Crunch Hype

A Y Combinator-backed startup that is helping major companies efficiently listen to how happy — or unhappy — their employees are and resolve their issues on time to retain talent just raised a new financing round from several high-profile executives. InFeedo, a four-year-old people analytics SaaS startup with headquarters in Gurgaon, said on Thursday it […]

When I send an email, it’s special. A crafted, beautiful thing that — who am I kidding, it’s mostly automatic. So why not automate it? OthersideAI is taking this idea (with a $2.6M seed round) beyond the auto-responders and smart replies, using OpenAI’s GPT-3 language generation engine to turn bullet points into full, personalized messages. […]

Selfie filters have improved immensely over the past several years, but companies on the forefront of the tech see plenty of room to grow. The cosmetics world has also seen some rapid change in the past several years as makeup has proven particularly ripe for up-and-coming direct-to-consumer and influencer-endorsed brands to take hold. Plenty of […]

For all the myriad ways Amazon has made shopping more convenient, the last-mile delivery can be an issue. The company’s Key service is an attempt to address those issues, offering a way for packages to get delivered even when residents aren’t home or are otherwise unreachable. Currently the company offers home, car and garage delivery […]

Facebook today announced its new Snapchat-like feature for disappearing messaging, Vanish Mode, is arriving on Messenger and Instagram. The feature, meant for more casual conversations, allows users to set chats to automatically delete after the message is seen and the chat is closed. In Vanish Mode, Messenger and Instagram users can send text chats, emoji, […]

A lot of the focus in online education — and, let’s face it, education overall — has been about professional development for knowledge workers, education for K-12 and how best to deliver cost-effective, engaging higher learning to those in college and beyond. But in what might be a sign of the times, today a startup […]

As subscriptions become an increasingly alluring business model, fintechs will be forced to consider whether or not this proven strategy is worth the risk.

PayPal announced today it’s dropping the waitlist to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrency in the U.S. With the move, all customers in the U.S. will be able to purchase cryptocurrency directly from within their PayPal accounts. U.S. customers will also be alerted to the new feature through both an email and a push notification in […]

Listen up, space fans and aficionados. You have just 48 hours left to secure an early-bird ticket to TC Sessions: Space 2020, a two-day virtual conference dedicated to early-stage space startups and the community that supports them. Join the brilliant minds, leading founders, shrewd investors and boundary-pushing engineers determined to shape the future of space […]

The day has finally arrived. The latest version of macOS is here, after a seemingly endless wait. That wasn’t just your imagination, either. Sure time is basically meaningless now, but this one did take a while to arrive, with nearly five months between its announcement at WWDC and today’s public release. There are, no doubt, […]

In 2009, Udemy co-founder Gagan Biyani tried to convince people to learn online through live classes. But what he discovered instead was that everyone wanted an online repository of content that allowed them to learn at their own pace, whenever and wherever. So, he canned his idea and Udemy created what is now called a […]

Guido van Rossum, the creator of the Python programming language, today announced that he has unretired and joined Microsoft’s Developer Division. Van Rossum, who was last employed by Dropbox, retired last October after six and a half years at the company. Clearly, that retirement wasn’t meant to last. At Microsoft, van Rossum says, he’ll work […]

A coalition of 135 startups and tech companies with services in verticals including travel, accommodation and jobs have written to the European Commission to urge antitrust action against Google — warning that swift enforcement is needed or some of their businesses may not survive. They also argue the Commission needs to act now or it […]

Earlier this year, Mirantis, the company that now owns Docker’s enterprise business, acquired Lens, a desktop application that provides developers with something akin to an IDE for managing their Kubernetes clusters. At the time, Mirantis CEO Adrian Ionel told me that the company wants to offer enterprises the tools to quickly build modern applications. Today, […]

Video communication startup Livestorm announced today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Gilles Bertaux told me that the company started out with a focus on webinars before launching a video meeting product as well (which we used for our interview). “The way we think about it is, webinars […]

The market for space observation is one of the few commercialized segments of the nascent industry and could be worth upwards of $8 billion by the end of the decade, according to some estimates. At TC Sessions: Space this December 16 & 17, we’ll be discussing what’s ahead for the market with some of the […]

Menlo Security, a malware and phishing prevention startup, announced a $100 million Series E today on an $800 million valuation. The round was led by Vista Equity Partners with help from Neuberger Berman, General Catalyst, JP Morgan and other unnamed existing investors. The company has now raised approximately $250 million. CEO and co-founder Amir Ben-Efraim […]

Amazon on Thursday announced a lawsuit against over a dozen bad actors, including online influencers and other businesses, who attempted to evade Amazon’s anti-counterfeiting measures by promoting luxury counterfeit products on social media sites, like TikTok and Instagram, as well as on personal websites, then using Amazon seller accounts to fulfill those orders. The suit […]

It’s hard to think back to the Vision Fund era today, given the oddities that 2020 has brought. But SoftBank’s gravity-bending investment vehicle only stopped investing last September, ending its disbursement of huge blocks of cash from a total committed capital pool worth nearly $99 billion. The Vision Fund was a wrecking ball, smashing into […]

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Dublin will capture how the city is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. (Please note, if you have filled the survey out already, there […]

You might not have heard of Sergey Toshin, but you should know his work. Toshin is a 24-year-old security researcher in Moscow who focuses largely on mobile app security. With his knowledge of what different mobile security flaws looked like, Toshin built a custom Android mobile app vulnerability scanner to quickly and automatically find vulnerabilities […]

Statespace, the training platform for gamers, has today announced the close of a $29 million Series B financing led by Khosla Ventures. This comes just six months after the announcement of a $15 million Series A funding, also led by Khosla. Founder and CEO Wayne Mackey described the funding as pre-emptive as the company experiences […]

Ford revealed Thursday the E-Transit, a configurable all-electric cargo van that it’s betting will be the new go-to workhorse for commercial customers. The E-Transit is just one piece of the company’s $11.5 billion investment in electrification. But it could be its most important one. Ford has largely focused its electrification efforts on the consumer market, […]

Solo.io, a Cambridge, MA service mesh startup, announced some big changes to its approach today with a full-stack platform of services aimed squarely at the enterprise. The culmination of this will be Gloo Mesh Enterprise, a new product that will be available in Beta by the end of the year. Service meshes are part of […]

The Los Angeles and New York-based venture firm M13 has managed to nab former Techstars LA managing director, Anna Barber, as its newest partner and the head of its internal venture studio, Launchpad. Designed to be a collaborative startup company incubator alongside corporate partners, Launchpad focuses on developing new consumer tech businesses focused on M13’s […]

Austria’s Supreme Court has dismissed Facebook’s appeal in a long running speech takedown case — ruling it must remove references to defamatory comments made about a local politician worldwide for as long as the injunction lasts. The Austrian Supreme Court has now delivered its final judgment in the #Glawischnig-Piesczek case. #Facebook has to remove the […]

There’s no shortage of streaming music options in the world, but the fine folks at Sonos decided we can all do with one more. Following the April launch of the ad-supported Sonos Radio, the company just announced a $7.99 a month premium tier called Sonos Radio HD. As its name implies, this is a streaming […]

mmhmm, the presentation software developed by Evernote founder Phil Libin, is today coming out of beta. The mmhmm app is now officially available for Mac. The software allows folks to spice up their video calls with the ability to add different backgrounds, play videos, add images, and use filters, among other cool effects. The app […]

It’s hard to shake the sense that the smart speaker market would look considerably different had the HomePod Mini arrived several years back. It’s not so much that the device is transformative on the face of it, but it’s impossible to deny that it marks a dramatically different approach to the category than the one […]

Pipedrive, the sales CRM tool for small and medium-sized businesses, is the latest European company to reach unicorn status. Founded in Estonia and now headquartered in New York, the company has taken a majority investment from U.S. enterprise software focused private equity firm Vista Equity Partners. This means that Vista has effectively acquired Pipedrive, in […]

Instagram is putting its TikTok competitor Reels front-and-center in a redesigned version of its app by giving it the center position on its new navigation bar. The update, arriving today, also replaces the Activity tab (heart icon) with the Shop tab, following a test that had changed this aspect of the app’s home screen earlier […]

Spain’s on-demand delivery app, Glovo, is gearing up to be able to deliver a much wider range of products within a 30-minute timeframe by rolling out a b2b logistics play — drawing on a network of city centre warehouses that it plans to massively expand over the next twelve months. It’s just announced the launch […]

Railsbank, the London-headquartered Banking-as-a-Service platform, has raised $37 million in new growth funding. Leading the round is MiddleGame Ventures and Ventura Capital, which are both existing investors in Railsbank . Also participating is Anthos Capital, Global Brain, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Moneta VC, Mitsui Fudosan and Firestartr. Nigel Verdon, co-founder and CEO of Railsbank, tells me […]

PUBG Mobile will make its return to India in a new avatar, parent company PUBG Corporation said on Thursday. TechCrunch reported last week that the South Korean gaming firm was plotting its return to the world’s second largest internet market two months after its marquee title was banned by the country. The new game, called […]

China’s e-commerce behemoths Alibaba and JD.com again claimed to have set records during the world’s largest shopping event, Singles’ Day. The figures can often be gamed to paint a rosy picture of perpetual growth, journalists and analysts have long observed, so they are limited metrics for measuring the firms’ performance or Chinese consumers’ purchasing power […]

President-elect Joseph Biden has plucked Ron Klain, a longtime colleague and confidant and the current executive vice president of the venture capital firm Revolution, as his White House chief of staff, reports The New York Times. Klain was Biden’s chief of staff for two years during the Obama administration and left his post as chief of […]

Rivian is opening up pre-orders for three editions of its upcoming electric pickup truck and SUV that start as low as $67,500 and with a battery range of more than 300 miles. However, more options will follow, including a base version that will have a smaller range of at least 250 miles and a price […]

New research has found that San Francisco and London have become two of the world’s leading hubs for VC investment into tech solutions that address one or more of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), more commonly referred to as “Impact Tech”. They are followed by Paris, Berlin, Stockholm, Shanghai and Beijing. Tech solutions […]

Electric automaker Rivian will makes its hands-free driver assistance system standard in every vehicle it builds, including its first two vehicles — the RT1 pickup truck and R1S SUV — that are coming to market in 2021. Details about the system, which is branded as Driver+, was just one of numerous new bits of information […]

Google changes its storage policy, Facebook extends its political ad ban and Ring doorbells are recalled. This is your Daily Crunch for November 11, 2020. The big story: Google Photos will end free, unlimited storage Google is changing its storage policies for free accounts in a way that could have a big impact on anyone […]

Google Music is dead, and with it one of the few remaining connections I have to the company that doesn’t feel like a gun to my head. The service, now merged haphazardly with YouTube Music, recalled the early days of Google, when they sometimes just made cool internet things. It made it nearly a decade, […]

Twitter’s own version of Stories, which it calls “Fleets,” have arrived in Japan. The new feature allows users to post ephemeral content that automatically disappears after 24 hours. Though Fleets previously launched in Brazil, India, Italy and South Korea, Japan is notably Twitter’s second largest market, with some estimated 51.9 million users. It’s also second […]

Amazon-owned Ring devices have long been under scrutiny of privacy advocates. Now the brand is dealing with another issue entirely.

The Extra Crunch Live series rolls along with a big new installment next week as Jordan Crook and Alex Wilhelm will welcome Bessemer Venture Partners‘ Byron Deeter to the conversation. Deeter is an obvious addition to the collection of investors, founders and tech luminaries that TechCrunch has interviewed so far in the Live series — […]

Snapchat is the quintessential consumer app: With an array of fun filters, it encourages people to send fun, disappearing messages to friends and has a large base of younger users. But could parent company Snap be eyeing up ways of leveraging its traction in the consumer world — with the app now seeing 249 million […]

Ajay Vashee — who spent the last eight years at Dropbox, rising from the head of finance to CFO over his tenure and helping to take the company public in 2018 — is joining the Silicon Valley venture firm IVP in January. It’s the realization of plans established long ago by Vashee, who fell in […]

Niantic is continuing to bet heavily on the idea that it knows where consumer computing is headed, namely toward augmented reality. The game development startup behind Pokémon GO has some good company with companies like Apple, Facebook and Snap making similar bets, but stakes are high for the studio that hopes it can build an […]

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 […]

Come June 1, 2021, Google will change its storage policies for free accounts — and not for the better. Basically, if you’re on a free account and a semi-regular Google Photos user, get ready to pay up next year and subscribe to Google One. Currently, every free Google account comes with 15 GB of online […]

The election is settled, but the nation is far from it. Before Election Day in the U.S., Facebook hit pause on all political and social issue ads. At the time, the company made it clear that the precautionary measure designed to turn off one potential faucet of misinformation would be temporary, but it couldn’t say […]