Crunch Hype

I’ve been a software engineer at Uber for two years, and I’ve also been a ride-share driver.

The UK’s data watchdog has sent a letter to parliament In lieu of a final report on a wide-ranging investigation into online political advertising which saw it raid the offices of Cambridge Analytica in 2018 after it emerged that the disgraced (and now defunct) data company had improperly acquired data on millions of Facebook users. […]

We should give developers the right to freely reimplement APIs, as developer ability to shift applications and skills between software ecosystems benefits everyone - we all get better software to accomplish more.

After all those years of startups not going public, 2020 is a little bit different. It feels like more companies are filing, and more companies are seeing their debuts through. We’re even seeing direct listings and SPAC-led deals, along with a trove of traditional IPOs. Data backs up how we feel about this year’s IPO […]

SpaceX has secured a contract valued at just shy of $150 million by the U.S. Space Development Agency, a branch of the U.S. military that is tasked with building out America’s space-based defense capabilities. The contract covers creation and delivery of “space vehicles,” aka actual satellites, that will form a constellation offering global coverage of […]

Snap, the social media platform for Gen Z, launched its latest slate of Snap Originals today, in a sign that not every media company has failed to capture the imagination of an audience with short form content. Even as Quibi’s billion dollar gambit continues to falter, Snap is forging ahead with a slate of new […]

When Salesforce Ventures launched the first $50 million Impact Fund in 2017, it wanted to invest not only in promising cloud businesses, but startups with a socially positive mission. Today, the company launched the second Impact Fund, this time doubling its initial investment with a new $100 million fund The latest fund is also designed […]

When Alexa launched six years ago, no one imagined that by today there would be hundreds of millions of Alexa-enabled devices or that Alexa would become part of so many lives. For people who are blind or visually impaired, voice assistants are a huge convenience, whether you are calling a loved one, cooking a meal, […]

Facebook and Twitter took action against a post from President Trump Tuesday that claimed that COVID-19 is “far less lethal” than the flu. Trump made the tweet and posted the same message to Facebook just hours after arriving back at the White House following a multi-day stay at Walter Reed medical center, where the president […]

Google announced today it’s introducing a Stories feature to its Google app for iOS and Android, which now reaches over 800 million people per month. In a new carousel within the app, users in supported markets will be presented with a row of tappable visual Stories from participating publishers. These Stories can include full screen […]

While many companies are using chatbots and other forms of automation to manage their communication with customers, Boston-based Tone is betting that humans will remain a key part of the equation. “The traditional models of bots and humans is, ‘Hello, I’m a bot, now you get to battle with me to finally get to a […]

Apple just sent out invites for its upcoming hardware event, all but confirming the arrival of the next iPhone. The event is scheduled nearly a month to the day after the its last big event, which gave us the Apple Watch Series 6 and two new iPads. A new iPhone was conspicuously absent from the […]

People who rely on gaze-tracking to interact with their devices on an everyday basis now have a powerful new tool in their arsenal: Google Assistant. Substituting gaze for its original voice-based interface, the Assistant’s multiple integrations and communication tools should improve the capabilities of the Tobii Dynavox devices it now works on. Assistant will now […]

A new forecast released today estimates Amazon’s delayed Prime Day sales event will top last year’s by bringing in an estimated nearly $10 billion in worldwide sales when it runs later this month. According to eMarketer, which released its first-ever Prime Day forecast, consumers will continue to spend heavily on e-commerce and seek out deals […]

As we plunge deeper into the pandemic, online transactions have become increasingly important, and ACH transactions, the ones that help us get direct deposit of our paychecks or pay our bills are growing ever more essential. Nivelo, an early stage startup from a former JP Morgan executive wants to take the risk out of ACH […]

In June of this year, as more of the world began to awaken to the many ways that people of color are systematically discriminated against amid months of protest, a wide number of companies announced initiatives aimed at improving the representation of underrepresented groups within their own ranks and as recipients of their investment dollars. […]

Last night, 10 disruptive mobility companies pitched on the virtual TechCrunch stage for a spot at TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. Each company pitched for one minute followed by a Q&A with our expert panel of judges – Shahin Farshchi (Lux Capital), Natalia Quintero (Transit Tech Lab) and Rachel Holt (Construct Capital). The judges heard each […]

Mobility enthusiasts from around the world, welcome to Day One of TC Sessions: Mobility 2020! Get ready for two days of programming dedicated to the people and technology behind the transformation of transportation. Mobility’s a rapidly evolving revolution, and we’re thrilled to have the community’s best founders, investors and technologists standing by ready to help […]

Facebook announced this morning it’s bringing a number of new features and services to its family of Portal devices, including support for Netflix and Zoom. The company will also introduce easier ways to launch Netflix and other video streaming apps via one-touch buttons on its new remote, in addition to expanding its selection of its stories […]

A new company called Scribe Therapeutics founded by two former members of CRISPR pioneer Jennifer Doudna’s UC Berkely genetics lab (alongside Doudna herself) launched on Tuesday, debuting a platform designed specifically to help develop and engineer new thereapeutics based on CRISPR for addressing specific diseases, with permanent treatments in patients. Doudna is part of the […]

No matter the industry, the coronavirus pandemic has absolutely rocked the way that we work. Work from home is the new norm. But many are anxious to get back into the office and startups are looking to help with that transition in the safest way possible. One such startup is Envoy, a company that launched […]

One of the broader trends of the pandemic has been the unbundling of Zoom with startups pulling out a feature or two and designing entire products centered around a specific vision of remote work. One of the more tempting product ideas has been the development of the omnipresent always-on video workspace where managers can always […]

World events have so far not stopped the enthusiasm for tech investing, and really, where else are those dollars going to go?

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 […]

SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, are all the rage right now, and people are emerging from all corners to raise them. Among the latest entrants — and someone who might be of interest to Silicon Valley watchers — is Emil Michael, a former Uber executive and top lieutenant to former CEO Travis Kalanick. Earlier […]

An aspect of video calls that many of us take for granted is the way they can switch between feeds to highlight whoever’s speaking. Great — if speaking is how you communicate. Silent speech like sign language doesn’t trigger those algorithms, unfortunately, but this research from Google might change that. It’s a real-time sign language […]

A day after the Senate Commerce Committee moved forward with plans to subpoena the CEOs of Twitter, Facebook and Google, it looks like some of the most powerful leaders in tech will testify willingly. Twitter announced late Friday that Jack Dorsey would appear virtually before the committee on October 28, just days before the U.S. […]

President Donald Trump’s positive COVID-19 result has made Twitter a busy place in the past 24 hours, including some tweets that have publicly wished — some subtly and others more directly — that he die from the disease caused by coronavirus. Twitter put out a reminder to folks that it doesn’t allow tweets that wish […]

Kindred Capital, the London-based VC that backs early-stage founders in Europe and Israel, recently closed its second seed fund at £81 million. Out if its first fund raised in 2018, the firm has backed 29 companies. They include Five, which is building software for autonomous vehicles; Paddle, SaaS for software e-commerce; Pollen, a peer-to-peer marketplace […]

Twitter addresses questions of bias in its image-cropping algorithms, we take a look at Mario Kart Live and the stock market takes a hit after President Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis. This is your Daily Crunch for October 2, 2020. The big story: Twitter confronts image-cropping concerns Last month, (white) PhD student Colin Madland highlighted potential algorithmic […]

The venture world is swimming in capital these days, and the flood doesn’t appear to be abating. That’s changing the game for venture capitalists and their firms, which transformed from solo practitioners focused on one stage and a single geographical area to covering all startups in all geos in all industries in just a handful […]

Twitter is developing a new product called “Birdwatch,” which the company confirms is an attempt at addressing misinformation across its platform by providing more context for tweets, in the form of notes. Tweets can be added to “Birdwatch” — meaning flagged for moderation — from the tweet’s drop-down menu, where other blocking and reporting tools […]

Daydream, Google’s mobile-focused virtual reality platform, is losing official support from Google, Android Police reports. The company confirmed that it will no longer be updating the Daydream software, with the publication noting that “Daydream may not even work on Android 11” as a result of this. This isn’t surprising to anyone who has been tracking […]

Grindr, one of the world’s largest dating and social networking apps for gay, bi, trans, and queer people, has fixed a security vulnerability that allowed anyone to hijack and take control of any user’s account using only their email address. Wassime Bouimadaghene, a French security researcher, found the vulnerability and reported the issue to Grindr. […]

One year ago, Uber’s business model could be categorized as an “all of the above approach,” a strategy to generate revenue from all forms of transportation, including ride-hailing, micromobility, logistics and package and food delivery. The COVID-19 pandemic upended that business strategy, prompting Uber to offload its shared micromobility unit Jump, double down on delivery […]

Welcome back to Human Capital, a weekly digest about diversity, inclusion and the human labor that powers tech. This week, we’re looking at a number of topics because a lot went down. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took a controversial stance on social, Clubhouse found itself under scrutiny again, but this time around anti-Semitism and a […]

GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, will invest $752 million in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, and TPG will invest $250 million in the Indian firm, they all said Saturday midnight (local time). The Government of Singapore Investment Corp and TPG are the latest high-profile investors to back Reliance Retail, India’s largest retail chain, in the past four […]

Neobanks have created a new tech stack, completely changing the services, products and speed at which they are delivered, and creating more fluidity in payments and currencies.

Plaid, the company building a universal banking API that lets you connect an app or service with a bank account, has updated Plaid Link. Plaid Link is the interface you see when you add your bank account to any app or service that uses Plaid, such as Cash App or TransferWise. Given that 3,000 apps […]

Anyone who writes online or in a word processor has likely gotten used to the inevitable squiggly line denoting a misspelled word or clumsy phrase. But what if you use a word that’s loaded, a phrase that’s too formal or not formal enough, or refer to a group of people in an outdated way? Writer […]

For several years, blockchain technology has been touted as a way to verify the sale of property. Any kind of property. And so entrepreneurs busily began the process of trying to create a startup that could complete a property deal on the blockchain. One that stood out from the start was Propy, started by Natalia […]

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase is adding a new way to withdraw funds from your Coinbase account. If you’ve added a compatible debit card to your account, you can transfer USD, EUR or GBP to your bank account nearly instantly. There are some drawbacks, and the main one is that you’ll pay a lot of fees. In […]

Removing the background of a video you’ve shot can be a real pain if you don’t have the kind of tools and setup used by professionals — and even then it isn’t as easy as it should be. Kaleido’s one-step background removal tool for images, remove.bg, has graduated to full-motion video with the company’s new […]

SpaceX is set to launch a GPS-III satellite for the U.S. Space Force using a Falcon 9 rocket, with a target launch time of 9:43 PM EDT (6:43 PM PDT). That opens a 15-minute launch window, and so far weather is looking relatively good, which will hopefully help SpaceX end a recent string of launch […]

Long before the coronavirus, Sora, a startup run by a team of Atlanta entrepreneurs, was toying with the idea of live, virtual high school. The program would focus on student autonomy and organize its curriculum around projects that learners wanted to work on, such as finding ways to reduce the impact of climate change on […]

For the past two years, TechCrunch has brought together the best and brightest minds in mobility at our TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility event. This year, we are adding a little extra twist. On October 5, the day before Mobility 2020, TC is hosting a pitch-off — which only ticket holders can access — highlighting disruptive startups […]

Bolt Threads has brought together some new and existing partners, including Stella McCartney, Kering (the fashion house behind brands like Balenciaga, Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta), Lululemon and Adidas to create a consortium that will explore the company’s use of its mushroom-based leather substitute in products, the company said. These companies will be among […]

Tesla delivered 139,300 vehicles in the third quarter, slightly above Wall Street’s expectations and a notable improvement from last quarter, as well as the same period a year ago. Tesla’s numbers in the third quarter marked a 43% improvement from the same period last year, when the company reported it had delivered 97,000 electric vehicles. […]

This week’s pair of direct listings from Asana and Palantir were historic moments for each firm, but they also served as public business experiments. For Palantir, the event tested how far corporate governance could be twisted while leaving a company worth buying in the eyes of public shareholders. And with Asana, its direct listing was […]

SpaceX will provide an update about what’s happening with their Starship spacecraft in roughly three weeks, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. Starship is a next-generation, fully reusable spacecraft that the company is developing with the aim of replacing all of their launch vehicles, including Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, for missions both to […]