Daily Crunch - NFT artwork sells for $69M

TechCrunch Newsletter

Thursday, March 11, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

The artist Beeple scores a huge NFT sale, Twitter Spaces are coming soon and Seth Rogen’s weed startup launches in the U.S. This is your Daily Crunch for March 11, 2021.

The big story: NFT artwork sells for $69M For the first time, auction house Christie sold a digital-only artwork: “Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” a collage of several years of sketches from the artist Mike Winkelmann, who’s known online as Beeple. Yes, it’s another one of those NFT (non-fungible token) sales you’ve been hearing so much about for the past few weeks. And this one came with the most eye-catching price tag so far, with bids in the final two hours escalating from $14 million to $69 million. While crypto and NFT enthusiasts likely drove much of that bidding, this is certainly going to make the art world sit up and take notice — not just when it comes to selling digital art, but also potentially as a means to record and transfer proof of ownership for any art.   Read more Image Credits: Beeple

How the in-person event industry is finding hope during lockdowns Sponsored by Bitmovin Inc Bitmovin, a B2B video startup, hosts a virtual CEO Pub Chat with film distributor, KinoStar, & concert provider, MusicScreen, to discuss how they found success during a pandemic by switching to a streaming model. View the discussion to learn more. Read more

The tech giants Twitter Spaces to launch publicly next month, may include Spaces-only tweets — The social network's Clubhouse rival is working toward a public launch in April. Facebook is bringing ads to shorter videos and Stories — Facebook is expanding its monetization options for video creators, which probably means more ads for viewers. Google paves way to monetize Pay users' data in India — Google says it will roll out an update to Google Pay next week asking users to choose whether they wish to share data with the company.

Startups, funding and venture capital Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg want to be your weed dealer — Seth Rogen and four friends-turned-co-founders have been building Houseplant for close to 10 years, and its products are now available in the United States. Epidemic Sound raises $450M at a $1.4B valuation to 'soundtrack the internet' — Epidemic’s audio marketplace currently features around 32,000 music tracks and 60,000 sound effects. Indy-based High Alpha Capital launches new $110M fund — The firm focuses on B2B SaaS startups.   Image Credits: Houseplant

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch Five takeaways from the Coursera IPO filing — The company is still unprofitable, despite the pandemic's boost to its business and customer base. Does your VC have an investment thesis or a hypothesis? — OpenVC has identified six common patterns of how VCs articulate their theses and some best practices in doing so. Bessemer's 2021 cloud report provides context for soaring software startup valuations — Growth rates among cloud companies should prove more durable than nearly anyone expected. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)   Image Credits: TechCrunch

Everything else Everything you missed from TC Sessions: Justice — If you didn't have a chance to join us last week, you can still catch up on all the conversations. The 2021 Volkswagen ID. 4 ticks all the boxes, except one — The electric crossover offers plenty of range at an affordable price. Eye, robot — Our latest robotics roundup covers the surgical, food delivery and ocean mapping robots, as well as the return of an adorable friend.

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Operations Engineer (IT) at Filestage (70199 Stuttgart, Germany) Software Developer at Lowers Risk Group LLC (Virginia, USA) IS Business Analyst at City & County of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA, USA) IT Project Manager, IT Project Management-Senior/Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA) Machine Learning Engineer at Brainmaven (Toronto, ON, Canada) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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Daily Crunch - Apple announces a chip design center in Germany

TechCrunch Newsletter

Wednesday, March 10, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

Apple is making a big investment in Germany, Russia takes aim at Twitter and Roblox goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for March 10, 2021. P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for TC Early Stage 2021, a virtual event focused on operations and fundraising that we’re holding on April 1 and 2!

Apple announces a chip design center in Germany Apple said it will spend $1.2 billion to create its European Silicon Design Center, which will be based in Munich and focus on chip design for 5G and other wireless technologies. This is not Apple’s first facility in Munich — in fact, it says it already employs 1,500 engineers in the city, making it the company’s largest engineering hub in Europe. These teams were initially focused on power management, but have subsequently expanded their focus to other areas of chip design. You can see a rendering of the planned building below. Read more Image Credits: Apple

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The tech giants Russia is trying to throttle Twitter — Russian state agency Roskomnadzor said it’s taking the action after Twitter did not remove banned content. Adobe delivers native Photoshop for Apple Silicon Macs and a way to enlarge images without losing detail — Adobe has been moving quickly to update its imaging software to work natively on Apple's new in-house processors for Macs. Facebook challenges FTC's antitrust case with Big Tech's tattered playbook — Facebook has challenged the FTC's antitrust case against it using a standard playbook that questions the agency's arguably expansive approach to defining monopolies.   Image Credits: TechCrunch

Startups, funding and venture capital Why Terry Crews is launching a social currency — With the help of social currency startup Roll, Crews is launching his own social currency, $POWER. EV subscription service Onto partners with Shell to expand access to charging — The partnership will give Onto customers access to more than 3,400 Shell Recharge charge points in the U.K. Rent the Runway's first iOS team launches Runway, an easier way to coordinate app releases — With Runway, teams can connect their existing tools to keep track of the progress of an app's release, automate many of the manual steps along the way and better facilitate communication among all those involved.   Image Credits: Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/FilmMagic / Getty Images

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch Welcome to Bloxburg, public investors — As Roblox began to trade today, the company's shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Dear Sophie: What are the pros and cons of the H-1B, O-1A and EB-1A? — The latest edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies. Proactive CEOs should prioritize European expansion — FrontlineX Partner Brendan O’Donnell argues that the EMEA region is your best growth lever. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)   Image Credits: Ian Tuttle / Getty Images

Everything else NFTs are changing cultural value creation — The latest episode of Equity is all about non-fungible tokens. Passive collaboration is essential to remote work's long-term success — The adjustment to a fully remote workforce has been challenging for everyone. ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt dives into tech's reckoning with online hate — We spoke with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt on proposed policy solutions and tech's coming era of accountability.   Image Credits: Ada Yokota / Getty Images (Image has been modified)

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard Software Developer at Lowers Risk Group LLC (Virginia, USA) IS Business Analyst at City & County of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA, USA) IT Project Manager, IT Project Management-Senior/Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA) Machine Learning Engineer at Brainmaven (Toronto, ON, Canada) Senior Integration Specialist at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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Daily Crunch - Dropbox acquires DocSend for $165M

TechCrunch Newsletter

Tuesday, March 09, 2021 • By Anthony Ha

Dropbox acquires a secure document-sharing startup, Sonos announces a new speaker and Google makes hotel listings free. This is your Daily Crunch for March 9, 2021.

The big story: Dropbox acquires DocSend for $165M Dropbox already acquired electronic signature company HelloSign in 2019. By acquiring DocSend — which allows customers to share and track documents using a secure link — it’s giving its platform an end-to-end, secure document-sharing workflow. "We're announcing that we're acquiring DocSend to help us deliver an even broader set of tools for remote work, and DocSend helps customers securely manage and share their business-critical documents, backed by powerful engagement analytics," said Dropbox CEO Drew Houston. One thing the two companies have in common: Both of them launched, years apart, at TechCrunch events. Read more Image Credits: Thomas Trutschel / Getty Images

Lufthansa Technik Takes UX to the Next Level for Private Jets Sponsored by The Qt Company The aviation industry spends the down-time wisely to cut cost and improve future user experiences. See how Lufthansa Technik brings about rapid alterations and updates to their inflight UX for planes across the world. Read more

The tech giants Sonos goes full portable Bluetooth speaker with the $169 Roam — The smaller, lighter, more ruggedized and waterproof design puts it more in line with popular offerings from companies like JBL. After similar moves for Shopping and Flights, Google makes hotel listings free — This change should give users a more comprehensive look into hotel room availability. French startup lobby targets Apple with 'privacy hypocrisy' complaint — Apple is facing another privacy complaint in Europe. Image Credits: Sonos

Startups, funding and venture capital Wefarm adds $11M to expand its network for independent farmers, now at 2.5M users — The startup has built a social networking platform to help independent farmers meet each other, exchange ideas and sell or trade equipment and supplies. Entertainment payroll startup Wrapbook raises $27M round led by a16z — The money comes from noteworthy names in both the tech and entertainment worlds. Eye surgery robotics startup ForSight raises $10M — ForSight looks to bring its offerings to international markets, pending the sorts of regulatory approvals that go into launching a robotic surgery platform. Image Credits: Wefarm

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch Four ways startups will drive GPT-3 adoption in 2021 — The introduction of GPT-3 in 2020 was a tipping point for artificial intelligence. Global-e files to go public as e-commerce startups enjoy a renaissance — The company’s business exploded in 2020. (Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.) Image Credits: Zastrozhnov / Getty Images

Everything else Memes for sale — We talk to Chris Torres, the Nyan Cat creator who has organized an informal collection of meme originators into a two-week-long auction of their works. Backstage Capital's Arlan Hamilton discusses how to find the next unicorn — Hamilton joined us at TC: Sessions Justice to chat about how she vets founders, the changing role of venture capital and how raising money from the community versus institutional LPs can impact Backstage strategy. Image Credits: Arlan Hamilton

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Newest Jobs from Crunchboard IS Business Analyst at City & County of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA, USA) IT Project Manager, IT Project Management-Senior/Specialist at Washington State Department of Natural Resources (Olympia, WA, USA) Machine Learning Engineer at Brainmaven (Toronto, ON, Canada) Senior Integration Specialist at Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (Middletown, PA, United States) C# Developer at Mayday Manufacturing Co (Denton, TX, USA) See more jobs on CrunchBoard Post your tech jobs and reach millions of TechCrunch readers for only $200 per month.

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