Crunch Hype

Get ready to spend two days rubbing virtual elbows with the global mobility community’s best and brightest minds and makers. TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 takes place October 6-7, and we’ve packed the agenda with experts, interviews, demos, panel discussions, breakout sessions and a metric ton of opportunity. Speaking of opportunity, savvy startuppers know to take […]

This Labor Day, it’s time to think about how corporations can better support and protect this vital but often forgotten segment of the workforce.

ThoughtRiver, a London-based legaltech startup that’s applying AI to speed up contract pre-screening, has announced a $10 million Series A round of funding led by Octopus Ventures. Existing seed investors Crane, Local Globe, Entrée Capital, Syndicate Room, and angel investor Duncan Painter also participated in the round. The UK startup is one of a number applying […]

Back in 2006, Joseph Heller went to China where he spent the next decade learning about the manufacturing business. Based on that experience he eventually built a startup called The Studio. The idea was to help connect people with a small business idea to manufacturers in China in a fully digital way. By 2016 he […]

As the Labor Day weekend winds down here in the states, so too does our flash sale and your chance to save $100 on a Digital Pro pass to Disrupt 2020. Fight off your holiday food coma long enough to buy your pass before 11:59 p.m. (PT) tonight. Disrupt 2020 takes place September 14-18, and […]

Italy’s competition authority has opened an investigation into cloud storage services operated by Apple, Dropbox and Google, in response to a number of complaints alleging unfair commercial practices. In a press release announcing the probe, the AGCM says it’s opened six investigations in all. The services of concern are Google’s Drive, Apple iCloud and the […]

More personnel changes at Revolut are in motion, as a key member of the leadership team leaves for Barclays, and two former Amazon staffers join the London-headquartered neobank, including a new chief operating officer. TechCrunch understands that Chris Sing, Revolut’s head of regulatory compliance is leaving to take up the position as Barclays’s new chief […]

The coronavirus global health pandemic — and the new emphasis on social distancing to slow down the spread of COVID-19 — has put healthcare and tech services used to enable healthcare remotely under the spotlight. Today a startup that’s building microinsurance and healthcare services specifically targeting emerging markets is announcing a round of funding to […]

China’s enthusiasm for teaching children to code is facing a new roadblock as organizations and students lose an essential tool: the Scratch programming language developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. China-based internet users can no longer access Scratch’s website. Greatfire.org, an organization that monitors internet censorship in China, shows that […]

HumanForest, a dockless, shared and ad-supported e-bike service which began trialling a service in London this June, has taken in its first tranche of external funding. The £1.8 million (~$2.3M) investment comes from backers in the mobility space, including Juan de Antonio and Vicente Pascual, founders of ride-sharing app Cabify. As part of the investment, […]

Based in Bangkok, Freshket simplifies the process of getting fresh produce from farms to tables. Launched in 2017, the startup has now raised a $3 million Series A, led by Openspace Ventures. Other participants included Thai private equity firm ECG-Research; Innospace; and Pamitra Wineka and Ivan Sustiawan, the co-founders of Indonesian agriculture technology startup TaniHub. […]

Daybridge, a productivity and time management app by former Monzo engineer Kieran McHugh, has picked by £750,000 in a seed round led by early Monzo backer, Passion Capital. Also participating is a number of London-based angel investors — including, I understand, other Monzo alumni. Passion Capital’s Eileen Burbidge has joined the Daybridge board. Started as […]

Vodafone Idea, one of the largest telecom operators in India, has rebranded as ‘Vi’ as it looks for a “fresh start” three years after the British telecom giant Vodafone Group’s India business and billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla’s Idea Cellular merged in the country. “As the integration of two businesses is now complete, it’s time for a fresh […]

Meet Lokalise, a Latvian startup that focuses on translation and localization of apps, websites, games and more. The company provides a software-as-a-service product that helps you improve your workflow and processes when you need to update text in different languages in your product. The company just raised a $6 million funding round led by Mike […]

We’ve been extremely privileged to witness thousands of early stage startups launch and take flight at Disrupt over the past 10 years, and they just keep getting bettter. You’ll be hard-pressed to find more creative, game-changing startups than the ones that earned our TC Top Picks designation for Disrupt 2020. The all-virtual nature of this […]

Becoming a successful leader isn’t a one-size-fits-all formula. Each startup — depending on the industry and internal culture — has its own needs. The hard part is figuring out what leadership style best suits the personality of the CEO or founder as well as the needs and culture of their startup and employees who work […]

“Teenage Bounty Hunters” has one of the most memorable — if not entirely appealing — titles of any new show on Netflix . As we explain on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, the series tells the story of Sterling (played Maddie Phillips) and Blair Wesley (Anjelica Bette Fellini), fraternal twins who end […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading.

No matter how you celebrate Labor Day weekend, we urge you to mask up, keep your distance when grilling burgers and dogs and — most of all — take advantage of our flash sale on Digital Pro passes to Disrupt 2020. Right now, you can save $100 on your pass — whether you observe the […]

The malls and grocery stores of the 20th century are being converted into industrial conveyor belts of goods and services traveling from the internet to your home.

As this pandemically perverse year draws to a close, there’s one thing that’s certain. Everything has changed — at least a little bit. The U.S. is still grappling with a virus that it has yet to control and a vaccine, once it’s discovered and proven to be effective will take months to be distributed throughout […]

After Beijing unilaterally imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong on July 1, many saw the move as an effort by Beijing to crack down on dissent and protests in the semi-autonomous region. Soon after, a number of tech giants — including Microsoft, Twitter and Google — said they would stop processing requests […]

TikTok deal talks got hung up over whether or not TikTok can export the app's algorithms, and Apple made headlines for delaying the rollout of a potentially disastrous iOS 14 change that's been panicking the advertising community.

Yesterday the four employees (pictured) of US-headquartered enterprise startup PandaDoc were arrested in Minsk by the Belarus police, in what appears to be an act of state-led retaliation, after the company’s founders joined protests against the 26 year-long regime of President Alexander Lukashenko. Lukashenko is widely believed by international observers to have rigged the country’s […]

Facebook removed accounts belonging to far-right group Patriot Prayer and its leader Joey Gibson on Friday, citing a new effort to eradicate “violent social militias” from the platform. That effort emerged through a policy update in mid-August to the company’s rules around “Dangerous Individuals and Organizations.” Those changes resulted in the removal of a number […]

Mobility may be one of the fastest moving technologies going, but procrastination is an equal-opportunity affliction that can strike even the most dedicated founders and devotees. Fortunately, Saint Expeditus, patron saint of procrastinators great and small, called in a favor. Early-bird pricing for passes to TC Sessions: Mobility 2020, which takes place October 4-6, remains […]

Peloton’s product lineup is both getting cheaper and more expensive, Nintendo announces a new retro device and Palantir reveals more about its governance plans. This is your Daily Crunch for September 4, 2020. The big story: Peloton might expand its product lineup Peloton is preparing to add new products at both ends of its pricing […]

Gerrymandering is one of the most insidious methods out there of influencing our political process. By legally changing the way votes are collected and counted, the outcomes can be influenced — even fixed in advance for years. The solution may be an AI system that draws voting districts with an impartial hand. Ordinarily, districts that […]

We have seen a lot of action this week as the DoD tries to finally determine the final winner of the $10 billion, decade-long DoD JEDI cloud contract. Today, the DoD released a statement that after reviewing the proposals from finalists Microsoft and Amazon again, it reiterated that Microsoft was the winner of the contract. […]

Newly released teaser images of Volkswagen’s upcoming all-electric ID.4 compact SUV reveals an interior that leans in on tech, such as touchscreens and ambient lighting used to talk to the driver, without erasing every toggle or knob from automotive’s yesteryear. In short: the ID.4 appears to have struck a balance between stark minimalism and a […]

When people reach out to customer service, they’re seeking more than a solution to their immediate problem. They want empathy and understanding.

For many investors, the coronavirus has effectively taken geography out of the equation when it comes to vetting new opportunities. While this dynamic opens up startups to more investment opportunities, venture capital firms that focus on a specific region are in a thornier spot. The competitive advantage they once had when raising — the notion […]

How can local leaders embrace this new era of civic engagement in the world of COVID-19 to deliver digital solutions that help everyone meet the moment?

It was just days ago that cries of “stocks only go up,” and “no it makes sense that Tesla is going up because it split” and other bits of unironic stupidity were the only thing you could read online about the equities markets. Today, and yesterday, that all went to hell. Stocks, it turns out, can […]

While wearable fitness devices saw an uptick in shipments in North America for Q2, the overall dollar amount of the market remained steady, according to new numbers out of Canalys. The discrepancy can be chalked up to a decline in the average selling price of the products. Continuing an overall trend for 2020, the COVID-19 […]

A few days ago I wrote down a few notes making a bullish case for Palantir, searching to find good news amidst the company’s huge historical deficits. Heading into the next phase of Palantir’s march to the public markets, I was very curious to see how the company would hone its S-1 filing to give […]

Athletic coaching is a massive, multi-billion-dollar industry. No surprise, really, given the massive revenue some top athletes are able to generate. Mustard is working to supplant — or at least augment — some of that pricey coaching with the launch of a new mobile app designed to analyze an athlete’s mechanics and offer corrective tips […]

We are thrilled to announce that Anne Neuberger, director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency, will join us at Disrupt 2020 from September 14-18. The headlines are not always kind to the government agencies that work in secret, and the NSA is no exception. Leaks have exposed some of the agency’s most clandestine intelligence-gathering […]

Peloton is reportedly getting ready to add to its product lineup with two new products at either end of its pricing spectrum, according to Bloomberg. The workout tech company is planning both a cheaper, entry-level smart treadmill, and a higher-end version of its stationary exercise bike, with an announcement set to take place as early […]

Nreal, one of the most-watched mixed reality startups in China, just secured $40 million from a group of high-profile investors in a Series B round that could potentially bring more adoption to its portable augmented headsets. Kuaishou, the archrival to TikTok’s Chinese version Douyin, led the round, marking yet another video platform to establish links […]

Google has made its pitch to shape the next decades of digital regulation across the European Union, submitting a 135-page response yesterday to the consultation on the forthcoming Digital Services Act (DSA) — which will update the bloc’s long-standing rules around ecommerce. The package also looks set to introduce specific rules for so-called “gatekeeper platforms” […]

Self-driving cars are still many years away from becoming a ubiquitous reality, but today one of the bigger efforts to build and develop them is taking a significant step out as part of its strategy to be at the forefront for when they do. Yandex — the publicly-traded Russian tech giant that started as a […]

Meet Teemyco, a Stockholm-based startup that wants to reproduce office interactions in a virtual environment. The company wants to foster spontaneous interactions and casual collaboration with a room-based interface. Each employee moves from one room to another just like in a physical office. If you’re no longer working from an office, chances are you rely […]

Tinder’s “Swipe Night” is going global. The dating app announced today that its interactive video series will be available in Asia and other international markets starting on September 12, giving users another way to connect as they continue to stay at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As in the United States, where “Swipe Night” […]

Earlier this week, in Brooklyn, near the waterfront, Amazon opened what looks from the outside like a typical Whole Foods store. It isn’t open to the public, however; it’s a new fulfillment center. “Grocery delivery continues to be one of the fastest-growing businesses at Amazon,” the company said in a statement about the location, noting […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was back, with Natasha Mascarenhas and Danny Crichton and myself chattering with Chris Gates behind the scenes making it all work. An extra shoutout to Natasha this week as we spent a lot of time talking […]

Cygilant, a threat detection cybersecurity company, has confirmed a ransomware attack. Christina Lattuca, Cygilant’s chief financial officer, said in a statement that the company was “aware of a ransomware attack impacting a portion of Cygilant’s technology environment.” “Our Cyber Defense and Response Center team took immediate and decisive action to stop the progression of the attack. We […]

When we leaked Palantir’s S-1 IPO filing a week and a half ago, one of the more bizarre components that came out of that document was the company’s corporate governance. In a unique three-class voting structure, Palantir founders Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen and Peter Thiel will be given a special “Class F” share that will […]

It has always been considered a matter of if, and not when, Nintendo would begin capitalizing in earnest on content from beyond the SNES generation. The company is finally showing its intent to do so today — but with an uneven approach that leaves some fans worried about its intentions for other all-time gaming classics […]

Quick, what was the first portable gaming system Nintendo made? If you said “Game Boy”… solid guess, but not quite. For nearly a decade before Nintendo released that iconic gray beast, it was making the Game & Watch — a collection of handheld devices, each dedicated to playing just one or two simple games and, […]