Crunch Hype

We’ve seen our fair share of business intelligence (BI) platforms that aim to make data analysis accessible to everybody in a company. Most of them are still fairly complicated, no matter what their marketing copy says. MachEye, which is launching its AI-powered BI platform today, is offering a new twist on this genre. In addition […]

Microsoft says hackers backed by the Iranian government targeted over 100 high-profile potential attendees of two international security and policy conferences. The group, known as Phosphorus (or APT35), sent spoofed emails masquerading as organizers of the Munich Security Conference, one of the main global security and policy conferences attended by heads of state, and the Think […]

Amazon is the biggest online retailer in Europe, and today it took the next step in making that effort more localized. The company has launched a dedicated portal for Sweden at Amazon.se — giving Swedish shoppers, third-party merchants, and itself, a local URL — and a local logistics system, and a local marketing push — […]

Streetbees started out as an app for consumers to snap pictures of supermarket shelf layouts and get paid. Consumer brands wanted to know if the supermarkets really had put them at eye level or not. Quickly, the startup realized it could interrogate consumers about how they felt about the brands themselves, turning their app into a […]

Nordic digital therapeutics company, Sidekick Health, has closed a $20 million Series A led by pan-European VC Wellington Partners and healthcare focused VC Asabys Partners. Existing investors, Novator and Frumtak Ventures, also participated in the oversubscribed round. The 2014-founded startup has built a gamified digital care platform that targets chronic and lifestyle disease management via […]

Harley-Davidson has spun out a new business dedicated to electric bicycles and plans to bring its first line of products to market in spring 2021. The new business called Serial 1 Cycle Company started as a project within the motorcycle manufacturer’s product development center. The name comes from “Serial Number One,” the nickname for Harley-Davidson’s oldest […]

The CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google will appear before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday in big tech’s latest showdown with Congress. The Senate hearing will have a narrower, more policy-centric scope than other recent high profile tech hearings, focusing specifically on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. That short law might sound […]

Amid a pandemic that has closed down fitness centers worldwide, a spate of companies has muscled their way into the booming at-home fitness market. In just the last two weeks, three-year-old Future, which promises at-home customers access to elite training, closed on $24 million in Series B funding; and Playbook, a nearly five-year-old fitness platform […]

President Trump’s campaign website was briefly and partially hacked Tuesday afternoon as unknown adversaries took over parts of the page, replacing them with what appeared to be a scam to collect cryptocurrency. There is no indication, despite the hackers’ claims, that “full access to trump and relatives” was achieved or “most internal and secret conversations […]

Motional, the Hyundai-Aptiv joint venture, and on-demand shuttle startup Via plan to launch a shared robotaxi service for the public in a U.S. city in the first half of 2021. The companies said the aim is to develop a “blueprint” for on-demand shared robotaxis and learn how these driverless vehicles can be integrated into mass transit. […]

Zoom adds a much-requested feature (but with a catch), TikTok partners with Shopify and Jack Dorsey lays out his argument for tomorrow’s Senate hearing. This is your Daily Crunch for October 27, 2020. The big story: Zoom adds end-to-end encryption to free calls Zoom was criticized earlier this year for saying it would only offer […]

Here’s a clever addition for Mophie, one of the longstanding battery case makers, which is now a part of the same smartphone accessory conglomerate as Zagg, Braven, iFrogz and InvisibleShield. The Juice Pack Connect is a modular take on the category, with a battery pack that slides on and off. For $80 you get a […]

Having a substantial part of our fellow citizens outside the digital environment is a recipe for continued racial injustice, social conflict, economic deprivation and political division.

Google search engine rivals have dialled up pressure on the European Commission over the tech giant’s ‘pay-to-play’ choice screen for Android users in Europe — arguing the Google-devised auction has failed to remedy antitrust issues identified by the European Commission more than two years ago. The joint letter to the Commission, which has been signed […]

SpaceX staff and members of the media have been inundated this morning with emails ostensibly from concerned Armenians around the world, asking the company to cancel a launch contract with the Turkish government. The concerns are valid — and the mass-email method surprisingly effective. In the form email, received by TechCrunch staff hundreds of times […]

TC Sessions: Space 2020, our first space technology event, launches December 16-17, and you won’t want to miss our virtual conference focused on this fast-emerging startup category. You’ll hear from the space industry’s top movers, shakers and decision makers, including Space Command’s General John W. Raymond, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and Tess Hatch of Bessemer […]

T-Mobile is launching new skinny bundles of live TV and streaming services to compete with expensive cable subscriptions. The carrier has already been moving into the TV market with the acquisition of Layer3 and the subsequent launch of TVision Home last year. However, that was closer to traditional cable, with a price tag starting at […]

Today after the bell, Microsoft reported its calendar Q3 2020 earnings, the period of that time corresponds to its Q1 fiscal 2021 period. In the three months ending September 30, Microsoft had revenues of $37.2 billion and per-share profit of $1.82. Analysts had anticipated the company to report $1.54 in earnings per share, generated from […]

Spurred on by the seemingly endless COVID-19 pandemic — and no doubt inspired by similar moves from companies like Twitter — Reddit today announced plans to offer its staff the opportunity to work remotely, going forward. The company announced the move in a blog post today, noting some practical exceptions to the rule, including those […]

Three of tech’s most prominent CEOs tomorrow will face the Senate Commerce Committee during a virtual hearing tomorrow and their opening statements are beginning to trickle out. The hearing, scheduled for 10 AM ET Wednesday, will see Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet in the hot seat for what’s sure […]

Instagram is adapting to the way creators have been using its service during the coronavirus pandemic. With individuals and businesses now limited from hosting in-person events — like concerts, classes, meetups, and more — users have turned to Instagram to live stream instead. Today, the company says it’s significantly expanding the time limit for these […]

Seasonality is critical for the media. End-of-year wrap-ups, best books for the summer, things to do this weekend — they’re all methods to note not only the passage of time, but also to begin to set the tone for what is about to come. Everyone covered the end of the 2010s with aplomb, a decade […]

I wrote a call to action for the tech community to dive deeper into the future of innovation this coming decade. Where are some of the hot spots going to come from though? Below, I have assembled a very loose set of five clusters broadly categorized into “wellness,” “climate,” “data society,” “creativity,” and “fundamentals” that […]

Diversity and inclusion are slowly, slowly moving away from being an afterthought (or worse, a no-thought) in the tech world. And to underscore the new attention the area is getting — in every aspect of the concept — today a startup that’s building tools to help designers and developers make their end products more accessible […]

Wyze first made a name for itself when it launched its $20 indoor security camera a few years ago. Since then, the company branched out into other smart home products, ranging from doorbells to scales. Today, it’s going back to its origins with the launch of the Wyze Cam V3, the third generation of its […]

Biotech can often, and sometimes literally, fly over our heads. However, the pandemic has shown an increased need for investment and focus on solutions that work on human and planetary health. For IndieBio, a science and biotech accelerator run by VC firm SOSV, this unprecedented year offered high stakes and new challenges. Today and tomorrow, […]

Ubisoft originally announced its subscription service back in June. Today, the company is rebranding the service from UPlay+ to Ubisoft+. The service is also on its way to Amazon’s Luna and Google’s Stadia. Ubisoft is betting on a multi-platform subscription, which means that you’ll be able to subscribe once and play Ubisoft+ games on PC, […]

After spending a few hours with the PlayStation 5 and its completely redesigned DualSense controller, I can say with confidence that the new haptics and audio features certainly work — and could become integral to the gaming experience. But only if — and it’s a big if — developers truly embrace the tech. The DualSense […]

SpaceX has debuted an official app for its Starlink satellite broadband internet service, for both iOS and Android devices. The Starlink app allows users to manage their connection – but to take part you’ll have to be part of the official beta program, and the initial public rollout of that is only just about to […]

Netflix announced this morning that it’s partnering with Ubisoft to adapt the game publisher’s “Assassin’s Creed” franchise into a live action series. The franchise jumps around in history, telling the story of a secret society of assassins with “genetic memory” and their centuries-long battle the knights templar. It has sold 155 million games worldwide and […]

Facetune maker Lightricks is out today with a new app, Filtertune, designed to create a community around custom photo filters. With the app, creators can make their own personalized preset photos filters, then share them across social media as photos that have a special QR code attached. When others see a filter they like, they […]

I get to play with a lot of new hardware from startups and it runs the gamut from super polished to barely working, neither of which is a value judgement! But every once in a while I get to mess with a new piece of kit that is just so fully realized that I am […]

Last fall, social analytics startup SocialRank sold its product and business to Trufan, allowing the team to focus on something new: a professional social network. Today, they’re officially unveiling Upstream to the public. To be clear, CEO Alex Taub told me that he’s not trying to replace LinkedIn — he acknowledged that thanks to network effects,”If you […]

Panoply, a platform that makes it easier for businesses to set up a data warehouse and analyze that data with standard SQL queries, today announced that it has raised an additional $10 million in funding from Ibex Investors and C5 Capital. This brings the total funding in the San Francisco- and Tel Aviv-based company to […]

Anima, the company that turns design prototypes into code, has today announced the launch of Anima 4.0, which will allow designers to create prototypes in Figma that are translated into components in React with the click of a button. The company was founded by Or Arbel (cofounder of Yo!), Avishay Cohen (who led R&D at […]

If analysts from BloombergNEF are right, then all of the world’s most greenhouse gas polluting days are behind it, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. A sharp drop in energy demand caused by the global response to the coronavirus pandemic will remove 2.5 years of energy sector emissions between now and 2050, according to the latest […]

SpaceX and orbital object tracking startup LeoLabs have announced a new commercial partnership that will see LeoLab track SpaceX’s Starlink satellites during their initial deployment and orbital travel. The arrangement means that LeoLabs will immediately start tracking new Starlink satellites once they’re released in space following a launch, giving SpaceX immediate info in terms of […]

If anyone knows early-stage investing and startups, it’s M.G. Siegler . As a general partner at GV, he’s personally invested in his fair share of rocket ship companies early on in their lifecycles, including Anchor, Slack, Medium and Stripe. He’s also a TechCrunch alum and a former startup operator himself as a web dev. We’re […]

What’s most remarkable about the push for 5G is how quickly the prices came down on handsets sporting the next-gen wireless technology. The push toward affordable 5G devices is clearly as much an indicator as the current state of the smartphone space as anything — people just aren’t upgrading devices as quickly as the used […]

A few weeks back, The Exchange dug through a number of Techstars demo days and parsed a few dozen startups to find a few favorites. Today, we’re back for more of the same, albeit with a different set of accelerators’ results to examine. As a reminder, the last time we dug through the various cohorts, […]

Google today announced several updates related to how it’s helping direct people to the polls, provide election results, and help people access real-time election news across its platforms and services, like Search, Assistant and YouTube. The company said it will again partner with the Associated Press (AP) to deliver authoritative information on election results on […]

Lightyear, a New York City startup that wants to make it easier for large companies to procure networking infrastructure like internet and SD-WAN, announced a $3.7 million seed round today. While it was at it, the company announced that it was emerging from stealth and offering its solution in public beta. Amplo led the round […]

Vimeo Record is a new product that allows teams to communicate through video messages. Vimeo CEO Anjali Sud said that while the pandemic has prompted many offices to embrace digital communication tools like Zoom, “There’s a whole host of work communication that needs asynchronous messaging.” Besides, sometimes a video can get your message across more […]

Deep tech. Hard tech. Or, as The Engine dubs it, Tough Tech. Venture investing today is essentially identical to what happens on Wall Street, focused on data rooms, spreadsheets, SaaS churn models and cohort analysis. Yet, the history of venture capital firms is heavily interwoven with universities and their research. Some of the most famous […]

Milan-headquartered scale-up Boom, which offers a two-sided tech platform to let companies book and manage commercial photo shoots, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Italy’s United Ventures, with the participation from Wellness Holding. It will be used to support the photo tech company’s next stage of growth as […]

Two automotive giants are teaming up to bring self-driving semi-trucks to market. Under this deal, Waymo and Daimler Trucks are partnering to build an autonomous version of the Freightliner Cascadia truck. This is Waymo’s first deal in the freight business. The truck would be equipped with level 4 autonomous technology, meaning it could drive itself […]

Months after its $80 million Series B fundraise, Course Hero has acquired Symbolab, an artificial intelligence-powered calculator that helps students answer and understand complex math questions. The price of the deal was undisclosed. The 9-person Symbolab team, based in Tel Aviv, will join Course Hero . The platforms will live under independent branding for the […]

“We’re building a decentralized ghost kitchen,” is a sentence that could launch a thousand investor calls, and Alex Canter, the chief executive officer behind Ordermark, knows it. The 29 year-old CEO has, indeed, built a decentralized ghost kitchen — and managed to convince Softbank’s latest Vision Fund to invest in a $120 million round for […]

The first mission to officially carry astronauts to the International Space Station for a standard crew rotation is now tentatively set for November 14. NASA provided an updated date for the mission this week, after it shifted from an original planned timeframe of sometime in October. This is the first time that Crew Dragon, SpaceX’s […]

Zoom, the video calling company that millions turned to during the pandemic, has finally launched end-to-end encrypted video calls for free accounts. The company said last week that it was readying the feature, months after it drew criticism for denying end-to-end encrypted calls to free users, effectively drawing a line between paid users whose conversations […]