Crunch Hype

Twitter is working to make its real-time Trending section less confusing. Last week, the company announced it would begin pinning to the trend’s page a representative tweet that gives more insight about a trend and promised more changes would soon be underway. Today, the company says it will begin writing headlines and descriptions for some […]

After months of teasers and announcements, Lucid Motors will finally reveal its first all-electric luxury sedan, the Air, during a live stream on September 9. But of course, the day before the big reveal, a little bit of news has trickled out. Lucid Motors has previously alluded that it will offer a high-end variant of […]

A graphic video of a man committing suicide spread across TikTok early this week, and the company is still working to remove it. Originating on Facebook Live, the clip was uploaded onto TikTok over the weekend and began to take root in users’ algorithmic recommendations. While the video first made the jump from Facebook in […]

DNX Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on early-stage B2B startups in Japan and the United States, announced today that it has closed a new $315 million fund. This is DNX’s third flagship fund; along with supplementary annexed funds, this brings its total managed so far to $567 million. Founded in 2011, with offices in […]

Lidar startup Ouster has spent the past several years expanding and improving its line of sensors as it jostles for a piece of the crowded and competitive market place. Now, Ouster says it has raised $42 million, fresh capital that will be used to fund product development and ramp up sales. In short: Ouster is […]

On the heels of new filings from both Sumo Logic and JFrog, Snowflake, a venture-backed unicorn looking to go public on the strength of its data-focused cloud service, set an initial price range for its IPO. The $75 to $85 per-share IPO price target values the firm at between $20.9 billion and $23.7 billion, huge […]

Apple has filed a countersuit against Epic over the latter’s attempt to circumvent App Store rules and avoid paying millions in fees. The lawsuit alleges that Epic is deliberately in breach of contract and asks the court to award damages and prohibit Epic from attempting anything like this again. A brief refresher: Epic in mid […]

Dropbox CEO Drew Houston will be joining us for a one-on-one interview at this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt happening next week from September 14-18. Houston has been there and done that as a startup founder. After attending Y Combinator in 2007 and launching at the TechCrunch 50 (the precursor to TechCrunch Disrupt) in 2008, he went […]

Nintendo has announced a surprise spin-off prequel to its modern classic Breath of the Wild, an action-focused game called Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. You’ll play the role of Link, as usual, but also the four champions and Princess Zelda herself, in attempting (unsuccessfully, as we know) to fight back the hordes of Ganon 100 […]

Apple is expanding its investment in podcasts. Today, Apple Books and Oprah announced the launch of “Oprah’s Book Club” podcast, an eight-episode series that will explore themes related to Oprah’s Book Club pick and bestseller, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Isabel Wilkerson. The podcast is the first to […]

I cover a lot of data breaches. From inadvertent exposures to data-exfiltrating hacks, I’ve seen it all. But not every data breach is the same. How a company responds to a data breach — whether it was their fault — can make or break its reputation. I’ve seen some of the worst responses: legal threats, […]

When AngelList first launched rolling funds, an investment vehicle that raises money through a quarterly subscription from interested investors, the company looked at it as a bet. But early interest from emerging fund managers indicates that rolling funds might be more of the future of the company, according to AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli. “Rolling funds […]

NASA wants its private commercial space company partners to make more moon deliveries on its behalf: The agency just issued another request for scientific and experimental payloads that need lunar delivery sometime in 2022, in part to help pave the way for NASA’s Artemis human lunar landing mission planned for 2024. NASA previously established its […]

The other day I took a moment to count the number of stories we’ve done on TechCrunch on the DoD’s $10 billion, decade-long, winner-take-all, JEDI cloud contract. This marks the 30th time we’ve written about this deal over the last two years, and it comes after a busy week last week in JEDI cloud contract […]

The CEO of Pan-African fintech unicorn, Mitchell Elegbe, is set to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020 on September 16. He founded the company in Lagos in 2002 to connect Nigeria’s — then — largely disconnected banking system. Over the next decade plus, Interswitch accelerated the adoption of digital payments across Africa and now stands as […]

Google today announced the launch of Android 11, the latest version of its mobile operating system. After a slightly longer public preview, users who own a select number of Pixel devices (starting with the Pixel 2), OnePlus, Xiaomi, OPPO or realme phones will now see the update roll out to their phones in the coming […]

It’s never easy, deciding which of the 20 companies that make it into the Disrupt Battlefield Competition will be anointed its winner. There’s just so much at stake each year and this year at Disrupt 2020 this September 14-18 the stakes are even higher. For that one startup that makes it all the way through […]

PopSQL, a startup that builds a collaborative SQL editor for teams, today announced that it has raised a $3.4 million seed round led by Google’s AI-focused Gradient Ventures fund. Other participants include Y Combinator and FundersClub, as well as angel investors Max Mullen, the co-founder of Instacart; Calvin French-Owen, the CTO of Segment; and Guillermo […]

Ride hailing giant Uber is committing to becoming a fully zero-emission platform by 2040 and setting aside $800 million to help get its drivers using electric vehicles by 2025. The company said that it would invest further in its micromobility options as well with the goal of having 100% of its rides take place on […]

The rumors of a new Apple Watch and iPad has thus far proven untrue. One thing that did pan out, however, is an invite for the company’s next big (virtual) event. Apple just announced that its annual Fall event will kick off September 15 at 10am PT. This may herald the arrival of the iPhone […]

Despite the public markets posting a few days of losses, the IPO wave continues to crest as a number of well-known technology companies line up to float their equity on American exchanges. Most recently we saw e-commerce giant Wish file (albeit privately) and news that dating service Bumble could look to go public next year. […]

In a VC ecosystem that has now looked up long enough to embrace the Black Lives Matter affirmation and the diversity conversations that have followed, firms are thinking creatively about how they access investment opportunities by underrepresented talent.

The 2020 class of Techstars Starburst Space Accelerator is graduating with an official demo day on Wednesday at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT), and you can watch all the teams present their startups live via the stream above. This year’s class includes 10 companies building innovative new solutions to challenges either directly or indirectly […]

Hasura, a service that provides developers with an open-source engine that provides them a GraphQL API to access their databases, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Previous investors Vertex Ventures US, Nexus Venture Partners, Strive VC and SAP.iO Fund also participated in this round. […]

Google today is introducing a new feature for Android phones that will help legitimate businesses reach their customers by phone by having their brand name and reason for calling properly identified. The feature, known as “Verified Calls,” will display the caller’s name, their logo, a reason why they’re calling, and a verification symbol that will […]

We’re just days away from Disrupt 2020, a tech summit of (literally) global proportions. It’s our biggest Disrupt ever, stretching over five days — September 14-18. We’ve packed the conference agenda with experts, insight, trends, tools and connections designed to help early-stage startups meet their potential. We know many startup budgets are under duress, and […]

Sennheiser has just released a new on-camera, directional microphone. The compact MKE 200 ($99.95) puts a lot of convenience and performance into a small, portable package – one that’s great for go-anywhere vlogging once that’s a reasonable option again, and one that provides a fantastic, but affordable upgrade for your at-home video conferencing setup in […]

Last Thursday and Friday’s public market selloff has stretched into this week, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite off 2.5% this morning. But while tech shares are down broadly to start the holiday-shortened week — and are taking stick for bringing down even broader indices — some well-known technology, and technology-ish companies are suffering even more. […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can […]

Disney’s live-action remake of “Mulan” skipped theaters to instead stream on Disney+ over the weekend, for the added fee of $30. According to early data, the launch helped grow Disney+ mobile installs by 68%, compared with one week prior. Consumer spending in the app also grew by 193% during the same time period. This data […]

The real estate industry — like so many other sectors — was forced to adapt this year. Now, investors are ready to pour capital into the startups they believe are best-positioned in this new era, from companies tackling construction tech, financing and digital workflow tools to those finding ways to monetize vacant spaces, flex offices […]

Nikola and General Motors today announced a strategic partnership. Through the deal, GM gets 11% ownership in startup Nikola, and will, in turn, produce Nikola’s wild fuel cell pickup truck by the end of 2022. Both companies’ shares jumped on the news, with Nikola trading up 45% and GM up 11% in pre-market trading. The […]

Progress, a Boston area developer tool company, boosted its offerings in a big way today when it announced it was acquiring software automation platform Chef for $220 million. Chef, which went 100% open source last year, had annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $70 million from the commercial side of the house. Needless to say, Progress […]

Unlike some of its competitors, Google Cloud has recently started emphasizing how its large lineup of different services can be combined to solve common business problems. Instead of trying to sell individual services, Google is focusing on solutions and the latest effort here is what it calls its Business Application Platform, which combines the API […]

Peloton has launched two new products for its home smart gym lineup, the Bike+ ($2,495) and the Tread ($2,495). While both carry the same price tag, the new exercise bike joins as the premium version of Peloton’s original stationary cycle, which will remain on sale at $1,895, and the Tread is the new entry-level Peloton […]

As tensions between the U.S. and China heighten over data security issues, Beijing took a proactive step to unveil a “data security initiative” that it believes can serve as “a global standard for data security.” The Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, appearing in a video during a closed-door meeting in Beijing on […]

Microsoft has confirmed via its official Xbox Twitter account that a discless, tiny Xbox called the Series S will be released alongside its forthcoming Xbox Series X. The Series S was initially leaked late Monday, first by Brad Sams on Twitter, and also by Walking Cat. The Xbox account tweeted an image fo the same […]

Diffblue, a spin-out from Oxford University, uses machine learning to help developers automatically create unit tests for their Java code. Since few developers enjoy writing unit tests to ensure that their code works as expected, increased automation doesn’t just help developers focus on writing the code that actually makes a difference but also lead to […]

TikTok, the popular short video sharing app, has joined the European Union’s Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech. In a statement on joining the code, TikTok’s head of trust and safety for EMEA, Cormac Keenan, said: “We have never allowed hate on TikTok, and we believe it’s important that internet platforms are held […]

Thunes, a Singapore-based startup developing a cross-border payments network to make financial services more accessible in emerging markets, announced today it has raised a $60 million Series B. The round was led by Africa-focused firm Helios Investment Partners, with participation from Checkout.com, and returning investors GGV Capital and Future Shape. Thunes launched in 2019 when […]

Skin Analytics, a U.K.-based startup that has developed a skin cancer screening service that uses artificial intelligence, has raised £4 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Hoxton Ventures, with participation from Nesta and Mustard Seed Ventures. Skin Analytics says it will use the injection of cash to expand its focus to […]

PUBG said on Tuesday Chinese giant Tencent Games will no longer be the publishing partner of the popular game in India as it attempts to allay concerns of New Delhi, which banned the game and 117 other apps last week. Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Tencent Games published and distributed PUBG Mobile games in India. PUBG […]

Marketing technology — and specifically tools that help companies leverage the internet to connect with customers in a way that is compliant with a new wave of data protection and privacy policies — continues to see a lot of traction with businesses and investors. In the latest development, Sarbacane, the French company that makes the Mailify SaaS-based […]

Byju’s has raised $500 million in a new financing round that values the Indian online learning platform at $10.8 billion, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The round was led by Menlo Park-headquartered PE firm Silver Lake, and existing investors Tiger Global, General Atlantic and Owl Ventures have also participated in it, India’s […]

New investment firm Do Ventures announced today the first closing of its fund for Vietnamese startups, which is backed by several of Asia’s most notable institutional investors. Called Do Ventures Fund I, the investment vehicle has hit more than half of its $50 million target, with limited partners including Korean internet giant Naver; Sea, whose […]

Fintech startup Revolut is expanding to Japan. After testing the service with 10,000 users, anybody can now sign up and open an account. The company originally obtained its authorization to operate from Japan’s Finance Service Agency in 2018. When you open an account, you get an electronic wallet and a Visa debit card. You can […]

E-commerce has seen a huge jump in the last eight months, driven by consumers shopping more for goods online while spending more time at home during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, a payments startup out of Amsterdam that has itself seen a surge of growth this year as a result of that is announcing a big […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B. As […]

Reducing consumption by expanding the notion of the rental economy and giving people access to tools and equipment has been something of a startup holy grail for some time. It’s a model that’s worked famously well for fashion and accessories (just ask investors in Rent the Runway), but has had not had the same resonance […]

Happy Labor Day and welcome back to Human Capital, where we unpack the latest in tech labor, and diversity, equity and inclusion. Human Capital will soon be available as a newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss it when it drops! This week, we’re looking at Pinterest’s newest edition to its DEI team, a […]