Crunch Hype

Formlabs was one of a few desktop 3D printing companies to weather the massive tech bubble a few years back. The Somerville, Massachusetts-based company set itself apart by bringing advanced industrial 3D-printing technologies to the consumer space. In recent years, the tech has also positioned the startup ahead of the competition when it comes to […]

Varada, a Tel Aviv-based startup that focuses on making it easier for businesses to query data across services, today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Israeli early-stage fund MizMaa Ventures, with participation by Gefen Capital. “If you look at the storage aspect for big data, there’s always innovation, […]

As we go deeper into the pandemic, many buildings sit empty or have limited capacity. During times like these having visibility into the state of the building can give building operations peace of mind. Today, Verkada, a startup that helps operations manage buildings via the cloud, announced a new set of environmental sensors to give […]

Over a decade’s worth of work by scientists working at Melbourne, Australia’s Monash University has produced a first-of-its-kind device that can restore vision to the blind, using a combination of smartphone-style electronics and brain-implanted micro electrodes. The system has already been shown to work in preclinical studies and non-human trials on sheep, and researchers are […]

Food has been an ever-present touchpoint in the world of startups, and I don’t mean the free catered lunches, or expansive canteens that you get in bigger places, to keep startup workers sustained but also focused on building, without leaving the building. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands, of enterprises spun out of the idea […]

If we have learned anything from the mass production of cheap internet-connected devices is that security was an afterthought. Default passwords are the norm and security flaws aren’t patched, leaving entire fleets of smart devices vulnerable to attack. But one Israeli security startup is taking a different approach to protect vulnerable Internet of Things devices. […]

The New York-based startup HowGood, which provides a sustainability database for consumer product ingredients, is publicly launching its product Latis and has already signed an initial customer with Danone North America, the company said. The company said that its Latis tool can be used to determine the impact of any ingredient or product against environmental […]

Airmeet, a startup that offers a platform to host virtual events, said on Tuesday it has raised $12 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore-headquartered firm demonstrates accelerating growth in its user base. Sequoia Capital India led the $12 million Series A financing round in one-year-old Airmeet. Redpoint Ventures and existing investors Accel […]

By the time Felix Ortiz III left the Army in 2006, the Brooklyn, NY native had spent time taking classes at the City University of New York and St. John’s. Those experiences led him to found ViridisLearning, which aimed to give universities a better way to track student development to help graduates land jobs. Now […]

With the 2020 general election coming up in November, Uber has partnered with TurboVote to launch an in-app feature designed to help riders, eaters, drivers and delivery workers register to vote. This comes after Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi in August said the company would help every driver register to vote. Uber will feature in-app banners […]

More than a third of small and medium-sized businesses on Facebook in India expect cash flow to be a challenge for them as they navigate through the coronavirus pandemic in the next few months, according to a report by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the World Bank. Facebook, which reaches nearly every internet […]

The European Union’s top court has handed down its first decision on the bloc’s net neutrality rules — interpreting the law as precluding the use of commercial ‘zero rating’ by Internet services providers. ‘Zero rating’ refers to the practice of ISPs offering certain apps/services ‘tariff free’ by excluding their data consumption. It’s controversial because it […]

IBM today, for the first time, published its road map for the future of its quantum computing hardware. There is a lot to digest here, but the most important news in the short term is that the company believes it is on its way to building a quantum processor with more than 1,000 qubits — […]

Spotawheel, the “end-to-end” digital platform for buying a used car in Poland and Greece, has raised €10 million in debt and equity funding, as it sees a bounce-back from the slowdown witnessed as the coronavirus crisis took hold. Once again the new investment was led by VentureFriends, with participation from existing investor Velocity Partners, along […]

Since India enforced a lockdown across the country in late March, shutting schools and other public places, Bangalore-headquartered startup Byju’s has emerged as one of the quintessential platforms for school-going students in the world’s second largest internet market. It took the startup about four and a half years to amass 40 million students. Since the […]

Fintech startup Klarna has raised a mega-round of funding led by Silver Lake. The company is raising $650 million at a post-money valuation of $10.65 billion. Klarna says it is now the highest-valued private fintech company in Europe following today’s funding round. In addition to Silver Lake, GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund) and funds and […]

Meet Swan, a new French startup that wants to let other companies offer financial services by issuing cards, bank accounts and IBANs with just a few lines of codes. The company could be considered as a bank-as-a-service platform, like Treezor or solarisBank. Originally founded by startup studio eFounders, the startup just raised a $5.9M million […]

Homage, a Singapore-based caregiving and telehealth company, has taken a major step in its global expansion plan. The startup announced today that it has received strategic investment from Infocom, the Japanese information and communications technology company that runs one of the largest healthcare IT businesses in the country. Infocom’s solutions are used by more than […]

Even as Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, admits that climate change “is real” and that “the science is unambiguous and the need to act grows more urgent by the day” the platform appears unwilling to take steps to really stand up to the climate change denialism that circulates on its platform. The company […]

CashKaro, one of the leading cashback and coupon sites in India, will expand its range of services for e-commerce after raising $10 million in Series B funding, the New Delhi-based startup announced today. The round was led by Korea Investment Partners, with participation from returning investor Kalaari Capital. TechCrunch last covered CashKaro five years ago […]

When COVID-19 spread to the United States, the pandemic exposed two conflicting realities: a healthcare system that excels at high-cost, complex treatments while failing to provide sufficient access at the local level. That lack of access to public health infrastructure might be the country’s biggest challenge. It has also created opportunities for healthcare startups, founders […]

The pandemic has led to N95 masks quickly becoming one of the world’s most sought-after resources as essential workers burned through billions of them. New research could lead to an N95 that you can recharge rather than throw away — or even one that continuously tops itself up for maximum effectiveness. The proposed system, from […]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is reportedly looking into claims that Nikola Corp. is involved in an alleged “intricate fraud,” the latest development in a controversy that erupted last week just days after GM took an 11% stake in the newly public company. Bloomberg reported Monday that the U.S. agency was examining the company […]

In the middle of a pandemic, Airtable, the low-code startup, has actually had an excellent year. Just the other day, the company announced it had raised $185 million on a whopping $2.585 billion valuation. It also announced some new features that take it from the realm of pure no-code and deeper into low-code territory, which […]

Tech and Hollywood don’t cross-pollinate that often, but when it comes to Franklin Leonard’s way of looking at things, maybe they should. Leonard is best known as the creator of The Black List, a curated collection of the most underrated screenplays of the year. What began as a side project in 2005 is now a […]

A former Facebook data scientist dropped a detailed, damning memo on her last day there, calling the social network out for what she describes as an arbitrary, slow and generally inadequate response to fake accounts and activity affecting politics worldwide. BuzzFeed News acquired the full memo and has published excerpts in this report, which is […]

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020, leaders from three quantum computing startups joined TechCrunch editor Frederic Lardinois to discuss the future of the technology. IonQ CEO and president Peter Chapman suggested we could be as little as five years away from a desktop quantum computer, but not everyone agreed on that optimistic timeline. “I think within […]

After 17 years, Palantir is getting closer and closer to its public debut later this month. We’ve been covering different facets of the company’s direct listing process, including concerns about its governance and how insiders are accelerating the sale of their shares as the public markets date looms closer. Now, we have several major updates […]

What market selloff? Despite last week’s market declines, two big IPOs are rolling ahead this week, with Snowflake and JFrog both boosting their IPO price ranges this morning. The jump in expected pricing means each IPO will likely raise more capital, valuing the firms more richly than their initial ranges made clear. Snowflake’s first IPO […]

A privacy bug in Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s official campaign app allowed anyone to look up sensitive voter information on millions of Americans, a security researcher has found. The campaign app, Vote Joe, allows Biden supporters to encourage friends and family members to vote in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by uploading their phone’s […]

For founders who have a startup idea — but few engineering skills to make it a reality — making the team’s first technical hire can be a daunting task. Nontechnical founders will face greater challenges when it comes to sourcing and recruiting engineering talent, but another factor that raises the stakes: They must often act […]

The robotics industry is having a major moment amid the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s true that category has been an exciting target for investments for a number of years now, but labor issues and concerns over transmission have led many sectors to take a good, long look at automation. Meal preparation is a […]

GoodRx is a rare breed of modern tech IPO: a startup that is actually profitable and heading to the public markets. The consumer service offers coupons on prescriptions redeemable at pharmacies that can save customers significant money on their monthly drug prices. The company filed an amended S-1 with the SEC this morning, and that […]

Earth observation has grown from government-run missions to a crucial everyday business tool, but it still has room to grow. Specifically, into the thermal infrared spectrum, if startup Satellite Vu gets itself into orbit. The company plans to be able to monitor the heat signatures of most of the planet’s buildings with a satellite constellation […]

Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd wants to build a truly timeless company. “You can never disrupt the need for humans to connect. And the other thing that you can never disrupt is the need for women to feel respected and to feel equal and to feel safe and empowered in those connections. And those are […]

While SpaceX and its ilk in the commercial rocket launch market have changed the economics of space and ushered in an era of small satellite entrepreneurship, the actual rocket engine technology they use isn’t that different from what was in use 50 years ago when NASA was making its first forays into outer space. Firehawk […]

Congratulations, you landed your Series A round. What’s next? Your Series B, and a lot of twists and turns. Yasmin Razavi of Spark Capital and Elliott Robinson of Bessemer are joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 (happening right now!) to talk about how early stage founders should think about landing growth stage venture capital money. […]

GM will reveal its GMC -branded electric Hummer on October 20, the same day that the company will also begin taking customer reservations for the new vehicle that it describes as a “super truck.” The Hummer EV debut, which was originally scheduled to occur May 20 and delayed due to COVID-19, is one of 20 […]

Before launching Clinic Price Check, Joanne Rodrigues-Craig had been a stay-at-home mom with Master’s degrees in population demographics, political science and applied mathematics from UC Berkeley and the London School of Economics. She’d written a book on demographics and politics, published work on data analysis for predictive customer insights and, most recently, worked for Sony […]

We’re excited to announce a new Partner Perk from Dell for Extra Crunch members. Starting today, annual and two-year Extra Crunch members can get a discount on a Dell XPS laptop as well as a discount on membership to the Dell for Entrepreneurs program. What is the Dell for Entrepreneurs program? The Dell for Entrepreneurs […]

Amazon today announced it will rebrand its kid-friendly services formerly known as Amazon FreeTime and Amazon FreeTime Unlimited to Amazon Kids and Amazon Kids+. In addition to the name change, the services are being redesigned to include a new homescreen experience, Amazon Echo integrations, and will introduce an expanded catalog of music and video content. […]

Nikola Corp., the hydrogen electric vehicle startup that went public this year through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, released Monday a point-by-point rebuttal that attempts to disprove a report issued last week by short-seller Hindenburg Research that accused the company of fraud. In spite of the careful wording of the rebuttal, some […]

Estonia-based Sentinel, which is developing a detection platform for identifying synthesized media (aka deepfakes), has closed a $1.35 million seed round from some seasoned angle investors — including Jaan Tallinn (Skype), Taavet Hinrikus (Transferwise), Ragnar Sass & Martin Henk (Pipedrive) — and Baltics early stage VC firm, United Angels VC. The challenge of building tools […]

Hardware season is in full swing. Apple’s big Watch event kicks off tomorrow and Samsung is readying itself for a third (!) Unpacked event on September 23. Now Google’s getting in on the fun. After opting to skip a virtual version of I/O earlier this year, the company has confirmed that it will be doing […]

For Jim Breyer, the mantra, “Silicon Valley is a state of mind” has always been behind Breyer Capital, his personal investment fund. While many of his investments and board seats (which have included Facebook, Blackstone, 21st Century Fox, Dell, Etsy, Marvel Entertainment and Walmart) backed that thesis, Breyer had never established an office for his […]

Courier is an API platform with a no-code twist that helps developers add multichannel user notifications to their applications. The company today announced that it has raised a $10.1 million Series A funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners. Matrix Partners, Twilio and Slack Fund also participated in this round. Previously, the company raised a […]

Blue Origin, along with it partners Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper, was one of three companies to be awarded contracts by NASA to develop human lunar landers for future moon missions. Blue Origin’s so-called “National Team” is focused on developing a Human Landing System (HLS) for NASA to support its efforts to return human […]

Welcome to Day One of Disrupt 2020, our biggest Disrupt ever! Over the next five days (cue Star Trek theme), you’ll explore strange new technology, seek out new opportunities and new collaborations. You’ll boldly immerse yourself with the global startup community. There’s still time to register if you haven’t picked up your pass to attend. […]

If this was a normal year, we would be settling in for an iPhone event right about now. This is, however, very much not a normal year. And while we are, in fact, getting an Apple hardware event tomorrow at 10 a.m. PT/1 p.m. ET, it’s looking entirely possible — even likely — that we […]

In a press briefing today, scientists rom the Royal Astronomical Society announced a potentially revolutionary scientific discovery: They’ve detected the presence of phosphine in the atmosphere of Venus, which suggests the possible presence of biological life. Phosphine is a gas that’s a known biosignature, which means it’s only present when some for of life is […]