Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Daily Crunch - Farewell to 2019

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Tuesday, December 31, 2019 By Darrell Etherington

2019 comes to a close

Today’s the last day of 2019 – quick, cross off those last minute to-dos for the year (and the decade). And should auld acquaintance be forgot? No, they obviously shouldn’t, the song is rhetorical. Enjoy this final Daily Crunch of the decade, your auldest and dearest acquaintance.

Uber and Postmates sue California over AB-5

Uber and Postmates are challenging the controversial AB-5 state bill just days before it’s set to go into effect. This is the bill that limits how much work companies can assign to contract workers, in an attempt to get them to actually hire more employees in-house. The effects of the bill don’t necessarily line up with its intent, according to critics, and Postmates and Uber are specifically challenging it as unconstitutional in this complaint, filed by the companies along with two contract workers.

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Uber and Postmates sue California over AB-5 image

Image Credits: ejs9 / Getty Images / Getty Images

Amazon is opening a homeless shelter in its Seattle HQ

Amazon is opening a homeless shelter that can accommodate families and pets, with private rooms and support for up to 275 people per night, along with an industrial, high-capacity kitchen. This will be located inside its headquarters, and its operation will be fully funded by the e-commerce giant. It’s a laudable move, but one could argue that the more pressing challenge to address is what impact Amazon’s operating model has on society as a whole.

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Meanwhile, Seattle's experiencing a startup boom

TC’s Kate Clark dives into the moment that Seattle is currently experiencing in terms of home-grown startups, providing a pretty comprehensive look at not only the new ventures that have popped up in the hometown of Amazon and Microsoft, but also of the investors and firms funding the spike in entrepreneurial success.

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Meanwhile, Seattle's experiencing a startup boom image

2019 was a banner year for wireless headphones

Fully wireless headphones have been around for most of the latter half of the last decade in one form or another, but 2019 just might be the year they really found their footing and surpassed their wired peers on most, if not all, measures that count. That led to big growth in shipment volumes for the category this past year, Canalys reports.

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Chinese EV company NIO gets a boost on surprise earnings

NIO, which went public earlier this year and has so far been hammered in the public markets, got a nice win on the heels of its latest earnings report, which included beats on both revenue and profit, as well as projections for big increases in vehicle deliveries for next quarter.

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Chinese EV company NIO gets a boost on surprise earnings image

Image Credits: Visual China Group / Getty Images

Huawei revenue hits a record high despite U.S. reversals

Huawei’s business weathered 2019 and its turbulent trade war fallout pretty well, with a record $122 billion in total revenue. But the company doesn’t expect that to necessarily continue, since it’s looking at 2020 as being a “difficult” year given the U.S. trade blacklist and strict limitations on how Huawei can work with U.S. companies.

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2019's 5 biggest investment rounds

TC’s Ingrid Lunden takes a look back at the five biggest VC investment deals in 2019, and what they signal about the investment market, their companies and the industry at large. This zoom-in is also informed by the overall trends that emerge from looking at the top 50 deals of the year, and is not to be missed. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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2019's 5 biggest investment rounds image

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch

Last call for ExtraCrunch discount

We have a holiday promotion going on right now with annual Extra Crunch membership. You can get an annual membership for only $79 (normally $150/year). This offer is available exclusively through this link, and the offer expires at the end of the month – which is today, for those keeping count.

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Monday, December 30, 2019

Daily Crunch - VMware completes Pivotal acquisition

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Monday, December 30, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Monday

VMware finishes a crucial acquisition, Spotify says it will pause political advertising and “The Mandalorian” will return next fall. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 30, 2019.

Also, Darrell Etherington is writing the newsletter tomorrow, so I’ll see you all in 2020!

VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition

VMware is closing the year with a significant new weapon in its arsenal. (I restrained myself from using a “pivotal” pun here. You’re welcome.)

The acquisition — first announced in August — helps the company in its transformation from a pure virtual machine supplier into a cloud native vendor that can manage infrastructure wherever it lives. It fits alongside the acquisitions of Heptio and Bitnami, two other deals that closed this year.

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VMware completes $2.7 billion Pivotal acquisition image

Image Credits: Pivotal

Spotify to 'pause' running political ads, citing lack of proper review

The company told us that starting early next year, it will stop selling political ads: “At this point in time, we do not yet have the necessary level of robustness in our processes, systems and tools to responsibly validate and review this content.”

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'The Mandalorian' returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020

The last episode of the first season of “The Mandalorian” went live on Disney+ on Friday, and showrunner Jon Favreau wasted very little time confirming when we can expect season two of the smash hit to land: next fall.

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'The Mandalorian' returns for Season 2 on Disney+ in fall 2020 image

2019 Africa Roundup: Jumia IPOs, China goes digital, Nigeria becomes fintech capital

The last 12 months served as a grande finale to 10 years that saw triple-digit increases in startup formation and VC on the continent. Here's an overview of the 2019 market events that capped off a decade in African tech.

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Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million

Maxar's goal in selling the business is to help alleviate some of its considerable debt. The purchasing entity is a consortium of companies led by private investment firm Northern Private Capital, which will acquire the entirety of MDA's Canadian operations — responsible for the development of the Canadarm and Canadarm2 robotic manipulators used on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, respectively.

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Maxar is selling space robotics company MDA for around $765 million image

Image Credits: NASA

Cloud gaming is the future of game monetization, not gameplay

Lucas Matney argues that as is so often the case with the next big thing in tech, cloud streaming is much more likely to become the next big feature of a more traditional platform, rather than the entire platform itself. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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This week's TechCrunch podcasts

Equity took the week off, but we kept Original Content going with a review of Netflix’s new fantasy show “The Witcher.”

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Friday, December 27, 2019

Daily Crunch - The startups we lost in 2019

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Friday, December 27, 2019 By Anthony Ha

Happy Friday

We round up the startups that failed in 2019, new details are revealed about Huawei’s support from the Chinese government and Russia is testing a separate internet of its very own. Here’s your Daily Crunch for December 27, 2019.

Remembering the startups we lost in 2019

This year's batch doesn't include any story quite as spectacular as last year's big Theranos flameout, which gave us a best-selling book, documentary, podcast series and upcoming Adam McKay/Jennifer Lawrence film. Some, like MoviePass, however, may have come close.

And for every Theranos, there are dozens of stories of hardworking founders with promising products that simply couldn't make it to the finish line.

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Remembering the startups we lost in 2019 image

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Huawei reportedly got by with a lot of help from the Chinese government

For those following Huawei's substantial rise over the past several years, it'll come as no surprise that the Chinese government played an important role in fostering the hardware maker. Even so, the actual numbers behind the ascent are still a bit jaw-dropping — at least according to a piece published by The Wall Street Journal.

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Russia starts testing its own internal internet

Russia has begun testing a national internet system that would function as an alternative to the broader web, according to local news reports. Exactly what stage the country has reached is unclear, however.

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Russia starts testing its own internal internet image

Image Credits: Max Ryazanov

Fintech's next decade will look radically different

Nik Milanovic argues that in the next 10 years, fintech will become portable and ubiquitous, as it both moves into the background and creates a centralized place where our money is managed for us.

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Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India's proposed intermediary liability rules

Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit group that operates Wikipedia, is urging the Indian government to rethink proposed changes to the nation's intermediary liability rules. Under the proposal, the Indian Ministry of Electronics and IT requires "intermediary" apps — a category that includes any service with more than 5 million users — to set up a local office and have a senior executive in the nation who can be held responsible for any legal issues.

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Wikimedia Foundation expresses deep concerns about India's proposed intermediary liability rules image

Image Credits: Anindito Mukherjee / Bloomberg / Getty Images

The FAA proposes remote ID technology for drones

According to the FAA, the "next exciting step in safe drone integration" aims to offer a kind of license plate analog to identify the approximately 1.5 million drones currently registered with the governmental body.

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The year of the gig worker uprising

2019 was a momentous year for gig workers. While the likes of Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash rely on these workers for their respective core services, the pay does not match how much those workers are worth — which is a lot. It's this issue that lies at the root of gig workers' demands. (Extra Crunch membership required.)

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