Crunch Hype

Twitter announced today it’s opening up its live audio chat rooms, known as Twitter Spaces, to users on Android. Previously, the experience was only open to select users on iOS following the product’s private beta launch in late December 2020. The company says that Android users will only be able to join and talk in […]

SpineZone is a startup that creates personalized exercise programs and treatment for neck and back pain. The company uses an online platform and in-person clinics to deliver a curriculum that, ideally, helps patients avoid the need for prescription drugs, injections and surgeries, and providers then avoid the cost of all of the above. Co-founded by […]

Microsoft is warning customers that a new China state-sponsored threat actor is exploiting four previously undisclosed security flaws in Exchange Server, an enterprise email product built by the software giant. The technology company said Tuesday that it believes the hacking group, which it calls Hafnium, tries to steal information from a broad range of U.S.-based […]

Bootstrapping a SaaS company is not only possible – I believe it’s a saner, more sustainable way to build and scale a business.

When I first wrote about Retail Zipline in 2019, the startup was focused on building a communication platform that would help corporate decision-makers in retail communicate with individual stores. As you’d probably guess, the startup saw some changes in 2020. “When COVID first hit, you might think a company that’s primarily focused on retail would […]

Mobile gaming hasn’t seen the same demand for streaming content in the past as desktop has, but Amazon sees a market there to extend Twitch’s dominance. After launching on Android back in November, the company’s mobile streaming centric app has just launched on Apple’s App Store. The app lets users record short clips (anywhere from […]

A new digital marketplace called West Tenth, now backed by $1.5 million in seed funding, wants to give women a platform to start and grow their home-based businesses. Through its mobile app, women can promote their business to others in the local community, then field inquiries and requests through the app’s integrated messaging platform, as […]

Amazon on Tuesday issued a rare apology to users in India for an original political drama series over allegations that a few scenes in the nine-part mini series hurt religious sentiments of some people in the key overseas market. The series, called “Tandav,” has faced criticism from some people in India — including a few […]

Fortnite maker Epic today announced plans to acquire Tonic Games Group, most notably the publisher behind the fellow massive battle royale hit title, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Tonic Games Group is the parent company for the Irregular Corporation, Fortitude Games and Fall Guys developer, Mediatonic. Other titles developed under the umbrella include Murder by Numbers, […]

There are many jobs in the construction industry that fall under the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” category said to be ripe for automation — but only a few can actually be taken on with today’s technology. One such job is the crucial but repetitive task of rebar tying, which a startup called SkyMul is aiming […]

Today, at a special AR/VR focused event held inside its virtual reality community platform Altspace, Microsoft showcased a new product aiming to provide their AR HoloLens platform and VR Windows Mixed Reality platform with a shared platform for meetings. The app is called Microsoft Mesh and it gives users a cross AR/VR meeting space to […]

Airbyte, an open-source data integration platform, today announced that it has raised a $5.2 million seed funding round led by Accel. Other investors include Y Combinator, 8VC, Segment co-founder Calvin French-Owen, former Cloudera GM Charles Zedlewski, LiveRamp and Safegraph CEO Auren Hoffman, Datavant CEO Travis May and Alain Rossmann, the president of Machinify. The company […]

Existential risk has been on many of our minds the past year. Sales of survival goods from food kits to nuclear-proof bunkers are way up, we doomscroll on Twitter all day, and it seems like there isn’t a week that goes by where civilizational collapse isn’t at least a possibility on the agenda. Yet, if […]

Making money on livestreams has never been easier thanks to a suite of tools from the Los Angeles-based startup Maestro, which just nabbed $15 million in financing to grow its business. As video commerce becomes the norm and entertainers, brands, businesses, and franchises of all sizes and stripes look to cut out the middle man, […]

Get ready to engage in essential conversations about some of the most important issues facing the tech industry — diversity, equity, inclusion and labor. TC Sessions: Justice 2021 — a day-long virtual symposium — begins tomorrow, March 3, and we’re here to highlight just a few of the powerful people, presentations and fireside chats you […]

We’ve known for a long time that music streaming royalties are fundamentally broken. As revenue has shifted away from sales of physical music, it’s become increasingly difficult for many independent artists to make a living off recorded music. But all of that has come to a head as the pandemic has stripped live music out […]

Postmates X, the robotics division of the on-demand delivery startup that Uber acquired last year for $2.65 billion, has officially spun out as an independent company called Serve Robotics. TechCrunch reported in January that a deal was being shopped to investors. Serve Robotics, a name taken from the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and […]

This morning Parabol, a startup that provides retrospective meeting software to agile development teams, announced that it has closed an $8 million Series A. Microsoft’s venture capital arm, M12, led the deal. The investment also saw participation from Techstars, CRV, and Haystack. TechCrunch caught up with Parabol CEO Jordan Husney to talk about the round, […]

Was back in 2019, Apple launched Research. The app was the latest effort by a company looking to take a more serious approach to user health, built (naturally) around data collected from the iPhone and Apple Watch. The app debuted with four studies: heart health, women’s health, movement and hearing. Today, the company is issuing […]

Vestiaire Collective announced a new funding round. The company has raised $216 million, or €178 million — it has reached a valuation above $1 billion, making it a unicorn. French fashion and luxury group Kering is leading the round with Tiger Global Management. Kering now owns 5% of Vestiaire Collective. The startup operates an online marketplace […]

Live events in the age of Covid-19 have largely been moved into the virtual world: we buy tickets (or simply click on a link), go to a site or app, and watch the action unfold on a screen. Your seat or mine might be just as good as that of any other audience member, but […]

These companies will soon convert tens of billions of dollars of illiquid private shares into public currency. As such, their offerings may reveal investors' sentiments regarding e-commerce and insurance companies backed by venture capital.

Investors have been waiting for Spotify’s multimillion-dollar bet on podcasting to pay off, in terms of increased paid subscriptions or improved revenues. But before that can occur, Spotify has to get more people listening to podcasts through its app. On that front, the streaming service has momentum. According to a new market forecast, Spotify’s U.S. […]

Semih Korkmaz and Hantz Févry launched Stoovo in 2019 as a way to help gig workers make the best use of their time. Févry, who immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti, knew first hand the struggles that come with part time work from his days as a student at Stonybrook University. While there bouncing from […]

On-demand grocery delivery platform Instacart has raises a $265 million funding ground from existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, D1 Capital Partners and others. The new funding, which, like its past few rounds, isn’t assigned a Series alphabetical designation, pushes the company’s valuation to $39 billion – more than double its $17.7 billion valuation […]

When a hacker broke into the computer systems of the Oldsmar Florida water supply last month, it sent up red flags across the operational tech world, whether that’s utilities or oil and gas pipelines. Xage, a security startup that has been building a solution to help protect these hard-to-secure operations, announced a Zero Trust remote […]

Insects are a lot of things – but fragile they’re not. Sure, most can’t withstand the full force of a human foot, but for their size, they’re evolve to be extremely rugged and resilient. Insect-sized technology, on the other hand, is general another story. That’s certainly been the historic case with scaled-down drones. The components, […]

Volvo Cars said it will only make and sell all-electric vehicles by 2030, as part of a broader transformation of the automaker that will include shifting sales online. “The key to sustainability is electrification, said Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson during a presentation Tuesday. “Together with investments in charging infrastructure that is the right way […]

News aggregator Flipboard‘s local coverage is making what product lead Brian Gottesman described as a “quantum leap,” expanding from 60 topics (a.k.a. cities, towns and communities that you can follow) to more than 1,000. While Flipboard has allowed users to follow stories focused on major cities like New York for years, it launched a broader […]

Silicon Valley is novel, but not unique. Throughout the United States and abroad, there are communities of technology entrepreneurs leveraging local assets to build great companies. TechCrunch has long told these stories, and throughout the first half of 2021, our editorial staff is dedicated to shining a spotlight on exciting startups and notable investors in […]

After inking a $9.2 billion deal to merge their classifieds businesses last year, eBay and Norway’s Adevinta have announced a deal to sell off three popular web properties in the UK to get the deal cleared by local regulators, the Competition Markets Authority. The companies plan to sell off Adevina-owned Shpock, and eBay-owned Gumtree and […]

Microsoft today announced that it is making Power Automate Desktop, its enterprise-level tool for creating automated desktop-centric workflows, available to all Windows 10 users for free. Power Automate Desktop is what Microsoft calls its “attended Robotic Process Automation” solution, but you can think of it as a macro recorder on steroids. It comes with 370 […]

As the pandemic drags on and we learn about the requirements of working from home with distributed teams, users could be craving more integration across their tools to help reduce the clicks required to complete a set of tasks. Today at the Ignite Conference, Microsoft announced tighter integration between its business suite Dynamics 365 and […]

Piano is expanding its platform for digital publishers with the acquisition of AT Internet, a 25-year-old analytics company based in France. Even if you don’t recognize Piano as a company, TechCrunch readers will probably be familiar with the product, since we use it to manage the reader experience of our Extra Crunch membership program. Other […]

DJI has flirted with FPV goggles before, of course. The company got on the burgeoning FPV movement with the launch of its DJI Goggles back in 2016. It was a logical extension for the company that controls around 70% of the drone market, at last count, and a push toward a more mainstream experience for […]

Last week the mobile charging battery company SparkCharge announced a partnership agreement with AllState that expands the company’s reach into vehicle services, driving the company further down the road toward its goal of making electric vehicle charging the next gig economy job. The company, which has developed, designed and is commercializing a mobile vehicle charger […]

The on-demand grocery delivery industry in Europe (and beyond) continues to heat up amidst the pandemic, including a plethora of startups taking a vertical approach by operating their own delivery only — or “dark” — stores. The latest to show its hand is Berlin-based Flink, which today is announcing that it has raised a hefty […]

The Future Africa Fund kicked off in 2015 when Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Nadayar Enegesi, co-founders of US-based and African-focused talent company Andela, wrote checks to African startups as angel investors. This continued even as Aboyeji joined and left Flutterwave, the fintech company he co-founded. In January 2020, the pair made the fund official, with Aboyeji […]

TikTok is bringing in external experts in Europe in fields such as child safety, young people’s mental health and extremism to form a Safety Advisory Council to help it with content moderation in the region. The move, announced today, follows an emergency intervention by Italy’s data protection authority in January — which ordered TikTok to […]

Humaans, a London-based HR startup, has raised $5 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its employee on-boarding and management platform. Backing the round is Y Combinator, Mattias Ljungman’s Moonfire, Frontline Ventures and former head of Stripe Issuing, Lachy Groom. A number of other investors, made up of seasoned entrepreneurs and startup operators, […]

Crisp, an Amsterdam-based, online-only supermarket focused on fresh produce, has raised €30 million in a Series B financing led by leading Target Global and joined by Keen Venture Partners and the co-founders of Adyen and Takeaway.com. Crisp has now raised a total of €42.5 million to date. It plans to use the money to expand […]

Food delivery — whether it’s ready-made orders from restaurants, meal kits or groceries — has been one of the most-used services in this last year of living under the cloud of a global health pandemic, and today one of the companies with ambitions to build a pan-European empire in the third of these categories is […]

According to an amended S-1 filing, South Korean e-commerce leader Coupang expects to price its initial public offering between $27 to $30 per share, potentially raising up to $3.6 billion. After the IPO, Coupang will have a total of 1.7 billion shares outstanding, including Class A and Class B. This means the means the pricing […]

Compass, the real-estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6 billion in venture funding, filed its S-1 Monday. The move comes just under one year after the New York-based company laid off 15% of its staff as a result of the shifting economic fortunes created by the global response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Prior to […]

What if we no longer needed cameras to make videos and can instead generate them through a few lines of coding? Advances in machine learning are turning the idea into a reality. We’ve seen how deepfakes swap faces in family photos and turn one’s selfies into famous video clips. Now entrepreneurs with AI research background […]

Hyzon Motors plans to produce fuel cells, including a critical component required to power hydrogen vehicles, at two U.S. factories in a move aimed at kickstarting domestic production at a commercial scale. The hydrogen-powered truck and bus manufacturer has already leased a 28,000-square-foot facility in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook and plans to expand it […]

Known for its innovations in the payments sector, Square is now officially a bank. Nearly one year after receiving conditional approval, Square said Monday afternoon that its industrial bank, Square Financial Services, has begun operations. Square Financial Services completed the charter approval process with the FDIC and Utah Department of Financial Institutions, meaning it’s ready for […]

It's unicorn melting season, with gobs of investors hoping for liquidity while public markets are hot. Expect more Kalturas.

A startup by an Apple alum that has become home to millions of low-skilled workers in India said on Tuesday it has raised an additional $12.5 million, just five months after securing $8 million from high-profile investors. One-year-old Apna said Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital led the $12.5 million investment in the startup. Existing […]

A challenger bank raises funding at a massive valuation, Instagram adds Live Rooms and Google updates Workspace. This is your Daily Crunch for March 1, 2021. The big story: Klarna valued at $31B The Swedish challenger bank and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service has raised $1 billion at a post-money valuation of $31 billion. Klarna says it […]