Marketplace Tech

The hottest electric car market in the world right now is China. Chinese consumers bought more than double the number of electric cars as the U.S. did in 2016. The Chinese government has said it wants 11 percent of all cars sold there to be electric by 2020. How could this change the global electric vehicle market? Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks about this with Marketplace's China correspondent, Jennifer Pak.

In the world of startups, getting venture capital funding isn't exactly easy. It's sort of a business of who-knows-whom. And getting in front of investors can be key. Enter the accelerator. These are for-profit business incubators that invest in groups of startups, give them advice and mentoring, and connect them with other investors. One of the biggest tech accelerators is Y Combinator. It has funded companies including Airbnb, Instacart and Dropbox. Marketplace Tech host Amy Scott talks with Michael Seibel, who leads Y Combinator's accelerator program.

The Trump administration is asking NASA to send astronauts back to the moon. This would be the first American lunar mission since 1972. The administration says that traveling to the moon will build a foundation for trips to Mars and beyond. But they’ll need to establish funding for it first. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks about the initiative with Kimberly Adams, who follows space for Marketplace.

Disney has just opened a virtual reality ride called "Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire," at Disney World. Riders go on a mission to recover intelligence that's essential to the Rebellion's future. And virtual reality might also be the future of amusement parks — in part because it can be cheaper. A typical headset costs about $400 to buy, as opposed to a big moving platform and screen, which can cost millions to install. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks about the economics of the virtual amusement park with Elbert Perez, co-founder of Doghead Simulations, a virtual reality software company.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

Companies are required to file equal employment opportunity reports with the government. But few make that information public. Reporters at Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX looked into how diversity stacks up in Silicon Valley. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talked with reporter Will Evans about why hard data on diversity in tech remains a bit of a mystery.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

Think about all the apps you use in a day: Amazon, Facebook, Gmail, maybe Lyft or Uber. In China, some of those apps are banned. But it’s possible to use one app — WeChat — to do lots of things, like sending messages and ordering taxis. Facebook Messenger is trying to take on the same role in the U.S. Jennifer Pak, Marketplace's China correspondent, gives us the lowdown on WeChat and talks about why there's no equivalent in the U.S. ... yet.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

As we get closer to sending humans to Mars, there’s been more talk about the technology and money it will take to colonize the planet. But science fiction writers have been pondering this for some time. Andy Weir is author of “The Martian,” which showed us how to survive on Mars. His new book, called “Artemis,” is about a colony on the moon. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talked with Weir about the real research that went into his science fiction.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

From data breaches to global cyberwarfare, it’s clear cybersecurity isn’t really working. And not even a newly minted MacArthur fellow can tell us why. What he can tell us: advice like creating long, complicated passwords might not make a big difference in the end. Marketplace Tech’s Molly Wood talks with Stefan Savage about what we can do to make cybersecurity better.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple are four of tech’s most powerful brands. But have they become too powerful? And is regulation the only way to stop them? Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Scott Galloway, a marketing professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, about how these companies grew to global dominance and our love-hate relationship with them.

This week we’re bringing you our favorite episodes of the year.

There’s a group of venture capital firms that want to change the world for the better and make money. This is called impact investing. One of the firms working in this space is Impact America Fund, which invests in companies with diverse missions — for instance, a startup that helps African-American stylists sell their own hair extensions. Marketplace Tech host Molly Wood talks with Impact America Fund founder Kesha Cash about the sometimes complex collision of money and mission in venture capital.