Daily Crunch - Facebook cancels F8 over coronavirus concerns

TechCrunch Newsletter

Friday, February 28, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Coronavirus fears prompt even more event cancellations, controversial facial recognition software is being used widely and DocuSign acquires Seal Software. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 28, 2020.

Facebook cancels F8 conference, citing coronavirus concerns Facebook has confirmed that it has canceled its annual F8 developers conference over growing concerns about the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. More specifically, the company says it's canceling the "in-person component” — there may still be video presentations, along with live-streamed and local events, under the F8 umbrella. At the same time, companies, including Microsoft, are pulling out of the Game Developers Conference over similar concerns. And the Geneva Motor Show was just canceled. Read more Image Credits: Andrej Sokolow/picture alliance / Getty Images

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Clearview said its facial recognition app was only for law enforcement as it courted private companies After claiming that it would only sell its controversial facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies, a new report in BuzzFeed News suggests that Clearview AI is less than discerning about its client base, and has in fact shopped its technology far and wide. Read more

DocuSign acquires Seal Software for $188M to enhance its AI chops Seal Software was founded in 2010, and, while it may not be a mainstream brand, its customers include the likes of PayPal, Dell, Nokia and DocuSign itself. (DocuSign previously invested in the company, too.) These businesses use Seal for its contract management tools, but also for its analytics, discovery and data extraction services. Read more Image Credits: Getty Images

Senate passes 'rip and replace' bill to remove old Huawei and ZTE equipment from networks Written as a response to recent concerns around Chinese hardware manufacturers, the bill would ban purchase of telecom equipment from embattled Chinese manufactures like Huawei and ZTE. It also includes $1 billion in funding to help smaller rural telecoms "rip and replace" existing equipment from specific manufacturers. Read more

The world Bob Iger made The Disney executive has been openly thinking about retirement and searching for a successor — a search that culminated in this week's announcement that he'd be stepping down from the CEO role immediately. But Iger's succession planning hasn't stopped him from solidifying Disney's dominance of the entertainment business, a position designed to last long after his departure. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more Image Credits: Valeri Macon / Getty Images

'Robot' was coined 100 years ago, in a play predicting human extinction by android hands Published 100 years ago, R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Czech writer Karel Čapek is best remembered for bringing the word "robot" to sci-fi — and English, generally. Read more

Catching up with Startup Battlefield We’re trying out something new: As you (hopefully) know, TechCrunch hosts a number of Startup Battlefield events, and afterwards, those startups often go on to do interesting and newsworthy things. But there are so many Battlefield alumni at this point that we can’t cover every announcement. So occasionally, I’ll be rounding them up here. This week, we’ve got news from Berlin 2019 competitor Nodle.io, which is crowdsourcing the connectivity of smart sensors by offloading the task to smartphones. And Nodle announced this week that it has acquired Internet-of-Things security company Brickchain.com. Read more

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Daily Crunch - DoorDash files to go public

TechCrunch Newsletter

Thursday, February 27, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

DoorDash prepares to go public, Roblox raises $150 million and Reddit’s CEO takes aim at TikTok. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 27, 2020.

DoorDash, the $13B on-demand food delivery startup, says it has confidentially filed for an IPO The company said that its Form S-1 (a draft registration statement) was filed with the SEC and is now being reviewed. It did not say how many shares it would potentially sell, nor the price range for the IPO, nor what the timing of its next steps would be. The timing of the news underscores just how cash-intensive the on-demand food delivery business can be. DoorDash closed its latest round, for $700 million at a $13 billion valuation, in November of last year. Read more Image Credits: Photo by Tibrina Hobson/Getty Images for Los Angeles Times Food Bowl / Getty Images

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Roblox raises $150M Series G, led by Andreessen Horowitz, now valued at $4B The funding comes at a period of significant growth for the gaming platform. Just last summer, it was being visited by 100 million users, topping Minecraft, and its developer community of over 2 million actives earned $110 million in 2019. Read more

Reddit CEO: TikTok is 'fundamentally parasitic' At the Social 2030 conference, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman pushed back hard on the notion that Silicon Valley startups had something to learn from TikTok, saying, “Maybe I'm going to regret this, but I can't even get to that level of thinking with them. Because I look at that app as so fundamentally parasitic, that it's always listening, the fingerprinting technology they use is truly terrifying, and I could not bring myself to install an app like that on my phone." Read more Image Credits: Horacio Villalobos - Corbis / Contributor / Getty Images

Apple to begin online sales in India this year, open first retail store in 2021 For a decade, Apple has solely relied on third-party sellers, stores and marketplaces to sell its products in India. That will begin to change this year. Read more

What virtual worlds in the coming multiverse era will look like In Part 3 of our virtual worlds series, we imagine what the experience of these new social environments will feel like. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more Image Credits: Thomas Barwick / Getty Images

Dahmakan, a Malaysian 'full-stack' food delivery startup, raises $18M Series B Launched by former executives from Foodpanda, Dahmakan was the first Malaysian startup to participate in Y Combinator's startup accelerator program. Operational costs for food delivery companies are notoriously high, but Dahmakan is among several startups that use "cloud" kitchens, located closer to customers, to reduce delivery costs. Read more

Vice President Mike Pence will lead the US response to the COVID-19 outbreak In a press conference, President Donald Trump tapped Vice President Mike Pence to lead the U.S. response to the COVID-19 outbreak that has spread through Europe, Asia and Latin America. The new coronavirus strain has infected about 81,000 people around the world, killed 3,000 and wrought havoc on the global economy. Read more

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Daily Crunch - Disney CEO Bob Iger steps down

TechCrunch Newsletter

Wednesday, February 26, 2020 • By Anthony Ha

Yesterday was a big day for executive moves, with Bob Iger stepping down as Disney CEO and Keith Block stepping down as Salesforce co-CEO. Meanwhile, Facebook has acquired another VR game studio and the owner of The Players’ Tribune has raised more funding. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 26, 2020.

Disney CEO Bob Iger immediately steps down from CEO position The Walt Disney Company announced yesterday that Robert Iger, the company's long-time CEO who ushered in the company's lush franchise and entertainment platform profits, will step down immediately as chief executive. Bob Chapek, a long-time senior exec at the company who most recently held the position of chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, will succeed him. In an email to employees, Iger pointed to the successful launch of Disney’s flagship streaming service, and its acquisition of 21st Century Fox, writing, “With these key endeavors well underway, I believe it's the right time to transition to a new CEO and I believe Bob is absolutely the right person to assume this role and lead our company in this next pivotal period.” Read more Image Credits: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times / Getty Images

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Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block steps down Block stepped into the co-CEO role in 2018, after a long career at the company that saw him become vice chairman, president and director before he took this position. His departure leaves company founder Marc Benioff as Salesforce’s sole CEO and chair. Read more

Facebook acquires the VR game studio behind one of the Rift's best titles Facebook announced that it has acquired Bay Area VR studio Sanzaru Games, the developer of "Asgard's Wrath," considered by many enthusiasts to be one of the Oculus Rift's best games. Facebook says the studio will continue to operate its offices in the U.S. and Canada, with "the vast majority" of employees coming aboard post-acquisition. Read more

Minute Media raises $40M more for its user-generated, syndication-based sports publishing platform Minute Media — which owns 90min.com, FanSided, The Players' Tribune, Mental Floss and other online properties — brings in user-generated content across its largely sports-focused sites, which it then syndicates to third-party publishing partners. Read more

Twilio 2010 board deck gives peek at now-public company's early days Recently, Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson shared a company board deck from March 2010. Now we’ve analyzed it for you, using the snapshot of Twilio's history to illustrate how far the company has come in the last decade. (Extra Crunch membership required.) Read more Image Credits: Bloomberg / Getty Images

On-demand tutoring app Snapask gets $35 million to expand in Southeast Asia Founder and CEO Timothy Yu said Snapask will expand into Vietnam and focus on markets in Southeast Asia, where there is a high demand for tutoring and other private education services. It also will open regional headquarters in Singapore and develop video content and analytics products for its platform. Read more

D-Wave launches Leap 2, the next version of its quantum cloud service At the core of Leap 2 is D-Wave's new hybrid solver that can handle complex problems with up to 10,000 variables. As a hybrid system, D-Wave uses both classical and quantum hardware to solve these problems. Read more

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