Crunch Hype

An increasing number of higher education institutions are investing in entrepreneurial pipelines that help students launch startups after graduation.

Trafi, the Lithuanian startup that created a platform that lets users plan, book and pay for various modes of transportation within a city, is expanding beyond the European market where it got its start to tackle one of the most congested urban areas in the world. The company said it has reached an agreement to […]

Chalk one up for Jigsaw, an “anti-superficial” dating app that has scored £2.7 million ($3.7 million) in seed funding to put toward U.S. expansion. The round is led by a lead generation company for online dating companies, called The Relationship Corp., with backing from angel investors in the U.S. and U.K. “primarily” in the tech […]

Parler, a social network adopted by the far right and recently kicked off AWS for its userbase’s habit of advocating violence, is back online. The restoration questions the notion that “big tech” can take and keep an unwanted presence offline, but Parler’s return is not quite a triumph, and its new CEO doesn’t suggest much […]

GoPuff, the U.S.-based startup that operates its own “microfulfillment” network and promises to deliver items such as over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol in 30 minutes or less, is in talks to acquire the U.K.’s Fancy Delivery, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, terms of the acquisition are still being fleshed out, and the deal […]

It’s becoming harder for the U.S. to ignore the very real effects of global climate change — and despite the efforts of naysayers, it’s not a push to renewables that’s to blame for the outages sweeping the nation. It’s the country’s energy infrastructure. Severe weather conditions caused by global warming have now caused massive blackouts […]

French startup Lengow has a new landlord as Marlin Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. Lengow operates a software-as-a-service platform to optimize e-commerce listings. Terms of the deal are undisclosed. In particular, many sellers now list their items on multiple e-commerce websites at once. For instance, a company could have its […]

Google has agreed to pay a €1.1 million fine over misleading star ratings for hotels in France. The tech giant had been applying its own (algorithmic) system of ratings for hotels applied via its search engine and on Google Maps. But back in 2019, following a number of complaints by hoteliers, the French national competition […]

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

On March 3, we’re hosting TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a day-long virtual conference dedicated to examining diversity and inclusion in tech. Tune in to presentations, panel discussions, breakout sessions and interactive Q&As with key tech leaders. Topics range from accessible product design and fighting algorithmic bias to the justice system, workplace organizing and support for […]

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Copenhagen and Denmark will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Denmark’s startup scene is evolving, […]

A new era of venture, or just another temporary weirdness caused by zero-cost money and an overabundance of bored cash?

Last week’s hours-long outage at online workspace startup Notion was caused by phishing complaints, according to the startup’s domain registrar. Notion was offline for most of the morning on Friday, plunging its more than four million users into organization darkness because of what the company called a “very unusual DNS issue that occurred at the […]

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 […]

Uber is shooting its shot at EU lawmakers as they dial up scrutiny of working conditions on gig platforms to decide whether new rules are needed to improve the lot of gig workers. The ride-hailing and on-demand food delivery giant has published a white paper today in which it lobbies European policymakers for what it […]

India said on Monday local firms will no longer need a license or other permission to collect, generate, store and share geospatial data of the country, bringing sweeping changes to its earlier stance that it admitted hindered innovation. Until now, New Delhi required Indian firms to seek licenses and additional approvals to create and publish […]

GM revealed Sunday a refreshed Chevrolet Bolt EV and a new, bigger — yet still compact — crossover called the Chevrolet Bolt EUV as part of the automaker’s goal to introduce 30 electric vehicles in the next four years. The vehicles, which are expected to go on sale this summer, are like siblings: the pair […]

The tech industry has long grappled with an overwhelming lack of diversity among employees, executives, venture-backed founders, venture capital firms and board members. And despite recent efforts to increase diversity throughout the industry, tech still remains predominantly white and male. Over the years, many have argued that the lack of diversity in tech is caused […]

The new Netflix series “Lupin” is a loose adaptation of the Arséne Lupin stories by Maurice Leblanc, but it’s set in the present day, with a hero who’s inspired by the exploits of Leblanc’s fictional “gentleman thief.” Through flashbacks, we meet Assane Diop (played by Omar Sy) as a young Senegalese immigrant who has recently […]

You’ve landed on Human Capital, a weekly newsletter detailing the latest in diversity, equity, inclusion and labor. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Friday at 1 p.m. PT. There’s some new legislation that hopes to prevent the use of non-disclosure agreements in workplace situations involving all forms of discrimination and harassment. That would […]

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. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Earlier this week TechCrunch broke […]

There’s always a fintech angle, even on Valentine’s Day. This week, I covered Zeta, a new startup working on joint finances for modern couples. It aims to take away the money chores of a relationship, from splitting the bill at dinner to requesting rent through a payment app every month. Aditi Shekar, the co-founder, gave […]

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 […]

About a decade ago, I remember having a conversation with a friend about big data. At the time, we both agreed that it was the purview of large companies like Facebook, Yahoo and Google, and not something most companies would have to worry about. As it turned out, we were both wrong. Within a short […]

However, finding funding for startups is still a “difficult task today” said one, as the ecosystem suffers from a lack of "scale capital" for later rounds.

I'm very proud of the work we're doing here at Extra Crunch, so it gives me great pleasure to announce that today is our second anniversary.

Tony Florence isn’t as well known to the public as other top investors like Bill Gurley or Marc Andreessen, but he’s someone who founders with SaaS and especially marketplace e-commerce companies know — or should. He’s responsible for the global tech investing activities for NEA, one of the world’s biggest venture firms in terms of […]

Jack Dorsey and Jay Z create a bitcoin endowment, Datadog acquires a Startup Battlefield company and BuzzFeed experiments with AI-generated quizzes. This is your Daily Crunch for February 12, 2021. Oh, and before we get started: Consider applying to the Early Stage pitch off and submitting a pitch deck for feedback on Extra Crunch Live! […]

Chronic allergy sufferers know well the daily discomfort of seasonal allergies and environmental allergies. They also likely know about allergy shots — the treatment that requires you to go into an office to get shots on a weekly or monthly basis. But there is a lesser-known treatment, allergy drops, that requires a bit less effort. […]

This week on Extra Crunch Live, Busque and Senkut discussed Guideline's Series B pitch deck — which Senkut described as a "role model" — and how they built trust over time.

Now, as the world glimpses a brighter, post-pandemic future, we are doubling down on the news and analysis that’s helped many early-stage companies make better decisions.

A new BuzzFeed quiz is the first in what Director of Product for Quizzes Chris Johanesen said he’s hoping will be a series of “stunt-y experiments” that the publisher launches this year. The quiz, timed for Valentine’s Day weekend, promises to “create your perfect boyfriend (or girlfriend) using AI technology.” Johanesen said it’s designed to […]

Coupang's offering, coming amidst the public debut of a number of well-known technology brands, will be a massive affair.

Minneapolis voted Friday to ban the use of facial recognition software for its police department, growing the list of major cities that have implemented local restrictions on the controversial technology. After an ordinance on the ban was approved earlier this week, 13 members of the city council voted in favor of the ban, with no […]

The All-22 tape is perhaps one of the most valued tools for professional football coaches because it allows the viewer to see all 22 players on the field at the same time. It improves a coach’s line of sight and, most importantly, helps avoid missing a critical motion or player. The upshot: It removes the […]

Here are just four innovations from our solar-powered plane that the market can start using now before it’s too late.

Let's unpack their latest numbers to see if what these companies are dangling in front of investors is worth desiring.

Cloud monitoring platform Datadog has announced that it plans to acquire Sqreen, a software-as-a-service security platform. Originally founded in France, Sqreen participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in 2016. Sqreen is a cloud-based security product to protect your application directly. Once you install the sandboxed Sqreen agent, it analyzes your application in real time to find […]

Notion, the online workspace startup that was last year valued at over $2 billion, was knocked offline after a DNS outage. The collaborative online office and document service was not loading as of around 9 a.m. ET on Friday, preventing anyone who relies on the service from accessing their cloud-stored data. In a since-deleted tweet, […]

Ember today announced that founder Clay Alexander will transition to Group CEO effective February 16. In his place, the Los Angeles-based smart mug company is bringing on Jim Rowan as Consumer CEO. The executive served as CEO of Dyson from 2017 to 2020, after five years as COO. It’s a big get for a relatively […]

One year after nabbing $590 million from investors led by Toyota, and a few months after picking up Uber’s flying taxi business, Joby Aviation is reportedly in talks to go public in a SPAC deal that would value the electric plane manufacturer at nearly $5.7 billion. News of a potential deal comes on the heels of another big SPAC transaction […]

Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay Z have created an endowment to fund bitcoin development initially in Africa and India, Dorsey said on Friday. The duo is putting 500 bitcoin, which is currently worth $23.6 million, in the endowment called ₿trust. The fund will be set up as a blind irrevocable trust, […]

Sweden’s data protection authority, the IMY, has fined the local police authority €250,000 ($300k+) for unlawful use of the controversial facial recognition software, Clearview AI, in breach of the country’s Criminal Data Act. As part of the enforcement the police must conduct further training and education of staff in order to avoid any future processing […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This week felt oddly comforting from a tech news perspective: Facebook is copying something, early-stage startup data is flawed enough to talk about and sweet DoorDash […]

While we might look like the Brady Bunch while sharing a Zoom window, are you actually communicating more like the family from "Succession?"

Building off TechCrunch’s coverage of the recent 500 Startups demo day, we’re back today to talk about some favorites from three more accelerator classes. This time we’re digging into Techstars’ latest three accelerator classes. What follows are four favorites from the Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and “workforce development” programs. As a team we tuned into the accelerator […]

We take an in-depth look at TikTok usage in Russia, Facebook’s Oversight Board looks beyond Facebook and Sesame Workshop backs an edtech fund. This is your Daily Crunch for February 11, 2021. The big story: TikTok becomes a political battleground in Russia Russia has a small but fast-growing and vocal group of TikTok users. And […]

TikTok is expanding its integrations with third-party services, with the launch of a test that allows creators in the food space to link directly to recipes found on the Whisk app. This is being made possible by way of a new “recipe” button overlaid on related TikTok food videos. The feature makes a TikTok cooking […]

The Facebook Oversight Board has only been operational for a short time, but the nascent project is already looking ahead. In a conversation hosted by the Carnegie Endowment Thursday, Oversight Board co-chair and former Prime Minister of Denmark Helle Thorning-Schmidt painted a more expansive vision for the group that could go beyond making policy decisions […]

Knife Capital, a South African venture capital firm, is raising a $50 million fund for startups looking to raise Series B financing. With Knife Fund III called the African Series B Expansion Fund, the firm seeks to directly invest in the aggressive expansion of South African breakout companies. It also plans to co-invest in companies […]