Crunch Hype

Arrival, the U.K. electric vehicle startup that plans to become a publicly traded company through a merger with special purpose acquisition company CIIG Merger Corp., has picked Charlotte for its North American headquarters. The company said it will add 150 new employees to support the headquarters and invest about $3 million in office space in […]

SpaceX is one step closer to replacing its Falcon line of active duty spacecraft: Its Starship prototype “SN8” achieved a major milestone in the ongoing spacecraft’s development program, flying to a height of around 40,000 feet at SpaceX’s development facility in southern Texas. One of the Starship’s three Raptor engines cut off around two minutes […]

A new robot created by researchers at Northwestern University looks and behaves like a tiny aquatic animal, and could serve a variety of functions, including moving things place to place, catalyzing chemical reactions, delivering therapeutics and much more. This new soft robot honestly looks a heck of a lot like a lemon peel, but it’s […]

In light of artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru’s exit from Google last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to staffers, obtained by Axios, saying the company would investigate “the circumstances that led up to Dr. Gebru’s departure, examining where we could have improved and led a more respectful process.” Last week, Gebru […]

SpaceX’s Starship prototype is set to take it’s first high-altitude flight — to around 40,000 feet or so — sometime this afternoon. This is the second time that it’s been poised to make this giant leap, after a try yesterday was aborted in the final seconds due to one of the Raptor engines automatically shutting […]

The Federal Trade Commission today announced a new antitrust lawsuit against Facebook, alleging that the social network has used monopoly power “with the aim of suppressing, neutralizing and deterring serious competitive threats,” and must be broken up. The suit is separate from, but was investigated in coordination with, one from 48 attorneys general also announced […]

Naturally, the economic model is important. Profitability is important. TAM is important. But right now, the markets are hot. Growth trumps all.

If you’re gazing longingly at new streaming services but can’t actually afford all of them, TiVo says it can help you choose. In recent years, the company has been trying to evolve beyond the DVR business by creating products that make it easier for consumers to navigate the increasingly fragmented TV landscape. Earlier this year, it […]

A huge collection of states filed an antitrust lawsuit Wednesday accusing Facebook of suppressing its competition through monopolistic business practices. Forty eight attorneys general across 46 states, the territory of Guam and the District of Columbia are behind the lawsuit, with only South Dakota, South Carolina, Alabama and Georgia declining to join. The lawsuit, which […]

We published the TechCrunch list of the best books of 2020 last week, which included such titles as Barton Gellman’s Dark Mirror as recommended by our cybersecurity editor Zack Whittaker and Shoe Dog by Phil Knight, recommended by Lightspeed’s Nicole Quinn. In all, we selected nine books from our writers and VCs in the community that helped us get through 2020.

Following several reports of a toxic workplace and abuse this year, Twitch today announced the introduction of a new hateful content and harassment policy for its streamer community that will go into effect on Jan. 22, 2021. Under the updated guidelines, Twitch’s Safety team will change the way it evaluates potentially violating content. The company […]

Cruise Automation, the autonomous vehicle subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, has started testing what it describes as fully driverless vehicles on public roads in San Francisco, the first milestone required to secure a permit to launch a shared, commercial service that can […]

If my friend is a Dreamer in the U.S. who is undocumented but wants to found a startup, is it possible?

Better late than never. So it might be said of the Boston- and New York-based seed-stage firm Flybridge Capital Partners, which is today announcing that Anna Palmer has been promoted to general partner. She is the first woman to hold the title at the 19-year-old firm. It’s a nice distinction to have and Palmer sounds […]

As competition in the streaming service market heats up, services are looking for ways to differentiate their offerings. One area of increased interest — especially in light of fierce competition from newcomer Disney+ — is how to make their services more family-friendly. On this front, Netflix today announced the rollout of new features for families, […]

Last year all-in-one digital sales platform GetAccept raised a $7 million Series A funding. The platform, which wraps-in video, live chat, proposal design, document tracking and e-signatures, has now raised $20 million in Series B funding, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, as the company expands its platform aimed at SMBs. The funding comes as the […]

As Twitter and Facebook scrambled to institute new policies for the 2020 election, YouTube was… mostly quiet. The platform didn’t make any flashy announcements about a crackdown on election-related misinformation, nor did it really fully grapple with its massive role in distributing information during what was widely regarded as an extremely volatile time for American […]

Squire, a startup that sells software to barbershops, has raised $59 million in a round led by Iconiq Capital. The raise is $45 million in equity capital, and $15 million in debt financing. The round comes just months after Squire closed its $34 million Series B, led by CRV. With the new financing, Squire has […]

Haters gonna hate, IPOs gonna pop. That’s the story today as richly valued DoorDash and C3.ai, two American technology unicorns, saw their values skyrocket after they began trading today. DoorDash shares are up just under 83% to $186.51. The company priced its IPO at $102 per share last night, ahead of its raised IPO range […]

Automattic, Mozilla, Twitter and Vimeo have penned an open letter to EU lawmakers urging them to ensure that a major reboot of the bloc’s digital regulations doesn’t end up bludgeoning freedom of expression online. The draft Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act are due to be unveiled by the Commission next week, though the […]

Stress can come in many forms. Burnout at work, anxiety to close that big deal or, like everyone, suffering from the changes the pandemic has had on your startup. While we can’t cover all bases, help is on the way. Mental health and stress management is pivotal to keeping your brain at peak performance, so […]

TC Sessions: Space 2020, our first conference dedicated to galactic endeavors, launches in just one week (December 16-17). We can’t wait to host out-of-this-world experts, innovative agencies and the bold, boundary-breaking startups focused on building a future in space. If you have not yet secured your seat on the space-race express, do so now while […]

Nutanix announced today that it was bringing in former VMware executive Rajiv Ramaswami as president and CEO. Ramaswami replaces co-founderr Dheeraj Pandey, who previously announced his plans to retire in August. The new CEO brings 30 years of industry experience to the position including stints with Broadcom, Cisco, Nortel and IBM — in addition to […]

Sweden’s MTG is making a significant acquisition in the mobile gaming industry. The company is acquiring Hutch Games, the London-based game studio behind popular mobile racing games, such as Rebel Racing, F1 Manager and Top Drives. The acquisition is an important one for MTG as the company is spending $275 million right away and setting […]

Power Automate is Microsoft’s platform for streamlining repetitive workflows — you may remember it under its original name: Microsoft Flow. The market for these robotic process automation (RPA) tools is hot right now, so it’s no surprise that Microsoft, too, is doubling down on its platform. Only a few months ago, the team launched Power […]

The coronavirus outbreak, elections, and Zoom meetings were on U.S. consumers minds’ this year, according to Google’s list of the U.S. top trending searches in 2020, released this morning. These search trends don’t reflect the most-searched for words and phrases across Google, but rather those that saw high spikes in traffic over a sustained period […]

Last night both DoorDash and C3.ai priced their IPOs above their raised ranges. In simpler terms, both companies provided the market with a target price interval. Then they both raised it and each priced higher than that raised target. The IPO market, even as December races along and winter begins to bite, is red-hot. The […]

At a time when more companies are building machine learning models, Arthur.ai wants to help by ensuring the model accuracy doesn’t begin slipping over time, thereby losing its ability to precisely measure what it was supposed to. As demand for this type of tool has increased this year, in spite of the pandemic, the startup […]

Stuf, a new startup transforming basements and other unused spaces into self-storage locations, is announcing that it has raised $1.8 million in seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Katharine Lau previously led the real estate team at co-working company Industrious. She told me that she became interested in the self-storage industry during the early months of […]

Microsoft has shared some details about the roadmap for its cloud gaming service. In addition to Android devices, the company confirms that it plans to add support for more platforms. In Spring 2021, Microsoft will launch its cloud gaming service on iOS and on computers. Originally called Project xCloud, Microsoft’s cloud gaming service lets you […]

"I used Coinbase as a vehicle because a lot of the early stuff in crypto is hard to understand."

Six years after the launch of the Mexico-based crypotcurrency exchange and financial services platform Bitso the company revealed it has closed on $62 million in financing to capitalize on the cryptocurrency boom investors expect to hit Latin America. The three major cryptocurrencies are all trading up in the waning months of 2020, with Bitcoin prices […]

As the healthtech landscape rapidly evolves another startup is making its presence known. HealNow has closed a $1.3 million round of funding from SoftBank Opportunity Fund and Redhawk VC. The company was founded by Halston Prox and Joshua Smith. Prox has worked in healthcare for more than a decade with major organizations such as Providence […]

The Blue Origin -led “National Team” has submitted a proposal to NASA for its Human Landing System (HLS), which would be used to transport the next lunar astronauts to the surface of the Moon during NASA’s forthcoming Artermis mission series. Blue Origin is one of three companies selected by NASA to bid on contracts for […]

Consumers will have downloaded 130 billion apps in 2020 across iOS and Google Play, up 10% year-over-year, according to mobile data and analytics firm App Annie’s year-end forecast. Consumer spending across the two app stores will also grow by 25% year-over-year to reach $112 billion by year end, the firm also predicts. Typically, much of […]

As financial troubles escalate at Danke, China’s authorities are stepping in to hold the once-promising apartment rental and sharing company accountable. In recent weeks, landlords who did not receive payments from Danke, which functions as a sublessor, began to evict tenants. After a flurry of local reports exposing the firm’s massive debt, which is reported […]

EU lawmakers have just unveiled a wide-ranging counter terrorism agenda as they set out plans to beef up regional security. The plan touches on some key tech topics — the most keenly watched of which is encryption. Here, concerns have been mounting that the bloc could be moving toward legislating against end-to-end encryption — in […]

Quantum computing startup IonQ today announced its road map for the next few years — following a similar move from IBM in September — and it’s quite ambitious, to say the least. At our Disrupt event earlier this year, IonQ CEO and president Peter Chapman suggested that we were only five years away from having […]

Creating a resume is one of the most frustrating parts of job hunting. Though ubiquitous on social media, videos are still rare on job platforms, even though it’s difficult to capture your personality in a resume. Sydney, Australia-based myInterview wants to turn videos into an integral part of recruitment, with a platform that allows candidates […]

Remote learning and training have become a large priority this year for organizations looking to keep employees engaged and up to date on work practices at a time when many of them are not working in an office — and, in the case of those who have joined in 2020, may have never met any […]

As edtech churns out more and more MasterClass copycats and coding bootcamps, it’s becoming glaringly obvious that students need better ways to navigate the crowded world of online learning. Career Karma, founded in 2018 by Ruben Harris, Artur Meyster and Timur Meyster, wants to help. The startup is bringing a pick-and-shovel play to the coding […]

Dataform, a startup in the U.K. that was building what it dubbed an “operating system” for data warehouses, has been quietly acquired by Google’s Google Cloud division. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed, although I understand this is mostly an acqui-hire, albeit one where the founders — both ex-Googlers prior to founding Dataform — […]

For many organizations, the shift to cloud computing has played out more realistically as a shift to hybrid architectures, where a company’s data is just as likely to reside in one of a number of clouds, as it might in an on-premise deployment, in a data warehouse, or in a data lake. Today, a startup […]

Karl Marx famously argued in ‘Das Kapital’ that to achieve freedom from the slavery of capitalism, the worker must own the means of production. Perhaps that day is edging closer. Today Wikifactory, billing itself as a ‘Github for hardware’, announces it has closed a $3 million funding round taking it to a total of $4.5m, […]

Carl Pei, the co-founder of OnePlus who left the company two months ago, has raised $7 million from a roster of high-profile investors for his new hardware venture. The Swedish tech entrepreneur said on Wednesday he had secured $7 million in Seed financing round from friends and private investors including Tony Fadell (Principal at Future […]

The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) announced it has banned 105 mobile apps for violating Chinese internet regulations. While almost all of the apps are made by Chinese developers, American travel booking and review site TripAdvisor is also on the list. TripAdvisor shares dipped on Nasdaq after the CAC’s announcement, but began recovering in after-hours […]

Inspiration to launch a lawn-care company struck Coulter Lewis when he was shopping for lawn-care products one day. The entrepreneur, who previously worked as a designer and co-founder of a snack company, says the stench of pesticides and herbicides piled high was too strong to ignore. Lewis began researching safer alternatives to fertilize his backyard. […]

Amy Yin doesn’t foresee startups resuming a five-day-a-week in-office work schedule, even after COVID-19 has been battled back. It’s probably a safe bet. Many companies have learned this year that employees can be just as productive, working from home. More, employees — much as they might miss their own desks — no longer want to […]

From a young age, Will Bruey, the co-founder and chief executive of Varda Space Industries, was fascinated with space and running his own business. So when the former SpaceX engineer was tapped by Delian Asparouhov and Trae Stephens of Founders Fund to work on Varda he didn’t think twice. Bruey spent six years at SpaceX. […]

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block Procter & Gamble’s acquisition of Billie, a NY-based startup that sells razors and body wash. In the notice, the FTC alleged that the merger would “eliminate innovative nascent competitors for wet shave razors” to the loss of consumers. Billie was founded in 2017 with the goal of […]