Wednesday, June 1, 2022

Buick unveils Wildcat concept car as company shifts to EV-only lineup

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By Christine Hall and Haje Jan Kamps

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

Extra, extra, read all about it — Sheryl Sandberg surprised us this afternoon and said she was stepping down as Meta COO. We're still figuring out the details, so stay tuned for more. And oh Hai! Or rather, Ohio — more specifically, Columbus, Ohio. Today, we're doing our City Spotlight, and we've been exploring who's building in Columbus, and how it became the tech hub of the Midwest. We also dove into why Intel chose the city to build its $20B manufacturing facilities. — Haje and Christine

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Image Credits: Buick

The TechCrunch Top 3

  • Buick going full EV: If you are into electric vehicles, you will love today's Daily Crunch. First up is Buick, which is full of surprises today — not only did the company say it is transitioning to electric vehicles only, but after a few years of focusing on SUVs, Buick is going back to its coupe and sedan roots. The Wildcat looks like a sweet ride. If it wasn't already evident, the U.S. is getting more serious about EVs, per Tim. Speaking of a sweet ride, the 1980s are indeed back in style. Jaclyn also wrote about the new DeLorean, which is being reimagined as an electric vehicle. Sorry, no flux capacitor on this one, but thankfully you won't need the plutonium or the 1.21 gigawatts.
  • Tiger gets its claws into Slice: Getting a bank account can be easy; getting credit, not so much. Slice is an Indian fintech company working to change that and is now buoyed by a new Tiger Global–led $50 million round that Manish reports has the company in unicorn territory. Slice is bringing credit to the masses in that country by bringing technology to the underwriting process and is issuing hundreds of thousands of cards per month, putting it at the top of its game in the South Asian market.
  • A "Netflix for education": Spain-based Odilo has a catalog of nearly 4 million educational items and today brought in $64 million to keep hidden. No, really, as Ingrid writes, the "white-labelness" of the company means businesses can build their own customized e-learning offerings, but customers may only see the education portal it’s powering as the front-facing brand, like, ahem, Google, which we talk about a lot today in the Big Tech Inc. section.

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Startups and VC

Every time I explain what a SPAC is to someone, they go, "Wait, how is that legal?" It seems like some folks in government agree, Connie reports, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren planning a new bill to tame the wild, wild west a little. The law may be a little late — interest was on the wane already, when the SEC warned in March last year that SPACs weren't accounting correctly for investor incentives called warrants.

The other thing we want to celebrate is irreverence and joy. Haje needed wafting with palm fronds after getting a little excited about a new photo-forward book about electronics, and Amanda lost her marbles over a couple of new Pokémon, including one called Lechonk.

Other things to get excited about:

Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?

Dear Sophie,

Our startup will be sponsoring my co-founders and me for O-1A visas.

How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria?

— Extraordinary Entrepreneur

(TechCrunch+ is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Read More

Dear Sophie: How do we qualify for each of the O-1A criteria? image

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

Big Tech Inc.

We promised above, and now we are delivering all of the delicious Google-ly goodness. Let's start with some news that will make you smile — Google is expanding its program aimed at providing job readiness and digital skills for formerly incarcerated people. The company will also invest $4 million in reducing barriers for these individuals to become gainfully employed. Next is a report showing that Chrome still edges out Apple's Safari for users, though Apple should still celebrate reaching 1 billion users. Not to be undone by:

Not much of a surprise with this next report, but it seems the U.K.'s new social media watchdog group Ofcom has found that social media giants are not taking women's safety seriously. Its study of some 6,000 people found that even though women spend a bit more time than men online, they still don't feel like they can express their opinions as freely as their male counterparts. In turn, Ofcom is urging social media companies to do something about it, namely make their platforms more welcoming.

Cryptocurrency has not been feeling the love lately, what with the whole TerraUSD thing, among others, and today the sector takes another hit as one of its own is arrested. Formal charges were made against former OpenSea head of product Nate Chastain for ​​"wire fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to commit insider trading." Chastain was fired from his job last year after being accused of "front-running purchases of NFT collections that he knew were about to be featured prominently on the homepage of OpenSea."

Please enjoy these other morsels:

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