All posts tagged: tech

Cyberattack on legal tech provider causing widespread disruption to UK law firms

Published by skeptic

CTS, a U.K.-based provider of managed IT services for law firms and the professional services industry, is experiencing a cybersecurity incident that is causing ongoing widespread disruption across the legal sector.  In a statement on its website, the Cheshire-headquartered CTS confirmed it’s experiencing a “service outage” resulting from an unspecified cyber incident. The company didn’t share any further details about the incident, such as how many of its customers are impacted or whether any sensitive data had been accessed, and hasn’t posted any updates since Friday. While CTS refuses to share details about the incident, industry publication Today’s Conveyancer said that close to 80 law firms are believed to have been affected so far by the upstream cyberattack, leaving firms unable to access their case files since last Wednesday. Reports on social media say that the incident has also disrupted house sales and purchases across the U.K., forcing customers to deal with unexpected accommodation and storage costs, as well as soon-to-expire mortgage offers. CTS spokesperson Natalie Kissack declined to answer TechCrunch’s questions when reached for …

The Groundless Fear of Regulating Big Tech

Published by skeptic

Today’s Big Five digital platforms aren’t the first tech giants to bristle at government scrutiny. Long before Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft began spending millions of dollars to fight antitrust rules and other measures that would challenge their business models, 20th-century behemoths such as AT&T and IBM were insisting that government interventions in their business would stifle innovation. In reality, one of the most important things the United States government has ever done to advance technology is regulate it. Microsoft was the beneficiary of antitrust litigation aimed at IBM, once the country’s dominant computer maker; Amazon, Google, and Facebook have flourished because a 1996 law granted them extraordinary protection from legal liability for the content they circulate; Apple is a beneficiary of a strong patent regime. The advent of smartphones, one-click shopping, and an avalanche of digital stimuli doesn’t change the fact that, when any industry stands astride the economy and reaches into most Americans’ homes, lawmakers should assess whether the public interest is being protected. But the reality that the tech giants have …

Tech CEO Austin Russell’s bid to buy Forbes fails

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Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell’s bid to buy Forbes Global Media Holdings has ended. Integrated Whale Media Investments, the Hong Kong-based parent company of Forbes, terminated the agreement with Russell after he failed to secure the ideal group of investors needed to close the deal. Bloomberg was the first to report the news, citing an internal memo by Forbes Chief Executive Officer Mike Federle. “The Forbes acquisition was all about impact, and to further the philosophy of business-for-good and philanthropy with the next generation of capitalism,” a statement provided by Austin Russell’s family office reads. “At this juncture, it was determined that it was in the best interest of the parties that the contract be terminated. We wish nothing but the best to the Forbes team.” Russell, the 28-year-old founder and tech star, announced back in May plans to buy an 82% stake in Forbes Global Media Holdings in a deal that values the company at nearly $800 million. The intention, which was initially successful, was to bring in a number of investors to …

Palantir’s Peter Thiel: NHS is a natural target for outspoken tech billionaire | Peter Thiel

Published by Sam

Peter Thiel likes to say “the unpopular thing”, according to his biographer, so the NHS would be a natural target for the outspoken tech billionaire. The co-founder of Palantir, which has just secured a £330m NHS data contract, was in full libertarian mode when discussing the health service in January. “Highways create traffic jams, welfare creates poverty, schools make people dumb and the NHS makes people sick,” he said. Speaking at the Oxford Union debating society, he also said the British public’s affection for the NHS was a case of “Stockholm syndrome” – the term for hostages who feel a bond with their captors. Palantir, already a well-established supplier to the NHS, now has an even closer relationship with the organisation. Palantir, a company Thiel still chairs, immediately distanced itself from the comments and said he was making them as a “private individual”. But they were a standard intervention from an entrepreneur who takes an outspoken position on the right of the political spectrum. “Thiel is very committed to the idea of being able to …

5 investors have high hopes for defense tech amid growing venture interest

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For many years, it was taken as a given that venture investing was fundamentally incompatible with defense technology. Cripplingly long acquisition cycles — upwards of 10-15 years for major weapons programs — and unfavorable economics of defense tech startup exits were frequently cited as two reasons why the math simply didn’t add up. Sometimes the objections wore moral garb: In 2018, a group of Google employees told CEO Sundar Pichai that the company should cease work on a Pentagon pilot called Project Maven because “Google should not be in the business of war.” The times have changed. Indeed, it is likely not an overstatement to say that the relationship between U.S. defense and Silicon Valley is undergoing its most profound transformation since the 1950s, when Pentagon funding led to massive advances in computing, semiconductors and weapons systems. Below, five venture investors describe this historic shift. Three of the investors separately use the word “generational” to describe the transformation: Jackson Moses, founder and managing partner at Silent Ventures, says defense tech is a “generational opportunity”; Jake …

China’s tech giants dip their toes into web3, but prospects are limited so far

Published by skeptic

During the Staking Summit in Istanbul, a conference attended by hundreds of individuals involved in the staking practice of the crypto ecosystem, two exhibition booths stood out. They belonged to Tencent and Huawei. Amidst a backdrop dominated by twenty-somethings clad in trendy company hoodies and giving out well-designed merchandise, the two Chinese tech giants appeared somewhat incongruous with their more formal corporate banners. They were next to engineers, marketers, and business developers deeply entrenched in staking, where individuals pledge their crypto assets, such as Ethereum, to protocols in exchange for returns. The borrowed assets are subsequently used to validate transactions in blockchains implementing the “proof-of-stake” method. In the past year, several Chinese tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei, have been popping up across crypto events in different corners of the world. In the hope of carving out a market share in the nascent web3 space, they show up for these events either as official sponsors or assume a more discreet presence simply as attendees. Chinese tech giants’ participation in crypto sits somewhere at the …

LucidLink lands $75M for its on-demand file streaming tech

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LucidLink, a startup offering a platform that enables teams to work on files without having to download or sync them, today announced that it raised $75 million in a Series C round led by Brighton Park Capital with participation from Headline, Adobe Ventures and Baseline Ventures. The tranche brings LucidLink’s total raised to $90 million — a respectable sum for a company founded around seven years ago. How, you might be asking (like this writer), did a storage startup raise nearly $100 million — and for what? Well, 5x growth in annual recurring revenue over the past two years might have something to do with it. As for how it plans to spend the money, LucidLink will “accelerate” its product and engineering development, customer acquisition and vertical expansion efforts, CEO and co-founder Peter Thompson told TechCrunch in an email interview. “LucidLink didn’t need to raise capital, but rather, investors sought us out for investment due to our top-of-class KPIs and metrics for software-as-a-service companies,” he said. “In a sea of flat and down rounds, the …

LA Auto Show: the tech, EVs and cars that got our attention

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The 2023 Los Angeles Auto Show is a wrap — for press, anyway. That means it’s time to recap the big launches, strange details, cars on display and peculiar absences we noticed this year. The highlights include the SUV that’ll make or break Lucid, Amazon’s auto fixation, a pickup that calls Tesla’s Cybertruck to mind and a rocket-powered Pontiac Fiero that two gearheads somehow launched into orbit (not really). The LA Auto Show floor was  subdued this year, thanks at least in part to the absence of Stellantis, which owns Fiat, Jeep, Chrysler and a host of other brands. As I typed this, while plopped against a wall on the convention center floor, a passerby remarked unconvincingly that the day’s turnout was “still pretty decent.” The comment seemed to capture the auto industry’s shift towards standalone and online events, and how the trend has left auto shows in search of ways to pad its halls. And yet, there’s still plenty to chew on this year, so let’s dig in. Lucid Gravity: handsome and high priced …

Maybe compliance tech really is a good startup bet

Published by skeptic

German software company EQS Group is being taken private by Thoma Bravo for about €400 million ($435.1 million) in a deal that represents a massive 53% premium over its pre-announcement value. Shares of EQS are up just under 52% today, implying that the market expects the deal to complete, and at the listed price. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on TechCrunch+ or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday. We care about a relatively small PE take-private of a software company that —be honest — you had not heard of until this deal was announced because of the why behind the transaction, and what it could mean for quite a number of startups operating in the regulatory technology (regtech) market. Briefly, EQS Group is a public company that sells compliance and investor relations software. In the third quarter of 2023, EQS reported 14% revenue growth (year-over-year) to €16.88 million, the addition of €3.00 million worth of new ARR (+50%), and adjusted EBITDA of €2.32 million (+49%). EQS is therefore not …

Feds want speed reduction tech in every new car. Are American drivers ready?

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On a Saturday afternoon in January 2022, a 2018 Dodge Challenger ran through a stop sign in Las Vegas, picked up the pace to a speed of 103 miles per hour and flew through an intersection on a red light. The Dodge struck the right side of a Toyota Sienna minivan, which carried seven occupants, causing four more vehicles to crash. The driver and passenger of the Dodge, as well as every passenger in the minivan, died. The National Transportation Safety Board, a U.S. government agency that investigates such accidents, found that in this scenario and many others like it, a technology that limits the speed of vehicles could have mitigated the scale of this tragedy. The driver, who was found to have cocaine and PCP in his system which impaired his decision-making, had a record for breaking the speed limit. The NTSB concluded that intelligent speed-assist technology (ISA) should be standard equipment in all new vehicles to prevent needless deaths. It’s no longer enough, the agency argues, to rely on states to deter driver …