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SpaceX’s floating oil rig spaceship launch pad could be operating later this year according to Elon Musk
SpaceX’s grand vision for Starship, the next-generation spacecraft it’s currently in the process of developing, includes not only trips to Mars, but also regular point-to-point flights rig
Meet Smash Ventures, the low-flying outfit that has quietly funded Epic Games among others
When in 2018, Smash Ventures showed up as an investor in a $1.25 billion round for Epic Games — reportedly the largest ever investment in a video game company at the time — it was the firs
Google Cloud puts its Kubernetes Engine on autopilot
Google Cloud today announced a new operating mode for its Kubernetes Engine (GKE) that turns over the management of much of the day-to-day operations of a container cluster to Google’s own engin
Apple supplier Foxconn reaches tentative agreement to build Fisker’s next electric car
Apple supplier Foxconn Technology Group has reached a tentative agreement with electric vehicle startup-turned-SPAC Fisker to develop and eventually manufacture an EV that will be sold in North Americ
MealMe raises $900,000 for its food search engine
This morning MealMe.ai, a food search engine, announced that it has closed a $900,000 pre-seed round. Palm Drive Capital led the round, with participation from Slow Ventures and CP Ventures. TechCrunc
Lifestyle benefits startup Fringe gets a pandemic boost, raises seed round
Employers today often use perks to attract new talent in the form of discounts and deals, commuter funds, gym memberships, childcare, free lunches and more. But the pandemic has impacted what sort of
Three days left to save on on early-bird pricing for TC Early Stage – Operations & Fundraising
In a mere 72 hours, early bird pricing disappears for TechCrunch Early Stage 2021, our two-part, founder bootcamp series focused on the building blocks you need to grow your company. The first event,
Select Star raises seed to automatically document datasets for data scientists
Back when I was a wee lad with a very security-compromised MySQL installation, I used to answer every web request with multiple “SELECT *” database requests — give me all the data and I’ll fig
Aquarium scores $2.6M seed to refine machine learning model data
Aquarium, a startup from two former Cruise employees, wants to help companies refine their machine learning model data more easily and move the models into production faster. Today the company announc
Meet the LatinX Startup Alliance and Startout founders from TC Include at TC Sessions: Justice 2021
We love nothing more than highlighting notable early-stage startups, and you’ll find plenty of them in the spotlight on March 3 at TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a virtual conference exploring diversity
VCs are chasing Hopin upwards of $5-6B valuation
Virtual events platform Hopin is hopin’ for a mega valuation. According to multiple sources who spoke with TechCrunch, the company, which was founded in mid-2019, is running around the fundraise cir
Marc Benioff and this panel of judges will decide who gets one seat on the first all-civilian spaceflight
SpaceX’s first all-civilian human spaceflight mission, which will carry four passengers to orbit using a Crew Dragon capsule later this year if all goes to plan, will include one passenger selec
Metal 3D printing company Markforged announces plans to go public via SPAC
Big morning for Massachusetts tech companies planning to go public via SPAC. Shortly after Berkshire Grey unveiled its intentions, Watertown-based Markforged has announced its own plans. The metal 3D
Understanding Toast’s expected IPO through the lens of Olo’s 2020 results
If Toast's recovery was anything like Olo's ascent, it isn't impossible to grok why its old $5 billion valuation might be a bit too small here in 2021
Primary Venture Partners raises $150M third fund to back NYC startups
Primary Venture Partners, a firm focused exclusively on investing in New York-area startups, has raised $150 million in its third fund for seed investments (its largest so far), as well as $50 million
4 essential truths about venture investing
After making pre-seed investments for seven years, I've observed how different the pre-seed stage is from Series A and later-stage investing. Today, I want to highlight four ideas that are true across
Metal 3D printing startup Mantle launches out of stealth with $13M in funding
Additive manufacturing has been a popular buzz phrase for decades now. With a smattering of notable exceptions, however, 3D printing has largely been focused on rapid prototyping and limited-run, pers
Hydrolix snares $10M seed to lower the cost of processing log data at scale
Many companies spend a significant amount of money and resources processing data from logs, traces and metrics, forcing them to make trade-offs about how much to collect and store. Hydrolix, an early
Scope AR launches a browser-based AR creation platform for the enterprise
Enticing the enterprise world to embrace augmented reality has proven a more difficult task than many startups in the AR space anticipated, but as the hardware and software behind the tech becomes inc
Noya Labs turns cooling towers into direct air capture devices for CO2 emissions
Not every company’s founders find themselves on a first name basis with the local bomb squad, but then again not every company is Noya Labs, which wants to turn the roughly 2 million cooling tow