Techflier

Embedded insurance — selling coverage at the same time as another product or service — is on the rise. According to data platform Dealroom , it accounts for a growing share of all policies sold, and startups in this space raised nearly $800 million in 2021 alone. Having recently polled investors on all things insurtech, we were curious to know if the market remained as bullish on embedded insurance as last year — and whether it was warranted. “Personally, I remain bullish on embedded insurance,” Brewer Lane Ventures general partner Martha Notaras told TechCrunch. “Many insurance purchases are difficult, so rolling insurance into another transaction makes a lot of sense.” While seeing clear value in the ability to bundle insurance with another purchase, Notaras and other investors we talked to also had reservations. “We believe in the concept of embedded insurance, but a more measured approach would suit investors well when analyzing these businesses,” Distributed Ventures partner...

US Capitol in Washington, DC, framed by storm clouds in May 2021. Drew Angerer/Getty Images A majority of Americans believe Congress is "out of touch" with climate change, a new poll found.  Adults who strongly disapprove of President Joe Biden's job were most likely to think Congress is "out of touch." Adults who strongly approve of Biden's job were most likely to think Congress is "in touch" with climate change.  A majority of American adults think Congress is out of touch on climate change, a new Insider/Morning Consult poll found .  About six out of 10 adults surveyed said they think Congress is "very out of touch" or "somewhat out of touch," according to the poll.    The group that most thought Congress is out of touch with climate change? People who strongly disapprove of Joe Biden's job as president.  Climate change has been one of the issues topping Biden's agenda . Since entering the White House,...

Flags of European Union member countries. Shutterstock.com The EU will try to implement a "price corridor" as talks of a price cap on natural gas ended without an agreement. Just 15 of 27 nations approved the price cap, but the bloc needs unanimous approval to pass the measure. Opponents say that the price cap could prevent some nations from getting any gas at all.  The European Union announced it will try to implement a "price corridor" to rein in soaring energy costs, after talks to cap natural gas prices ended without an agreement. In a meeting on Friday, the bloc scrambled to approve profit levies on energy companies , which will tax profits and redistribute them to households to help cover the soaring cost of energy. It also approved a mandatory 5% cut on electricity demand during peak hours. But just 15 nations in the 27-country bloc approved the proposal to cap gas prices, Reuters reported, and the EU needs unanimous approval for the measure to pa...

Is Tumblr porn making a comeback? No, it’s not — and Amanda Silberling joins me on this week’s TechCrunch podcast to explain why, and why people thought it might be. Devin Coldewey also joins us to talk about NASA’s DART mission, which saw the U.S. space agency throw a little spacecraft at a big asteroid moon. Yes it’s all real and it all makes sense, I promise. And of course, we run down the biggest stories in tech this past week that you need to know about. By the way, if you recently were laid off, TechCrunch is offering a free expo pass to Disrupt (October 18-20) in San Francisco. No strings attached. These tickets get you access to the expo floor, breakout sessions and plenty of networking opportunities like partner roundtables and parties. For more info, check out this page . Articles from the episode: No, Tumblr is not bringing back porn Watch the asteroid-smashing DART spacecraft make its 6-million-mile shot today NASA’s DART anti-asteroid satellite successfully smashes i...

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange shortly before the closing bell as the market takes a significant dip in New York, U.S., February 25, 2020. Lucas Jackson/Reuters A $46 trillion wipe out in stocks and bonds over the past year has led to forced liquidations on Wall Street, according to Bank of America. The bank doesn't expect the bleeding to stop until the Fed launches a coordinated dovish pivot with other central banks.  "Markets stop panicking when central banks start panicking but BoJ/BoE panics not yet credible nor coordinated," BofA said. It's been a tough year for investors, with global stock and bond markets erasing $46.1 trillion in market value since November 2021, according to Bank of America. The massive drawdown has led to forced liquidations on Wall Street, the bank's chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett said in a Friday note, highlighting the recent break below 2018 support in the NYSE Composite Index. And i...

Rachel Mendelson/Insider Congress and the president are the oldest in US history. There's a growing age gap between the people leading the government and Americans being led. Some young officials say they feel blocked by those clinging to power, their issues downplayed. The United States' elected leaders are the oldest they've ever been. The age gap between the government and the governed is wider than ever before. And the notion that the nation is now a gerontocracy — which the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary defines as "a state, society, or group governed by old people" — is decidedly real. Insider journalists have spent four months interviewing hundreds of sources and analyzing gigabytes of data to understand how the United States arrived at this moment. In " Red, White, and Gray ," Insider endeavors to explain what it means for a nation that, on balance, is decades younger than its representatives in Washington, DC. Launched Septe...

When insurtech company Metromile went public via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) in February last year, it was valued at over $1 billion. A year and five months later, Lemonade acquired the company for less than $145 million. As the markets turned early this year, insurtech left most generalist investors’ playbooks almost as fast as Metromile and its peers’ plummeting valuations. Yet, the sector is very much alive, and the “correction” of these companies’ valuations presents an opportunity for those who have cash left on their balance sheets, investors told TechCrunch. “Just like how not every insurtech was a unicorn last year, not all of them are worth zero today,” said Florian Graillot , founding partner at Astorya.vc . The insurtech market has been through a rough time this past year, so we reached out to eight active investors in the space to get a read of what’s been cooking as the markets aggressively recalibrated what an insurtech startup is worth. We’re wid...

  Truist is piloting 5G-only internet at bank branches. Rafael Henrique/ SOPA Images/ LightRocket/ Getty Images Truist is piloting 5G tech across the bank, including implementing it at its innovation hub. Ken Meyer, a Truist tech exec, spoke with Insider about the superregional bank's plans.  This article is part of " How 5G Is Changing Everything ," a series about transformational 5G tech across industries. When BB&T and SunTrust merged in 2019 to create one of largest consumer banks in the country, at the top of its to-do list was setting up its new brand. The bank, which renamed itself Truist, wanted something that was different from the heritage-filled brands its predecessors held. BB&T, headquartered near Charlotte in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, had been around since 1872, while SunTrust, which was headquartered in Atlanta, was established in 1891.  Truist was to represent the banks coming together to service its clients as a "true fin...

Here’s a question for you: How seriously should we take Amazon’s home robotics play ? Perhaps a better way of framing it is: When do we take Amazon’s home robotics play seriously? I realize these sound like pointed questions, and I should specify that they’re not really specific to Amazon. They’re more a result of having been burned in the past. The road to the home robot is littered with fine intentions from companies large (Sony) and small (Anki, etc.). For decades, robots have been a kind of industry shorthand for forward-thinking innovation. Want the world (and, more importantly, shareholders) to know you’re focused on the future? Roll a robot out at your press conference, and who cares if it ever comes out? Amazon’s obviously addressed that last bit of potential criticism. Astro came out. Announced a year ago this week, the company launched the robot as part of its “Day One Edition” program, offering it up with limited availability at a steep price ($1,500). During a call before...

Elon Musk. REUTERS/Adrees Latif Text messages between Elon Musk and various notables in tech and business have been released. In one private text exchange, the CEO of Axel Springer, Insider's parent company, speaks to Musk.  The CEO urges Musk to acquire Twitter and offers to "run it" on his behalf. Days before Elon Musk's investment in Twitter became public, he was already being urged to acquire the company by a number of notable figures in business, including Mathias Döpfner. Döpfner is the CEO of Axel Springer, parent company of Insider Inc., the publisher of this story. In a private text exchange dated March 30, 2022, unveiled Thursday in as part of Twitter's lawsuit against Musk, Döpfner urged Musk to buy Twitter. "Why don't you buy Twitter?" Döpfner asks. "We run it for you. And establish a true platform of free speech. Would be a real contribution to democracy." Musk replied a few minutes later, according to the text log,...

This spring, Google announced it would expand the types of personal information users could request to have removed from Google Search results to include contact information, like a phone number, address or email. At Google’s “Search On” event today, where the company unveiled a number of announcements related to its Search products and services, it said this feature would now be rolling out widely to users in the U.S. and would later expand to include alerts. Originally, Google had said the feature would arrive in the Google App in the “coming months” without giving an exact launch date. Today, Google says the “Results About You” tool will become accessible to all English language users in the U.S. within the next few weeks. It will also introduce a new feature, yet unreported, that will allow users to receive proactive alerts about their contact information appearing in Search results. When available, users will be able to find the tool in the Google App or by clicking on the thr...

In early April, software engineer Dmitri Kyle Brereton published a blog post — “Google Search Is Dying” — that struck a nerve. Now among the most upvoted threads of all time on Y Combinator’s Hacker News forum, the piece argues many users have become so dissatisfied with Google search results that they now append “Reddit” to the end of their queries — repurposing Google Search as a souped-up search engine for Reddit and its communities. Brereton blamed the trend on sites’ drive to optimize pages for Google Search and Google’s preferential treatment of its own properties, like Google Flights. But he asserted that Google Search has historically been poor at answering more open-ended questions whose answers tend to be diverse, like which laptop is the best on the market. In an effort to address this second shortcoming, Google is today introducing a feature called “Discussions and forums” that will incorporate search results from discussion forums, including Reddit, Quora, and Edmunds.co...

In this photo released by the U.S. Navy, the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz transits the Arabian Sea on Aug. 17, 2020. Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Elliot Schaudt/U.S. Navy via AP The US Navy recently found traces of jet fuel in the water on board the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. Water testing on Sept. 19 originally didn't reveal any contamination, a Navy official told Insider. But more testing two days later yielded "detectable traces" of hydrocarbons, the official said. After determining the water on the ship was safe, the US Navy again found traces of jet fuel in the water on board the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, a Naval Air Forces official confirmed to Insider on Wednesday. Officials tested samples of the Nimitz's waste water on September 19 following the carrier's arrival at San Diego's Naval Air Station North Island. Those laboratory tests, which were conducted several days after traces of jet fuel were initially detected in the ship...

"The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power." Prime Video Amazon's "Rings of Power" appears to be facing some growing pains. That's apparent especially when comparing it to HBO's "House of the Dragon." It highlights the risks of releasing two big-budget fantasy shows at the same time. Jeff Bezos' TV passion project might be experiencing some growing pains. Five episodes into Amazon's "Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," the series appears to be facing aggressive headwinds amid a TV landscape ripe with popular IP — at least compared to HBO's own fantasy hit "House of the Dragon," and when considering its hefty, reportedly $715 million price tag . "The Rings of Power" has been hit with poor audience reactions, and online engagement is muted. That's not to say the show is a failure, but its fantasy counterpart "House of the Dragon" doesn't seem to be dealing with those obsta...

Kazi Awal/Insider Crypto mining is an energy-intensive process. Marco Bello/Getty Images Limited power and infrastructural and logistics issues have led to inefficiencies in cryptocurrency mining farms. Sabre56 is a cryptocurrency mining consultancy working to plug a hole in this sector's problems. This article is part of " Master Your Crypto ," a series from Insider helping investors improve their skills in and knowledge of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency mining is an infamously energy-intensive endeavor, and a growing number of crypto miners are hungry for electricity. With limited power on national grids, "all the low-hanging fruit for power has been snapped up," CEO of mining consultancy firm Sabre56, and ex-special forces operative, Phil Harvey, told Insider.  Pair this with the fact that, until recently, there has been a lack of direction regarding exactly how organizations should efficiently build and run crypto mining farms, and, as Ha...

SAN FRANCISCO - NOVEMBER 4 : San Francisco mayoral candidate Gavin Newsom lifts arms with his wife Kimberly Guilfoyle Newsom before speaking to supporters at an election night party November 4, 2003 in San Francisco. Newsom, the front runner to replace outgoing mayor Willie Brown, will face a run-off election with fellow supervisor Matt Gonzales in December. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Newsom brought up what he called "the awkward conversation" about his ex-wife during an MSNBC interview. The California governor was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancée, from 2001 to 2005. Asked whether they talk, he responded, "Nope. Not lately."  California Gov. Gavin Newsom brought up what he called "the awkward conversation" around his ex-wife, Kimberly Guilfoyle, during a wide-ranging MSNBC interview. The Democrat, who has been urging his party to be more aggressive against Republicans, was talking about how some of his close colleag...

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Alexey Nikolsky/Getty Images Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion in Russia before the Ukraine invasion. A prospectus for the fund revealed investments in Russia's infrastructure, manufacturing, logistics and retail sectors, the Wall Street Journal said. The Public Investment Fund, which is run by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, oversees $600 billion in assets.  Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund invested $2 billion into Russian assets before the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal .  The Public Investment Fund, which is run by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, oversees $600 billion in assets. While it typically keeps details about its investments under tight wraps, it has circulated a prospectus for a planned bond sale. According to a prospectus viewed by the Journal, the PIF invested the $2 bil...