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Travis VanderZanden’s slow-motion departure from Bird is now complete. The scooter rental company announced in a late-Friday news dump that the executive has stepped down from his role as chairperson of Bird’s board, “ effective immediately .” Replacing VanderZanden is John Bitove, who played a role in saving Bird’s bacon this past December via its merger with Bird Canada. VanderZanden had led the micromobility company from its inception as its president and founding CEO, but that all changed last year when Bird’s declining stock price culminated in a delisting warning from the New York Stock Exchange. Soon after, VanderZanden stepped down from his role as president , handing over the title to Bird’s then-chief operating officer Shane Torchiana. Torchiana went on to assume the CEO post as well several months later. At the time, VanderZanden called the reorg a “long-planned transition.” According to Bird,  VanderZanden “decided to step down [from the board] to pursue other ve...

YouTube is running a new experiment to limit usage on ad blockers by asking users to turn it off or buy a premium subscription after three videos. Users on Reddit posted screenshots of the streaming service showing a warning sign to people using an ad-blocking extension on desktop as spotted first by Bleeping Computer . The warning says “Video player will be blocked after 3 videos.” The message below states that “It looks like you maybe using an ad blocker. Video playback will be blocked unless YouTube is allowlisted or the ad blocker is disabled.” Image Credits: u/Reddit_n_Me Another user posted a screenshot after YouTube blocked access to the video. “Ad blockers violate YouTube’s Terms of Service,” the message reads. Some users have experienced YouTube restricting ad blockers on mobile as well . Image Credits: Reddit (opens in a new window) The company told TechCrunch that this warning sign is part of an experiment. “We’re running a small experiment globally that urges v...

The number of workplaces offering fertility and reproductive healthcare benefits are on the rise . Doing so can help companies become more competitive employers and bolster diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, for example by attracting more women and LGBTQ+ people. Based in London, Fertifa wants to enable more companies in Europe to offer reproductive benefits to workers. Its clients already include Lululemon, Meta, Bain Capital and Virgin. Today the startup announced it has raised a £5 million seed round (about $6.3 million USD) led by Notion Capital and Triple Point Ventures. Other participants included Conviction, Calm/Storm, Tiny.vc, EQT Foundation and angel investors Eamon Jubbawy, Catherine and Jonathan Lenson, Dorothy Chou, Caroline and Mike Hudack and Scott Mackin. Existing investors Passion Capital, Lemonade Stand, SpeedInvest, Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield, Adam Knight and Jeremy Yap also returned for the round. Fertifa was founded in 2019 by Tony Chen and Nick Kuan, ...

The number of workplaces offering fertility and reproductive healthcare benefits are on the rise . Doing so can help companies become more competitive employers and bolster diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, for example by attracting more women and LGBTQ+ people. Based in London, Fertifa wants to enable more companies in Europe to offer reproductive benefits to workers. Its clients already include Lululemon, Meta, Bain Capital and Virgin. Today the startup announced it has raised a £5 million seed round (about $6.3 million USD) led by Notion Capital and Triple Point Ventures. Other participants included Conviction, Calm/Storm, Tiny.vc, EQT Foundation and angel investors Eamon Jubbawy, Catherine and Jonathan Lenson, Dorothy Chou, Caroline and Mike Hudack and Scott Mackin. Existing investors Passion Capital, Lemonade Stand, SpeedInvest, Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield, Adam Knight and Jeremy Yap also returned for the round. Fertifa was founded in 2019 by Tony Chen and Nick Kuan, ...

An Indian court has dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit against the Indian government that sought to challenge New Delhi’s block orders on tweets and accounts. The Karnataka High Court dismissed the plea, filed last year, and also fined the Elon Musk-owned firm 5 million Indian rupees ($61,000). “Your client (Twitter) was given notices and your client did not comply. Punishment for non-compliance is 7 years imprisonment and unlimited fine. That also did not deter your client. So you have not given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year of delay… then all of sudden you comply and approach the Court. You are not a farmer but a billon dollar company,” a single judge bench said in scathing verdict Friday. Twitter filed the plea against the Indian government in Karnataka High Court in Bengaluru last year, before the takeover by Musk, alleging that New Delhi had abused its power by ordering it to arbitrarily and disproportionately remove several tweets from its platform. Additio...

An Indian court has dismissed Twitter’s lawsuit against the Indian government that sought to challenge New Delhi’s block orders on tweets and accounts. The Karnataka High Court dismissed the plea, filed last year, and also fined the Elon Musk-owned firm 5 million Indian rupees ($61,000). “Your client (Twitter) was given notices and your client did not comply. Punishment for non-compliance is 7 years imprisonment and unlimited fine. That also did not deter your client. So you have not given any reason why you delayed compliance, more than a year of delay… then all of sudden you comply and approach the Court. You are not a farmer but a billon dollar company,” a single judge bench said in scathing verdict Friday. Twitter filed the plea against the Indian government in Karnataka High Court in Bengaluru last year, before the takeover by Musk, alleging that New Delhi had abused its power by ordering it to arbitrarily and disproportionately remove several tweets from its platform. Additio...

In the industrial world, cement is about as omnipresent as materials get. But despite its clear and obvious utility, cement is responsible for some 8% of global CO2 emissions — if it was a country, it would be third biggest emitter globally , by some estimations. While cement’s ubiquity comes largely down to how easy it is to produce and the relative cost, creating cement is hugely carbon-intensive due to the amount of energy required to make it. And this is something that U.K. startup Material Evolution is seeking to address with a new low-energy manufacturing process that it says requires zero heat. Founded in 2017, Material Evolution today announced it has raised £15 million ($19 million) in a Series A round of funding to scale production of its low-carbon cement, which it says has a 85% lower carbon-footprint than normal Portland cement . While Material Evolution is officially incorporated in the U.S., where it initially intended as its first target market, the company operate...

In the industrial world, cement is about as omnipresent as materials get. But despite its clear and obvious utility, cement is responsible for some 8% of global CO2 emissions — if it was a country, it would be third biggest emitter globally , by some estimations. While cement’s ubiquity comes largely down to how easy it is to produce and the relative cost, creating cement is hugely carbon-intensive due to the amount of energy required to make it. And this is something that U.K. startup Material Evolution is seeking to address with a new low-energy manufacturing process that it says requires zero heat. Founded in 2017, Material Evolution today announced it has raised £15 million ($19 million) in a Series A round of funding to scale production of its low-carbon cement, which it says has a 85% lower carbon-footprint than normal Portland cement . While Material Evolution is officially incorporated in the U.S., where it initially intended as its first target market, the company operate...

Indian startups experienced a significant contraction in funding in the first half of 2023, revealing the knock-on effect of broader public market instability on young ventures in emerging regions. The first six months of 2023 saw Indian startups raise a mere $5.46 billion, a substantial 68% decline from the $17.1 billion during the same timeframe in 2022, and a drop from $13.4 billion in H1 2021, as per data from market intelligence agency Tracxn shared with TechCrunch. This year has thus far failed to yield any fresh unicorns in the Indian startup ecosystem, a stark contrast to the 18 new entrants to the billion-dollar club in H1 2022 and 16 minted during the corresponding period the previous year. The funding drought is permeating startups across different stages. A total of 325 seed funding deals were struck in H1 2023, a dramatic fall from the 936 in the same period in 2022 and 921 in H1 2021, according to Tracxn’s data. Other early-stage funding rounds, chiefly Series A and S...

Indian startups experienced a significant contraction in funding in the first half of 2023, revealing the knock-on effect of broader public market instability on young ventures in emerging regions. The first six months of 2023 saw Indian startups raise a mere $5.46 billion, a substantial 68% decline from the $17.1 billion during the same timeframe in 2022, and a drop from $13.4 billion in H1 2021, as per data from market intelligence agency Tracxn shared with TechCrunch. This year has thus far failed to yield any fresh unicorns in the Indian startup ecosystem, a stark contrast to the 18 new entrants to the billion-dollar club in H1 2022 and 16 minted during the corresponding period the previous year. The funding drought is permeating startups across different stages. A total of 325 seed funding deals were struck in H1 2023, a dramatic fall from the 936 in the same period in 2022 and 921 in H1 2021, according to Tracxn’s data. Other early-stage funding rounds, chiefly Series A and S...

DoorDash will give delivery workers the option to be paid a guaranteed hourly minimum rate instead of being paid per delivery, the company said Wednesday. The new option, a novelty in the gig worker industry, comes as DoorDash and other app-based gig companies like Lyft and Uber will have to provide New York City delivery workers with a guaranteed minimum wage of $18 per hour. While DoorDash has positioned this new offering as a way to maintain flexibility while also promoting reliable earnings, the hourly rate isn’t  really an hourly rate. It’s based on the time spent on a delivery, “from the moment [a worker accepts] an offer until it’s dropped off — plus 100% of tips,” according to the company. “We know there are Dashers who prioritize reliability in their earnings, who simply want to get on the road and dash with an exact, upfront idea of how much they’ll earn for the time it takes to complete an order,” reads a blog post from DoorDash. “Earn by Time was developed precisel...

DoorDash will give delivery workers the option to be paid a guaranteed hourly minimum rate instead of being paid per delivery, the company said Wednesday. The new option, a novelty in the gig worker industry, comes as DoorDash and other app-based gig companies like Lyft and Uber will have to provide New York City delivery workers with a guaranteed minimum wage of $18 per hour. While DoorDash has positioned this new offering as a way to maintain flexibility while also promoting reliable earnings, the hourly rate isn’t  really an hourly rate. It’s based on the time spent on a delivery, “from the moment [a worker accepts] an offer until it’s dropped off — plus 100% of tips,” according to the company. “We know there are Dashers who prioritize reliability in their earnings, who simply want to get on the road and dash with an exact, upfront idea of how much they’ll earn for the time it takes to complete an order,” reads a blog post from DoorDash. “Earn by Time was developed precisel...

We are only scratching the surface of how artificial intelligence might be used in art, and musicians are already experimenting with the technology . But if their AI-assisted composition is to be eligible for a Grammy, they’ll need to make sure that their contribution is “meaningful,” the rules now state. An update to the famous awards’ eligibility criteria states that “Only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration,” and that “A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any Categories.” AI is not a kiss of death, though. In a wise and shrewdly open-ended exception to this prohibition, the Grammy authorities allow for any work in which “the human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful and more than de minimis.” Furthermore, the authorship must pertain to the category a song is submitted for, e.g. for “songwriting” the AI cannot have written the song. What does this all mean? Say you used an AI-powered tool to generate a con...

We are only scratching the surface of how artificial intelligence might be used in art, and musicians are already experimenting with the technology . But if their AI-assisted composition is to be eligible for a Grammy, they’ll need to make sure that their contribution is “meaningful,” the rules now state. An update to the famous awards’ eligibility criteria states that “Only human creators are eligible to be submitted for consideration,” and that “A work that contains no human authorship is not eligible in any Categories.” AI is not a kiss of death, though. In a wise and shrewdly open-ended exception to this prohibition, the Grammy authorities allow for any work in which “the human authorship component of the work submitted must be meaningful and more than de minimis.” Furthermore, the authorship must pertain to the category a song is submitted for, e.g. for “songwriting” the AI cannot have written the song. What does this all mean? Say you used an AI-powered tool to generate a con...

ChatGPT on mobile can now surf the web. But only via Bing. Today, OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus, the premium version of the company’s AI-powered chatbot, can use a new feature on the ChatGPT app called Browsing to have ChatGPT search Bing for answers to questions. Browsing can be enabled by heading to the New Features section of the app settings, selecting “GPT-4” in the model switcher and choosing “Browse with Bing” from the drop-down list. Browsing is available on both the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps. OpenAI says that Browsing is particularly useful for queries relating to current events and other information that “extend[s] beyond [ChatGPT’s] original training data.” When Browsing is disabled, ChatGPT’s knowledge cuts off in 2021. Browsing — which Microsoft and OpenAI previously announced would arrive sometime this year, first on the web — certainly makes ChatGPT a more useful assistant, particularly for research. Prior to it, asking ChatGPT questions like...

“Win on Sunday, sell on Monday.” That was the popular marketing adage when motorsports and car sales were intricately intertwined. While a podium finish these days doesn’t necessarily translate into a bump in sales — with many consumers being more focused on fuel economy, looks and comfort — there is still a glimmer of truth to the phrase. Take the new Mercedes-AMG S 63 E Performance hybrid, for instance. That’s a mouthful of a name to be sure, but Mercedes takes advantage of the battery technology in its podium-winning F1 car driven by Lewis Hamilton and George Russell to give us the most powerful S-Class ever. I’m talking 802 horsepower and a whopping 1,055 pound-feet of torque — in a luxury sedan. The S 63 E Performance is a plug-in hybrid (not a BEV like the Mercedes EQS SUV ). But don’t think you’ll get any kind of efficiency out of the powertrain. The 13.1 kWh battery only lasts for about 20 miles of all-electric range). Instead the battery, like that found in the Mercedes F1 c...

Faraday Future has managed to raise $90 million from existing investors to help it get its much-delayed FF 91 luxury electric SUV to production and delivery. Faraday’s investors will also accelerate an existing commitment of $15 million, the EV company said Tuesday. Faraday is one of a litany of EV SPACs — EV startups that went public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company — that has struggled to stay afloat . The company keeps burning through cash and putting its hand out for more , while pushing the delivery date of its vehicles. Against that backdrop, Faraday Future has also been investigated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice , and suffered through one internal drama after another. Despite repeated production delays and an inability to deliver vehicles into customers’ hands, Faraday in May announced that its luxury EVs would have ChatGPT capabilities , an attempt to jump on the AI bandwagon and attract attention. And p...

Arkam Ventures is courting its second fund, aiming for $180 million, nearly doubling the size of its maiden fund, as the Indian venture capital firm gears up to double down on the expanding ‘middle India’ opportunity. The firm’s partners said in an interview that they are hopeful to retain support from high-profile international institutional investors and family offices for the new fund. Key investors in Arkam’s first fund included British International Investment, SIDBI and Evolvence. Arkam , whose startup portfolio includes Jar , Smallcase , Kreditbee , and Jai Kisan , seeks to write larger early-stage checks with the new fund to secure bigger stake in emerging companies, said Bala Srinivasa (left in the lead picture), co-founder and managing director of the fund, in a conversation with TechCrunch. The deliberation on the new fund coincides with a period when VC firms are grappling with closing new funds, and in many instances, reducing the target size due to a slackened economy...

Last week, we talked with Kindred Ventures , a small, nine-year-old, San Francisco-based early-stage venture firm that, despite investing in a lot of nascent startups — more than 100 to date — takes a generalist approach, investing in AI, climate tech, consumer internet companies, crypto deals, fintech startups, health startups, mobility startups and the outfits developing tools and infrastructure. It’s a little like trying to boil the ocean. Still, the firm’s two managing directors — Steve Jang and Kanyi Maqubela — have had enough success that Kindred’s investors last year agreed to let them up the ante considerably. After closing a $56 million fund in 2019 and a $101 million fund in 2021, Kindred last year closed a $200 million fund, as well as a $112 million later-stage fund to back growth-stage companies in Kindred’s own portfolio and outside it. The capital more than doubled their assets under management, which is currently around $550 million, including some special purpose vehi...