Crunch Hype

While much of what made 2020 such an absolute nightmare will still be with us on January 1 (sorry!), we will really, truly be leaving Adobe Flash and FarmVille behind as we enter the new year. The end of Flash has been a long time coming. The plugin, which was first released in 1996 and […]

On the last day of 2020, New York City’s Metro Transit Authority announced that it has finished its roll out of contactless payment systems. With the addition of a final stop in Brooklyn, every MTA subway station and bus in the five boroughs now sports the OMNY “Tap and Go” system. We got an early […]

I've tried to gather a sample of stories that taught me something new (which means this top 10 list betrays my ignorance).

SoftBank Group is reportedly investing $200 million to bail out Katerra, a startup that had hoped to remake the construction industry with a vertically integrated approach, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Katerra’s shareholders reportedly approved the new investment on Wednesday, with the new lifeline from SoftBank coming on top of roughly […]

"We're going to start to see a lot of real value and ROI generated by AI across more and more businesses,"

When Salesforce acquired Quip in 2016 for $750 million, it gained CEO and co-founder Bret Taylor as part of the deal. Taylor has since risen quickly through the ranks of the software giant to become president and COO, second in command behind CEO Marc Benioff. Taylor’s experience shows that startup founders can sometimes play a […]

What could go wrong? Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As you can see, this is our yearly predictions episode. Our behind-the-scenes guru Chris Gates joins us on the mic, we take shots at our prior prognostications, and nosh on what we […]

Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee faces a nine-year prison term in the bribery case that contributed to the downfall of former president Park Guen-hye. Prosecutors argued that the length of the sentence is warranted because of Samsung’s power as the largest chaebol, or family-owned conglomerate, in South Korea. “Samsung is a group with […]

Amazon makes a big podcast acquisition, a Chinese robot maker raises $100 million and we review a robotic cat pillow. This is your Daily Crunch for December 30, 2020. The big story: Amazon acquires Wondery Amazon is the latest company to make a big acquisition in the podcast market — it’s buying Wondery, the podcast […]

You don’t need Qoobo in your life. Nobody needs Qoobo, exactly. In fact, first reactions tend to range from befuddlement to bemusement. The robotic cat pillow doesn’t make a ton of sense on the face of it — in part because Qoobo has no face. The handful of times I’ve interacted with the original Qoobo […]

Earlier this month, Hyundai acquired a controlling stake in Boston Dynamics that valued the company at $1.1 billion. What’s most interesting about the news isn’t the acquisition itself (it does, after all, find Boston Dynamics switching hands for the third time in seven years), but rather what the company’s evolution tells us about the state […]

SpaceX will try a significantly different approach to landing its future reusable rocket boosters, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. It will attempt to ‘catch’ the heavy booster, which is currently in development, using the launch tower arm used to stabilize the vehicle during its pre-takeoff preparations. Current Falcon 9 boosters return to Earth […]

The Qatar Investment Authority is investing $125 million into energy storage systems integrator and power management tech developer, Fluence, in a deal that will value the company at over $1 billion. The joint venture between the American independent power producer, AES Corp. and the German industrial conglomerate Siemens, was already worth $900 million prior to […]

How do you make a virtual event accessible for people who are blind or visually impaired? When I started work on Sight Tech Global back in June this year, I was confident that we would find the answer to that question pretty quickly. With so many virtual event platforms and online ticketing options available to […]

Amazon just announced that it’s acquiring Wondery, the network behind podcasts including “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death.” Wondery will become part of Amazon Music, which added support for podcasts (including its own original shows) in September. At the same time, the announcement claims that “nothing will change for listeners” and that the network’s podcasts will continue […]

I really want permanent residence, but I never won a Nobel prize; I’m single; and I don’t have a million dollars yet. However, I think I might qualify for an EB-2 NIW green card.

This has been the year of the social organization. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world and the United States, governments and a patchwork of nonprofits and volunteer organizations sprang into action, offering everything from food and medical supplies to children’s books and clothing to individuals and families struggling in the virus’s wake. Perhaps […]

Tech got dragged into yet another irrelevant Congressional scuffle this week after President Trump agreed to sign a bipartisan pandemic relief package but continued to press for additional $2,000 checks that his party opposed during negotiations. In tweets and other comments, Trump tied a push for the boosted relief payments to his entirely unrelated demand […]

Without active involvement from business unit leaders across the company in marketing, human resources, sales and more, a company can never have a healthy risk-aware culture.

Spyware maker NSO Group used real phone location data on thousands of unsuspecting people when it demonstrated its new COVID-19 contact-tracing system to governments and journalists, researchers have concluded. NSO, a private intelligence company best known for developing and selling governments access to its Pegasus spyware, went on the charm offensive earlier this year to […]

Third Point, the activist hedge fund run by Daniel Loeb, is busy in the waning days of 2020. It’s had great returns despite huge turbulence early in the pandemic — Reuters says that it is up 12.3% for the year as of earlier this month — and the firm clearly sees more and more potential […]

As businesses around the world look to automate production lines and supply chains, companies making the robots are attracting great investor interest. The latest to get funded is Flexiv, which closed a Series B round north of $100 million from investors including China’s on-demand services giant Meituan, TechCrunch learned. Other major investors in the strategic […]

Online video platform Biteable, a startup that makes it easier to create polished and professional videos using templates and a library of images and animations, has raised $7 million in Series A funding led by Cloud Apps Capital Partners. The service today competes with products from Vimeo, Canva, Adobe and others, but focuses on creating […]

Tony Fadell can’t stop thinking about what’s next in tech. The man credited with creating the iPod, building the iPhone and founding the smart-home company, Nest, had tried to retire before he started his latest venture, Future Shape, but found that retirement didn’t really take. So the 51-year-old designer, engineer and investor, together with a […]

European Union lawmakers have set out the biggest update of digital regulations for around two decades — likening it to the introduction of traffic lights to highways to bring order to the chaos wrought by increased mobility. Just switch cars for packets of data. The proposals for a Digital Services Act (DSA) to standardize safety rules […]

While it remains an ongoing challenge to get these numbers in sync with other industries, there were two developments specifically in 2020 that may beget more action in 2021.

A new fintech startup called EarlyBird wants to help families invest in their children’s financial futures. Through the EarlyBird mobile app, parents in just a few minutes can create a custodial account, also known as a UGMA (Uniform Gifts to Minors Act) account. These accounts typically allow a parent, aka the “custodian,” to invest in […]

Amazon is planning to extend its computer science program Future Engineer to India, demonstrating its growing interest in the education space in the world’s second largest internet market. In a job recruitment post, the company said that initial research for Amazon Future Engineer, through which it aims to bring computer science education to underserved and […]

RentPath, owner of property listing sites including Rent.com and Apartment Guide, said today it has cancelled its agreement to be acquired by CoStar Group after the Federal Trade Commission sued to block the sale. CoStar, a commercial real estate data and analytics provider that also operates listing sites like Apartments.com and ApartmentFinder.com, agreed in February […]

The New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) has approved Tokyo-based GMO Internet to launch GYEN, the first stablecoin pegged to the Japanese yen. GMO Internet, an internet conglomerate that offers a large array of services, including domain hosting, online advertising and what it claims is the world’s largest foreign exchange trading platform, will set […]

Apple faces a major setback in one of its legal fights, VMware sues a former executive and Google tests a new short-form video feature. This is your Daily Crunch for December 29, 2020. The big story: Judge dismisses Apple copyright claims against Corellium Apple filed a lawsuit last year against Corellium, a company that allows […]

Podcast homepages weren’t something I gave any thought to until I launched my own standalone show. And honestly, even then I probably didn’t give enough thought to the subject. For that reason, many or most of my shows have Tumblr pages — which is, at best, a bit of a mixed blessing in 2020. The […]

Google is testing a new feature that will surface Instagram and TikTok videos in their own dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices — a move that could help the company retain users in search of social video entertainment from fully leaving Google’s platform. The feature itself expands on a test launched earlier […]

Back in August of last year Apple filed a lawsuit against the virtualization software company Corellium, arguing that the product infringed its copyright and later adding claims that Corellium’s product violates the DMCA. While the DMCA claims will still need to be settled in court, a judge in Florida has tossed out Apple’s copyright claims. […]

There’s no denying that 2020 has been the year of the special purpose acquisition company. Since the beginning of the year, 219 SPACs have raised $73 billion, according to widely reported market research from Goldman Sachs. That’s a 462% jump from 2019 and more than traditional public offerings raised by about $6 billion. By some […]

It’s that time of year again. Of course, this year is going to be different (to be honest, even looking at that lead image makes me uneasy). For the first time ever, CES is going all-virtual – but as usual, TechCrunch will be around to (virtually) cover it. The new format offers some unique challenges […]

After decades of global expansion and consolidation in the tech sector, antitrust is now a headline issue for the industry across the world. What has been a slow and sputtering series of disparate actions over the past decade has coalesced in just the past few weeks into a rapid and comprehensive series of actions against […]

DNA testing technology company 23andMe has raised just shy of $82.5 million in new funding, from an offering of $85 million in total equity shares, according to a new SEC filing. The funding, confirmed by the Wall Street Journal, comes from investors including Sequoia Capital and NewView Capital. It brings the total raised by 23andMe […]

CommonGround, a startup developing technology for what its founders describe as “4D collaboration,” is announcing that it has raised $19 million in funding. This isn’t the first time Amir Bassan-Eskenazi and Ran Oz have launched a startup together — they also founded video networking company BigBand Networks, which won two technology-related Emmy Awards, went public […]

The space economy in the last few years has been in large part driven by the increasing cadence and reliability of launch services, and while that market will continue to grow, the new economy enabled by those launches is only just beginning to take off. If you thought the launch boom was big, just wait […]

Madrona Venture Group has been a mainstay of the Seattle and northwest United States startup ecosystem for years now, and it looks like it is going to continue that legacy going forward. In a filing with the SEC, the firm announced its eighth venture capital fund, raising $320 million. That’s up slightly from the firm’s […]

There is massive VC overcapitalization for Series A and later companies, and probably for seed as well. But there is a massive gap in the market to financially underwrite promising founders and guide them out of their current employers or schools. Cory Levy, who has been a long-time angel investor and startup tinkerer, launched First […]

If you build it, they will come, but they sure as hell are going to complain about everything until they do. There were millions of bets made in the tech industry last year. Some of those bets involved actual venture capital dollars. Others involved individual decisions on where to live: do you bet on the […]

“Next year, all of those services are leveling up to a different world, where people are going to need to start paying for it."

Earlier this month, when Nutanix announced it was hiring former VMware COO Rajiv Ramaswami as CEO, it looked like a good match. What’s more, it pulled a key player from a market rival. Well, it seems VMware took exception to losing the executive, and filed a lawsuit against him yesterday for breach of contract. The […]

Despite the pandemic keeping us in one place most of the time, proptech is still taking off. And not just in the U.S. Dongnae is looking to digitize the rental and home buying market in South Korea. The startup is announcing the close of a $4.1 million seed round, led by Flybridge and MetaProp, with […]

Rocket launch startup Skyroot is closing out 2020 with a key milestone in the development program for their Vikram-I launch vehicle: A successful test firing of a solid rocket propulsion stage that serves as a demonstrator of the same tech to be used in the production Vikram. This is the first time that a private […]

All these materials and components find their way in the supply chain, but their stories get lost along the way.

Rendin, an Estonian proptech startup that wants to improve the home rental experience, including offering a no-deposit feature, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Tera Ventures, Iron Wolf Capital, Truesight Ventures, Atomico’s Angel Programme, and Startup Wise Guys. Launched in Estonia in March this year and currently expanding to Poland, […]

Applications based on artificial intelligence — whether they are systems running autonomous services, platforms being used in drug development or to predict the spread of a virus, traffic management for 5G networks, or something else altogether — require an unprecedented amount of computing power to run. And today, one of the big names in the […]