Crunch Hype

Mass transportation is a critical part of how metropolitan areas keep moving, and today a startup that has built an AI-based platform to help mass transportation work more efficiently is announcing a huge round of funding to grow its business and tackle a new set of opportunities and challenges in the modern city. Optibus — […]

Many things have accelerated in the world of fintech over the past year, not the least of which is the trend of digital banks aimed at specific communities in the U.S. In the past few months alone, a number of neobanks targeting the Black and Latinx communities have emerged. Most recently, we covered the $5 […]

Growth for Facebook is coming from the developing world, and so the social network today made another key move to cater better to consumers in those countries. After nearly three years in the planning, Facebook is taking the plunge today and officially launching Instagram Lite, a less data- and storage-intensive Android-only version of its popular […]

Savannah Fund, a pan-African venture capital firm, today announced a $25 million fund as it looks to back more early-stage startups on the continent. Since launching in 2012, Savannah Fund — led by Mbwana Alliy and Paul Bragiel — has backed more than 30 startups. Some of its well-known investments include South African car subscription […]

Miami-based cybersecurity startup Lumu today announced the closing of its $7.5 million Series A. The round was co-led by SoftBank Group Corp.’s SB Opportunity Fund and Panoramic Ventures. Lumu, co-founded and headed by Colombian native Ricardo Villadiego, offers a cloud-based service that helps companies continually scan and react to data compromises in real time. The […]

Aqua Security, a Boston- and Tel Aviv-based security startup that focuses squarely on securing cloud-native services, today announced that it has raised a $135 million Series E funding round at a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by ION Crossover Partners. Existing investors M12 Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Insight Partners, TLV Partners, Greenspring Associates […]

Sources say Web Summit, the giant tech conference company which specialized in very large gatherings in cities like Lisbon, is poised to spin out its Hopin-like proprietary conference software as an independent startup. Although it’s put out a statement today that it will be licensing its software to the United Nations Development Programme, I’ve spoken […]

Remix, the startup that developed mapping software used by cities for transportation planning and street design, was born out of a hackathon during a Code for America fellowship. Nearly seven years later, the San Francisco-based startup is being acquired by Via for $100 million in cash and equity. Remix will become a subsidiary of Via, […]

Meet Fleex, a French startup that was formally named Flexlab. The company wants to make it easier to give some cash to your employees so that they can spend it on a desk, an external monitor, some computer peripherals, a nice chair, etc. Essentially, Fleex wants to make it easier to turn remote work into […]

Apple is beginning to assemble the iPhone 12 in India as it ramps up its production capacity in the world’s second largest smartphone market. Foxconn, a contract manufacturing partner of Apple, is assembling the iPhone 12 model — though currently no other iPhone 12 model — Pro and Pro Max, and Mini — in the […]

The team behind Songclip thinks that social media could use more music. Yes, music is a big part of the experience on a handful of apps like TikTok and Triller, but Songclip co-founder and COO John vanSuchtelen told me, “That is not the end of how music is going to be a feature, that is […]

Zego, the insurtech that got its start by offering flexible motorbike insurance for gig economy workers but has since expanded with a range of tech-enabled commercial motor insurance products, has raised $150 million. Leading the London-based company’s C round — giving it a $1.1 billion valuation and a unicorn status — is DST Global. Other […]

Spain’s Jobandtalent, a digital temp staffing agency startup which operates a dual-sided platform that matches temps with employers needing casual labor in sectors like ecommerce, warehousing, logistics and manufacturing, has grabbed €100 million (~$120M) in Series D funding from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2. Previous investors include Atomico, Seek, DN Capital, InfraVia, Quadrille, Kibo and FJ […]

Beyond Meat shares soared today on the heels of an announcement that Walmart is beefing up its relationship with the purveyor of meatless protein patties, sausages, and balls. 900 stores will now be stocking Beyond Meat’s hot Italian sausages and its party packs of beefless burgers — those grilling delectations for the omnivores, vegetarians and […]

Dropbox acquires a secure document-sharing startup, Sonos announces a new speaker and Google makes hotel listings free. This is your Daily Crunch for March 9, 2021. The big story: Dropbox acquires DocSend for $165M Dropbox already acquired electronic signature company HelloSign in 2019. By acquiring DocSend — which allows customers to share and track documents […]

Trufan, a startup selling tools helping marketers analyze their social followings and collect audience data, announced today that it has raised a $2.3 million seed round. Despite raising a relatively small amount of funding ($4.1 million total), Trufan has already made two notable acquisitions. First, it acquired the SocialRank product and business in 2019, allowing […]

The best CEOs are globally ambitious, and they know that unlocking Europe’s growth potential remains a critical step on the road to IPO.

Passion Capital, one of the UK’s first early-stage VCs, is to crowd-fund the final stage of its latest £45 million fund ($62.5m), Passion Capital Fund III. TechCrunch understands this is the first time retail investors have been invited to become LPs in a VC fund, at least in Europe. Passion says it will use the […]

The proliferation of fintech services across Africa remains in full swing as investors remain bullish about the opportunities that abound in the sector. Today we behold another unicorn: African payments company Flutterwave announced that it has closed $170 million, valuing the company over $1 billion. New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital and US […]

Along with a more spacious cockpit, more storage and some upgraded cupholders, Audi has packed in some serious new tech into its upcoming all-electric Q4 e-tron compact crossover, including an augmented reality head-up display (HUD) that’s reactive enough to accurately stick to a driver’s real environment. Audi revealed Tuesday the interior of the Q4 e-tron, […]

MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency that has received technical guidance from Moxie Marlinspike, the creator of private messaging app Signal, has raised $11.35 million in fresh venture funding across two rounds from Future Ventures and General Catalyst. The round, shared with us by a source familiar with the company, seems to suggest the cryptocurrency is one step […]

The $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund has a new chief executive and it’s Andrew Steer, the former head of the World Resources Institute — an organization that Bezos described as “working to alleviate poverty while protecting the natural world.” As the head of the fund, Steer will be responsible for spending that money down by […]

Recognizing the issue is the first step to solving any problem. The increase in awareness and action is sure to bring forth important development that makes the future brighter for women entrepreneurs everywhere.

Mercado Libre, one of the largest e-commerce and financial services company from Latin America by market cap, has selected the startup and Y Combinator alumni Pachama as its strategic partner in developing projects to restore ecosystems in Latin America. The selection of Pachama is part of a program initiated by Mercado Libre, Latin America’s answer […]

Introduced in late-2019, the Move was a very Sonos approach to the Bluetooth speaker. It was an attempt to bring the company’s long-standing premium approach to a more portable form factor. Accordingly, the press photos feature a lot of shots of the product on porches and around pools. Today’s arrival of the Roam, however, takes […]

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will be providing NASA with a valuable scientific tool ahead of the U.S. space agency’s goal of returning to the Moon: The ability to run experiments in simulated lunar gravity much closer to home, in suborbital space. NASA revealed that Blue Origin will be modifying its reusable New Shepard sub-orbital launch […]

The creator of the Nyan Cat, Chris Torres, has organized an informal collection of meme originators – the creators or original popularizers of meme images — into a two-week-long auction of their works. Under the hashtag #memeconomy the creators of memes like Bad Luck Brian, Coughing Cat, Kitty Cat Dance, Scumbag Steve, Twerky Pepe and […]

What OpenAI — and crucially, the beta testers with access to GPT-3 and other models — are able to accomplish continues to surprise and in many cases, unexpectedly delight us.

This morning Techstars Music is announcing 11 new companies that have joined its ranks, along with a partnership with Atlanta media company/record label Quality Control. While it’s easy to mentally bunch everything Techstars does together under the singular “Techstars” name, it’s actually made up of 40+ interconnected accelerator programs each with its own focus and […]

Epic Games is quickly becoming a more dominant force in gaming infrastructure M&A after a string of recent purchases made to bulk up their Unreal Engine developer suite. Today, the company announced that they’ve brought on the team from photogrammetry studio Capturing Reality to help the company improve how it handles 3D scans of environments […]

Meet Detail, a new startup working on an app for iOS and macOS so that you can turn your iPhone into a software-optimized camera for live video. The startup wants to make it easy to use the phone that you have in your pocket with the livestreaming platform that you already use, such as Zoom, […]

Capsule‘s plan to launch a super simple decentralized social media platform which is safe from censorship by Big Tech has advanced another stage: The nascent startup has closed a seed round of funding ($1.5M) led by Beacon Fund, a dedicated crypto fund by Polychain Capital — which is itself focused on startups building on Dfinity’s […]

In December, Walmart partnered with TikTok on the first pilot test of a new livestreamed shopping experience in the U.S. on the video platform. That test seemingly performed well, as today Walmart announced it will return to TikTok to host another livestream shopping event, the “Spring Shop-Along: Beauty Edition,” which will feature TikTok creators and […]

Carbon Engineering is moving ahead with its carbon removal service business, allowing customers to buy the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using its direct air capture technology. The launch of the service, and the announcement that Shopify will be the company’s first customer, comes as the company’s most direct competitor, Climeworks, made moves […]

The world of cybersecurity has seen a huge proliferation of new technology and services over the years. But with the primary focus being on solutions for larger enterprises, it leaves a big gap in the market for small and medium businesses, not least because they are increasingly finding themselves to also be a focus of […]

SoFi, more formally known as Social Finance, announced today that it has agreed to acquire Golden Pacific Bancorp (GPB) for about $22.3 million. The dollar amount is not staggering. What is more notable about the acquisition is that it’s giving SoFi a quick route to getting a national bank charter. SoFi, a digital personal finance […]

Many companies have turned to self-serve sales, which may encourage people to try freemium or open source versions of a product. Some percentage of these users may turn into paying customers, and in the best case will act as leaders to bring a product into their organization. Calixa, an early stage startup believes that this […]

Building a strong board for your startup is key. It’s important to have folks on your board who have both the founder’s and the company’s best interests in mind, and are able to help the company navigate the many stages of a startup’s lifecycle. At TechCrunch’s Early Stage event on April 1 – 2, Generation […]

Buckle up, startup and tech fans. Save the date and get ready to rub virtual elbows with mobility’s best and brightest minds — the movers, shakers and policy makers that are shaping the future of transportation. TC Sessions: Mobility returns for its third year on June 9, 2021. Can you say mobility three-peat? Yes, you […]

A security vulnerability in a popular iPhone call recording app exposed thousands of users’ recorded conversations. The flaw was discovered by Anand Prakash, a security researcher and founder of PingSafe AI, who found that the aptly named Call Recorder app allowed anyone to access the call recordings from other users — by knowing their phone […]

The investment firm Flagship Pioneering has incubated a lot of life sciences companies since it was founded in 2000. In fact, while a general partner with Flagship Pioneering over the last 15 years, David Berry has started more than 30 companies, five of which trade publicly right now: Seres Therapeutics, Sensen Bio, Evelo Biosciences, T2 […]

Apple is facing another privacy complaint in Europe: A startup lobby group, France Digitale, has asked the country’s data protection watchdog to investigate alleged breaches of EU rules. The complaint, reported earlier by Politico, follows two similar complaints lodged in Germany and Spain by EU privacy campaign group noyb last year. All these complaints are […]

Most companies claim they want a diverse staff but at the same time, complain they don’t know how to go about recruiting more diverse candidates. Enter SeekOut — a startup that is out to give companies no excuses with its AI-powered platform. A group of former Microsoft executives and engineers — Anoop Gupta, Aravind Bala, […]

Daily, the makers of a developer platform for real-time audio and video, has been booming in recent months — in part, due to the pandemic’s impact on remote work, virtual events, telehealth and more. Over the past year, Daily saw around a 20x increase in the number of paying customers and a 30x increase in […]

While Global-e is not a U.S.-based company, its recent growth underscores that the e-commerce boom we've seen domestically is hardly unique.

At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice, we examined the importance of ensuring products are designed to be accessible from the beginning. And how building the expertise of disabled technologists and advocates and into the DNA of your company from the start is vital not only to produce better products but also in the pursuit of a functioning […]

Toxic culture, deadly conspiracies and organized hate have exploded online in recent years. At TechCrunch Sessions: Justice we talked about how much responsibility social networks have in the rise of these phenomena and how to build healthy online communities that make society better, not worse with Color of Change’s Rashad Robinson, Accountable Tech’s Jesse Lehrich and […]

Last year, Google made a significant change to its Google Shopping destination by making it free for e-commerce retailers to sell on Google, when before the Shopping tab had been dominated by paid product listings. It also made it free for partners to participate in Google Flights. Today, the company announced it’s now doing the […]

Wrapbook, a startup that simplifies the payroll process for TV, film and commercial productions, has raised $27 million in Series A funding from noteworthy names from both the tech and entertainment worlds. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Equal Ventures and Uncork Capital, as well as from WndrCo (the investment and […]

Pegasus Tech Ventures, a firm that helps corporations launch startup investment funds, announced a new partnership with Japanet today. Japanet, one of Japan’s largest television shopping companies, and Pegasus have established a $50 million venture fund to invest in startups from around the world, including for a major new development in Nagasaki. Japanet is looking […]