April 3, 2025

Trump’s tariffs will deliver a big blow to climate tech

US president Donald Trump’s massive, sweeping tariffs sent global stock markets tumbling on Thursday, setting the stage for a worldwide trade war and ratcheting up the dangers of a punishing recession.  Experts fear that the US cleantech sector is especially vulnerable to a deep downturn, which would undermine the nation’s progress on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions…

The Nintendo Switch 2, hands-on: It’s pretty good!

April 3, 2025
At a presentation unveiling the Nintendo Switch 2, longtime Nintendo producer Kouichi Kawamoto revealed that at one point, he considered calling the Switch’s successor the “Super Nintendo Switch.” It would have been a nice nod to Nintendo’s second console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, which followed the original NES about 35 years ago. But Kawamoto, […]

A web3 startup aims to change the game in the tariff wars

April 3, 2025
With President Donald Trump’s latest round of tariffs coming out today — a day he is calling “Liberation Day” — a Web3 startup thinks it could track tariffs automatically on goods coming into and out of the USA using its blockchain platform. The claim may well be bold — and typical of many such bold claims […]

The Download: dethroning SpaceX, and air-conditioning’s energy demands

April 3, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX SpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop…

Fuse raises $6.6M to fix a payment problem for companies expanding to MENA

April 3, 2025
Expanding into the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains a costly and complex challenge for global businesses, thanks to fragmented regulations and banking systems. Dubai-based fintech Fuse aims to simplify that with a cross-border payments API and has raised $6.6 million in seed funding to make it happen. Founded in 2023 by George Davis, […]

Truecaller now has over 450M monthly active users

April 3, 2025
Caller ID app Truecaller said on Thursday that it crossed the 450 million user mark earlier this week. The company said that it added 50 million users in the past 10 months and 15.5 million users since the beginning of 2025. India is the company’s biggest user base, so it wasn’t surprising to see Truecaller […]

Fintech Plaid raises $575M at a $6.1B valuation, says it will not go public in 2025

April 3, 2025
Plaid, which connects bank accounts to financial applications, has sold about $575 million worth of common stock at a $6.1 billion post-money valuation, the fintech company confirmed to TechCrunch. The valuation is about less than half of the $13.4 billion that San Francisco-based Plaid was valued at when it raised a $425 million Series D […]

We should talk more about air-conditioning

April 3, 2025
Things are starting to warm up here in the New York City area, and it’s got me thinking once again about something that people aren’t talking about enough: energy demand for air conditioners.  I get it: Data centers are the shiny new thing to worry about. And I’m not saying we shouldn’t be thinking about…

Rivals are rising to challenge the dominance of SpaceX

April 3, 2025
SpaceX is a space launch juggernaut. In just two decades, the company has managed to edge out former aerospace heavyweights Boeing, Lockheed, and Northrop Grumman to gain near-monopoly status over rocket launches in the US; it accounted for 87% of the country’s orbital launches in 2024, according to an analysis by SpaceNews. Since the mid-2010s,…