Crunch Hype

Penguin Business describes Starling Bank founder Anne Boden’s “Banking On It” as the “first-hand account of one woman’s quest to rebuild Britain’s broken banking system.” Written with the help of a ghost writer, Boden relates how she came up with the idea to found a challenger bank and the many obstacles she faced along the […]

UPI, a four-year-old payments infrastructure built by India’s largest banks, surpassed 2 billion transactions last month, exactly a year after hitting the 1 billion monthly transactions milestone. Driving the transactions for UPI — which has become the most popular digital payments method in India thanks to its open architecture that allows interoperability among all participating […]

This is the Atari 400 Raspberry Pi 400. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is launching a new product today — and it’s a brand new device. As you can see on the photo, the Raspberry Pi 400 is a computer integrated in a compact keyboard that costs $70. And it is the easiest way to get […]

Started as a side project by its founders, Warren is now helping regional cloud infrastructure service providers compete against Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Google and other tech giants. Based in Tallinn, Estonia, Warren’s self-service distributed cloud platform is gaining traction in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s fastest-growing cloud service markets, and Europe. It recently closed […]

At its five-year anniversary gala graced by celebrities, esports stars and orchestras, Tencent’s mobile game Honor of Kings said it has crossed 100 million daily active users. The title has not only broken user records but generated other unprecedented accomplishments along the way. For one, it consistently ranks among the top-grossing mobile games worldwide, jostling […]

Thousand Fell, the environmentally conscious, direct-to-consumer shoe retailer which launched last November, has revealed the details of the recycling program that’s a core component of its pitch to consumers. The company, which has now sold enough shoes to start seeing its early buyers begin recycling them after ten months of ownership, expects to recycle roughly […]

Designing higher end furniture for Mexico’s rising middle and upper-middle class consumers has netted the Mexico City-based GAIA $15 million in a new round of funding. The bridge round will take the company through to a much larger capital raise planned for 2021 as the company capitalizes on the growth of e-commerce in Mexico. A […]

A shared user account used by WeWork employees to access printer settings and print jobs had an incredibly simple password — so simple that a customer guessed it. Jake Elsley, who works at a WeWork in London, said he found the user account after a WeWork employee at his location mistakenly left the account logged […]

While we are encouraged by the progress the industry has made to return to “normal,” the market for Series A fintech remains challenging for the vast majority of startup founders.

“On the Rocks,” a new film on Apple TV+, focuses on a troubled marriage between Laura (a writer played by Rashida Jones) and Dean (a startup executive played by Marlon Wayans). When Laura begins to suspect Dean of cheating on her, she turns to her father Felix (Bill Murray) for help. The film reunites Murray […]

With less than one week left until the election, DoorDash made a late contribution of $3.75 million to try to ensure California’s gig worker ballot measure Prop 22 passes. Meanwhile, Coinbase is looking for a head of diversity and inclusion and Uber was hit with claims of reverse racism. All that and more in this […]

One way to consider how far public valuations rose for tech startups, especially those with a software core in 2020, is to ask yourself how often you heard about a down IPO this year.

This week, GV General Partner (and TechCrunch alum) MG Siegler joined us on Extra Crunch Live for a far-ranging chat about what it takes to foster a good relationship between investor and startup, how portfolio management and investing has changed as the COVID-19 crisis drags on, and what Siegler expects will and won’t stick around […]

Let's think beyond Monday, for a minute, to the trends playing out in technology this coming decade. While humanity's problems have never been greater, our tools have never been better.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the TechCrunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are now spending three hours and 40 minutes per day […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As promised, the whole gang is back, this time to chew on the biggest, baddest, worstest, and most troubling earnings reports from the current cycle. This week saw Amazon and Alphabet and Microsoft and Apple […]

For years — decades, even — there was little question about whether you could become a venture capitalist if you weren’t comfortable financially. You couldn’t. The people and institutions that invest in venture funds want to know that fund managers have their own “skin in the game,” so they’ve long required a sizable check from […]

TikTok has won another battle in its fight against the Trump administration’s ban of its video-sharing app in the U.S. — or, more accurately in this case, the TikTok community won a battle. On Friday, a federal judge in Pennsylvania issued an injunction that blocked the restrictions that would have otherwise blocked TikTok from operating […]

Asymptomatic spread of COVID-19 is a huge contributor to the pandemic, but of course if there are no symptoms, how can anyone tell they should isolate or get a test? MIT research has found that hidden in the sound of coughs is a pattern that subtly, but reliably, marks a person as likely to be […]

Are your AirPods Pro earbuds making weird noises? You’re not imagining it — and you’re not the only one. Just a few months after Apple started shipping AirPods Pro, some users started noticing that one or both of their earbuds were rattling or crackling. The noises would reportedly get worse whenever the user moved, and […]

Under Armour gives up on one of its big acquisitions, Uber Eats faces complaints over its free delivery policy for Black restaurants and Facebook takes another step to limit QAnon-related content. This is your Daily Crunch for October 30, 2020. The big story: Under Armour is selling MyFitnessPal Five years after Under Armour acquired MyFitnessPal […]

Apple has packed an interesting new accessibility feature into the latest beta of iOS: a system that detects the presence of and distance to people in the view of the iPhone’s camera, so blind users can social distance effectively, among many other things. The feature emerged from Apple’s ARKit, for which the company developed “people […]

“5G is a once-in-a-decade kind of opportunity,” Tim Cook told the media during the Q&A portion of Apple’s Q3 earnings call. “And we could not be more excited to hit the market exactly when we did.” The truth of the matter is its timing was a mixed bag. Apple was, by some accounts, late to […]

Google has dropped details of a previously undisclosed vulnerability in Windows, which it says hackers are actively exploiting. As a result, Google gave Microsoft just a week to fix the vulnerability. That deadline came and went, and Google published details of the vulnerability this afternoon. The vulnerability has no name but is labeled CVE-2020-17087, and […]

With just days to go before the U.S. election, Facebook quietly suspended one of its most worrisome features. During Wednesday’s Senate hearing, Senator Ed Markey asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about reports that his company has long known its group recommendations push people toward more extreme content. Zuckerberg responded that the company had actually disabled […]

Proposed changes to the H-1B lottery are expected to be published in the Federal Register next week and DHS will accept comments from the public on this proposal for 30 days after that.

The world of enterprise software and cybersecurity has taken multiple body blows since COVID-19 demolished the in-person office, flinging employees across the world and forcing companies to adapt to an all-remote productivity model. The shift has required companies to rethink not only collaboration software, but also the infrastructure that powers it and the best way […]

New York City, one of the most coveted shared micromobility markets in the industry, has released its request for interest in its electric scooter pilot, officially kicking off what promises to be a competitive battle among companies vying for a chance to operate their businesses in the city. The city also released a request for […]

While the launch of a $50 million venture capital fund by the shipping, logistics, and truck rental company Ryder System may have seemed like an odd strategic move, it’s actually the culmination of roughly three years of investment activity from the Florida-based company. Ryder’s push to create its own venture fund is actually part of […]

Nestlé USA just announced that it has acquired Freshly for $1.5 billion — $950 million plus potential earnouts of up to $550 million based on future growth. Founded in 2015, Freshly is a New York City-based startup that offers healthy meals delivered to your home in weekly orders, which can then be prepared in a […]

Major Internet platforms will be required to open up their algorithms to regulatory oversight under proposals European lawmakers are set to introduce next month. In a speech today Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager suggested algorithmic accountability will be a key plank of the forthcoming legislative digital package — with draft rules incoming that will require platforms […]

Facebook today confirmed that it will be limiting the distribution of the hashtag “save our children.” Over the past several months, the phrase — and ones like it — have become associated with QAnon. These terms have served to provide a kind of innocuous cover for the popular online conspiracy theory. A spokesperson for the […]

In 2015, then-Twitter product manager Terri Burns penned a piece about staying optimistic despite the sexism and racism that exists expansively within tech. “America has broke my heart countless times, but I believe that technology can be a tool to mend some of the woes of the world and produce tools to better humanity,” she […]

It wasn’t the lingering exhaustion that made Christine Huang, a New York public school teacher, leave the profession. Or the low pay. Or the fact that she rarely had time to spend with her kids after the school day due to workload demands. Instead, Huang left teaching after seven years because of how New York […]

VC firm e.ventures is expanding its footprint in Europe with a new office in Paris, as well as a new Paris-based partner. Jonathan Userovici, who previously worked for Idinvest Partners, is joining e.ventures as partner and head of the Paris office. Originally founded in the U.S. 20 years ago, e.ventures has been expanding to new […]

Daimler’s trucks division has invested in lidar developer Luminar as part of a broader partnership to produce autonomous trucks capable of navigating highways without a human driver behind the wheel. The deal, which comes just days after Daimler and Waymo announced plans to work together to build an autonomous version of the Freightliner Cascadia truck, […]

Uber says it has received more than 8,500 demands for arbitration as a result of it ditching delivery fees for some Black-owned restaurants via Uber Eats. Uber Eats made this change in June, following racial justice protests around the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man. Uber Eats said it wanted to make […]

What do you call the grey area between a Series A and a Series B? In 2020, when the money is taken on opportunistically, you call it a Series A-1 extension, according to Teampay. Even if the new capital was raised at a new, higher valuation. At least that’s what Teampay CEO Andrew Hoag has […]

U.K.-based Fertifa has bagged a £1 million (~$1.3 million) seed to plug into a fertility-focused workplace benefits platform. Passion Capital is investing in the round, along with some unnamed strategic angel investors. The August 2019-founded startup sells bespoke reproductive health and fertility packages to U.K. employers to offer as workplace benefits to their staff — […]

Reliance Jio Platforms, the telecom venture run by India’s richest man (Mukesh Ambani), had 405.6 million subscribers in the quarter that ended in September, becoming the first operator outside of China to cross 400 million subscribers in a single-country market. The Facebook and Google-backed telecom operator said its finances have improved, too, despite the pandemic. […]

If the projections are to be believed, the amount of money swirling around the space industry is poised to grow considerably over the next decade. Consider that the aviation giant Boeing estimates that the aerospace market will reach $3 trillion in market size between now and 2029. It’s most certainly in Boeing’s best interests to […]

The cloud infrastructure market kept growing at a brisk pace last quarter, as the pandemic continued to push more companies to the cloud with offices shut down in much of the world. This week the big three — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — all reported their numbers and, as expected, the news was good, with […]

Coronavirus cases in the United States are reaching new peaks. E-commerce is continuing to boom. And b8ta, a San Francisco startup that is betting on the future of physical retailers, is doubling down on its in-person footprint. B8ta offers shelf space to unique digital products, such as electric skateboards or a coffee alarm clock, on […]

Yesterday’s earnings deluge made plain that tech shares are not rocketing higher as 2020 comes to a close. Indeed, in pre-market trading this morning, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and Amazon are all down. Alphabet is the only member of the Big Five that is worth more today than yesterday. Strong advertising and cloud results helped the […]

Mobile news organization NowThis is announcing a bit of counter-programming for next week’s presidential election — it’s partnering with meditation app Calm to create a livestream for anyone who needs relief from stress of Election Day news. Not that NowThis is exactly avoiding that news, but this livestream (combining breathing exercises and other meditative activities […]

China was the first major global smartphone markets to rebound from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Stringent lockdown measures were able to help the country recover from the virus relatively quickly during the first wave, as sales started to return well ahead of other areas. In Q3, however, things have taken begun to […]

Here’s an example of ad targeting that’s actually good for public health: In a campaign encouraging people to wear masks, the Illinois state government has been focusing its digital ad dollars on the counties with the highest COVID risk. To achieve this, the government’s been working with Civis Analytics, the data science company founded by […]

The UK’s ICO has reduced the size of a data breach penalty for hotel business Marriott — dropping it to £14.4 million (~$23.8M) in a final penalty notice down from the £99M ($123M) figure that the watchdog initially said it would levy in July 2019. The fine relates to a data breach suffered by the […]

Global fitness giant Under Armour announced this morning that it will be selling MyFitnessPal to investment firm Francisco Partners for $345 million, five and a half years after acquiring it for $475 million. The company also announced that it will be winding down the Endomondo platform which it also acquired at the same time for […]

AOL founder Steve Case was there in Dulles, Virginia, just outside of Washington, D.C., when in 1996 the Communications Decency Act was passed as part of a major overhaul of U.S. telecommunications laws that President Bill Clinton signed into law. Soon after, in its first test, a provision of that act which states that, “[n]o […]