China’s draft payments rules put Ant, Tencent on notice

A string of recent events in China’s payments industry suggests the duopoly comprising Ant Group and Tencent may be getting a shakeup. Following the abrupt call-off of Ant’s public sale and a government directive to reform the firm’s business, the Chinese authorities sent another

JustKitchen is using cloud kitchens to create the next generation of restaurant franchising

JustKitchen operates cloud kitchens, but the company goes beyond providing cooking facilities for delivery meals. Instead, it sees food as a content play, with recipes and branding instead of music or shows as the content, and wants to create the next iteration of food franchises. JustKitchen curre

Elon Musk is donating $100M to find the best carbon capture technology

Elon Musk said Thursday via a tweet that he will donate $100 million toward a prize for the best carbon capture technology. Musk, who recently surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, didn’t provide any more details except to add in an accompanying tweet

Alphabet shuts down Loon internet balloon company

Google's parent firm, Alphabet, is done exploring the idea of using a fleet of balloons to beam high-speed internet in remote parts of the world. The firm said on Thursday evening that it was winding down Loon, a nine-year-old project and a two-and-a-half-year-old spin-off firm, after failing t

Hims, the telehealth startup, saw its shares slip in their trading debut — and that’s fine with its CEO

Hims & Hers, a San Francisco-based telehealth startup that sells sexual wellness and other health products and services to millennials, began trading publicly today on the NYSE after completing a reverse merger with the blank-check company Oaktree Acquisition Corp. Its shares slipped a bit, end

Daily Crunch: Apple might be working on a VR headset

A new report suggests there’s a pricey Apple VR headset in the works, Facebook’s Oversight Board will examine one of the social network’s most consequential decisions and we review the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. This is your Daily Crunch for January 21, 2021. The big story: Apple m

IBM transformation struggles continue with cloud and AI revenue down 4.5%

A couple of months ago at CNBC's Transform conference, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna painted a picture of a company in the midst of a transformation. He said that he wanted to take advantage of IBM's $34 billion 2018 Red Hat acquisition to help customers manage a growing hybrid cloud world, while

Judge denies Parler’s bid to make Amazon restore service

A federal judge has denied an attempt by conservative social network Parler to force Amazon to host it on AWS. As expected by most who read Parler’s ramshackle legal arguments, the court found nothing in the lawsuit that could justify intervention, only “faint and factually inaccurate s

Pebble founder launches Beeper, a universal chat app that works with iMessage and others

Decades ago, a software program called Trillian introduced a way for internet users to interact with multiple IM networks, like ICQ, AIM and MSN Messenger, in a single window. Now, Pebble founder and Y Combinator Partner Eric Migicovsky is revisiting this concept, but this time with a focus on cent

Forsaking funding at a $1 billion valuation, Solugen preps a new green chemical product and a big 2021

Late last year, Solugen, a startup using synthetic biology to take hydrocarbons out of the chemicals industry, decided against pursuing a new round of funding that would have valued the company at over $1 billion, technewss has learned. Instead, the Houston-based bio-manufacturing company raised a

The FCC has a new acting chairwoman in Jessica Rosenworcel

The Biden administration has officially appointed Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel acting FCC chairwoman, and she very well may be the first woman to hold the official position if she is nominated for it later this year, as many expect. With her record of standing for equal access, industry account

How Bitcoin is helping middle-class users survive the pandemic

Regulators may still want to imply Bitcoin is merely a tool for criminals, but for many middle-class users, it's proving to be a lifeline. Even as politicians like European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde criticize cryptocurrency for providing “loopholes” used for “funny

Omnipresent raises $15.8M Series A for its platform to employ remote-workers globally

Omnipresent, which helps companies employ remote-working local teams worldwide, has closed a $15.8 million Series A funding round. The fundraise was led by an undisclosed investor with participation from existing investors, Episode 1, Playfair Capital and Truesight Ventures. The company said it clo

Instacart is eliminating nearly 2,000 jobs

Instacart plans to lay off nearly 2,000 of its workers, including the 10 workers from the Kroger-owned Mariano’s who unionized early last year, Vice reports. These workers are responsible for in-store shopping and packing of groceries. According to Vice, 10 of the workers affected unionized w