Crunch Hype

India continues to crack down on Chinese apps, Microsoft launches a deepfake detector and Google offers a personalized news podcast. This is your Daily Crunch for September 2, 2020. The big story: India bans PUBG and other Chinese apps The Indian government continues its purge of apps created by or linked to Chinese companies. It […]

Facebook’s video destination, Facebook Watch, is introducing a new feature called “Your Topics” that will allow you to tailor its feed to include more of the content you want to see. Currently, Facebook leverages its existing understanding of each viewer’s interests to personalize the Watch Feed. Topics, however, will allow users to more explicitly tell […]

Yesterday’s overflow Galaxy Unpacked event was about one thing and one thing alone: the Galaxy Z Fold 2. Honestly, it was a bit anticlimactic after its predecessor found Samsung unveiling five new devices. But the singular focus wasn’t for lack of new stuff to show off. In fact, the company just unleashed a whole slew […]

The FCC was deeply embarrassed last year when it was found that its rosy broadband deployment report was off by millions, owing to a single, extremely suspect filing that conjured 62 million customers out of thin air. The company responsible is being assessed a $163,912 fine, but the underlying problems that let it happen haven’t […]

The continual uncertainty around TikTok’s future may have provided a big boost to Snapchat in August. Or maybe it was just the Disney eyes filter that went viral. In any event, preliminary estimates from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower indicate that Snapchat’s mobile app across both iOS and Android saw approximately 28.5 million new […]

LPs have the power and the responsibility to invest in more diverse fund managers to keep them and their investment teams accountable.

School district technology budgets are tight. But Kami CEO and founder Hengjie Wang wanted to make his company’s digital classroom product a go-to tool anyway. He landed on trying to disrupt the printers. Wang found that school districts spend an average of $150,000 every year on printed materials. Kami helps teachers digitize worksheets so students […]

Process automation startup Hypatos has raised a €10 million (~$11.8 million) seed round of funding from investors including Blackfin Tech, Grazia Equity, UVC Partners and Plug & Play Ventures. The Germany and Poland-based company was spun out of AI for accounting startup Smacc at the back end of 2018 to apply deep learning tech to […]

A government watchdog has criticized U.S. border authorities for failing to properly disclose the agency’s use of facial recognition at airports, which included instructions on how Americans can opt out. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), tasked with protecting the border and screening immigrants, has deployed its face-scanning technology in 27 U.S. airports as part […]

Disrupt 2020 is a few weeks away and we’re looking for founders to submit their pitch decks. In the Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees’ pitch decks. First impressions are everything, and pitch decks are often the first glimpse of companies by investors and business […]

COVID-19 has stirred up the long-settled dust on real estate investing, which could paint a bright future with promising – yet different – projects for developers, startups and investors.

Research papers come out at far too rapid a rate 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, […]

Lucas di Grassi is returning to TechCrunch’s stage, and we’re going to talk racing electric vehicles. Again. Because electric is the future of motoring including motorsports. There’s a lot to talk about with di Grassi. He’s an outspoken proponent of electric vehicles, previously helping to develop Formula E, push forward the AI racing circuit Roborace […]

How long does the EB-1B process take? What can we do to maximize our chances for approval?

The builders, questioners, makers and ethical leaders coming up in technology firms now will help us to reshape the industry for the better and create the products we deserve.

Twitch is doubling down on making its site more than just a place for livestreaming gaming video. Last fall, the Amazon-owned company began testing a new feature called “Watch Parties,” which lets creators stream Amazon Prime Video content to viewers with Amazon Prime. This spring, Twitch opened up Watch Parties to its biggest streaming channels […]

Stan Chudnovsky last spoke at Disrupt in 2016, so we’ve got a lot to catch up on. Chudnovsky remains in charge of Facebook Messenger — his current title is VP of Messenger — so he can tell us more about how the product has evolved at this year’s Disrupt 2020 on September 14-18. One of […]

Peer Medical has a big mission. After his father died of lung cancer, serial entrepreneur Ed Spiegel vowed to create a better way for lung cancer patients to deal with their disease. The startup has so far raised a $1.2M seed funding round for its ground-breaking approach and is onboarding patients at a rate of […]

A few weeks back, TechCrunch wrote about how Ramp, a corporate credit card startup with a focus on cost control, had added expense management software on top of its company plastic business. Closing out our piece, I wondered if “cards aren’t de facto commoditized by this point,” given the sheer number of companies that are […]

Zume pulled the plug on its robotic pizza wing earlier this year. A lot goes into making a decision like that — particularly for a company whose robotic dreams were a press darling for a while there. But its own inabilities to get the math right shouldn’t necessarily be taken as an indication of a […]

Lucid Motors is set to unveil its production electric sedan next week and it’s clear the company is targeting Tesla . Over the last few weeks, Lucid has teased notable aspects of the Lucid Air including recharge time, estimated range, bi-directional power flow, and now, today, the Air’s quarter-mile time. And it’s faster than any […]

U.S. cell carrier Assist Wireless left tens of thousands of personal customer documents on its website by mistake. Assist provides free government-subsidized cell phones to low-income households across Oklahoma through the Lifeline program, set up by the Federal Communications Commission in 1985. Lifeline helps households on federal assistance programs, like food stamps or public housing, […]

“The Mandalorian” is returning to Disney+ with new episodes starting on October 30. The Star Wars spinoff series (created by Jon Favreau) was the biggest original offering when Disney+ launched in November of last year. With its story of a mysterious bounty hunter (played by Pedro Pascal) and his adorable alien ward, the first season […]

Last year, Google launched a personalized playlist of audio news called “Your News Update” for Google Assistant. The feature leverages machine learning techniques to understand the news content and how it relates to the listener’s own likes and interests. Today, the company says it’s publishing this personalized audio experience on Google Podcasts, allowing it to […]

Transposit is a company built by engineers to help engineers, and one big way to help them is to get systems up and running faster when things go wrong — as they always will at some point. Transposit has come up with a way to build runbooks for faster disaster recovery, while using data to […]

Last Monday will go down in the books as a historic day for unicorn liquidity, as company after company dropped their IPO filings onto the internet for the world to read. It was great. But this week is still managing a good grip of IPO news, with Wish announcing yesterday that it has filed privately […]

Caregivers, both paid and unpaid, have been in the spotlight this year as one of the key categories of front-line workers helping cope with the coronavirus pandemic. On one hand, they have been in great need, especially as the infection seemed to hit hardest with the elderly people and infirm people who they help. On the […]

Legion, an artificial intelligence driven platform for workplace management, has raised a $22 million series B round led by Stripes with participation from Workday Ventures and others. Legion is designed to help employers better manage their hourly workforces by automating certain decisions, like how much labor to deploy to meet the needs of the company […]

A newly discovered bug in a cloud system used to manage SonicWall firewalls could have allowed hackers to break into thousands of corporate networks. Enterprise firewalls and virtual private network appliances are vital gatekeepers tasked with protecting corporate networks from hackers and cyberattacks while still letting in employees working from home during the pandemic. Even […]

Deciding how to go about getting your initial funding is always a tricky subject, as the wrong move could adversely impact your young company. At Disrupt 2020 this September 14-18, we’ll showcase three amazing investors and experts who’ve shepherded multiple companies during their earliest stages. The process of raising your first dollars looks simple from […]

In the two years since Chinedu Eleanya founded Mulberry to be the warranty service for direct-to-consumer brands, business has boomed. Already riding a shakeup in consumer behavior brought by the emergence of startup brands selling just about everything to just about everyone, Mulberry brought a much-needed new spin on the warranty service that retailers had […]

India has banned more than 100 additional apps with linkage to China including popular mobile game PUBG citing cybersecurity concerns as geopolitical tension between the two neighboring nations continues to rise. On Wednesday, India’s IT Ministry ordered to ban 118 apps that it said were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security […]

Point72 Ventures, the early stage investment firm that’s now solely investing the personal wealth of the multi-billionaire hedge fund magnate Steven A. Cohen, is getting into healthcare investing. The firm has hired Scott Barclay, a former partner at the life sciences and frontier technology investment firm, DCVC, to run its new healthcare practice. Since the […]

India has a new unicorn startup. On Wednesday, Bangalore-based online learning startup announced it has raised $150 million in a new financing round that valued the Facebook-backed firm at $1.45 billion (post-money). SoftBank Group — through its Vision Fund 2 — led Unacademy’s Series F financing round while existing investors Facebook, Blume Ventures, Nexus Partners, […]

Microsoft has added to the slowly growing pile of technologies aimed at spotting synthetic media (aka deepfakes) with the launch of a tool for analyzing videos and still photos to generate a manipulation score. The tool, called Video Authenticator, provides what Microsoft calls “a percentage chance, or confidence score” that the media has been artificially […]

French startup Klaxoon is currently testing a new product called Board. The company expects to launch Board at some point during the second half of September. Board is a new visual interface that connects directly with video-conferencing services, such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom and Google Meet. If you’re not familiar with Klaxoon, the startup wants […]

E-commerce has brought in a logistics boom in China over the last decade, transforming small-town delivery businesses into multinational corporations. One leading player, YTO, is gearing up for international expansion after it secured 6.6 billion yuan or $970 million from its long-time ally and client, Alibaba. 20-year-old YTO announced this week it will sell 379 […]

3one4 Capital, a venture capital firm in India, today announced a $100 million fund as the young investment firm looks to back more early-stage startups in the world’s second largest internet market. The new fund, third for the five-year-old Bangalore-headquartered investment firm, has already secured $40 million from new and existing investors. 3one4 Capital, which […]

PasarPolis, the Indonesian-based startup focused on making insurance policies more accessible in Southeast Asia, has closed a Series B round totaling $54 million. Investors include LeapFrog Investments and SBI Investment, both firms that focus on financial services; AlphaJWC; Intudo Ventures; and Xiaomi. Gojek’s venture capital arm, Go-Ventures, which participated in PasarPolis’ Series A two years […]

As the COVID-19 pandemic spread to the United States, a number of automakers and other manufacturers announced plans to retrofit factories to help ease the shortage of personal protective gear and ventilators. Now, two U.S. automakers have fulfilled their separate multi-million-dollar ventilator contracts — together delivering 80,000 of the devices to the U.S. government. General […]

As Slack ramps up its investment in Asia, Toss Lab, the South Korea-based creator of enterprise collaboration platform JANDI, is preparing to become a more formidable rival. The startup announced today that it has raised a $13 million Series B led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, the early-stage venture arm of SoftBank Group. Participating investors also […]

Apple and Google are adding support for app-less exposure notifications, Facebook says it might block news sharing in Australia and Samsung has a new foldable phone. This is your Daily Crunch for September 1, 2020. The big story: Apple launches ‘Exposure Notification Express’ for COVID-19 Apple and Google are introducing new tools that should make it […]

Launch provider Rocket Lab has gained a key clearance from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration that should mean it’ll be launching from its U.S.-based facility at Wallops Island, Virginia relatively soon. As it had done before for its LC-1 launch pad in New Zealand, Rocket Lab gained a Launch Operator License for its LC-2 pad […]

The Amazon app is getting a makeover. You may have already spotted the refreshed version of the Amazon shopping app with its new color scheme and revamped navigation if you’re an iPhone user. The changes began rolling out earlier this summer to iOS users in the U.S. and are on track to reach 100% of […]

Dell has long garnered high esteem for the quality of its displays, and that hasn’t changed with its more recent models. What has changed is that more and more, people are looking for external monitors to complement their work laptops as they shift to more remote work — and settle in for more permanent home […]

Wish, the San Francisco-based, 750-person e-commerce app that sells deeply discounted goods that you definitely don’t need but might buy anyway when priced so low — think pool floats, guinea pig harnesses, Apple Watch knockoffs — said yesterday that it has submitted a draft registration to the SEC for an IPO. Because it filed confidentially, […]

Last week TechCrunch sat down virtually with Jeff Lawson, the CEO and co-founder of Twilio as part of our long-running Extra Crunch Live series. As I expected, the chat was a good use of time. Why? Lawson was early on the idea that software companies could deliver their features not through a web app, but […]

India, the world’s second most populated nation, sees more than 20% of the global flood-related fatalities each year as overrun riverbanks sweep tens of thousands of homes with them. Two years ago, Google volunteered to help. In 2018, the company began its flood forecasting pilot initiative in Patna — the capital of the Indian state of […]

Google launched a few updates to its Contact Center AI product today, but the most interesting one is probably the beta of its new Custom Voice service, which will let brands create their own text-to-speech voices to best represent their own brands. Maybe your company has a well-known spokesperson for example, but it would be […]

It was all supposed to be so different. When Rocket Internet IPO’d in 2014 it was the largest tech company floatation in Europe for seven years. A year later it had lost $46 million and its valuation had dropped by 30%. Since then the German startup factory behind internet companies such as Delivery Hero, Zalando […]