Crunch Hype

A group of Singaporean government agencies is launching a new research program for blockchain technology with $12 million SGD (about $8.9 million USD) in funding. Called the Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme (SBIP), the project is a collaboration between Enterprise Singapore, Infocomm Media Development Authority and the National Research Foundation Singapore. It has support from the […]

French startup Luko has raised a $60 million Series B funding round (€50 million). The round is led by EQT Ventures, with existing investors Accel, Founders Fund and Speedinvest also participating. Some angel investors with a background in insurance and technology are also investing in the startup, such as Assaf Wand, the co-founder of Hippo […]

SpaceX launched its 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission for NASA to the International Space Station on Sunday, using a brand new variant of its Dragon capsule spacecraft. This new cargo Dragon has greater carrying capacity and can dock fully autonomously with the Space Station, both improvements over the last iteration. This is the first […]

If funding round stories were simply stories about funding, we would only need Twitter to be educated. TechCrunch is proof that the stories are so much more than the dollar signs.

Welcome back to Mixtape, the TechCrunch podcast that examines diversity, inclusion and the human labor that drives tech. This week, Megan moderated a panel at Sight Tech Global, a conference dedicated to fostering discussion among technology pioneers on how advances in AI and related technologies will alter the landscape of assistive technology. The panel featured […]

SpaceX is launching a new spacecraft during its 21st Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) mission for the International Space Station this morning. The launch is set to take off at 11:17 AM EST (8:17 AM PST) from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and will be the first ever flight of an updated version of SpaceX’s cargo-specific […]

With one fell swoop, WarnerMedia eradicated the status quo in Hollywood, turning its 2021 feature film schedule on its head. Well, not quite. By moving 2021’s theatrical releases to both physical and digital theaters, the AT&T affiliate gave us a reason to sign up for its HBOMax streaming service. With a simultaneous window of one […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

Welcome back to Human Capital, a weekly newsletter that looks at the latest in diversity and inclusion in tech, as well as labor. This week, Google made headlines a couple of times for its workplace issues, while Coinbase found itself back in the news after the New York Times reported on alleged issues of racism […]

Did you follow all of the unicorn news from the last couple of weeks? No? Here’s a list of headlines to catch you up....

“Happiest Season,” a new film on Hulu, feels like a traditional, Christmas-themed romantic comedy — with one important exception. The movie stars Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis as Abby and Harper, a lesbian couple who are visiting Harper’s parents for the holidays. As they drive back to Harper’s childhood home, she makes a big confession: […]

Tesla’s top leadership positions skew white and male with just 4% of those roles going to Black employees, according to the company’s first diversity and inclusion report released Friday. The report shows that overall the company, which has factories in California, Nevada and New York, has a workforce that includes women as well as Black, […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the 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 consumer spending in 2019. People now spend three hours and 40 minutes per day using apps, rivaling TV. Apps […]

"I think there are some companies that have a lot of COVID tailwind."

Founder Mike Cagney is always pushing the envelope, and investors love him for it. Not long after sexual harassment allegations prompted him to leave SoFi, the personal finance company that he cofounded in 2011, he raised $50 million for a new lending startup called Figure that has since raised at least $225 million from investors […]

We learn more about Slack’s future, Revolut adds new payment features and DoorDash pushes its IPO range upward. This is your Daily Crunch for December 4, 2020. The big story: Slack and Salesforce execs explain their big acquisition After Salesforce announced this week that it’s acquiring Slack for $27.7 billion, Ron Miller spoke to Slack […]

The pandemic has meant we leave our homes far less often, and that means fending for ourselves when it comes to coffee. But too many of us have old, cheap coffee makers or worse, pod-based ones at home. Here are the best ways to elevate your coffee game or delight the java lover in your life.

With the amount of time you’re spending at home these days, you deserve a better headset. A wireless one that works with your computer and maybe your console as well, with a mic for calls and great sound for games and movies. Fortunately there are a lot to choose from, and I’ve tested out your […]

We don’t believe enterprises or consumers will revert to the old ways of doing things when the pandemic subsides. Welcome to the next phase of tech spending.

Zephr has raised $8 million in a new funding round led by Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (owned by media giant Bertelsmann). The London-headquarted startup’s customers already include publishers like McClatchy, News Corp Australia, Dennis Publishing and PEI Media. CEO James Henderson told me via email that rather than creating “a monolithic product that tries to […]

Shared electric moped startup Revel said Friday that it will shut down its service in Austin later this month. The startup’s CEO and co-founder Frank Reig didn’t place the entire blame on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused ridership to fall across shared micromobility services as well as public transit, for the company’s decision. Instead, […]

The Newport Beach, California-based healthcare lending service PrimaHealth Credit is now pitching point-of-sale lending services for elective medical procedures. Taking the kinds of financial lending services that have been popularized by companies like Klarna and Affirm, PrimaHealth Credit is bringing them into elective surgical space for things like cataract surgery, orthodontic work, dental care or […]

When Salesforce bought Slack earlier this week for $27.7 billion, it was in some ways the end of a startup fairytale. Slack was the living embodiment of the Silicon Valley startup success fantasy. It started as a pivot from a game company, of all things. It raised $1.4 billion, went from zero to a $7 […]

Fintech startup Revolut is launching its own acquiring solution. With this move, the company is competing directly with Stripe, Adyen, Braintree or Checkout.com. This is an in-house product and not just a fresh coat of paint on an existing solution. As a reminder, Revolut already offers business accounts. It lets you send and receive international […]

DoorDash filed a fresh S-1/A, providing the market with a new price range for its impending IPO. The American food delivery unicorn now expects to debut at $90 to $95 per share, up from a previous range of $75 to $85. That’s a bump of 20% on the low end and 12% on the upper […]

We hope this guide gives founders and C-suite executives some food for thought in forming a plan for their international growth — and a pause for thought on those considering too bold an approach.

Singapore on Friday granted four firms, including Ant Group and Grab, licenses to run digital banks in the Southeast Asian country, in a move that would allow the tech giants to expand their financial services offerings. The nation’s central bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), said it applied a “rigorous, merit-based process” to select a […]

The world’s food supply must double by the year 2050 to meet the demands of a growing population, according to a report from the United Nations. And as pressure mounts to find new crop land to support the growth, the world’s eyes are increasingly turning to the African continent as the next potential global bread […]

China is a step closer to cracking down on unscrupulous data collection by app developers. This week, the country’s cybersecurity watchdog began seeking comment on the range of user information that apps from instant messengers to ride-hailing services are allowed to collect. The move follows in the footstep of a proposed data protection law that […]

Like many overseas Chinese, Derek Weng gets shopping requests from his family and friends whenever he returns to China. Some of the most wanted imported products are maternity items, cosmetics and vitamin supplements. Many in China still uphold the belief that “imported products are better.” The demand gave Weng a business idea. In 2018, he […]

OTV (formerly known as Olive Tree Ventures), an Israeli venture capital firm that focuses on digital health tech, announced it has closed a new fund totaling $170 million. The firm also launched a new office in Shanghai, China to spearhead its growth in the Asia Pacific region. OTV currently has a total of 11 companies […]

An executive order was just issued from the White House regarding “the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in Government.” Leaving aside the meritless presumption of the government’s own trustworthiness and that it is the software that has trust issues, the order is almost entirely hot air. The EO is like others in that it is […]

Joe White MBE — a general partner of Entrepreneur First, a Greylock-backed early-stage deep tech fund — is leaving after being appointed as Her Majesty’s Consul-General, San Francisco, and Technology Envoy to the United States in a new, combined and powerful, role for the U.K. government. One of the key figures from the last two […]

Google fires a leading researcher, Stripe launches a new banking service and WarnerMedia shakes up the theatrical business model. This is your Daily Crunch for December 3, 2020. The big story: Google fires co-lead of its Ethical AI team Timnit Gebru, a leading researcher in the field of ethics and artificial intelligence, tweeted last night […]

It's a great time to be a gamer — I mean, what else is there to do? And with the prospect of a long winter and lonely holiday season ahead of us, here's a list of games on all the major platforms that you can really sink your teeth — and a few dozen hours — into.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re back with not an Equity Shot or Dive of Monday, this is just the regular show! So, we got back to our roots by looking at a huge number of early-stage rounds. And a […]

Latin America’s startup scene has attracted troves of venture investment, lifting highly-valued companies such as Rappi and NuBank into behemoth businesses. Now that the spotlight has arrived, those same startups need more talent than ever before to meet demand. That’s where one seed-stage Buenos Aires startup wants to help. Henry has created an online computer […]

Esports One, a startup bringing the fantasy approach to esports, is announcing that it has raised an additional $4 million in funding. When I first wrote about Esports One in April, co-founder and COO Sharon Winter described it as the first “all-in-one fantasy platform” in the esports world, allowing you to research players, create fantasy […]

I believe building a successful proptech company is less about anticipating economic upswings and markets and more about timing and taking advantage of the right technological trends.

Just a few weeks back, we learned that Apple would be launching an “App Store Small Business Program” that would reduce its fees from 30% to 15% for developers earning less than $1 million per year from the App Store. That program is starting to roll out now, with Apple opening up the enrollment process […]

Fintech startup Stripe has announced an ambitious new product today called Stripe Treasury. The company is partnering with banks to offer a banking-as-a-service API. In other words, Stripe clients will be able to provide bank accounts to their customers — the service is invite-only for now. This is part of a bigger trend called embedded […]

Advancements in the tech and the cyber threat landscape are creating vast job opportunities. The global cybersecurity market is projected to reach £210 billion by 2026. But in the U.K., out of 952,000 working-age (16-64) U.K. military veterans and 15,000 service leavers a year, only 4% of them are working in tech and cyber. This […]

Twitter is shutting down its experimental app twttr, which the company had used publicly prototype new features back in 2019. The app was first introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2019, then launched to testers that March. Its primary focus had been on trying out new designs for threaded conversations, including things like […]

With automation and intent data, brands can more easily connect with leads, prospects, and customers at a personal, intimate level.

Following last month’s news that “Wonder Woman 1984” will be released simultaneously on HBO Max and in U.S. theaters, Warner Bros. and its parent company WarnerMedia just announced that they will follow the same strategy with every theatrical release that they’ve got planned for 2021. That includes movies like “Godzilla vs. Kong,” “Mortal Kombat,” “In […]

Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft and one of the world’s richest men and most prolific philanthropists, has just released a broad new plan on how the U.S. could take the lead in the fight against climate change. “[We] need to revolutionize the world’s physical economy—and that will take, among other things, a dramatic infusion […]

NASA has selected the winning candidates that they’ve decided to tap to collect lunar resources for eventual Earth return, from a number of commercial companies who applied. The four companies all have rides booked on future commercial lunar lander missions, and the agency is using this as a demonstration of what kinds of efficiencies it […]

Thoma Bravo must really like Flexera, an IT asset management company out of Chicago. The private equity firm bought the company for the second time today. Sources told TechCrunch the price was $2.85 billion. Technically, Thoma Bravo is getting a majority stake in the company, buying it from previous owners TA Associates and Ontario Teachers’ […]

Decentralized exchange protocols that allow crypto traders and investors to trade across different blockсhains have been in development for a while. A significant new development now comes with the launch of the ‘Testnet’ from Injective Protocol. Injective has been backed by Binance, one of the biggest centralized exchanges in the Crypto world. Injective Protocol is […]

YouTube today announced it’s launching a new feature that will push commenters to reconsider their hateful and offensive remarks before posting. It will also begin testing a filter that allows creators to avoid having to read some of the hurtful comments on their channel that had been automatically held for review. The new features are […]