Hello and welcome back to TechCrunchs China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, the unprecedented national security law descended on Hong Kong, changing the day-to-day life of the people there, as well as businesses across the []

Qualcomm has become the newest high-profile backer offour-year-old Reliance Jio Platforms, which has raised more than $15.7 billion in the past 12 weeks from as many investors. On Sunday evening, Qualcomm Ventures said it will invest $97 million in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake on a fully diluted basis in the []

Editors note:Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT).Subscribe here. You could almost hear the internet cracking apart this week as international businesses pulled away from Hong Kong and the US considered a ban on TikTok. Software can no longer eat the entire []

With the release of Hamilton on Disney+, Jordan and Darrell finally got to watch the musical biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton albeit in recorded form, rather than live on-stage. And as we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, they were pretty delighted by what they found. Not that a []

This week we dig into the news of a possible TikTok ban in the U.S. Also, both Android and iOS saw beta launches. We also look at the coronavirus' impact on the app economy in Q2, and more.

Welcome to The Exchange, an upcoming weekly newsletter featuring TechCrunch and Extra Crunch reporting on startups, money, and markets. You can sign up for it here to receive it regularly when it launches on July 25th. You can email me about it here, ortalk to me about it on Twitter. Lets go! Ahead of parsing []

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has admitted that there is no practical way for Americans to avoid having their movements tracked by its license plate readers, according to its latest privacy assessment. CBP published its new assessment three years after its first to notify the public that it plans to tap into a []

We look at Rackspaces finances, a Facebook code change causes numerous app issues and electric vehicle company Rivian raises $2.5 billion. Heres your Daily Crunch for July 10, 2020. The big story: Rackspace is going public again The cloud computing company first went public in 2008, before accepting a $4.3 billion offer to go private []

Google announced its plans to acquire Fitbit for $2.1 billion back in November. As of this writing, the deal has yet to go through, courtesy of all the usual regulatory scrutiny that occurs any time one large company buys another. EU regulators are often a key hurdle for these sorts of deals, and this time []

In its first few weeks of release, the latest game from QuizUp founder Thor Fridriksson took the top spot in the Games Section of Apples App Store and was the top app (for a brief time) in the App Store at large. Since its launch on June 17, Trivia Royale has been downloaded more than []

Replicated, the Los Angeles-based company pitching monitoring and management services for Kubernetes-based applications, has managed to bring on the former head of product of the $2.75 billion-valued programming giant GitLab as its new chief product officer. Mark Pundsack is joining the company as it moves to scale its business. At GitLab, Pundsack saw the company []

HBO Max, the WarnerMedia-owned streaming service that launched in May, announced today that it has made a series commitment to an untitled TV show tied to the movie The Batman (currently scheduled for release in 2021). The show will be set in the Gotham City police department, with a creative team that includes Matt Reeves, []

Hey, yall. Im experimenting with a bi-weekly roundup that looks at the state of labor in tech. Well use this space to explore topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion, the future of work, issues relating to pay equality, notable personnel changes and much more. This week, were looking at Facebooks civil rights audit, a []

If youre an angel who invested in a startup that was meant to go public in 2014, you might be getting a little bit impatient. High-risk, high-reward investing has lost its shine in this environment: the stock market is a mess these days, and you want your cash back. Enter recapitalization events, where startups restructure []

After going private in 2016 after accepting a $32 per share, or $4.3 billion, price from Apollo Global Management, Rackspace is looking once again to the public markets. First going public in 2008, Rackspace is taking second aim at a public offering around 12 years after its initial debut. The company describes its business as []

When Mallun Yen started Operator Collective last year, she wanted to build an investment firm for people who didnt have a voice in Silicon Valley. That meant connecting women and people of color with operators who have been intimately involved in building companies from the ground up, then providing early-stage investment. She then brought in []

Fringe is a new company pitching employers on a service offering lifestyle benefits for their employees in addition to, or instead of, more traditional benefits packages. We didnt think it made sense that employees need to be sick, disabled, dead or 65+ to benefit from their benefits, wrote Fringe chief executive Jordan Peace, in an []

As expected, fintech company nCino has raised its IPO price range. The North Carolina-based banking software firm now expects to sell its shares for between $28 and $29 per share, far more than its initial price range of $22 to $24 per share. At its $28 to $29 per-share price interval, nCino is worth $2.50 []

How should society address the scenario where the AI algorithm got it right but from an ethical standpoint, we're uncomfortable with the results?

Nanoleaf essentially created a new smart lighting category with its connected light panels, and since then it has iterated with its pixel-like Canvas, and most recently, its new Shapes Hexagons. The Hexagons already seem to be proving popular with customers, since theyre currently waitlisted, but I got the chance to spend some time with them []

If youre an iPhone user, odds are fairly good you spent a frustrating portion of the morning attempting to reopen apps. I know my morning walk was dampened by the inability to fire up Spotify. Plenty of other users reported similar issues with a number of apps, including Pinterest and Waze. The issue has since []

The biggest story to come out of the post-March stock market boom has been explosive growth in the value of technology shares. Software companies in particular have seen their fortunes recover; since March lows, public software companies valuations have more than doubled, according to one basket of SaaS and cloud stocks compiled by a Silicon []

When Ming-Chi Kuo offers up a new report, Apple followers listen. The latest offering from the analyst adds key detail to the potential roadmap for Apples recently-announced push into its home baked ARM-based processors. Once again, Kuo notes that a 13.3-inch MacBook will be arrive in the fourth quarter of this year, sporting Apples own []

TC Early Stage on July 21 and 22 will virtually bring together 50+ experts across startup core competencies to give you the tools youll need to be able to keep building your business and protect your assets. If youre on the fence about attending, here are just five reasons why you should get your tickets []

Rivian, the electric vehicle company aiming to become the first to bring an EV pickup truck to market, has raised $2.5 billion in a round led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. New investors Soros Fund Management LLC, Coatue, Fidelity Management and Research Company and Baron Capital Group also participated. []

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunchs venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We wound up having more to talk about than we had time for but we packed as much as we could into 34 minutes. So, climb aboard with Danny, Natasha, and myself for another episode of Equity. Before []

NASA has signed a new agreement with Japan that lays out plans for the two nations to cooperate on the International Space Station (continuing existing partnership between the countries there) as well as on NASAs Artemis program, which includes missions in lunar space and to the lunar surface. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine signed the agreement []

Food delivery startups in India have been struggling to make financial sense for years. They have each lost as much as $50 million a month to win and sustain customers by offering heavy discounts. And unlike some other markets, food delivery startups in India have been severely hit by the coronavirus pandemic. But Zomato, one []

Spring 2020 was gloomy for Klook. As countries closed their borders and went into complete or partial lockdown, the SoftBank-backed travel platform saw its revenue plummet by as much as 90% through March and April. The World Travel and Tourism Council said in April that the coronavirus could put up to 100 million jobs in []

According to a report in Politico, California has become the 49th state to launch an antitrust investigation into Google. California and Alabama were the only states that did not participate in an antitrust investigation by 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, that began in September and is focused on Googles dominance in []

The Trump administration is set to finalize regulations this week that ban the United States government from working with contractors who use technology from five Chinese companies: Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, Dahua and Hytera Communications, according to a Reuters report. The ban was first introduced as a provision in the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act that []

On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said that the U.S. is looking at banning Chinese social media apps, including the Chinese-owned company TikTok, comparing it to other Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE that have been deemed national security threats by the current administration. With respect to Chinese apps on peoples cell phones, []

A beta version of Apples latest mobile operating system is available to the public, Coinbase may go public and researchers discover a frightening smartwatch vulnerability. Heres your Daily Crunch for July 9, 2020. The big story: Apple releases public beta of iOS 14 Developers are no longer the only ones who can try out the []

PC shipments had a rough first quarter for all of the same reasons as everything that isnt a Clorox wipe or N95 mask. People just werent ready to drop a ton of money on a new device. The impact of COVID-19 was lessened slightly by IT departments and individuals adapting to the new remote working []

In a statement issued this week, the U.S. Treasury Department notes that Amazon has agreed to pay $134,523 to settle potential liability over alleged sanctions violations. The charges specifically pertain to goods and services sent to people located in Crimea, Iran and Syria, which are covered by Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions, between []

Harley-Davidson, the storied and struggling Milwaukee-based company that last year launched its first production electric motorcycle in an effort to reboot sales and appeal to a younger customer base, is cutting 700 jobs from its global operations. About 500 workers will be laid off before the end of the year, the company said Thursday. The []

TikTok likes and views are broken for some unknown portion of the video apps user base this afternoon. The impacted users are seeing a zero like count on TikTok posts, including their own and those of other app users, as well as zero views. The company has acknowledged the issue and says its working on []

Apple today announced its plans for a new, free resource aimed at helping educators of all skill levels gain the ability to teach both Swift and Xcode the latest in Apples educational initiatives focused on encouraging more students to learn app development. On July 13, Apple will begin offering free online training to educators []

Funding for virtual reality startups has grown more sparse over the past couple years, as investors have grappled with extended timelines for mainstream adoption. Meanwhile, connected fitness has exploded, gaining attention amid shelter-in-place as companies like Peloton have seen huge user gains with Mirror recently selling to Lululemon for $500 million. FitXR wants the virtual []

EQT Ventures, the Stockholm-headquartered venture capital firm that invests in Europe and the U.S., is losing founding partner Hjalmar Winbladh, TechCrunch has learned. Rumours that he was leaving the multistage, sector-agnostic VC fund that he helped launch in 2016, begun circulating within the European startup ecosystem last week, with multiple sources telling TechCrunch that Winbladh []

Apple unveiled the next major version iOS a few weeks ago. Ive been playing around with beta versions of iOS 14 and heres what you should expect when you update your iPhone to the final release of iOS 14 this fall. The most interesting change is something youre not going to notice at first. The []

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS and iPadOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 14 and iPadOS 14, the next major version of the operating systems for the iPhone and iPad. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download those betas without a $99 developer account. []

If every California student without an adequate internet connection got together and formed a state, it would contain more people than Idaho or Hawaii.

Venn, the company looking to be gamings answer to 80s-era MTV, has revealed the first slate of shows to premier on the network when it launches August 5, 2020. Working out of studios in Playa Vista in Los Angeles and New Yorks World Trade Center (coming in 2021), Venn intends to use 1,000 square feet []

You just got your first customer! You just hired your first employee! You just got your first VC investor! These are huge milestones in the life of a startup and are extraordinarily exciting. That is, until that first draft of the contract arrives in your inbox and you suddenly realize you are 30 pages of []

Earlier this month, Spanish early-stage venture capital firm K Fund officially launched its second fund, which sits at 70 million, up from 50 million the first time around. Targeting Spanish startups with an international outlook, the seed-stage firm plans to invest from 200,000 to 2 million, writing first checks in 25-30 companies. Meanwhile, a portion []

Docker and AWS today announced a new collaboration that introduces a deep integration between Dockers Compose and Desktop developer tools and AWSs Elastic Container Service (ECS) and ECS on AWS Fargate. Previously, the two companies note, the workflow to take Compose files and run them on ECS was often challenging for developers. Now, the two []

Amie, a new productivity app from ex-N26 product manager Dennis Mller, has picked up $1.3 million in pre-seed funding to kickstart development and hiring. Backing 23 year-old Mller is Creandum the European VC best known for being an early investor in Spotify along with Tiny.VC and a plethora of angels. They include Laura []

As the world continued to cope with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak, the second quarter of 2020 became the largest yet for mobile app downloads, usage, and consumer spending. According to new data from app store intelligence firm App Annie, mobile app usage grew 40% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2020, even hitting []

Its hard to believe that Alexa was only announced in November 2014. In few than six years, the smart assistant has gone from consumer electronics curiosity to a nearly ubiquitous tech phenomenon. Launched alongside the first Echo device, Alexa has helped definite a new paradigm of voice computing, alongside Apples Siri and Googles Assistant. According []