Crunch Hype

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 […]

As smoke from fires chokes the skies Western U.S. and pollution chokes much of the world, air quality has become yet another issue for civilization to address. Industrialization and natural disasters wrought by climate change are spewing more toxic matter into the air, and governments around the world are racing to monitor what the combination […]

Yaw Aning, named Malomo, the service he launched for small businesses to turn their order-tracking services into branded customer experiences, as a tribute to his mother, who was a small business owner herself. “Malomo” means flowers in Swahili and it was the name of Aning’s mother’s small soap making business which she built over the […]

Zynga announced in August that it would be acquiring Istanbul-based Rollic, developer and publisher of hyper-casual gaming hits like Go Knots 3D and Tangle Master 3D. Today, it says the deal has closed. To be clear, Zynga doesn’t completely own Rollic yet. Instead, it’s purchased 80% of the company for approximately $180 million in cash, […]

American stocks are selling in the wake of President Trump, and members of his family and a key staff member, testing positive for COVID-19. The news, which came overnight, is weighing heavily on all major American indices, but heaviest on tech shares. As of the time of writing, here’s where the mess stands: Dow Jones […]

In an interesting development in the wake of a bias controversy over its cropping algorithm Twitter has said it’s considering giving users decision making power over how tweet previews look, saying it wants to decrease its reliance on machine learning-based image cropping. Yes, you read that right. A tech company is affirming that automating certain decisions […]

Paired, a new app for couples, is launching today and disclosing $1 million in funding. Backing the startup, which wants to support “happier and healthier” relationships, is Taavet Hinrikus of TransferWise, the co-founders of Runtastic (which was sold to Adidas), Ed Cooke of Memrise and Bernhard Niesner of Busuu. Founded in September 2019 by Kevin […]

Blossom Capital, the early-stage venture capital firm founded by Ophelia Brown, has recruited its latest partner: Carmen Alfonso Rico has joined from Samaipata VC, where she led the U.K. office. Before that she was at Felix Capital and is also a co-founder of the London outpost of “community-driven” VC, The Fund. During her time at […]

In a year, Nintendo would have demoed, in person, Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit. The company would have invited select members of the press into some rented event space and let us experience the game first-hand, like it had with Labo and Ring Fit Adventures. It’s 2020, however, and that’s just not how we do […]

NexusMods, a large platform and gathering place for modding PC games, has banned all content relating to the U.S. elections following a flood of troll content, saying “we’ve decided to wipe our hands clean of this mess.” Not exactly headline news, no, but a reminder that the toxic behavior frequently seen (and blamed) on social […]

As reported in the first half of our Spain-focused VC survey, the nation’s startup ecosystem continues to grow and is keeping pace with ecosystems in more developed European countries such as U.K., France, Sweden and Germany. While main hubs Madrid and Barcelona bump heads politically, tech ecosystems in each city have been developing with local support. […]

The 2020 election is without a doubt going to be the biggest one in history for voting by mail, but people with disabilities may find it rather difficult to apply for their ballot, since according to an audit by Deque, most states don’t actually have an accessible digital application. Deque, a company that helps develop […]

Google is paying a lot of money for its news licensing program, Microsoft announces an affordable laptop and Facebook says it won’t accept ads casting doubts on the election. This is your Daily Crunch for October 1, 2020. The big story: Google commits $1B to pay publishers Specifically, CEO Sundar Pichai said today that the […]

Is there a data-driven — or even better, an AI-driven — process for gaining deeper insight into which images are more likely to engage users?

Facebook today says it has filed a lawsuit in the U.S. against two companies that had engaged in an international “data scraping” operation. The operation extended across Facebook properties, including both Facebook and Instagram, as well as other large websites and services, including Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn and YouTube. The companies, which gathered the data of […]

It looks like we’re in for another big tech CEO hearing. The Senate Commerce Committee voted Thursday to move forward with subpoenas for Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet. The unusual decision to subpoena the social media chief executives adds yet another politically volatile event to the schedule […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s VC-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, Alex is on a much-deserved vacation (but not from Twitter, it seems) so Danny Crichton and I chatted through the news and happenings of the week. Somehow we winded our way through the latest […]

While the overall cloud infrastructure market is booming having reached $30 billion last quarter worldwide, Oracle is struggling with market share in the low single digits. It is hoping that the Zoom and TikTok deals can jump start those numbers, but trying to catch the market leaders Amazon, Microsoft and Google, never mind several other […]

If we look beyond the data at the bigger picture instead of searching for mythical creatures, the promise of digitalization in Latin America is clear.

As it begins expanding beyond its home base in Mexico City, the on-demand, online only grocery store Jüsto has added another $5 million in early stage funding. The new money came from Bimbo Ventures, the strategic investment arm of one of the world’s largest bakery companies, Bimbo, and Sweet Capital, the investment fund from the […]

Google has long had a frenemy position with regards to the world of news: it can direct a lot of traffic to online publishers, but that’s only if people bother to click on links after getting the gist of the story from Google itself (and that’s before considering Google’s AMP approach on mobile that keeps […]

A lot of people are opting to use cars instead of taking public transportation in the UK at the moment, as a way of ensuring more social distancing, and today one of the startups that’s built a more efficient way of selling and buying cars is announcing a big round of funding. Cazoo, which provides […]

As more companies and brands put the internet at the core of how they run their businesses these days, it’s giving a strong push to the growth of startups that are building tools to help them. In the latest development, Sendinblue, an eight-year-old French startup that has built a platform to help small and medium […]

Since 2011, European startup studio eFounders has launched 27 companies with a focus on software-as-a-service companies trying to improve the way we work. Some of them have been quite successful, such as Front and Aircall. And the company is working on its next batch of startups. “We're particularly inspired by the new wave of productivity […]

As people spend less time out in the world and more time daydreaming about when a vaccine will arrive, lifestyle shoes are only gaining traction. One obvious beneficiary is Allbirds, the San Francisco-based maker of comfortable, sustainable kicks that launched in 2016 and quickly became a favorite in Silicon Valley circles before taking off elsewhere. […]

Google, which reaches more internet users than any other firm in India and commands 99% of the nation’s smartphone market, has stumbled upon an odd challenge in the world’s second-largest internet market: Scores of top local entrepreneurs. Dozens of top startups and firms in India are working to form an alliance and toying with the […]

The markets are closed and the verdicts are in: investors liked what they saw in Palantir and Asana . The two companies, which debuted this morning in dual (and duel) direct listings, continued to prove that enterprise tech companies without the brand recognition of Spotify (which conducted its own direct listing back in 2018) can […]

It’s a big day for Asana, the work management tool that debuted on the NYSE this morning in a direct listing. Founded back in 2009 by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin Rosenstein, the company has assiduously grown over the years, taking in about $213 million in venture capital the past decade and reaching almost $100 million […]

This year, Google’s annual hardware event consisted of a brisk 30 minutes of pre-recorded promotional videos, but the company managed to pack a number of new product announcements into that time. To make things easy for you, here’s a quick rundown of everything that Google announced, including the Google Pixel 5, a new TV interface […]

Small startups and logistics giants alike are working on how to use automated vehicle technology and robotics for delivery. Some have even accelerated their efforts, with mixed results, as the COVID-19 pandemic drove up demand for delivery. But is the world — or the tech — ready for the mainstream? TechCrunch has tapped three experts […]

The global pandemic is driving interest toward cannabis, and device makers are recording record sales. From startups to major players, several leading manufacturers told TechCrunch that their companies are seeing a boom in sales since the start of the crisis. Coupled with supply constraints, consumers are now seeing limited supply on some top models as […]

Research papers come out far too rapidly for anyone to read them all, especially in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in but not limited to artificial intelligence — and […]

Fintech startup N26 is announcing some changes in the leadership team with two new C-Level hires. First, Adrienne Gormley, pictured above, is joining the company as chief operating officer, replacing Martin Schilling who left the company in March 2020. Second, Diana Styles, pictured below, will become N26’s chief people officer. Gormley has spent the last […]

Under threat of regulation, Google announced today it’s updating its Google Play billing policies to better clarify which types of transactions will be subject to Google’s commissions on in-app purchases. While the more detailed language doesn’t actually change the earlier policy’s intention, it will impact a percentage of developers who don’t currently use Google Play’s […]

As high schools pivot to hybrid models and students see less in-person face time with friends, the current social app sphere seems to be missing a way to build deeper bonds with classmates. HAGS is building a social network designed around high school networks and they’ve picked up some fresh funding led by Google’s venture […]

Utilizing content marketing and digital PR can make huge strides in getting your brand name out there.

Around a quarter of U.S. adults, or roughly 26%, say they get news by watching YouTube videos, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, which examined the Google-owned video platform’s growing influence over news distribution in the U.S., as well as its consumption. The study, not surprisingly, found that established news organizations no […]

Were you Born to be Wild? Then get your electric motor running, head out on the virtual highway to look for adventure, because we’re just one week away from TC Sessions: Mobility 2020. Join thousands of global attendees October 6-7 for two programming-packed days devoted to the fast-moving world of mobility and transportation technology. Price […]

Last December (yes, in the before-times) UK-based mental health startup eQuoo had a round of announcements, becoming the NHS approved mental health game, as well as signing Barmer, the largest insurance company in Germany, as a client. It’s now been selected as the Mental Health App for Unilever’s new global initiative aimed at the mental […]

Universal Health Services, one of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack. The attack hit UHS systems early on Sunday morning, according to two people with direct knowledge of the incident, locking computers and phone systems at several UHS facilities across the country, including in California and Florida. […]

Adobe has had a developer program for years called Adobe.io, but today at the Adobe Developers Live virtual conference, the company announced some new tools with a fresh emphasis on helping developers build custom apps on the Adobe Experience Cloud. Jason Woosley, VP of developer experience and commerce at Adobe says that the pandemic has […]

SoftBank has been quite bullish on Bear Robotics this year, beginning with leadership in a $32 million Series A back in January. It’s easy to see why the investment firm believes that this is the breakthrough moment for the Bay Area-based startup, as the COVID-19 pandemic has led to economic and labor issues around the […]

UK-based startup HumanForest has suspended its nascent ‘free’ e-bike service in London this week, after experiencing “mechanical” issues and after a user had an accident on one of its bikes, TechCrunch has learned. The suspension has also seen the company make a number of layoffs with plans to re-launch next spring using a different e-bike. […]

Last month, Facebook introduced support for paid online events — and because many of the businesses offering those events have struggled during the coronavirus pandemic, the company also said it would not collect fees for the next year. At the same time, it complained that Apple had “dismissed” its requests to waive the App Store’s […]

It’s nearly October, startup fans, and that means TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 is right around the corner. On October 6 & 7, you’ll experience an incredible two-day agenda packed with the top leaders, visionaries, makers and investors, and they’re ready to drop serious knowledge about crucial trends, issues and challenges related to mobility and transportation […]

Twitter has emailed developers warning of a bug that may have exposed their private app keys and account tokens. In the email, obtained by TechCrunch, the social media giant said that the private keys and tokens may have been improperly stored in the browser’s cache by mistake. “Prior to the fix, if you used a […]

This year’s Bessemer Venture Partners’ annual Cloud 100 Benchmark report was published recently and my colleague Alex Wilhelm looked at some broad trends in the report, but digging into the data, I decided to concentrate on the Top 10 companies by valuation. I found that the top company has defied convention for a couple of […]

TechCrunch is embarking on a major new project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Helsinki will capture how the city is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. (Please note, if you have filled out the survey already, there […]

It’s not over until it’s over for Apple and its ongoing tax headache in Europe. Today the European Commission announced that it plans to appeal the July 2020 ruling that overturned the original $15 billion fine that it leveled against Apple and Ireland over State Aid and taxes, as it believes the General Court “made […]

The former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, the disgraced data company that worked for the 2016 Trump campaign and shut down in 2018 over a voter manipulation scandal involving masses of Facebook data — has been banned from running limited companies for seven years. Alexander Nix signed a disqualification undertaking earlier this month, which the U.K. […]