Crunch Hype

If you’re a part of the early-stage startup space race, or aspire to such celestial heights, don’t miss out on early-bird savings to TC Sessions: Space 2020 on December 16-17. We’re at T-minus four days and counting — buy your pass before the countdown clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (PT) November 13, and you’ll save $100. […]

With the second season of “His Dark Materials” premiering on HBO on November 16, the network has partnered with creative studio Framestore to create a new iOS and Apple Watch app called His Dark Materials: My Daemon. The free app gives fans of the show (and the Philip Pullman novels the show is based on) […]

Venture capital continues to get a founder makeover. Two years ago, I profiled Spearhead, a new program and fund created by Jeff Fagnan at Accomplice and Naval Ravikant, the co-founder of AngelList, to mentor leading founders into becoming the next-generation of angel and seed investors. The premise is and remains simple: offer founders with great […]

European data protection regulators have inched toward an enforcement decision for a Twitter breach that the company publicly disclosed in 2019, after a majority of EU data supervisors agreed to back a draft settlement submitted earlier by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC). Twitter disclosed the bug in its ‘Protect your tweets’ feature at the start […]

Sight Tech Global goes live the week after Thanksgiving on December 2-3, and now’s the time to pick up a free pass! The agenda for this virtual, global event on AI-related technology and accessibility for people who are blind or visually impaired just keeps getting better. Today we’re delighted to announce two new sessions […]

TikTok’s upward trajectory is expected to continue in 2021, according to a new forecast from mobile data and analytics firm App Annie, which estimates the short-form video app will surpass the 1 billion monthly active user mark next year. The expanded forecast also looked into future trends around mobile ad spending and the growth in […]

Following weeks of rumors surrounding a potential sale, Huawei has reportedly struck a deal to divest itself of its Honor brand. A new report out today from Reuters notes that the embattled hardware maker will sell the budget unit to a consortium of buyers that includes the government of the city of Shenzhen and Digital […]

One of the problems with putting a satellite in orbit is that once you do, it’s pretty much out of your hands. If anything goes wrong, or it runs out of fuel, that’s all she wrote. Fortunately there are companies that aim to change this, and three leaders in the field — Orbit Fab, Astroscale, […]

Isovalent, a startup that aims to bring networking into the cloud-native era, today announced that it has raised a $29 million Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Google. In addition, the company today officially launched its Cilium Enterprise platform (which was in stealth until now) to help enterprises connect, observe and secure their […]

Waze CEO Noam Bardin, who joined the company nearly 12 years ago and led it through its acquisition by Google to become a crowdsourced navigation app with millions of active users, is stepping down early next year. Bardin had planned to announce his departure from Waze last spring, but changed his plans as the COVID-19 […]

Carbon Health has raised a $100 million Series C funding round, led by Dragoneer Investment Group and including participation from prior investors Brookfield Technology Partners, DCVC and Builders VC. This funding will be used to help the SF-based healthcare provider startup to continue to expand its nationwide footprint, including with the opening of 100 pop-up […]

Roblox this morning announced a partnership with Columbia Records that will allow it to bring a virtual concert experience featuring Lil Nas X to its gaming platform. Notably, this will be Roblox’s first-ever virtual concert, and follows similar events that have been held during the pandemic, like the “One World: Together At Home” concert to […]

Explo, a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 class, which is helping customers build customer-facing business intelligence dashboards, announced a $2.3 million seed round today. Investors included Amplo VC, Soma Capital and Y Combinator along with several individual investors. The company originally was looking at a way to simplify getting data ready for models […]

Venture capitalist Soraya Darabi of TMV will join us today to discuss strategies early-stage startup founders can deploy to get their first “yes” from an investor — and which founder mistakes often lead her to say “no.” You’ll need to be an Extra Crunch subscriber to attend, so grab your seat ASAP (we promise, it’s […]

Spotify has come under fire of late over questions around musician compensation, but when it comes to podcasting, it has money to burn. This morning, the streaming service confirmed its acquisition of Megaphone for a reported $235 million. Launched by The Slate Group in February 2015 as Panopoly, it rebranded as Megaphone in 2019. In […]

Remote working has become the norm in many offices around the world this year, as organizations do what they can to help contain the rapid transmission of Covid-19 by reducing in-person interactions between workers. That’s also meant a renewed focus on how companies manage employees who have never worked in the office, and might even […]

While there were risks to gaming, the large and growing market size, resilient economic model and high engagement rates were compelling enough to look past them.

U.S. retailer Walmart and autonomous vehicle company Cruise are pairing up to test grocery delivery in Scottsdale, Arizona. Under the pilot program, customers will be able to place an order from their local Walmart store and have it delivered via one of Cruise’s autonomous, electric Chevy Bolt cars. While the vehicles will operate autonomously, a […]

JumpCloud, the cloud directory service that debuted at TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in 2013, announced a $75 million Series E today. The round was led by BlackRock with participation from existing investor General Atlantic. The company wasn’t willing to discuss the current valuation, but has now raised over $166 million, according to Crunchbase data. Changes in […]

Uber is rolling out a new feature this week that will let users reserve rides up to 30 days in advance and pick their favorite driver for the trip as the ride-hailing company seeks out new ways to attract customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new option called Uber Reserve, which will begin to show up […]

Tailscale has raised a $12 million funding round. Accel is leading the round with Heavybit and Uncork Capital also participating. The company is building a better corporate VPN by leveraging a modern protocol and focusing on ease of implementation. A VPN, or a virtual private network, is an encrypted tunnel between two devices. Many companies […]

The African continent is currently one of the fastest-growing regions when it comes to mobile growth, and financial technology companies that are building services to meet that rapidly-expanding market are getting a lot of attention. In the latest development, Kuda, a startup out of Nigeria that operates a popular mobile-first challenger bank for consumers and […]

Qualcomm Ventures, Qualcomm’s investment arm, today announced four new strategic investments in 5G-related startups. These companies are private mobile network specialist Celona, mobile network automation platform Cellwize, the edge computing platform Azion and Pensando, another edge computing platform that combines its software stack with custom hardware. The overall goal here is obviously to help jumpstart […]

The European Commission has laid out a first set of antitrust charges against Amazon focused on its dual role as a platform for other sellers but also a retailer itself on its own platform — and its cumulative use of third party merchant data to underpin Amazon’s own retail decisions. Competition chief Margrethe Vestager said […]

This morning Hopin, a startup that provides online events software, announced that it has closed a $125 million Series B round of capital. The new funds come mere months after Hopin raised a $40 million Series A this summer. According to Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat, the new capital was raised at a $2.125 billion valuation, […]

Alphabet’s X ‘Moonshot Factory’ subsidiary has a lot of cutting edge projects in development, so it’s always exciting when one of them gets ready for real-world deployment. On Tuesday, X announced that its ‘Project Taara’ high-speed optical wireless broadband endeavor is working with internet provider Econet and its subsidiaries to begin rolling out its tech […]

Bucking the slowdown in most of the power sector caused by responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, renewable energy actually grew in 2020, and will represent about 90% of the total power capacity added for the year, according to the International Energy Agency. A surge in new projects from China and the US led the charge […]

Patreon and Acast are teaming up to make it easier for podcasters to publish episodes that are only available to the patrons financially supporting them on Patreon. Most paywall solutions for podcasts are pretty clunky or limited. That’s why Acast launched technology last year that allows publishers to release paywalled episodes that listeners can access […]

Berlin-based micro-mobility startup Tier has raised a significant Series C round of $250 million. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is leading the round, which proves that the Vision Fund team is still focused on high-risk, high-potential bets. As a reminder, SoftBank has invested in many late-stage funding rounds through its Vision Fund team. Portfolio companies include […]

Debates over anti-competitive practices amongst China’s internet firms resurface every year in the lead up to Singles’ Day, a time when online retailers exhaust their resources and deploy sometimes sneaky tactics to attract vendors and shoppers. This year, just a day before the world’s largest shopping festival was scheduled to fall on November 11, China’s […]

Brynn Putnam has a lot to feel great about. A Harvard grad and former professional ballet dancer who opened the first of what have become three high-intensity fitness studios in New York, she then launched a second business in 2016 when — while pregnant with her son — she was exercising at home and couldn’t […]

Based in Hong Kong, Coherent helps insurance providers go digital. With their services more relevant than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup announced it has raised $14 million in new funding. The Series A round, led by Cathay Innovation with participation from Franklin Templeton, will be used to grow Coherent’s client base in Asia, […]

Bill Zhang lowered himself into lunges on a squishy mat as he explained to me the benefits of the full-body training suit he was wearing. We were in his small, modest office in Xili, a university area in Shenzhen that’s also home to many hardware makers. The connected muscle stimulator attached to the suit, called […]

As Ant Group seizes the world’s attention with its record initial public offering, which was abruptly called off by Beijing, investors and analysts are revisiting the fintech interests of Tencent, Ant’s arch rival in China. It’s somewhat complicated to do this, not least because they are sprawled across a number of Tencent properties and, unlike […]

Elon Musk’s tunneling and transportation startup The Boring Company is eyeing Austin for its next project based on several new job postings. The Boring Company, which last year landed a deal to construct and operate a “people mover” for the Las Vegas Convention Center, tweeted Monday that is was hiring in Austin. Engineering, accountant and […]

Sony has announced that it is entering the drone market with a new brand called Airpeak, though the specifics of the drone itself are left something of a mystery. It plans to launch the project next spring. The bare-bones announcement says only that Sony has been inspired by the “recent proliferation” of drones and the […]

Beyond Meat’s partnership with McDonald’s to develop the McPlant burger wasn’t enough to keep shares from collapsing after the company posted third-quarter earnings that fell far below analysts’ expectations. The big miss sent shares tumbling nearly 29% in after markets closed Monday after reporting it generated $94.4 million in revenues and a loss of 28 […]

When we recorded this Gillmor Gang, it was Day Four post-election, or midweek in counting the late incoming mail and other provisional ballots. We were largely convinced of the Biden victory, but that nagging doubt instilled in us by 2016 still pervaded the Zoom session. Saturday’s street party felt more like it, and the sheer […]

Back before just about every major TV network built a streaming app of their own, watching live TV on your smartphone was tricky. One of the first relatively simple options was the Slingbox. You’d set it up between your cable box and your TV, plug it into your network, and bam: you’re streaming live TV, […]

We review the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the iPhone 12 mini, Zoom settles with the FTC and Pfizer announces promising results for its COVID-19 vaccine trial. This is your Daily Crunch for November 9, 2020. The big story: Reviewing the biggest and smallest new iPhones TechCrunch Editor in Chief Matthew Panzarino tackled both extremes […]

Twitter is working to expand the use of its “misinformation” labels on misleading tweets. The company has developed a new feature, not yet live, that would pop up a “misleading information” label when a user tries to “Like” a tweet that’s been labeled as misinformation. The feature was discovered by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong in […]

Uber shares surged 7.38% to close at $48.18 following news that a vaccine candidate is 90% effective at preventing COVID-19, and could start coming to market in a matter of months. The announcement by drug makers Pfizer and BioNTech sparked widespread optimism and helped boost shares across industries that have been weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, […]

NASA has announced 20 new partnerships with commercial space outfits, among them collaborations with SpaceX, Blue Origin and Rocket Lab. While no money will change hands, NASA will dedicate millions in personnel and other support to these test launches and developing technologies. The partnerships are NASA’s Announcement of Collaboration Opportunity selections for 2020. These agreements […]

Adobe just announced that it is acquiring marketing workflow management startup Workfront for $1.5 billion. Bloomberg first reported the sale earlier today. Workfront was founded back in 2001, making it a bit long in the tooth for a private company that has raised $375 million, according to Crunchbase. (It’s worth noting that $280 million of […]

Xpressbees, an Indian logistics firm that works with several e-commerce firms in the country, said on Monday it has raised $110 million in a new financing round as online shopping booms in the world’s second largest internet market. The Pune-headquartered startup’s Series E financing round was led by private equity firms Investcorp, Norwest Venture Partners […]

Dating app Bumble announced today it’s changing how its “unmatch” feature works in an effort to better prioritize user safety. The change will make it more difficult for a bad actor or harasser to use the app’s unmatch feature in order to avoid having their conversation reported to Bumble’s safety team. Before, when either side […]

Closing the gender gap in VC funding is no simple task, but it’s one that must be undertaken.

Boston Dynamics could be set to change hands once again, according to a new report from Bloomberg that cited “people familiar with the matter.” The deal would make Korean automaker Hyundai the third company in seven years to own the robotics firm, following sales to Google and SoftBank Group. Boston Dynamics is well known inside […]

After tumbling earlier today, Beyond Meat shares are shooting upward on news that the company did indeed collaborate with McDonald’s on its new McPlant vegetarian menu. McDonald’s made waves this morning when it announced its new McPlant, and the company’s statement, which said that the new plant-based patty and chicken substitute formulation was made in-house, […]

The election is over, but not without a hitch or two. Some voters in Georgia and Ohio had to use paper ballots after hand sanitizer leaked into voting machines — an unexpected casualty of the pandemic. And a slew of robocalls across a number of swing states urged voters to “stay safe and stay home,” […]