Airchat, a social app built around voice messages, is pivoting after it launched in April.
Airchat now looks like an asynchronous Clubhouse: You join channels for specific topics, then record voice messages or videos to respond to other people in that channel. If you want to move a thread out from the main conversation, you can start group DMs. This is a departure from its previous iteration, which featured a Twitter-like social feed, but even in that form, it included topic-based group chats for subjects like startups, fitness and books.
“With our initial launch, there was such an interest around the topic-based groups that we wanted to just double down on those and try to connect more like-minded people,” Airchat designer Kyle Barber told TechCrunch. “It’s a lot more focused around the things that you like, and finding people in those rooms or channels to talk with.”
The concept of Airchat is fun, especially if you’re someone who loves to send voice memos instead of typing out long paragraphs on your phone keyboard. But like any social app, Airchat’s test will come when more users onboard: What happens when a conversation gets too congested? Will Airchat face the same obstacles as Clubhouse when it comes to moderating audio content? Airchat has a leg up on Clubhouse, at least, because it comes with a very accurate, built-in transcription feature — so if Airchat applies industry-standard, AI-based text moderation, those transcriptions will come in handy.
This isn’t Airchat’s first pivot. The company delivered its first product in May 2023, but the founders — AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard — rebuilt the app, which was what launched earlier this year. Maybe the third time’s the charm!
Payments giant Stripe has delayed going public for so long that its major investor Sequoia Capital is getting creative to offer returns to its limited partners.
The venture firm emailed LPs in funds raised between 2009 and 2011 with an offer to buy up to $861 million worth of shares in Stripe, Axios reported. Sequoia has declined to comment but the buyers would be other, newer Sequoia funds, according to the email sent to LPs, that was shared by Axios.
The move is notable for two reasons. For one, it’s evidence that LPs are increasingly antsy for liquidity in this dry IPO market. (2024 thus far has delivered just four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April.)
But perhaps more telling is that Sequoia’s gesture reflects that the firm is confident not only of Stripe’s future, but in its ability to eventually exit in a way that will reward investors handsomely. In the letter to LPs, Sequoia wrote that it remained “highly optimistic about Stripe’s future” and that the company is “durable across economic cycles.”
Remember, in March of 2021 Stripe was valued at $95 billion, making it one of the highest-valued private startups in the world, and appeared to be steamrolling toward a big, highly-anticipated IPO. In January of 2023, it was reported that Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public or it would pursue a transaction on the private market, such as a fundraising event and a tender offer.
It obviously opted for the latter.
Last summer, Stripe was valued at $50 billion when it raised $6.5 billion in Series I funding, a big haircut from its heyday $95 billion. In February, TechCrunch reported that Stripe had inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $65 billion valuation. While that meant it is climbing back to that peak valuation, it was still far below the high mark.
Still, even at $65 billion, Stripe remained one of the world’s most valued startups.
Since 2011, Sequoia has invested a total of $517 million in Stripe. In its letter to LPs, the firm noted that Stripe’s most recent 409A valuation was $70 billion and that Sequoia’s entire position is valued at $9.8 billion. As a whole, Sequoia reportedly distributed $10 billion to its investors in 2023.
Now that Stripe has conducted a big tender offer, and Sequoia is maneuvering to return cash to earlier funds, this is another indication that the fintech giant not likely planning an IPO anytime soon. It’s also worth pointing out that Sequoia partner Luciana Lixandru and Kevin Kelly, a partner from Sequoia Heritage, the firm’s separate wealth management business, both sit on Stripe’s board, giving them inside knowledge of Stripe’s financial plans. Lixandru replaced Michael Moritz’s board seat after he exited the storied VC firm in December.
There is, of course, the possibility that Stripe will never go public. Despite increased competition, 15-year-old Stripe has continued to grow impressively. In March, Stripe noted in its annual letter that it had crossed the $1 trillion total payment volume metric in 2023 after seeing a 25% bump in its payment volume. The company also said in the letter that it was “robustly cash flow positive in 2023 and expects to be again in 2024,” which means it won’t feel the urgency to raise capital, even as it searches for ways to allow its employees and VC investors to sell shares.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for TechCrunch Fintech here.
Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.
One major dissenter threatens to upend Fisker’s apparent best chance at offloading its unsold EVs, a deal that would keep the startup’s bankruptcy proceeding alive and pave the way for paying back creditors some of what they’re owed.
The objection to the sale comes from the office of the U.S. Trustee, an arm of the Department of Justice that oversees the administration of bankruptcy, with the stated mission of promoting “the integrity and efficiency of the bankruptcy system for the benefit of all stakeholders.”
But Fisker has a raft of support for the deal, which could max out at around $46.25 million and would see all of the Ocean SUVs configured for the North American market go to a company called American Lease that services ride-hail drivers in the New York City area.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning where the parties will make arguments in front of a Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge, who will likely decide whether or not to approve the sale.
Fisker’s support for the deal is broad. The company’s biggest secured lender wants it to go through. The committee of unsecured creditors, which covers parties who are owed money like Fisker’s contract manufacturer Magna, also approves of the sale. The newly formed Fisker Owners Association wants the sale to happen, too — but on the condition that Fisker, American Lease and the secured lender promise to make spare parts available and provide more clarity on how they plan to address an open recall regarding the Ocean’s water pump.
Fisker says it needs the sale to go through soon to provide a financial buffer that will keep the bankruptcy proceeding alive while the creditors fight over what’s left. The vehicle sale is also crucial because the total scope of Fisker’s other assets — and what value they might hold — is still not clear. The company has claimed to have total assets between $500 million and $1 billion, but it has asked the court to delay the release of that information because it’s still being compiled.
The Trustee’s office submitted a filing to the Delaware Bankruptcy Court late last Thursday laying out its reasons why the sale shouldn’t go through as constructed, though.
The objection from the Trustee’s office largely echoed concerns it raised in the hearings that have been held to date. Its lawyers wrote that Fisker provided “no information” about whether it tried to shop around the fleet to other potential buyers, how it marketed the sale or how it valued the vehicles. It accused Fisker of “offering their fleet inventory to this buyer at fire sale prices without adequate marketing that would maximize value.” And it chastised the company for trying to rush through the sale, including scheduling an emergency hearing on the day before the July 4th holiday.
Fisker “sought a sale hearing for their ‘crown jewel’ assets on one week’s notice over a federal holiday and are exclusively pursuing a private sale to one buyer without any efforts to notify other potential purchases,” lawyers for the Trustee’s office wrote.
Lawyers for Fisker, along with the startup’s Chief Restructuring Officer John DiDonato, previously told the court in that emergency hearing a rush sale was required in order to make payroll and keep the bankruptcy proceeding alive. But after a grilling from one of the U.S. Trustee’s lawyers, DiDonato and Fisker’s counsel took another look at the startup’s meager assets, were able to put some costs off — including founders Henrik Fisker and Geeta Gupta-Fisker reducing their salaries to $1 — and decided they could wait another week or two to allow more input on the sale.
The Trustee’s office also asked in its objection for more information about why American Lease initially agreed to buy 2,000 Oceans on May 30 — before the bankruptcy — for a much higher average price, which would have netted Fisker around $40 million.
The only other entity that objected to the sale by last Thursday’s 5 p.m. ET deadline was Ideal Motors, one of the dealer partners that Fisker signed on earlier this year. Ideal argues that it wasn’t properly notified of the proposed sale, and said “the speed here appears to be nearly unprecedented.”
Despite putting another potential buyer on the table — a development that was revealed in the most recent hearing on July 9 — the committee of unsecured creditors says it now supports the sale to American Lease.
“The Committee believes that the [Ocean SUVs] were adequately marketed, that the Fleet Sales Agreement constitutes the highest and best offer for the [Ocean SUVs] that [Fisker] could secure under the circumstances, and that the Sale Transaction maximizes the value of the Debtors’ estates for the benefit of all stakeholders,” the committee’s lawyers wrote in a Sunday filing.
Image Credits: Diego Radames/Europa Press / Getty Images
Businesses across the world are reporting IT outages, including Windows “blue screen of death” errors on their computers, in what has already become one of the most widespread IT disruptions in recent years. The outage — linked to a software update from popular cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike — has affected computers running Microsoft Windows at organizations across various sectors, including airlines, banks, retailers, brokerage houses, media companies and railway networks. The travel sector seems to be one of the hardest hit, based on online chatter.
CrowdStrike’s chief executive, George Kurtz, confirmed in a post on X that a “defect” in a content update for Windows hosts had caused the outage, and Kurtz ruled out a cyberattack. He added that the firm was rolling out a fix and that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” Kurtz noted on X.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” Kurtz said.
Later Friday, the U.S. cyber agency, the CISA, said that even though the outage wasn’t linked to any suspicious activity, it has “observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity.”
A post on CrowdStrike’s support forums (which are only accessible with a login) also acknowledged the issue early on Friday, saying the company had received reports of crashes related to a content update. CrowdStrike said the crash reports were “related to the Falcon Sensor” — its cloud-based security service that it describes as “real-time threat detection, simplified management, and proactive threat hunting.”
A screenshot of the post on CrowdStrike.Image Credits: CrowdStrike
A moderator of the CrowdStrike subreddit also said the company was aware of “widespread reports” of blue screen errors on Windows devices across multiple versions of its software. The firm was investigating the cause, the message read.
The security firm didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Microsoft started to note problems starting in the early hours of July 19. Its Service Health page notes currently that Microsoft 365 for Consumers is now back up. Enterprise apps, however, are still seeing disruption according to its Service Health Status for its cloud services for business.
“We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
The Microsoft spokesperson said that the previous Microsoft 365 service disruption overnight July 18 to 19 was unrelated to the widespread outage triggered by the CrowdStrike update.
There will be a lot of questions to ask and answer about resilience — or perhaps the lack of it — in cloud services, and namely how one single update could bring so much to a grinding halt around the world.
“In our view, cybersecurity products have to clear a higher bar of reliability and security in customer deployments than other technology products because they are mission critical and actively attacked by adversaries,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a research note Friday. “In some ways, we believe this will reinforce the barrier to entry in the industry and the need for best-in-class update, outage and customer service protocols, ultimately favoring companies with scale.”
Airlines and airports across Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Australia, China, Japan, India, Singapore and Taiwan are reporting problems with check-in and ticketing systems, resulting in flight delays and ample chaos at airports.
U.S. federal airspace officials announced a nationwide ground stop of air traffic on Friday due to the outages, which might have an affect on the climate, experts told TechCrunch. Others were affected by the outage and the airline chaos in other ways.
In the U.K., the London Stock Exchange reported disruptions. Several doctors’ offices in the U.K. said on X that the outage had hit the National Health Service’s clinical computer system that contains medical records and is used for scheduling appointments.
And in the U.S., some 911 and non-emergency call centers seem to be affected. A post by Alaska State Troopers said many such call centers were “not working correctly across the State of Alaska.”
U.K. news broadcaster Sky News faced trouble broadcasting live this morning due to the outage, the firm’s executive chairman David Rhodes tweeted. The New Zealand Herald reported that banking services in the country were affected by the issue, too, and several Indian news channels said they had problems broadcasting as well.
Many companies’ employees have reported being unable to start their computers due to the issue. The outage came shortly after Microsoft confirmed service problems with its Microsoft 365 apps late on Thursday, which affected several airlines including Delta and United. Microsoft’s services status page says the issues are being resolved.
And amid the chaos, misinformation has been spreading, including that the Las Vegas Sphere was displaying a blue screen of death.
Before CrowdStrike acknowledged its role in the crash, businesses and security experts early on Friday began to point fingers at the company, whose software is used by millions of people across enterprises to manage security both on devices and servers. Experts told TechCrunch that rivals could stand to gain from the debacle, as well.
CrowdStrike counts nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies and more than half of the Fortune 1,000 among its clients, per its website. Its services are deployed by eight of the top 10 financial services firms and an equal number of leading tech companies. It also has a deep and wide presence in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors, serving six and seven of the top 10 companies in those industries, respectively.
CrowdStrike’s shares were down around 11% when the market closed on Friday, and a market cap of $74.2 billion at the time of this writing.
Ram Iyer, Ingrid Lunden and Zack Whittaker contributed to this report.
The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today 😅 pic.twitter.com/xsdnq1Pgjr
— Akshay Kothari (@akothari) July 19, 2024
Prague Airport is currently beeing affected by an outage of the global check-in system, which is used by a large number of airlines. As a result, some departures are delayed. pic.twitter.com/fFpXkMccXO
— Prague Airport (@PragueAirport) July 19, 2024
Something super weird happening right now: just been called by several totally different media outlets in the last few minutes, all with Windows machines suddenly BSoD’ing (Blue Screen of Death). Anyone else seen this? Seems to be entering recovery mode: pic.twitter.com/DxdLyA9BLA
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 19, 2024
This story was originally published at 12:09 a.m. July 19, and was updated to reflect new information.
Airchat, a social app built around voice messages, is pivoting after it launched in April.
Airchat now looks like an asynchronous Clubhouse: You join channels for specific topics, then record voice messages or videos to respond to other people in that channel. If you want to move a thread out from the main conversation, you can start group DMs. This is a departure from its previous iteration, which featured a Twitter-like social feed, but even in that form, it included topic-based group chats for subjects like startups, fitness and books.
“With our initial launch, there was such an interest around the topic-based groups that we wanted to just double down on those and try to connect more like-minded people,” Airchat designer Kyle Barber told TechCrunch. “It’s a lot more focused around the things that you like, and finding people in those rooms or channels to talk with.”
The concept of Airchat is fun, especially if you’re someone who loves to send voice memos instead of typing out long paragraphs on your phone keyboard. But like any social app, Airchat’s test will come when more users onboard: What happens when a conversation gets too congested? Will Airchat face the same obstacles as Clubhouse when it comes to moderating audio content? Airchat has a leg up on Clubhouse, at least, because it comes with a very accurate, built-in transcription feature — so if Airchat applies industry-standard, AI-based text moderation, those transcriptions will come in handy.
This isn’t Airchat’s first pivot. The company delivered its first product in May 2023, but the founders — AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard — rebuilt the app, which was what launched earlier this year. Maybe the third time’s the charm!
Payments giant Stripe has delayed going public for so long that its major investor Sequoia Capital is getting creative to offer returns to its limited partners.
The venture firm emailed LPs in funds raised between 2009 and 2011 with an offer to buy up to $861 million worth of shares in Stripe, Axios reported. Sequoia has declined to comment but the buyers would be other, newer Sequoia funds, according to the email sent to LPs, that was shared by Axios.
The move is notable for two reasons. For one, it’s evidence that LPs are increasingly antsy for liquidity in this dry IPO market. (2024 thus far has delivered just four venture-backed tech IPOs — Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik — in March and April.)
But perhaps more telling is that Sequoia’s gesture reflects that the firm is confident not only of Stripe’s future, but in its ability to eventually exit in a way that will reward investors handsomely. In the letter to LPs, Sequoia wrote that it remained “highly optimistic about Stripe’s future” and that the company is “durable across economic cycles.”
Remember, in March of 2021 Stripe was valued at $95 billion, making it one of the highest-valued private startups in the world, and appeared to be steamrolling toward a big, highly-anticipated IPO. In January of 2023, it was reported that Stripe had set a 12-month deadline for itself to go public or it would pursue a transaction on the private market, such as a fundraising event and a tender offer.
It obviously opted for the latter.
Last summer, Stripe was valued at $50 billion when it raised $6.5 billion in Series I funding, a big haircut from its heyday $95 billion. In February, TechCrunch reported that Stripe had inked deals with investors to provide liquidity to current and former employees through a tender offer at a $65 billion valuation. While that meant it is climbing back to that peak valuation, it was still far below the high mark.
Still, even at $65 billion, Stripe remained one of the world’s most valued startups.
Since 2011, Sequoia has invested a total of $517 million in Stripe. In its letter to LPs, the firm noted that Stripe’s most recent 409A valuation was $70 billion and that Sequoia’s entire position is valued at $9.8 billion. As a whole, Sequoia reportedly distributed $10 billion to its investors in 2023.
Now that Stripe has conducted a big tender offer, and Sequoia is maneuvering to return cash to earlier funds, this is another indication that the fintech giant not likely planning an IPO anytime soon. It’s also worth pointing out that Sequoia partner Luciana Lixandru and Kevin Kelly, a partner from Sequoia Heritage, the firm’s separate wealth management business, both sit on Stripe’s board, giving them inside knowledge of Stripe’s financial plans. Lixandru replaced Michael Moritz’s board seat after he exited the storied VC firm in December.
There is, of course, the possibility that Stripe will never go public. Despite increased competition, 15-year-old Stripe has continued to grow impressively. In March, Stripe noted in its annual letter that it had crossed the $1 trillion total payment volume metric in 2023 after seeing a 25% bump in its payment volume. The company also said in the letter that it was “robustly cash flow positive in 2023 and expects to be again in 2024,” which means it won’t feel the urgency to raise capital, even as it searches for ways to allow its employees and VC investors to sell shares.
Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for TechCrunch Fintech here.
Want to reach out with a tip? Email me at [email protected] or send me a message on Signal at 408.204.3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew at [email protected]. For more secure communications, click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and links to encrypted messaging apps.
One major dissenter threatens to upend Fisker’s apparent best chance at offloading its unsold EVs, a deal that would keep the startup’s bankruptcy proceeding alive and pave the way for paying back creditors some of what they’re owed.
The objection to the sale comes from the office of the U.S. Trustee, an arm of the Department of Justice that oversees the administration of bankruptcy, with the stated mission of promoting “the integrity and efficiency of the bankruptcy system for the benefit of all stakeholders.”
But Fisker has a raft of support for the deal, which could max out at around $46.25 million and would see all of the Ocean SUVs configured for the North American market go to a company called American Lease that services ride-hail drivers in the New York City area.
A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning where the parties will make arguments in front of a Delaware Bankruptcy Court judge, who will likely decide whether or not to approve the sale.
Fisker’s support for the deal is broad. The company’s biggest secured lender wants it to go through. The committee of unsecured creditors, which covers parties who are owed money like Fisker’s contract manufacturer Magna, also approves of the sale. The newly formed Fisker Owners Association wants the sale to happen, too — but on the condition that Fisker, American Lease and the secured lender promise to make spare parts available and provide more clarity on how they plan to address an open recall regarding the Ocean’s water pump.
Fisker says it needs the sale to go through soon to provide a financial buffer that will keep the bankruptcy proceeding alive while the creditors fight over what’s left. The vehicle sale is also crucial because the total scope of Fisker’s other assets — and what value they might hold — is still not clear. The company has claimed to have total assets between $500 million and $1 billion, but it has asked the court to delay the release of that information because it’s still being compiled.
The Trustee’s office submitted a filing to the Delaware Bankruptcy Court late last Thursday laying out its reasons why the sale shouldn’t go through as constructed, though.
The objection from the Trustee’s office largely echoed concerns it raised in the hearings that have been held to date. Its lawyers wrote that Fisker provided “no information” about whether it tried to shop around the fleet to other potential buyers, how it marketed the sale or how it valued the vehicles. It accused Fisker of “offering their fleet inventory to this buyer at fire sale prices without adequate marketing that would maximize value.” And it chastised the company for trying to rush through the sale, including scheduling an emergency hearing on the day before the July 4th holiday.
Fisker “sought a sale hearing for their ‘crown jewel’ assets on one week’s notice over a federal holiday and are exclusively pursuing a private sale to one buyer without any efforts to notify other potential purchases,” lawyers for the Trustee’s office wrote.
Lawyers for Fisker, along with the startup’s Chief Restructuring Officer John DiDonato, previously told the court in that emergency hearing a rush sale was required in order to make payroll and keep the bankruptcy proceeding alive. But after a grilling from one of the U.S. Trustee’s lawyers, DiDonato and Fisker’s counsel took another look at the startup’s meager assets, were able to put some costs off — including founders Henrik Fisker and Geeta Gupta-Fisker reducing their salaries to $1 — and decided they could wait another week or two to allow more input on the sale.
The Trustee’s office also asked in its objection for more information about why American Lease initially agreed to buy 2,000 Oceans on May 30 — before the bankruptcy — for a much higher average price, which would have netted Fisker around $40 million.
The only other entity that objected to the sale by last Thursday’s 5 p.m. ET deadline was Ideal Motors, one of the dealer partners that Fisker signed on earlier this year. Ideal argues that it wasn’t properly notified of the proposed sale, and said “the speed here appears to be nearly unprecedented.”
Despite putting another potential buyer on the table — a development that was revealed in the most recent hearing on July 9 — the committee of unsecured creditors says it now supports the sale to American Lease.
“The Committee believes that the [Ocean SUVs] were adequately marketed, that the Fleet Sales Agreement constitutes the highest and best offer for the [Ocean SUVs] that [Fisker] could secure under the circumstances, and that the Sale Transaction maximizes the value of the Debtors’ estates for the benefit of all stakeholders,” the committee’s lawyers wrote in a Sunday filing.
Image Credits: Diego Radames/Europa Press / Getty Images
Businesses across the world are reporting IT outages, including Windows “blue screen of death” errors on their computers, in what has already become one of the most widespread IT disruptions in recent years. The outage — linked to a software update from popular cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike — has affected computers running Microsoft Windows at organizations across various sectors, including airlines, banks, retailers, brokerage houses, media companies and railway networks. The travel sector seems to be one of the hardest hit, based on online chatter.
CrowdStrike’s chief executive, George Kurtz, confirmed in a post on X that a “defect” in a content update for Windows hosts had caused the outage, and Kurtz ruled out a cyberattack. He added that the firm was rolling out a fix and that Mac and Linux hosts were not affected.
“CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted,” Kurtz noted on X.
“This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed. We refer customers to the support portal for the latest updates and will continue to provide complete and continuous updates on our website. We further recommend organizations ensure they’re communicating with CrowdStrike representatives through official channels. Our team is fully mobilized to ensure the security and stability of CrowdStrike customers,” Kurtz said.
Later Friday, the U.S. cyber agency, the CISA, said that even though the outage wasn’t linked to any suspicious activity, it has “observed threat actors taking advantage of this incident for phishing and other malicious activity.”
A post on CrowdStrike’s support forums (which are only accessible with a login) also acknowledged the issue early on Friday, saying the company had received reports of crashes related to a content update. CrowdStrike said the crash reports were “related to the Falcon Sensor” — its cloud-based security service that it describes as “real-time threat detection, simplified management, and proactive threat hunting.”
A screenshot of the post on CrowdStrike.Image Credits: CrowdStrike
A moderator of the CrowdStrike subreddit also said the company was aware of “widespread reports” of blue screen errors on Windows devices across multiple versions of its software. The firm was investigating the cause, the message read.
The security firm didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Microsoft started to note problems starting in the early hours of July 19. Its Service Health page notes currently that Microsoft 365 for Consumers is now back up. Enterprise apps, however, are still seeing disruption according to its Service Health Status for its cloud services for business.
“We’re aware of an issue affecting Windows devices due to an update from a third-party software platform. We anticipate a resolution is forthcoming,” a Microsoft spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement.
The Microsoft spokesperson said that the previous Microsoft 365 service disruption overnight July 18 to 19 was unrelated to the widespread outage triggered by the CrowdStrike update.
There will be a lot of questions to ask and answer about resilience — or perhaps the lack of it — in cloud services, and namely how one single update could bring so much to a grinding halt around the world.
“In our view, cybersecurity products have to clear a higher bar of reliability and security in customer deployments than other technology products because they are mission critical and actively attacked by adversaries,” Goldman Sachs analysts wrote in a research note Friday. “In some ways, we believe this will reinforce the barrier to entry in the industry and the need for best-in-class update, outage and customer service protocols, ultimately favoring companies with scale.”
Airlines and airports across Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Australia, China, Japan, India, Singapore and Taiwan are reporting problems with check-in and ticketing systems, resulting in flight delays and ample chaos at airports.
U.S. federal airspace officials announced a nationwide ground stop of air traffic on Friday due to the outages, which might have an affect on the climate, experts told TechCrunch. Others were affected by the outage and the airline chaos in other ways.
In the U.K., the London Stock Exchange reported disruptions. Several doctors’ offices in the U.K. said on X that the outage had hit the National Health Service’s clinical computer system that contains medical records and is used for scheduling appointments.
And in the U.S., some 911 and non-emergency call centers seem to be affected. A post by Alaska State Troopers said many such call centers were “not working correctly across the State of Alaska.”
U.K. news broadcaster Sky News faced trouble broadcasting live this morning due to the outage, the firm’s executive chairman David Rhodes tweeted. The New Zealand Herald reported that banking services in the country were affected by the issue, too, and several Indian news channels said they had problems broadcasting as well.
Many companies’ employees have reported being unable to start their computers due to the issue. The outage came shortly after Microsoft confirmed service problems with its Microsoft 365 apps late on Thursday, which affected several airlines including Delta and United. Microsoft’s services status page says the issues are being resolved.
And amid the chaos, misinformation has been spreading, including that the Las Vegas Sphere was displaying a blue screen of death.
Before CrowdStrike acknowledged its role in the crash, businesses and security experts early on Friday began to point fingers at the company, whose software is used by millions of people across enterprises to manage security both on devices and servers. Experts told TechCrunch that rivals could stand to gain from the debacle, as well.
CrowdStrike counts nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies and more than half of the Fortune 1,000 among its clients, per its website. Its services are deployed by eight of the top 10 financial services firms and an equal number of leading tech companies. It also has a deep and wide presence in the healthcare and manufacturing sectors, serving six and seven of the top 10 companies in those industries, respectively.
CrowdStrike’s shares were down around 11% when the market closed on Friday, and a market cap of $74.2 billion at the time of this writing.
Ram Iyer, Ingrid Lunden and Zack Whittaker contributed to this report.
The Microsoft / CrowdStrike outage has taken down most airports in India. I got my first hand-written boarding pass today 😅 pic.twitter.com/xsdnq1Pgjr
— Akshay Kothari (@akothari) July 19, 2024
Prague Airport is currently beeing affected by an outage of the global check-in system, which is used by a large number of airlines. As a result, some departures are delayed. pic.twitter.com/fFpXkMccXO
— Prague Airport (@PragueAirport) July 19, 2024
Something super weird happening right now: just been called by several totally different media outlets in the last few minutes, all with Windows machines suddenly BSoD’ing (Blue Screen of Death). Anyone else seen this? Seems to be entering recovery mode: pic.twitter.com/DxdLyA9BLA
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 19, 2024
This story was originally published at 12:09 a.m. July 19, and was updated to reflect new information.
Airchat, a social app built around voice messages, is pivoting after it launched in April.
Airchat now looks like an asynchronous Clubhouse: You join channels for specific topics, then record voice messages or videos to respond to other people in that channel. If you want to move a thread out from the main conversation, you can start group DMs. This is a departure from its previous iteration, which featured a Twitter-like social feed, but even in that form, it included topic-based group chats for subjects like startups, fitness and books.
“With our initial launch, there was such an interest around the topic-based groups that we wanted to just double down on those and try to connect more like-minded people,” Airchat designer Kyle Barber told TechCrunch. “It’s a lot more focused around the things that you like, and finding people in those rooms or channels to talk with.”
The concept of Airchat is fun, especially if you’re someone who loves to send voice memos instead of typing out long paragraphs on your phone keyboard. But like any social app, Airchat’s test will come when more users onboard: What happens when a conversation gets too congested? Will Airchat face the same obstacles as Clubhouse when it comes to moderating audio content? Airchat has a leg up on Clubhouse, at least, because it comes with a very accurate, built-in transcription feature — so if Airchat applies industry-standard, AI-based text moderation, those transcriptions will come in handy.
This isn’t Airchat’s first pivot. The company delivered its first product in May 2023, but the founders — AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard — rebuilt the app, which was what launched earlier this year. Maybe the third time’s the charm!
Aurora and automotive supplier Continental have wrapped up the first phase of a more than $300 million project to mass produce autonomous vehicle hardware for commercial self-driving trucks.
The two companies said Friday that the design and system architecture of an autonomous vehicle hardware kit is now complete. The blueprint for a secondary computer that can take over operation if a failure occurs — known as a fallback system — has also been finalized. The companies made the announcement ahead of a planned showcase at CES 2024, the annual tech trade show that kicks off next week in Las Vegas.
While a seemingly small milestone in a years-long and multimillion-dollar journey, it is a complicated and critical one. An array of hardware, including sensors such as radar, cameras and lidar, automated driving control units and high-performance computers, are used alongside software to allow a vehicle — in this case, driverless semi-trucks — to navigate roads without a human driver behind the wheel.
This means that Continental can now get to work on developing prototypes ahead of its plan to begin production in 2027. Continental will build initial versions of the hardware for testing at its new facility in New Braunfels, Texas over the next year. By 2026, the companies said that “validation” is expected to begin, a process that will include integrating the hardware and software systems onto a fleet of trucks for testing. Aurora is also partnered with truck makers Paccar and Volvo Group.
The end goal is to mass produce an automotive-grade hardware system that can hold up to the cold, heat and other environmental conditions that long-haul trucks encounter every day. Importantly, the hardware system has to be reliable, easy to maintain and produced cheaply.
The companies have previously said the intent is to produce thousands of these systems.
Aurora co-founder and CEO Chris Urmson said finalizing the design of its future hardware is a meaningful step toward making the unit economics of the Aurora Driver compelling and building a business for the long-term. In other words, Urmson believes it’s critical if the company hopes to become profitable.
Aurora isn’t waiting until 2027 or beyond to launch commercial operations, however. The company plans to launch up to 20 driverless Class 8 trucks — meaning no human behind the wheel — by the end of 2024. Initially, these driverless trucks will carry freight between Dallas and Houston, a route the company has been using for testing.
While these first driverless trucks won’t be equipped with the Aurora-Continental hardware kit, they are designed to automotive standards and to operate safely without a driver, according to Aurora spokesperson Rachel Chibidakis. Aurora will continue to update the hardware on this fleet over the next several years before switching to the kit designed to be manufactured at scale.
Correction: TechCrunch was given incorrect information on the number of driverless trucks that will initially launch at the end of year. The number has been corrected to “up to 20” driverless trucks.
