Hey, TechCrunch besties. After every week in Korea and the Philippines, it’s nice to be again within the States — and barely extra tan (i.e., burnt) than earlier than. Massive because of Henry, who was compelled to step in over the previous two weeks because of my failing to comprehend that Korean Air doesn’t provide in-flight Wi-Fi. Talk a few good sport.
If you’re questioning about Greg’s standing, to not fear — he’s resulting from return from a well-deserved parental go away in a month and alter. In the meantime, I’m right here to nag you about TechCrunch’s upcoming headliner occasions.
TechCrunch Early Stage is quick approaching — it’s on April 20 in Boston this 12 months, and it’ll host consultants throughout the enterprise and tech panorama who’ll communicate to options in getting a startup off the bottom. (Also in Boston: City Spotlight, which kicks off February 27.) On the far horizon, there’s TechCrunch Disrupt (September 19–21), which guarantees to be an absolute blowout this 12 months. Having taken a peek on the preliminary visitor listing, let me simply say this: It gained’t disappoint.
With these administrative bits out of the way in which, let’s get on with Week in Review. (If you need it in your inbox each Saturday, enroll right here). Here are the highest tales from the previous a number of days!
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Dashed ambitions: Tage completely stories that allegedly Dash CEO Prince Boakye Boampong was briefly suspended pending an investigation into monetary impropriety on the firm. Boampong, considered one of Africa’s best-known serial entrepreneurs, is reportedly accused of partaking in monetary misreporting; sources inform TechCrunch that executives repeatedly hid financials throughout the agency whereas shedding staff at will. Prior to Boampong’s alleged suspension, Dash had raised tens of thousands and thousands in enterprise capital at an over-$200 million valuation.
New iOS, new emoji: Apple launched the iOS 16.4 developer beta, which introduced with it the subsequent set of emoji coming to iPhones. Originally unveiled through the draft section final 12 months, the emoji span classes like foods and drinks, exercise, objects, animals and symbols. Sarah writes that among the many highlights are variations on the guts emoji, pushing hand gestures and a “shaking face” emoji. Curious customers can try the brand new additions by enrolling in Apple’s Developer Program.
Pony up for Paramount: Ahead of the launch of “Paramount+ with Showtime,” a brand new TV streaming service bundle that’ll see Showtime integrated with Paramount+, Paramount introduced that it will be rising the value of its Paramount+ Premium tier from $9.99 monthly to $11.99 monthly. It’s not an surprising transfer — Paramount CEO Bob Bakish telegraphed the plans in early December — but it surely may nonetheless put Paramount+ with Showtime at an obstacle because it competes with Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming HBO Max/Discovery+ service.
Feishu is the brand new Slack: Feishu, ByteDance’s Slack-like office collaboration app, surpassed $100 million in annual recurring income final 12 months, Rita writes. ByteDance’s heavy funding in Feishu is telling of the state of enterprise software program in China. At a time when Silicon Valley buyers are heralding product-led development, software program in China remains to be largely relying on gross sales, advertising and marketing and providers to recruit customers.
Channeling Instagram: Instagram launched a brand new broadcast chat characteristic this week known as “Channels.” Aisha stories that it lets creators share public, one-to-many messages to straight interact with their followers. Channels help textual content, photographs, polls, reactions and extra. Instagram is beginning to check channels with choose creators within the U.S. and plans to develop the characteristic in coming months.
Salesforce below stress: Salesforce is on the lookout for new methods to chop prices as activist buyers put stress on the corporate. This week, Salesforce applied stricter efficiency measurements for engineering, with some salespeople being put below stress to stop or succumb to harsh efficiency insurance policies of their very own. As Ron writes, it’s in all probability associated to the truth that activist buyers have been circling the corporate, undoubtedly pushing administration to extend productiveness and cut back expenditures.
Safety issues canine Tesla: Tesla this week issued a recall of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta software program, a complicated driver-assistance system that federal regulators say may enable autos to behave unsafe round intersections. Affecting over 362,000 autos, the recall was motivated partly, Telsa disclosed, by issues that FSD-driven autos may reply insufficiently to adjustments in posted velocity limits, amongst different issues. FSD beta software program — from its title and Musk’s guarantees round its capabilities to its rollout and security issues — has been controversial, attracting scrutiny from regulatory businesses.
Snapping up customers: Snapchat now has over 750 million month-to-month lively customers (MAUs). The firm introduced the milestone throughout its Investor Day on Thursday, Sarah stories. Snapchat mentioned it sees a path to reaching over 1 billion folks within the subsequent two to a few years, however whether or not it’ll truly obtain that is still to be seen. In any case, 750 MAUs places Snapchat forward of Pinterest (450 million) however behind Facebook (2.96 billion).
A Tetris film: Apple TV+ this week launched the primary trailer for its film “Tetris,” based mostly on the origin story of the favored puzzle online game. Starring Taron Egerton, who performs American online game salesman Henk Rogers, “Tetris” tells the story of Rogers and his mission to safe the distribution rights of the sport. The film will premiere at South by Southwest movie competition in March, after which Apple will launch it worldwide on Apple TV+ (on March 31).
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TechCrunch has a beautiful lineup of audio programming, in case you weren’t conscious. In different phrases, we’ve acquired podcasts for days. This week on Equity, Mary Ann and Becca acquired on the mic to speak about Descope’s $53 million seed spherical, Phenomenal Ventures’ new fund and a Mexican neobank’s newest increase. On Found, Darrell and Becca talked with Alex Rappaport, the CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo, which makes it sensible for industries to recycle water and improve product restoration with new filtration know-how. And over at TechCrunch Live, the crew went reside (to not be repetitive) with CFO-turned-CEO Christina Ross and her Mayfield Fund accomplice, Rajeev Batra, to speak concerning the story behind Ross’ firm, Cube, and the way it meets its prospects the place they’re at.
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Is the tech jobs market as unhealthy because it appears?: Ron investigates the state of the tech jobs market, discovering that — whereas some numbers are down — it’s not a clear-cut matter. His top-level statement? Tech employees, particularly these with specialised abilities like engineering, knowledge science, AI and cybersecurity, proceed to be in demand as provide lags behind the variety of open jobs.