Crunch Hype

Techstars NYC just announced the 10 startups participating in this year’s program, making up what Managing Director Jenny Fielding described as the accelerator’s most global class yet. “We’ve always had applications from around the world and I was always able to take companies from anywhere,” Fielding said. “But the truth is, when you run Techstars […]

The closest match to the growing e-commerce stack is the marketing automation stack, making it worthwhile to compare and contrast the growth of these ecosystems and what drives consolidation.

It’s plain to see that electric vehicles are the future, but there’s more to making that change happen than swapping out a gas motor for a battery-powered one — especially in aircraft. H3X is a startup that aims to accelerate that future with a reimagined, completely integrated electric motor that it claims outperforms everything on […]

BMW Group and California utility Pacific Gas & Electric are rolling out the next phase of a pilot that aims to test — and learn — how electric vehicles could support the integration of renewable energy on the electric grid. The ChargeForward program, now entering its third phase, is open to PG&E customers who drive […]

Social audio app Clubhouse has now promised a time frame of sorts for the launch of its anticipated Android version, following its recent hire of an Android software developer last month. In its weekly Townhall event on Sunday, Clubhouse co-founder Paul Davison remarked that the company was working “really hard” to come to Android, but […]

With Y Combinator Demo Day kicking off tomorrow morning, startups in the current batch are hurrying to make a little news before they show off their recent growth to investors. The list includes Runway, Mono, Pangea and Flux. Add Chums to the mix. Chums is a social shopping service that helps friends suggest products to […]

After Spark Capital announced it would “sever all ties” with Dispo following allegations around co-creator and famous YouTuber David Dobrik, two of the app’s earliest investors have similarly backed away from the company. Seven Seven Six and Unshackled followed suit this morning, releasing subsequent statements that they plan to donate any potential profits from investments […]

Side, a real estate technology company that works to turn agents and independent brokerages into boutique brands and businesses, announced Monday that it has raised $150 million in Series D funding. Coatue Management led the round, which brings San Francisco-based Side’s valuation to $1 billion and total funding raised to over $200 million since its […]

Let's rewind back through TechCrunch's ironSource coverage during its life as a private company and then examine its financial results.

Ahead of another big tech vs Congress ‘grab your popcorn’ grilling session, scheduled for March 25 — when US lawmakers will once again question the CEOs of Facebook, Google and Twitter on the unlovely topic of misinformation — a coalition of organizations across the privacy, antitrust, consumer protection and civil rights spaces has called for […]

We’re just days away from kicking off TC Early Stage 2021: Operations & Fundraising on April 1-2. Join us for two program-packed days dedicated to founders in the earliest stages of startup life (pre-seed through Series A). The event agenda features interactive presentations that cover a range of essential topics like fundraising, operations, growth, product-market […]

Amazon’s Prime Wardrobe has been a key way for the e-commerce giant to expand its reach selling clothing and other apparel: giving shoppers an easy way to try on several items, return what they don’t want, and pay for what they keep has helped it cross the virtual chasm by bringing the online experience a […]

Nigerian startup Xend Finance uses decentralized finance (DeFi) to address currency devaluation. DeFi aims to bridge the gap between decentralized blockchains and financial services. Aronu Ugochukwu and Abafor Chima founded the startup in 2019, and Ugochukwu is quite familiar with currency devaluation. Currency devaluation is a common economic nightmare faced in most African countries and […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox. Hi friends and new readers, welcome to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point […]

Space startup Astroscale has launched ELSA-d, the demonstration mission for its End-of-Life Services by Astroscale (ELSA) technology, which aims to dock with, and then safely remove, orbital debris. Astroscale’s demonstrator package includes two separate payloads, a servicer that represents its future production spacecraft, and a ‘client’ satellite that’s meant to represent the debris satellites it’ll […]

The SolarWinds attack was successful because it took advantage of a vast, intermixed supply chain of technology vendors. The lesson? Complexity is the enemy of security.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You […]

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) offer new ways for consumers to collect, wear and trade fashion online. Now that most fashion shows have scaled back or gone virtual, they may become an important tool for the industry.

Lost item finder Tile, the maker of the popular Bluetooth-powered tracker that can help you find your misplaced keys, bag, wallet or more, is bringing its tracking service to a wearable device for the first time with the launch of its Fitbit partnership. Starting today, all new and current Fitbit Inspire 2 users will gain […]

London-based fintech startup Revolut has announced that it is applying for a bank charter in the U.S. The company has submitted a draft application with the FDIC and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. If the company manages to get a charter in California, it would let the company operate throughout the U.S. […]

One clear sign of a maturing platform is when the company exposes the services it uses for its own tools to other developers. Zoom has been doing that for some time introducing Zoom Apps last year and the Marketplace to distribute and sell these apps. Today, the company introduced a new SDK (software development kit) […]

Berlin-based y42 (formerly known as Datos Intelligence), a data warehouse-centric business intelligence service that promises to give businesses access to an enterprise-level data stack that’s as simple to use as a spreadsheet, today announced that it has raised a $2.9 million seed funding round led by La Famiglia VC. Additional investors include the co-founders of […]

It’s clear that automated workflow tooling has become increasingly important for companies. Perhaps that explains why Camunda, a Berlin startup that makes open source process automation software, announced an €82 million Series B today. That translates into approximately $98 million U.S. Insight Partners led the round with help from A round investor Highland Europe. When […]

Waterfund, an investment and trading firm that specializes in acquiring and managing water-related infrastructure assets, today announced a deal with Israel-based crowdfunding platform OurCrowd that will see the Waterfund team commit $50 million to build a water- and agtech-focused portfolio of 15 companies. The first of these investments is in Plenty, a well-funded vertical farming […]

The once untouchable semiconductor sector continues to attract fervent attention from VCs. The latest news this morning is that Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital has led a $55 million Series D round of financing into Flex Logix, which builds chips designed to bring AI workflows to the compute edge. That follows on earlier rounds in […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to people everywhere shopping more online and Latin America is no exception. São Paulo-based Nuvemshop has developed an e-commerce platform that aims to allow SMBs and merchants to connect more directly with their consumers. With more people in Latin America getting used to making purchases digitally, the company has experienced […]

Zaver, a Swedish fintech that enable merchants to accept cardless payments and offer buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) as an option, has raised $5 million in new funding. The company, which began life focused on P2P payments for marketplace transactions, is now doubling down on the durables sector (think: automotive, health & beauty, craftmanship etc.) for both online […]

In the 170 years since Western Union was founded, no company has managed to solve two basic problems that continue to bedevil the remittance business — exorbitant fees and slow deposit times. For instance, it takes days or weeks for money sent from an immigrant in the U.S. to reach a relative in Nigeria. Ben […]

Caesar Sengupta, the long-time head of Google’s Next Billion Users initiative, is leaving the company next month, he said Monday. Sengupta, who additionally also led the company’s payments business in the past three years, is leaving the firm after nearly 15 years. A regular fixture at Google’s events in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, Sengupta (pictured […]

Venture capital firm Spark Capital has decided to ‘sever all ties’ with Dispo, a photo-sharing app co-created by famous YouTuber David Dobrik. The move, announced by the firm late Sunday, was triggered by a recent investigation by Business Insider that exposed allegations from a woman who said that a member of Dobrik’s Vlog Squad sexually […]

Indonesia-based fintech Pluang announced today it has raised $20 million in a pre-Series B round led by Openspace Ventures, with participation from Go Ventures and other returning investors. The company offers proprietary savings and investment products that allow users to make contributions starting from 50 cents USD. Go Ventures, the investment arm of Gojek, also […]

M Capital Management, a Singapore-based venture capital firm, announced today it has closed its debut fund, M Venture Partners (MVP), totaling $30.85 million USD. It plans to invest in 40 early-stage startups, primarily seed and pre-Series A, with an average initial check size of about $500,000. M Capital Management was founded by Mayank Parekh, whose […]

The historical trajectory of venture capital has been to move to earlier and earlier finding rounds in order to capture the greatest potential multiple on exit. In the US, we’ve seen an explosion of Pre-series A funds, and similarly in Europe. But there’s been an opportunity to tie a lot of that activity together and […]

Kate Hiscox is having a moment. Her company, Sivo, founded eight months ago, has already raised $5 million from investors at a post-money valuation of $100 million, and she says she is in active talks with others who would like her to consider accepting Series A funding from them. Surely the attention owes to the […]

Energy consumption has become the latest flashpoint for cryptocurrency. Critics decry it as an energy hog while proponents hail it for being less intensive than the current global economy. One such critic, DigiEconomist founder Alex de Vries, said he’s “never seen anything that is as inefficient as bitcoin.” On the other side of the debate, […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. Earnings season is coming to a close, with public tech companies wrapping up their Q4 and […]

A proposed witness list filed by Apple for its upcoming trial against game-maker Epic reads like a who’s who of executives from the two companies. The drawn out battle could well prove a watershed moment from mobile app payments. The two sides came to loggerheads when the Fortnite maker was kicked out of the App […]

In an Extra Crunch Live this past week, Cleo Capital founding partner Sarah Kunst broke down what founders can learn from Supreme, a sought-after streetwear brand. She argued that founders, similar to Supreme, should build a brand around themselves that is so well-respected and has clout that whenever they start something new, investors will line […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

Facebook develops a new way to interact with AR, Uber’s facial recognition policy faces scrutiny and SpaceX’s Starship rocket booster hits a major milestone. This is your Daily Crunch for March 19, 2021. The big story: Facebook shows off wrist-based interface This project comes out of Facebook Reality Labs and is supposed to present an […]

This column aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in but not limited to artificial intelligence — and explain why they matter.

Most American retail banks are designed the same way: Customers must pass several desks set aside for loan and mortgage officers before they can talk to a customer representative. I only step inside a bank a few times each year, but even pre-pandemic, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone sitting at one […]

Abodu, one of a slew of startup companies pitching backyard homes and office spaces to Californians in an effort to help address the state’s housing shortage, has instituted a new “Quickship” program that can take an order from contract to construction and installation in about 30 days. Behind the quick turnaround time is a pre-approval […]

Organizations spend ungodly amounts of money — millions of dollars — on business intelligence tools. Yet, adoption rates are still below 30%. Why is this the case? Because BI has failed businesses.

Facebook’s hardware strategy often looks pretty opaque from the outside. The company has done fairly well with Oculus sales amid pandemic demand. Even its Echo Show competitor Portal has seen a bump as people have been forced to socially distance. The company’s smartphone partnership with HTC, meanwhile, fell flat eight or so years back. Earlier […]

The paradox of connected computing is how much information is made available to us in just a few clicks or taps — but also how this ocean of available data can overwhelm and lap over a particular bit of intel the moment we need to lay our fingers back on it. Fire up a web […]

It took Christine Tao, founder of Sounding Board, just over three years to recognize the value of executive coaching and get her company to a Series A. Here's how she did it.

Superpedestrian, the startup that makes e-scooters equipped with self-diagnostic software, is upgrading its product as it prepares for a major expansion into 10 new cities within the next two weeks. Superpedestrian is considered an up-and-coming player in the micromobility world because of how it handles safety issues. The company has developed AI — which is […]

Just as countless aspects of corporate life have been reshaped over the course of the last year, boards of directors are undergoing significant and lasting transformation.

Instagram and WhatsApp experienced an apparent outage on Friday. It began around 1:40 p.m. ET and lasted for more than half an hour. WhatsApp was unable to connect to the server, and messages were not being delivered. It’s not clear if the issue also affected Facebook Messenger, which last year rolled out new functionality to […]