Crunch Hype

Opendoor has opened the door, so to speak, for startups to apply their technical expertise in search, marketplaces and audience segmentation to rethink the very antiquated and analogue world of property. Today, a startup that is doing this in the specific area of distressed property is announcing a round of growth funding to ramp up […]

Engineers at Cloudflare and Apple say they’ve developed a new internet protocol that will shore up one of the biggest holes in internet privacy that many don’t know even exists. Dubbed Oblivious DNS-over-HTTPS, or ODoH for short, the new protocol makes it far more difficult for internet providers to know which websites you visit. But […]

With nearly half a million customers across Mexico already and a network of 30,000 retail locations where representatives can take deposits, the challenger bank albo is already on its way to becoming a dominant player in Mexico’s emerging fintech industry. And the company has recently raised another $45 million to consolidate its position. “When your […]

Reliance’s Jio Platforms, the largest telecom operator in India, plans to roll out a 5G network in the country in the second half of 2021, top executive Mukesh Ambani announced on Tuesday. “India is today among the best digitally connected nations in the world. In order to maintain this lead, policy steps are needed to […]

The Seattle-based startup Recurrent said today it has closed on $3.5 million in financing as it looks to become the Carfax for electric vehicle batteries. The battery system is arguably the most important part of any electric vehicle and as the market for used electric vehicles expands, independent verification on battery life and range can […]

German e2e encrypted email provider Tutanota has been ordered by a regional court to develop a function that allows it to monitor an individual account. The encrypted email service provider has been fighting a number of such orders in its home country. The ruling, which was reported in the German press late last month, contradicts […]

Nielsen is updating its TV ratings to reflect a world which audiences are watching TV both live and on-demand, across a variety of different streaming services and devices. While the firm has long provided the standard measure for TV audiences, things are more fragmented when it comes to digital viewing. So the upcoming Nielsen One […]

The old saw about finding a place where companies still use spreadsheets, and then building a startup to solve the problem, was a good way to dream up new software as a service (SaaS) companies. But the next generation of that idea may be to instead find a place where data is locked, fragmented or […]

Cybersecurity firm Dragos has raised $110 million in its Series C, almost triple the amount that it raised two years ago in its last round. Dragos was founded in 2016 to detect and respond to threats facing industrial control systems (ICS), the devices critical to the continued operations of power plants, water and energy supplies, […]

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the co-founder and CEO of Klarna — the Swedish fintech “buy now, pay later” sensation that is currently Europe’s most valuable private tech company — is dismissive of the suggestion that non U.S. companies should relocate to Silicon Valley if they really want to grow. “We did hear that and I think it’s […]

DealShare, a startup in India that has built an e-commerce platform for middle and lower income groups of consumers, said on Tuesday it has raised $21 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint in the world’s second largest internet market. WestBridge Capital led the Series C round of the […]

Outfund, the revenue-based finance startup that wants to help online businesses fund growth without giving away equity, has raised £37 million in a “late seed” investment. A mixture of debt and equity, the round is led by Fuel Ventures, alongside TMT Investment. Outfund says it will use the funds to offer larger financing to more […]

Most people know Wish as a site that sells throwaway doodads from China, but in anticipation of its impending IPO, the ten-year-old, San Francisco-based company has begun portraying itself as a kind of Amazon for the rest of us. Judging by what we’ve read and heard from sources in recent months, Wish wants to paint […]

Lemonade is launching its renters insurance in France. This is the company’s third European launch after the Netherlands and Germany. Originally from the U.S., Lemonade is now a public company with a current market capitalization close to $4 billion. Lemonade will compete directly with a local competitor called Luko. Both companies share a lot of […]

Shippit, a Sydney, Australia-based e-commerce logistics platform, will expand in Southeast Asia after closing a $30 million AUD (about $22.2 million USD) Series B led by Tiger Global, with participation from Jason Lenga. Founded in 2014, Shippit’s technology automates tasks related to order fulfillment, including finding the best carrier for an order, tracking packages and […]

Despite several efforts from carriers, telecom regulators, mobile operating system developers, smartphone makers, and a global pandemic, spam calls continued to pester and scam people around the globe this year — and they only got worse. Users worldwide received 31.3 billion spam calls between January and October this year, up from 26 billion during the […]

Young people have long been a prime, if especially careful, target for financial services companies: find the right and responsible way to connect with them, and you could have a good customer for many years. Today, one of the startups building services specifically for those under 18 is announcing a round of growth funding, money […]

Getsafe, the digital-first insurance startup that initially launched with an app for home contents insurance, has closed $30 million in Series B funding. Swiss Re, the reinsurer giant, led the round. Existing investors, including Earlybird and CommerzVentures, also participated. Getsafe has raised a total of $53 million to date since being founded in May 2015. […]

Another federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against U.S. government restrictions that would have effectively banned TikTok from operating in the United States. The ruling (embedded below) was made by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols in a lawsuit filed by TikTok and ByteDance against President Donald Trump, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross and […]

Harry Destecroix co-founded Ziylo while studying for his PhD at the University of Bristol. Ziylo, a university spin-out company, developed a synthetic molecule allowing glucose to bind with the bloodstream more effectively. Four years later, and by then a Phd, Destecroix sold the company to Danish firm Novo Nordisk, one of the biggest manufacturers of […]

Sometimes it’s just not worth it to try to top Mother Nature. Such seems to have been the judgment by engineers at the University of Washington, who, deploring the absence of chemical sensors as fine as a moth’s antennas, opted to repurpose moth biology rather than invent new human technology. Behold the “Smellicopter.” Mounted on […]

You can listen to Apple Music on your Google Nest device, Apple is working to top Intel with its next set of chips and Cisco acquires Slido. This is your Daily Crunch for December 7, 2020. The big story: Google smart speakers add Apple Music support Google announced this morning that devices including the Nest […]

Like a lot of startups, Aarmy faced some big challenges when the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns in March. Up until then, Aarmy was offering in-person fitness classes from its locations in New York and Los Angeles. Trey Laird, who founded the startup with trainers Akin Akman (chief fitness officer) and Angela Manuel-Davis (chief motivation officer), […]

Practically speaking, it’s nearly impossible to offer a real review of “Cyberpunk 2077,” the long-awaited follow-up to “The Witcher 3” from developer CD Projekt Red. In the first place, it’s so big that the few days I’ve had with it aren’t enough to realistically evaluate the game; second, it’s so buggy and janky now that […]

Aurora Innovation, the autonomous vehicle startup backed by Sequoia Capital and Amazon, has reached an agreement with Uber to buy the ride-hailing firm’s self-driving unit in a complex deal that will value the combined company at $10 billion. Aurora is not paying cash for Uber ATG, a company that was valued at $7.25 billion following […]

Odysee is a new video site that CEO Jeremy Kauffman said was created to recapture some of the freedom and independence of the internet he grew up with — an internet where “anyone could speak and anyone could have a voice.” Kauffman argued that since then, the internet has become “very corporate,” with a small number […]

Do people want their at-home fitness to come in video-game form? The incredible popularity of games like Ring Fit Adventure suggests yes. London-based startup Quell thinks it’s just the beginning for this genre, and they’ve raised a $3 million seed round to help prove it. At the core of Quell’s gameplay is the “Gauntlet” — […]

Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, the company which spun out of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to fund, develop, and own the next generation of infrastructure, has unveiled its latest project — Reslia, which focuses on upgrading the efficiency and reliability of power grids. Through a $20 million equity investment in the startup OhmConnect, and an $80 million commitment […]

Finn.auto — which allows people to subscribe to their car instead of owning it, and offsetting their CO₂ emissions — has raised a $24.2 million / €20 million Series A funding round. White Star Capital (which has also invested in Tier Mobility), and the Zalando co-CEOs Rubin Ritter, David Schneider and Robert Gentz, are new […]

Twitter’s timeline is currently overrun with ads for some users, in what appears to be a glitch involving the distribution of Promoted Tweets. Typically, a Promoted Tweet — which is just a regular tweet an advertiser has paid to promote more broadly — will appear just once at the top of a user’s timeline, then […]

Portable audio recording solutions abound, and many recently released devices have done a lot to improve the convenience and quality of sound-recording devices you can carry in your pocket — spurred in part by smartphones and their constant improvement in video recording capabilities. A new device from Austria’s mikme, the mikme pocket (€369 or just […]

The FCC has just published the results of its Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Phase I auction, which sounds rather stiff but involves distributing billions to broadband providers that bring solid internet connections to under-served rural areas “on the wrong side of the digital divide.” Included is $885 million earmarked for SpaceX, whose Starlink satellite service […]

I’m a true believer that you can solve any problem with the right product and process, even one as gnarly as the multiheaded hydra that is microservice overhead.

Cloudflare is working on a new product called Cloudflare Pages. The new product could compete directly with Netlify and Vercel, two cloud hosting companies that let you build and deploy sites using Jamstack frameworks. Popular Jamstack frameworks include Gatsby, Jekyll, Hugo, Vue.js, Next.js, etc. The new product was discovered on Saturday by reverse engineer Jane […]

Designing a startup for scale means investing in the right technology today to underpin your future growth.

Microsoft continues to expand its global Azure data center presence at a rapid clip. After announcing new regions in Austria and Taiwan in October, the company today revealed its plans to launch a new region in Denmark. As with many of Microsoft’s recent announcements, the company is also attaching a commitment to provide digital skills […]

Cloudflare has launched a new set of features today called the Data Localization Suite. Companies on the Enterprise plan can choose to enable the features through an add-on. With the Data Localization Suite, Cloudflare is making it easier to control where your data is stored and if you’re authorized to view data depending on from […]

So much for a December slowdown — this morning, Airbnb and C3.ai raised their IPO price ranges and we got early pricing information from Upstart and Wish.

The state of California has now expanded access of its CA Notify app to all in the state, after originally deploying the app in a pilot program at UC Berkeley in November, which later expanded to other UC campuses. The statewide launch of the app, announced by California Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday, means that […]

We are T-minus one week until TC Sessions: Space 2020 lifts off on December 16-17. Join the global space community’s leading experts, brightest visionaries and rising stars for two days dedicated to space technology and exploration — and the opportunities they offer. Speaking of opportunity, you don’t want to miss our University Showcase sessions featuring […]

Google announced this morning it’s adding support for Apple Music to its Google Nest smart speakers, as well as other Google Assistant-enabled smart speakers and displays in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany and Japan. This means Google’s flagship smart speaker devices, including Nest Audio, Nest Hub Max and Nest Mini, will now be able to […]

Tecton.ai, the startup founded by three former Uber engineers who wanted to bring the machine learning feature store idea to the masses, announced a $35 million Series B today, just seven months after announcing their $20 million Series A. When we spoke to the company in April, it was working with early customers in a […]

Last month, Bumble introduced a new feature that would prevent bad actors from using the dating app’s “unmatch” feature to hide from victims. Now Tinder has done something similar. The company announced on Friday it will soon roll out an update to its app that will make it easier for users to report someone who […]

Only eight months after getting acquired for $180 million, Avira is changing hands again, for double the value: NortonLifeLock today announced that it would acquire the German security firm for around $360 million in an all-cash deal. The M&A deal is the latest of a series of consolidations and shifts in ownership around both companies: […]

When one of AWS’s east coast data centers went down at the end of last month, it had an impact on countless companies relying on its services including Roku, Adobe and Shipt. When the incident was resolved, the company had to analyze what happened. For most companies, that involves manually pulling together information from various […]

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 big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can […]

While Zoom continues to hold a lot of mindshare (and market share) in the world of videoconferencing, Cisco’s WebEx division today announced an acquisition to underscore its own intention to keep its hat firmly in the game. It is picking up Slido, the company that lets people moderate questions and interactions from a larger group […]

Apple is reportedly developing a number of Apple Silicon chip variants with significantly higher core counts relative to the M1 chips that it uses in today’s MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and Mac mini computers based on its own ARM processor designs. According to Bloomberg, the new chips include designs that have 16 power cores and […]

If this year has taught us a lesson about the world of of work, it’s that collectively, we weren’t very well equipped in terms of the technology we use to translate the in-person experience seamlessly to a remote version. That’s led to a rush of companies launching new services to fill that hole — cloud […]

Highland Europe — the tech growth fund best known for backing high profile late-stage startups like GetYourGuide, Huel, WeTransfer, Wolt and Zwift — has closed its fourth fund, raising €700M in a comparatively short space of time compared to previous fund closes. Highland plans to ‘double-down’ on its strategy of being one of the few […]