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Big Tech expands its reach with new startup acquisitions and investments
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week’s newsletter is about startups, but it is also about Big Tech companies expanding their reach, both through acquisitions and through investments. Most interesting startup stories…
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Google begins requiring JavaScript for Google Search
Google says it has begun requiring users to turn on JavaScript, the widely used programming language to make web pages interactive, in order to use Google Search. In an email to TechCrunch, a company spokesperson claimed that the change is intended to “better protect” Google Search against malicious activity, such as bots and spam, and…
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Treasury sanctions Salt Typhoon hacking group behind breaches of major US telecom firms
The US government has also sanctioned the hacker responsible for December’s US Treasury hack © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Malware stole internal PowerSchool passwords from engineer’s hacked computer
The theft of a PowerSchool engineer’s passwords prior to the breach raises further doubts about the company’s security practices. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
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Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd to reclaim CEO position in March
Bumble announced today that founder Whitney Wolfe Herd is returning as CEO after stepping down from the position in 2023. Wolfe Herd will succeed Lidiane Jones, the company’s current CEO who has left for “personal reasons,” Bumble explained. Jones, the former CEO of Slack, will continue her role at Bumble until the transition takes effect…
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Instagram Reels rolls out new features for U.S. users as TikTok gets banned
Instagram announced a timely update to its video feature Reels this morning, alongside the news that the Supreme Court upheld the law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. on January 19. The update, says Meta, will make it easier for users to discover the content that friends and followers are liking on the platform…
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Trump spoke to China’s President Xi about TikTok just ahead of Supreme Court ruling
Just ahead of today’s Supreme Court ruling — which saw the nation’s highest court uphold the law banning TikTok in the U.S. as of January 19 — Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that he had a “very good” phone call with China’s President Xi Jinping, which included discussion of TikTok. Though the U.S. president-elect…
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Rivian finalizes $6.6B loan for its Georgia factory
Rivian and the Department of Energy have finalized a $6.6 billion loan announced in November with just a few days left until Donald Trump’s inauguration. The company will use the loan to help build out its planned factory in Georgia, east of Atlanta, with construction beginning in 2026. The first R2 SUVs are scheduled to…
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Instabase raises $100M to help companies process unstructured document data
Instabase, a company that creates software for extracting processing unstructured data from myriad document types, has raised $100 million in a Series D round of funding. The announcement comes as companies struggle under a deluge of data — data that can unlock key business insights. Indeed, most of the data that companies generate is “unstructured,”…
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Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban
The Supreme Court has upheld the law that will effectively ban TikTok on Sunday, January 19. The decision marks the end of TikTok’s months-long legal fight against a law that essentially forces the ByteDance-owned app to shut down unless it divests its US operations. As of Sunday, it will be illegal for app stores and…