Technology

Xiaomi, the Chinese comapny famous for its budget smartphones and a bevy of value-for-money gadgets, said in a filing on Thursday that it has backed more than 300 companies as of March, totaling 32.3 billion yuan ($4.54 billion) in book value and 225.9 million yuan ($32 million million) in net gains on disposal of investments

Run The World, a year-old startup that’s based in Mountain View, Calif., and has small teams both in China and Taiwan, just nabbed $10.8 million in Series A funding co-led by earlier backer Andreessen Horowitz and new backer Founders Fund. It’s easy to understand the firms’ interest in the company, whose platform features every functionality

Johannes Lenhard Contributor One of the VC partners in a well-established London firm told me straight out: Venture capital is money [laughs], it is a risky asset class, perhaps the wildest asset class […] and it has the biggest possible returns. I have detailed elsewhere how I think caring more beyond the immediate-return mentality often

E-book and audiobook subscrition service Scribd has been actively embracing and experimenting with bundling over the past couple years, creating joint offers with The New York Times and with Spotify and Hulu. Today it announced a slightly different take on the idea with Scribd Perks. These perks gives Scribd’s paying subscribers (the service costs $8.99 per

Ola said on Wednesday it is cutting 1,400 jobs in India, or 35% of its workforce in the home market, as the ride-hailing firm works to reduce its expense to steer through the coronavirus pandemic that has severely impacted mobility companies in the country. Bhavish Aggarwal, co-founder and chief executive of Ola, shared the job

With more than 1,200 employees distributed across over 65 countries and a valuation of nearly $3 billion, GitLab is one of the world’s most successful fully remote startups. Describing it as a textbook example of a remote company would be redundant, because the company actually wrote a textbook about it. I recently had a chance

More than two-thirds of startups in India need to secure additional capital in the coming weeks to steer through the coronavirus pandemic, according to an industry report. 70% of startups in India, home to one of the world’s largest startup ecosystems, have less than three months of cash runway in the bank, and another 22%

The COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out the spring seasons for professional sports and associated revenue for TV networks, but esports is filling part of that void. Gaming companies behind titles licensed by each major league are the winners in this unexpected shift; Electronic Arts (EA) is first among them with FIFA, Madden NFL, NBA Live

Swiggy said on Monday it is cutting 1,100 jobs and scaling down some adjacent businesses as India’s top food delivery startup looks to reduce costs to survive the coronavirus pandemic that has made people cautious about ordering food online. In an internal email, which the Bangalore-headquartered startup published on its blog, Swiggy co-founder and chief

[embedded content] The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Saturday, May 9, 2020. For more, subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang Liner Notes Live chat stream The

Everlywell was one of the first startups to announce that it was working on a self-administered, at-home COVID-19 diagnostic kit, but it initially sought out to ship kits before regulators made clear that this was not in line with its guidelines. Everlywell then became intent on working with the FDA to secure a proper Emergency

Editor’s note: Get this weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT), just subscribe here. Commercial real estate, the traditional heart of most cities, may have lost its reason to exist in the last few months. The world is about to find out what the situation

With many major sectors totally frozen and reeling from losses, tech’s biggest players are proving themselves to be the exception to the rule yet again. On Friday, Facebook confirmed its plans to buy Giphy, a popular gif search engine, in a deal believed to be worth $400 million. Facebook has indicated it wants to forge

The novel coronavirus pandemic has disordered traditional notions of work, travel, socializing and the way we collaborate with colleagues. It seems obvious that the future of work must evolve, given what we’re experiencing, but what will that future look like? Which changes are here to stay and which ones will revert the moment offices reopen?

Months into this global pandemic, many questions remain about whether and when companies of all sizes will return to their offices and what will be required of the move. The future is so unclear that even people steeped in the real estate industry don’t have all the answers — though they’re starting to make educated

Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, automaker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, is laying off nearly 8% of its more than 1,800-member workforce today as it tries to reduce costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The layoffs will affect employees in Cruise’s product, marketing and

Workvivo, an employee communications platform founded only three years ago, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding, in a round led by Tiger Global which is best know for large growth-oriented rounds. Also participating is Frontline Ventures and Enterprise Ireland, previous investors. The Series A round follows on from a seed round late