Pixel 6, announced by Google today, introduces a suite of new AI-powered tools to make humans show up better than ever. The two highlights are Face Unblur — which helps reduce blur on moving faces
Google’s latest flagship phones have an impressive set of automated, AI-powered tools to help make your photos look better, with smart blurs, object removal and skin tone exposure. While we’ll have to test them out to see if they work as advertised, they could be useful for everyone from pixel peepers to casual snapshot takers.
Google is set to announce new Pixel phones today. The company is holding an event at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. Google already said that it plans
Not content with setting your feet a-tapping with its intuitive music sequencer aimed at amateur music makers, Artiphon today announced an app that adds video-making prowess to the Orba’s already impressive feature set. Appealing to your inner Video Jockey, the Orbacam demo video makes it look easy, adding video filters and effects to your visual
Gloucester, Massachusetts-based Cometeer has been around for nine years. In that time, the company has built up a mad scientist’s lair worth of coffee scientists, equipment and processes to jolt some fresh life into the industry. Based out of a former frozen seafood facility, the company has created a multimillion-dollar proprietary production line to turn
The ocean economy is growing in importance, and with it grows the need to map, understand, and track the ocean itself. Saildrone has been doing just that with its fleet of autonomous science vessels, and the company has now raised a massive $100M round C to pursue its ro-boat aspirations further. Saildrone’s boats have been
Hello again, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s running series of posts discussing how the public markets rarely give even half of a spare fuck concerning what Apple announces at its events. Indeed, Apple’s stock seems to be far more labile to external events than from internally sourced announcements; rare is the case in which Apple’s
Apple has backpedaled on years of questionable design choices with its MacBook Pros, unceremoniously retiring the universally disliked Touch Bar and adding back the ports and MagSafe users have missed. But in a show of perverse solidarity with the iPhone, the company has added a big, ugly notch front and center on the “best notebook
Apple has unveiled some new MacBook Pro models at a virtual conference today. And the company is timing the release of the next major release of macOS with the new laptop. Mac users will be able to update to macOS Monterey on Monday, October 25. This new major release of macOS will be available for
Uber is testing Pool Chance, a feature that lets riders heading in the same direction share the cost of the journey, in Kenya, with plans to roll out the low-cost service to Ghana and Nigeria. TechCrunch discovered the option when booking a car in Nairobi, Kenya. An Uber spokesperson later confirmed it was part of
Apple is set to announce new hardware today. The company is holding a (virtual) keynote at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. Rumor has it that the company
One of the gating factors for getting more homeowners to make the switch to solar energy has been that solar, as a business, is hard one to get right, with many a company failing when they’ve been unable to strike the right balance between the technology working as it should, provisioning services in a cost-effective
Analogue’s much-anticipated Pocket retro gaming machine will come with more than just sleek design and the ability to play tons of classic games. The device will be the first with AnalogueOS on it, an effort to make what founder Chris Taber calls the “Library of Alexandria of video games.” Actually, he called it the “great
Arvind co-leads Mayfield’s engineering biology practice and is founder and venture advisor at IndieBio. He was the first investor in breakout bio companies such as Geltor, Synthex, Prime Roots, NotCo, Prellis, New Culture, DNA Lite and Memphis Meats. Climate in the last decade has been unprecedented in many ways, none of them good. Wildfires in
The new version of Nintendo’s hit Switch console is just different enough to justify itself, but hardly a must-buy for any of the millions who bought the launch version. With a bigger, brighter and better screen, it’s a good choice for someone buying now who intends to use it mostly as a handheld — but
The math is pretty basic. How many satellites are going to go up over the next decade? How many solar panels will they need? And how many are being manufactured that fit the bill? Turns out the answers are: a lot, a hell of a lot and not nearly enough. That’s where Regher Solar aims
Planet-positive venture capital firm At One Ventures closed on its Fund I, aimed at injecting $150 million into startups that are innovating in the technical hardware space and specializing in environmentally positive technology. The Bay Area firm was started in 2019 by GoogleX co-founder Tom Chi, Laurie Menoud, who co-led venture capital for North American
Spotify’s in-car entertainment system known as just “Car Thing,” launched this spring on an invite-only basis, is now becoming more broadly available. The company announced today Car Thing will become available to U.S. users who want to purchase the $79.99 device. Previously, Spotify had distributed the product for just the cost of shipping during its
In a rather surprising move, the makers of the reMarkable line of e-paper tablets have added a subscription service to their latest device that enables several of its more advanced features. All current users are provided a lifetime subscription, and new users get about a year for free, so nothing will change for most, but
The Luna Display from Astropad is a clever product enabling you to use your iPad as a second display. It was originally launched for Mac only, but Apple launched a competing product, putting the company in jeopardy for a couple of years. Today, it’s available for Windows machines as well, completing Astropad’s pivot to a
E-bike manufacturer VanMoof recently raised a $128 million funding round. And the company is already using some of that cash to develop a brand new product — the VanMoof V. This is a new product in the VanMoof lineup, a high-speed bike. The VanMoof V isn’t available just yet. Instead, the company teased the new
Following Tile’s recent close on $40 million in debt financing, the company today is introducing its latest lineup of lost-item trackers, including the long-promised ultra-wideband-powered tracker aimed to compete with Apple AirTag, Tile Ultra. This product, though being officially announced, is not yet available for purchase. Instead, the company’s first updates include the premium Tile
It seems as if retailers and Google are playing a game of chicken about who can leak the most information about the company’s two upcoming flagship phones: the Google Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 6 Pro. Google’s Pixel line of smartphones has traditionally been the flagship of the Android armada for those of us who