Crunch Hype

DXY, a 20-year-old online healthcare community for Chinese consumers and healthcare organizations like Pfizer, announced this week that it has raised $500 million in its Series E round led by private equity firm Trustbridge Partners. Existing backer Tencent and Hillhouse Capital’s early-stage focused GL Ventures also participated in the round, which lifted the firm’s total […]

The Chinese government could reshape Ant Group’s business, Tesla plans to launch in India next year and the FAA announces a new ID requirement for drones. This is your Daily Crunch for December 28, 2020. The big story: China presents ‘rectification’ plan for Ant Group Less than two months ago, Chinese authorities halted the planned […]

Japan’s ambitious second asteroid return mission, Hayabusa 2, has collected a wealth of material from its destination, Ryugu, which astronomers and other interested parties are almost certainly champing at the bit to play with. Though they may look like ordinary bits of charcoal, they’re genuine asteroid surface material — and a little something shiny, too. […]

The Exchange is taking a break from vacation to dig into the new Qualtrics S-1 filing. Then the column and newsletter are back on hold until January 4. This afternoon, Qualtrics, a software company that helps companies poll their employee base, customers and others, filed to go public. It’s the second time that the Utah-based […]

The FAA today announced that it will be issuing two new rules for drone pilots in the U.S. The first is the implementation of a long-awaited Remote ID. The system effectively works as a kind of digital license plate for unmanned aircraft, broadcasting identifying details, including the location of the craft. The full text of […]

Pokémon GO was created to encourage players to explore the world while coordinating impromptu large group gatherings — activities we've all been encouraged to avoid since the pandemic began.

For obvious reasons, many of us are spending the final week of 2020 looking forward. Samsung is hoping some folks are looking far enough ahead to reserve a spot in line for its still-unannounced Galaxy S21 handset (not an official name, mind, but probably a safe guess). If you’re on the Samsung Mobile mailing list, […]

Volkswagen Group has developed a mobile electric vehicle charger that can autonomously navigate parking areas, power up an EV and then make its way back to its outpost without the intervention of humans. The prototype, which VW Group Components created, aims to showcase how the automaker will expand charging infrastructure over the next few years […]

Global investors are running from Chinese tech stocks in the wake of the government’s crackdown on Ant Group and Alibaba, two high-flying businesses founded by Ma Yun (Jack Ma) that were once hailed as paragons of China’s new tech elite. Shares of major technology companies in the country have fallen sharply in recent days, with […]

The U.S. government is appealing the ruling that blocked the Trump administration’s TikTok ban, according to a new court filing. On December 7, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols in Washington became the second U.S. judge to block the Commerce Department’s attempt to stop the TikTok app from being downloaded from U.S. app stores, […]

When kids today want to learn about a new topic they’re interested in, they’ll often turn to YouTube. But the quality of the educational content on the platform can be hit or miss, depending on what specific videos kids happen to come across. Tappity, a digital educational startup now backed by $1.3 million in seed […]

If ever there was a typically quiet tech industry that seemed to drive massive headlines this year, it was semiconductors. From record-setting M&A purchases to prodigious venture capital financing, the decline of major players and huge international trade fights, semiconductor companies found themselves in the crosshairs of inventors, VCs, regulators, politicians and, well, Apple. 2020 […]

Tesla will begin operating in India in “early” 2021, a top Indian minister said on Monday, a day after the tech-centric carmaker said it was confident it would enter the world’s second most populated market next year. Tesla’s operations with begin with sales in early 2021 and then “maybe” look at assembling and manufacturing vehicles […]

Ross Lipson Contributor Ross Lipson is CEO and co-founder at Dutchie, an online cannabis marketplace. Ross possesses more than a decade of experience in advanced and equitable delivery services for a variety of industries, including online food ordering, and has executed two successful business exits. To say that COVID-19 has dominated the past year would […]

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 […]

Adopt a “hire slow, fire fast” mentality for your expansion strategy. Don’t be afraid to pull the plug if things don’t work out.

The rivalry between China’s top online learning apps has become even more intense this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The latest company to score a significant funding round is Zuoyebang, which announced today (link in Chinese) that it has raised a $1.6 billion Series E+ from investors including Alibaba Group. Other participants included returning […]

What a whirlwind holiday for Jack Ma and his fintech empire. The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, summoned Ant Group for regulatory talks on December 26th, announcing a sweeping plan for the fintech firm to “rectify” its regulatory violations. The meeting came less than two months after China’s financial authorities abruptly halted […]

The coronavirus pandemic — and a handful of other factors — slowed dealmaking for startups in India this year. Compared to their record $14.5 billion fundraise last year, Indian startups are ending 2020 with about $9.3 billion. This is the first time since 2016 that startups in India, one of the world’s largest startup communities, […]

Today we sat on the deck with our daughter Ella and her boyfriend Nick. Knowing of my fascination with all things Beatles, Nick gave me a Japanese 45 of Get Back flipped with Don’t Let Me Down. His gift coincided with a 5 minute cut of material from a newly authorized production of a new […]

Want this newsletter in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. Remember when it was news that venture capitalists were open for business? Or when Zoom investing was only done by that one guy in Ann Arbor (ha, I kid!)? These past few months have felt busier than ever, with no holiday slowdown in […]

“The Mandalorian” just wrapped up its second season on Disney+, with an action-packed and surprise-filled finale. In many ways, it feels like a seamless continuation of the first season’s storylines, with the titular bounty hunter searching for a Jedi who can take responsibility for the alien moppet known to the internet as Baby Yoda, while […]

“Are you okay?” I don’t have a good answer to the question. Knowing full well that I’m talking back to an algorithm — even one asking the same question of everyone with a different band mad-libbed in — doesn’t soften the blow. Am I? Are we? Is anyone, really? In this case, it’s referring to […]

Chinese authorities investigate an e-commerce giant, Google may be tightening its grip on research and VCs weigh in on the year’s biggest surprises. This is your (briefer than usual) Daily Crunch for December 24, 2020. The big story: Alibaba faces antitrust probe China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said that it’s investigating the e-commerce giant […]

This was going to be the year of 5G. It was going to be the year the next-generation wireless technology helped reverse some troubling macro trends for the industry — or at the very least helped stem the bleeding some. But the best laid plans, and all that. With about a week left in the […]

SpaceX is set to significantly ramp up its Starship development program in the new year, in more ways than one. SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk noted on Twitter on Thursday that the company will seek to make use of both of its two launch pads at its development facility in Boca Chica, Texas with […]

Summarizing the performance of 10, 20 or 50 developers over the past 12 months, offering personalized advice and having the facts to back it up — is no small task.

If you didn’t think much about seed in 2020, you’re not alone. Late, huge rounds consumed most of the media’s oxygen, leaving smaller startups to compete for scraps of attention.

If the portfolio of a corporate venture capital firm can be taken as a signal for the strategic priorities of their parent companies, then National Grid has high hopes for automation as the future of the utility industry. The heavy emphasis on automation and machine learning from one of the nation’s largest privately held utilities […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today is our holiday look-back at the year, bringing not only our own Danny and Natasha and Chris and Alex into the mix, but also five venture capitalists who we got to leave us their […]

From the beginning, the plan for Sidewalk Labs (a subsidiary of Alphabet and — by extension — a relative of Google) to develop a $1.3 billion tech-enabled real estate project on the Toronto waterfront was controversial. Privacy advocates had justified concerns about the Google-adjacent company’s ability to capture a near-total amount of data from the […]

Brightpearl, which allows retailers to streamline their operations thus boosting sales, has raised $33 million in funding to scale its business. This Series C round was led by Sage, which has put $23 million into the U.K. company. Previous backers Cipio Partners, Notion Capital and Verdane also participated, putting in $10 million. The Bristol, U.K.-based startup […]

China’s top market watchdog has begun a probe into Alibaba over alleged anti-competition practices at the e-commerce firm, the latest of Beijing’s efforts to curb the country’s ever-expanding internet titans. The State Administration for Market Regulation said Thursday in a brief statement that it is investigating Alibaba over its “choosing one from two” policy, in […]

Google is currently under fire for apparently pushing out a researcher whose work warned of bias in AI, and now a report from Reuters says others doing such work at the company have been asked to “strike a positive tone” and undergo additional reviews for research touching on “sensitive topics.” Reuters, citing researchers at the […]

SURPRISE! It's December 23rd. How? Because time doesn't make sense anymore and last week was really a month ago and April was yesterday.

Telegram will introduce ads, TikTok’s parent company is moving into drug discovery and President Trump continues his battle against Section 230. This is your Daily Crunch for December 23, 2020. The big story: Telegram prepares to monetize Telegram founder Pavel Durov said the messaging app will introduce advertising next year on public one-to-many channels. Durov […]

Following through on his previous threat, President Trump has vetoed the $740 million National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a major bill that allocates military funds each year. In tweets early this month, Trump said he would sink the NDAA if it wasn’t altered to include language “terminating” Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, an […]

The value of one of the world’s most valuable cryptocurrencies is crashing and a recently filed SEC complaint is at the root of the free fall. According to CoinMarketCap, the XRP token’s value has declined more than 42% in the past 24 hours and is down more than 63% from its 30-day high of $0.76. […]

As the year comes to a close, some of our editors share their top stories from 2020.

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is allowed to launch commercial driverless services on public roads in California — the first company to clear this hurdle — after receiving a permit from the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Nuro, which was founded in June 2016 by Google alums Dave Ferguson and Jiajun Zhu, plans to start commercial […]

A new mobile app called Honk aims to make messaging with friends a more interactive, real-time experience. Instead of sending texts off into the void and hoping for a response, friends on Honk communicate via messages that are shown live as you type, with no saved chat history and no send button. The end result […]

You’re probably investing in an email newsletter these days, whether you’re an international brand, a nonprofit or a local news publisher. Maybe email is even your focus now, because you got burned by Facebook, Google or other closed platforms during the past decade. The problem is that the tools you have available are probably too […]

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: How […]

DeepMind has made it a mission to show that not only can an AI truly become proficient at a game, it can do so without even being told the rules. Its newest AI agent, called MuZero, accomplishes this not just with visually simple games with complex strategies, like Go, Chess, and Shogi, but with visually […]

Fluent Forever, a startup that uses a novel learning system to help its users master a new language faster, has raised a $4.9 million funding round led by Denver-based Stout Street Capital. Other investors in this round include The Syndicate, LAUNCH, Mana Ventures, Noveus VC, Flight.VC, Insta VC, UpVentures, Firebrand Ventures, Cultivation Capital, Spero Ventures […]

Regulation shouldn't be a guessing game.

Autonomous delivery company Nuro has acquired Ike, a startup founded by veterans of Apple, Google and Uber Advanced Technologies Group that aimed to commercialize self-driving trucks. The deal, the latest in a busy season of acquisitions and consolidation in the autonomous vehicle industry, brings together two companies that have deep ties and shared technology. And […]

So, onto 2021 we go. Let's see if the bulls are right again.

Voyager Space Holdings continues to build up its portfolio of strategic space service offerings with the acquisition of a majority stake in X.O. Markets, the parent company of Nanoracks. Nanoracks has provided commercial space services for years now, and most recently provided the Bishop Airlock that was installed on the International Space Station. Bishop is […]

The undoing of Nikola continues. Today, the company announced the termination of its contract with Republic Services for 2,500 garbage trucks. Announced back in August, the deal had Nikola building garbage trucks in 2023 with on-road testing scheduled for 2024. This is the latest deal to unravel for Nikola as it tries to patch up […]