Crunch Hype

It’s been a busy year of expansion for the large cloud providers, with AWS, Azure and Google aggressively expanding their data center presence around the world. To cap off the year, Google Cloud today announced a new set of cloud regions, which will go live in the coming months and years. These new regions, which […]

Bolt, a startup that offers online checkout technology to retailers, announced this morning that it has added $75 million to its Series C round, bringing the financing to a total of $125 million. WestCap and General Atlantic led the new tranche, which Bolt CEO Ryan Breslow told TechCrunch was raised at around twice its Series […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday 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 […]

IBM has been busy since it announced plans to spin out its legacy infrastructure management business in October, placing an all-in bet on the hybrid cloud. Today, it built on that bet by acquiring Helsinki-based multi-cloud consulting firm Nordcloud. The companies did not share the purchase price. Nordcloud fits neatly into this strategy with 500 […]

The U.S. government is one of the biggest spenders in the nascent space industry, and the man who handles the money for the Air Force’s $16 billion checkbook wants startups to know that his door is open for them. In all, Will Roper, the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, […]

Spotify users have Wrapped and Instagram users have their Top 9. And now TikTok users will have their own year-in-review feature, too. The company today announced the launch of its first personalized annual recap feature with the launch of “Year on TikTok,” a video highlight reel that showcases individual users’ own top TikTok moments. This […]

A long-awaited COVID-19 relief bill finally received congressional approval over the weekend. Top-line efforts include plans to bolster a population feeling intense strain after nine months of shutdown. The $600 direct payment has, understandably, grabbed the most headlines, but there’s a ton to dig into amidst the $900 billion package. Most relevant for our coverage […]

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 […]

NextMind debuted its Dev Kit hardware at CES last year, but the hardware is now actually shipping out, and the startup shared with me the production version to take a test drive. The NextMind controller is a sensor that reads electrical signals from your brain’s visual cortex, and translates those into input signals for a […]

From now until January 3, TechCrunch readers can save $10 on annual Extra Crunch membership. Users outside the US will see a similar discount for the holiday sale, but it will be in a local currency. You can claim the deal here. Extra Crunch helps you spot technology trends and opportunities, build better startups, get […]

Eneba, a marketplace for gamers that sells games and other products, has raised a $8M round of funding from Practica Capital and InReach Ventures. The funding is described as a ‘combination’ of a Seed and Series A round. Also participating in the funding for the Lithuanian startup was FJ Labs and a group of Angel […]

The busy year in M&A continued this weekend when private equity firm Thoma Bravo announced it was acquiring RealPage for $10.2B. In RealPage, Thoma Bravo is getting a full-service property management platform with services like renter portals, site management, expense management and financial analysis for building and property owners. Orlando Bravo, Founder and a Managing […]

OneTrust, the 4-year old privacy platform startup from the folks who brought you AirWatch (which was acquired by VMWare for $1.5B in 2014), announced a $300 million Series C on an impressive $5.1 billion valuation today. The company has attracted considerable attention from investors in a remarkably short time. It came out of the box […]

Lockheed Martin (LM), the US’s largest defence contractor will acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne (AR), a rocket engine and missile manufacturer, for $4.4 billion including debt and net cash, giving the company a larger stake in space and hypersonic technology. The move comes amid the context of increasing competition in the Space and Defence industries. In a […]

Back in January, OnePlus showed off its first concept phone. The aptly (if plainly) named Concept One sported color-shifting glass, giving the effect of an “invisible camera” on the rear of the device. The concept wasn’t particularly useful — if anything it was a fun diversion from boring old phone updates. From that standpoint, the […]

An Indian court rejected Future Group’s plea that sought to prevent its partner Amazon from interfering in — and blocking — the Indian retail giant’s $3.4 billion asset sale deal to Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, delivering a glimmer of hope to the American e-commerce firm that has invested more than $6.5 billion in the world’s […]

SoftBank Investment Advisers may file as early as Monday to raise between $500 million and $600 million through an initial public offering of its first special purpose acquisition vehicle, reports Axios. SoftBank Investment Advisers manages the two Vision Funds and may continue leaning into SPACs, with two more reportedly in the works. Almost everything you […]

When Payam Banazadeh and his team started Capella Space in 2016, they had visions of providing private industry with a wealth of new data that they could use in all sorts of ways to create business opportunities and improve efficiencies. Four years later, Banazadeh is still waiting for that commercial opportunity. Capella is still successful. […]

Citizen Lab researchers say they have found evidence that dozens of journalists had their iPhones silently compromised with spyware known to be used by nation states. For more than the past year, London-based reporter Rania Dridi and at least 36 journalists, producers and executives working for the Al Jazeera news agency were targeted with a […]

Let’s be clear: “Songbird” is not a good movie. It’s hard to see how it could have been any good, since “Songbird” was written shortly after the pandemic began and filmed a few months later — so the filmmakers had to write a screenplay, shoot it in the midst of a pandemic and edit it, […]

 Welcome back to Mixtape, the TechCrunch podcast that looks at the human element that powers technology. For this episode we spoke with Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute and Minderoo Research Professor at NYU; Mara Mills, associate professor of Media, Culture and Communication at NYU and co-director of the NYU Center for […]

Twitter is shutting down Periscope, the video app it acquired several years ago when Facebook Live threatened to lap the field. When we stream the Gillmor Gang sessions, we send them to Facebook, Twitter, and an unlisted embed on YouTube. At one point, we planned to stream the sessions live on TechCrunch, but for now […]

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? Subscribe here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Sweet dreams are made of IPOs, so merry f****** Christmas We’re […]

This was quite the week for Pinterest and not in a good way. While the company settled the gender discrimination lawsuit brought forth by its former COO, the hefty $22.5 million settlement highlighted some of the tech industry’s inequities. Meanwhile, Airbnb outlined some new goals around diversity and inclusion, despite having not produced a diversity […]

I often begin calls with founders by asking why they’re willing to bet their livelihoods on an idea that will most likely fail. It’s a small hack that lets me see how vulnerable a founder is, and how much conviction they have behind their ideas. Sometimes, if they answer, it’s the lede of my story. […]

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Commerce included DJI among the 77 new entries on its ‘entity list.’ Precisely what this means for the company’s future in the States remains uncertain, but it has since responded to TechCrunch’s request for comment. “DJI is disappointed in the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision,” a spokesperson for the drone […]

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 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in global consumer spend in 2019. Not including third-party Chinese app stores, iOS and Android […]

Apple has placed its contract manufacturing partner Wistron on probation and won’t give the Taiwanese firm any new business until it takes “complete corrective actions” following lapses at its southern India plant earlier this month. The iPhone maker said on Saturday that its employees and independent auditors hired by the company to investigate the issues […]

It’s probably no wonder that when Founders Fund was still a very young venture firm, it brought aboard as its first principal Justin Fishner-Wolfson. Having nabbed two degrees from Stanford and spent two years as CEO of an organization that provides asset management services to the school’s student organizations, Fishner-Wolfson wasn’t shy about voicing his […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, as expected after an independent panel commissioned by the administration recommended its approval earlier this week. This is the second vaccine now authorized for use in the U.S. under EUA, after the Pfizer -BioNTech vaccine was approved […]

The rest of the world may be slowing down as we prepare for Christmas and New Year's, but we are not taking our foot off the gas.

We interview the senior senator from Minnesota about fitness trackers, Sony pulls “Cyberpunk 2077” from the PlayStation Store and Indian delivery startup Zomato raises a massive round. This is your Daily Crunch for December 18, 2020. The big story: Amy Klobuchar discusses Amazon Halo concerns Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar recently wrote an open letter to […]

Headphones! They make a pretty solid gift any year, but they're an even better option when so many of us are stuck at home. It's hard to think (much less get anything done) when the background track of your life is a cacophony of conference calls and Zoom school.

The idea of satellites and other spacecraft being able to refuel, repair or even add new capabilities while in orbit has generally seemed like a “nice in theory” one, but as leaders from Maxar, Astroscale and Orbit Fab explained at TC Sessions: Space, 2021 will be the year that theory becomes reality — or at […]

After reading a review of Amazon’s new fitness tracker, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar penned an open letter. “Recent reports have raised concerns about the Halo’s access to this extensive personal and private health information,” the lawmaker wrote to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. “Among publicly available consumer health devices, the […]

The Justice Department’s historic lawsuit against Google is moving along — albeit very, very slowly. In a status hearing Friday, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta set a tentative date for the case. The good news and the bad news for both parties involved is that it’s more than two years away. As CNBC reports, Mehta […]

What’s next? That’s the question we ask ourselves here at TechCrunch every day for the past 15 years. The answer, more often than not, comes from the earliest-stage founders. That’s why last year, we introduced a new event called TechCrunch Early Stage. TC Early Stage is all about providing founders access to the top experts […]

While there’s been plenty of recent debate around the gig economy, Jarah Euston argued that it’s time to rethink a bigger part of the workforce — hourly workers. Euston, who was previously an executive at mobile advertising startup Flurry and a co-founder at data operations startup Nexla, told me that although 80 million Americans are […]

Today Bumble, a popular dating-focused startup, was reported by Bloomberg to have filed IPO documents, albeit privately. The news that Bumble is pursuing an IPO is not a surprise. TechCrunch covered the story in September, noting the huge revenues that its rival Tinder has managed to accrete, possibly indicative of a sufficiently large market to […]

Mobile travel app Hopper has been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers canceled their trips and airlines dropped their flights. But the complications around getting airline credits and refunds have since turned into a customer service crisis for the airfare prediction and ticket booking startup, which had been valued at $750 million back […]

General John “Jay” Raymond spoke at TC Sessions: Space earlier this week, where he touched on a variety of subjects. The talk came on the eve of Space Force’s first birthday, having been founded on December 20, 2019. The Space Force commander explains how the new military service operates like a startup and gave advice […]

The latest branch of the U.S. military was founded just a year ago and will celebrate its first birthday on December 20. General John W. “Jay” Raymond spoke at TC Sessions: Space and explained how the youngest military branch operates like a startup. “In some ways, we’re a startup as well,” Gen. Raymond said. “The […]

In the end, each SaaS company has to decide the best course, based on its business goals, customer base, and competitive environment.

Just a few years ago it seemed like Rocket Lab was going to be an up-and-comer in the launch world, and so they are today — in addition to going reusable, creating a low-cost satellite platform, and planning a mission to Venus. CEO and Founder Peter Beck, speaking at TC Sessions: Space, talked about how […]

Ultimately, there isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” approach to building intersectional AI. At The Trevor Project, our team has outlined a methodology based on what we do, what we know today and the specific communities we serve.

Tap Network is providing a new approach to loyalty rewards programs that it describes as “rewards as a service.” You may recognize the Tap Network name, as well as its co-founder and CEO Lin Dai, from Hooch, a startup that offered a drink-a-day subscription service before shifting focus to a broader rewards program. Dai told […]

Lt. Gen. John Thompson of the United States Space Force spoke at TechCrunch Session: Space earlier this week on the importance of working with startups. The general is the Commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, where he oversees research, design, development, and acquisition of satellites and their associated command and control systems for the […]

Space Force’s Lt. Gen. John Thompson spoke at TechCrunch Session: Space earlier this week. Throughout the wide-ranging interview, General Thompson explained the various ways and means for private companies like startups should interact with Space Force. Thompson knows what he’s talking about. As the Commander of the Space and Missiles Systems Center, he oversees research, […]

Following numerous reports that the U.S. government was seeking to crack down on DJI, the Department of Commerce today will be adding the drone giant to its “Entity List.” Reuters and Drone DJ have issued early reporting based on a conference call with a state official. The full list of 77 impacted companies is available […]

Creditas, the Brazilian lending business, has raised $255 million in new financing as financial services startups across Latin America continue to attract massive amounts of cash. The company’s credit portfolio has crossed 1 billion reals ($196.66 million) and the new round will value the company at $1.75 billion thanks to $570 million raised in outside […]