Crunch Hype

Google and Walmart have a new challenge ahead of them as they race to expand the reach of their payments apps in India: They won’t be permitted to grow beyond a limit. National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the body that operates the widely popular UPI payments infrastructure, said Thursday evening that it will enforce […]

Almost on command after we asked yesterday if a rash of technology IPOs were about to land, news broke that Airbnb plans to drop its S-1 filing early next week with a December roadshow. The document will be of intense interest for shareholders — as well as public investors who hope to purchase shares in the […]

How-to videos have been some of the most popular content on YouTube over the years, and now, to grow engagement and the pool of users that it appeals to, the upstart video app TikTok is getting in on the action, too. After launching a dedicated “Learn On TikTok” hashtag (#LearnOnTikTok) earlier this summer with a […]

Nvidia is bringing Fortnite back to iPhones and iPads, according to a report from the BBC. The British news service is reporting that Nvidia has developed a version of its GeForce cloud gaming service that runs on Safari. The development means that Fortnite gamers can play the Epic Games title off of servers run by […]

Atlanta-based Kobiton, a mobile testing platform that allows developers and QA teams to test their apps on real devices, both on their own desks and through the company’s cloud-based service, today announced that it has acquired Mobile Labs, another Atlanta-based mobile testing service. To finance the acquisition of its well-funded competitor, Kobiton raised a $14 […]

Arriving seven years after the Xbox One first launched, the new Microsoft Xbox Series X console lands in a different world and a very different Xbox ecosystem. Microsoft is embracing subscription bundling with its Game Pass service and cloud-streaming with xCloud, nevertheless they are still committed to building huge metal boxes with tremendous power designed […]

The UK’s data watchdog is facing a legal challenge after it took the decision to quietly close a complaint against the adtech industry’s high velocity background trading of personal data. The legal challenge was reported earlier by Politico. The original complaint — challenging the adtech industry’s compliance with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — […]

As we’ve seen, some startups are pivoting to re-model themselves for the radically different world of the COVID-19 pandemic. But others literally turned out to have a business model which, although they could never have realized it at the time, might have been (almost) tailored-made for this era. A fascinating example of this is SaaS […]

SpaceX is set to launch the U.S. Space Force’s GPS III Space Vehicle 04 today from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. This launch was all set to take off back at the beginning of October, but was scrubbed in the final seconds. Today’s launch window spans 15 minutes, and opens at 6:24 PM […]

Despite being relatively new to market, this investment category has quickly become one of the most active. It has also become one of the most confusing.

Osome, a Singapore-headquartered business assistant app that digitizes accounting and compliance tasks, has raised $3 million. An extension of Osome’s seed round, the new funding was led by XA Network and AltaIR Capital. The startup currently has about 4,500 SME clients across Singapore, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, founder and chief executive officer Victor […]

Citysocializer, previously a platform for promoting real-world socializing in cities, has relaunched, becoming something akin to a ‘Get Your Guide for virtual events’. Just as other startups have pivoted to ‘lean in’ to current circumstances, this startup has turned its attention to how people can monetize their skills and passions from home doing the COVID-19 […]

The Public Investment Fund, which has this year invested $1.5 billion in Mukesh Ambani’s telecom venture Jio Platforms and more than half a billion dollars in his fiber-optic business, has returned to back yet another empire built by India’s richest man. The sovereign wealth fund is investing $1.3 billion in Reliance Retail for a 2.04% […]

Facebook recently announced that WhatsApp passed the whopping milestone of 100 billion messages sent per day, but not everyone wants those chats to stick around forever. Now, Facebook’s wildly popular messaging app with 2 billion users is adding a feature to give people more control on how their words and pictures live within the app. […]

German fintech startup Vivid Money has raised a $17.6 million Series A funding round (€15 million). Ribbit Capital is leading the investment. Today’s funding round gives Vivid Money a valuation of $117 million (€100 million). Vivid Money is quite a young startup as the company started accepting customers just a few months ago. Built on […]

While short videos are what drive ByteDance’s revenues and give the Chinese startup international recognition, the firm is expanding into numerous new areas like other tech giants to fuel growth. It’s dabbled in enterprise software and online learning, and the news came this week that ByteDance will invest in one of China’s largest e-book readers […]

On the same day that the U.S. officially withdrew from the global pact to reduce emissions that cause climate change, presidential contender Joe Biden committed that he would rejoin the Paris Agreement if elected. In a tweet late Wednesday, Biden wrote, “Today, the Trump Administration officially left the Paris Climate Agreement. And in exactly 77 […]

We dug DJI’s Mavic Mini when the drone arrived last year. As Matt noted in his review, “It packs everything critical to be a quality drone. It has a good camera, good range and a good controller. It holds up well in the wind and is quick enough to be fun.” Today, DJI improves two […]

Whatever the election results, there will still be many ways for people to legally navigate the U.S. immigration process and access the opportunity and security of life here.

This year’s presidential election has already proven to be a considerable test of the U.S. democratic system. It’s also been doing a fine job testing the systems behind leading social networks four years after a rather disinformation-ridden election. Twitter today has proven to be reasonably swift — if not entirely proactive — in its push […]

You may have heard that the United States had a presidential election yesterday, with plenty of implications for the tech world, particularly with social media as one of the battlegrounds in the fight over the results. Meanwhile, major tech-relevant ballot measures, like California’s Proposition 22, also passed. I’ll do my best to cover it all […]

There was some confusion when the Juice Pack Connect was announced last week. I admit I was a bit confused, too. It was, no doubt, the proximity to Apple’s iPhone 12 launch that lead many to (understandably) assume that the new take on Mophie’s case is based on the handset’s new MagSafe tech. While it […]

Merritt Hummer Contributor Share on Twitter Merritt Hummer is a partner at Bain Capital Ventures, where she invests in the fintech, e-commerce and proptech sectors. Startups involved in B2B e-commerce such as Faire and Mirakl have burst out of the gates in 2020. Almost overnight, these startups transformed into consequential platforms, earning billion-dollar valuations along […]

Zynga’s revenue grew to a record $503 million (up 46% year-over-year) in the third quarter, with bookings of $628 million (up 59%), according to its latest earnings report. It also had its best mobile daily active user (31 million) and monthly active user (83 million) numbers in six years. But things weren’t all rosy: The […]

When it comes to financing a startup, the most important — and hardest — check to land is the very first one. The growth of accelerators, rolling funds, community funds, hungry angels and institutional investors has given founders more options than ever before, but for women and people of color, access to funding continues to be […]

TikTok confirmed today it has taken down videos spreading election misinformation that had been posted to two high-profile Republican-supporting accounts, The Republican Hype House and The Republican Boys. The accounts, popular with young, conservative voters, reach more than a million followers combined, and have the potential to reach even more users who would find their […]

A ballot measure passed by 75% of voters in Massachusetts has resolved a thorny question that could have widespread implications for the automotive industry: once a person buys a vehicle, they own all of its data. The measure, listed on the ballot as Question 1, amends and broadens a law that gives consumers in Massachusetts […]

When Trump spoke early Wednesday morning, it became clear which long-dreaded election scenario an anxious nation was on the cusp of. “This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said in remarks delivered from the White House, mixing his campaign with the presidency. “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did […]

Polls closed in the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday without any significant or disruptive cyberattacks, according to cybersecurity officials and experts. Election Day wasn’t without its problems. Some voting machines in Nevada and Texas went down but were quickly back up and running, some voters in Georgia and Ohio had to use paper ballots after […]

The flow of venture capital in 2020 has been surprisingly strong given the year’s general uncertainty, but while investors have showered plenty of dough on growth-stage companies, seed-stage startups are down 32% last quarter compared to the year before. There have been plenty of recent conversations about alternative funding routes for founders, and one of […]

As we’re currently shifting through all of the national and local votes from last night’s elections, here’s a small but important victory for privacy advocates out of Portland, Maine . Per the Bangor Daily News, the city passed “Referendum Question B,” designed to curb government and police use of facial recognition technology. According to the […]

Cannabis legalization was on five state ballots yesterday and ran the table. Voters in Oregon, where cannabis is already legal, also approved a measure addressing street drugs and another that sought to legalize psychedelic mushrooms’ therapeutic use. Of the five states that voted on cannabis, four states approved legal recreational marijuana for adults age 21 […]

Whether space is the final frontier remains to be seen, but it’s certainly the next one as far as we’re concerned. On December 16-17, we’re hosting TC Sessions: Space 2020, a two-day online conference and our first event focused squarely on space technology and the early-stage startups and investors that make it possible. The future […]

During yesterday’s tense voting and this morning, shares of American-listed technology companies are shooting higher. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is up around 3.35% this morning, more than double what the broad S&P 500 index is currently managing. SaaS and cloud stocks kicked off the day up a staggering 4.98%, a sharp rally in the value […]

No matter whom you support for President, it’s a nerve-wracking morning as many states come down to mere tens of thousands of votes. And perhaps no state looms larger than Pennsylvania, where a larger number of votes are yet to be counted. But if you are currently torturing yourself by reading an endless stream of […]

Facebook and Instagram are running notifications in their respective apps informing U.S. users that the winner of the 2020 U.S. presidential election has not yet been determined. In large pop-ups appearing at the top of the Facebook and Instagram News Feeds, the notification states that “Votes Are Being Counted” and directs users to other in-app […]

You might have very good reason to be on a wine kick right now — along with plenty of the rest of the country — so it’s perhaps timely to take a look at the Aveine Smart Aerator, a gadget from a French startup that offers variable, instant aeration and a connected app platform for […]

On the back of sizable gains posted yesterday, tech stocks are once again rising sharply in pre-market trading today. Futures concerning the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index are indicating a 3.4% gain this morning, far above a 1.7% gain that the broader S&P 500 index is currently anticipating. The market capitalization of some of the world’s […]

Shares of American ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft are sharply higher in pre-market trading this morning on the expected passage of Proposition 22, a California ballot measure that allow tech-enabled, on-demand companies to continue classifying gig-workers as independent contractors. Shares of Uber are up 11.88% in pre-market trading, while shares of Lyft — which is […]

Uber, Lyft, Instacart and DoorDash — the major backers of California’s Proposition 22 — are getting their way. The proposition, which will keep gig workers classified as independent contractors, is projected to pass. The Associated Press called the race with 67% of precincts partially reporting. At the time of publication, 58.2% of voters (more than […]

With key wins notched in a few states, Trump didn’t quite declare victory prematurely on social media as platforms had feared — but he did baselessly raise the specter of voter fraud. “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Trump tweeted. “We will never let them do it. Votes cannot […]

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s win in a Georgia House race means that QAnon is headed to Capitol Hill. Greene openly supports the complex, outlandish conspiracy theory, which posits that President Trump is waging a secret war against a shadowy group of elites who engage in child sex trafficking, among other far-fetched claims. The FBI identified QAnon […]

Intel continues to snap up startups to build out its machine learning and AI operations. In the latest move, TechCrunch has learned that the chip giant has acquired Cnvrg.io, an Israeli company that has built and operates a platform for data scientists to build and run machine learning models, which can be used to train […]

It’s no secret that the Trump administration has pursued a variety of avenues to keep foreigners out of the U.S., including through a recent overhaul of the H-1B visa program for high-skilled foreign workers that will require employers to pay H-1B workers higher wages and narrow the types of degrees that would qualify an applicant […]

Even as the country is in the final days of a polarizing election, the cogs of VC never stop turning. On this ever-so-quiet, non-election-news Tuesday, venture firms still managed to file paperwork with the SEC indicating newly raised funds. Precursor Ventures and Insight Partners will join Hustle Fund in closing new capital. The filings are […]

A scourge of robocalls urging Americans to “stay safe and stay home” has gotten the attention of the FBI and the New York attorney general over concerns of voter suppression. The brief message, which doesn’t specifically mention Election Day, has prompted New York Attorney General Letitia James to launch an investigation into the matter. James announced […]

Yes, there’s a high-stakes presidential election underway, but tech news doesn’t stop completely: Chinese regulators pull the brakes on Ant Group’s IPO, Spotify adds standalone streaming support on Apple Watch and PayPal outlines its plans for 2021. This is your Daily Crunch for November 3, 2020. The big story: China postpones Ant Group IPO The […]

Waymo has taken a dual approach to operations on Election Day. In San Francisco, where Waymo has been testing its autonomous vehicles, driving operations have been temporarily suspended Tuesday and Wednesday “out of an abundance of caution.” Its fleet of autonomous vehicles was moved Monday to nearby Mountain View, according to an internal email first […]

Hustle Fund, a pre-seed fund built by former operators and founders, has raised $30 million for a new fund, per SEC filings. Hustle Fund first filed paperwork for this fund, its second to date, in May 2019 with intention to raise $50 million. Its inaugural investment vehicle closed at $11.5 million. Hustle Fund was unable […]

Listen chief, it’s Election Day in the United States. You know that, I know that. Everyone knows that — and in the off-chance anyone wasn’t clued in to the fact, the last few weeks have offered a non-stop barrage of reminders to vote. Today. Tuesday. November 3. 2020. It seems the last one to find […]