Crunch Hype

Napster, the pioneering digital music brand from way back when, is changing hands once more. Today, a UK startup called MelodyVR, which creates immersive live music experiences that you watch either through VR headsets or phones, announced that it has acquired Rhapsody International — the company that owns Napster and was most currently majority-owned by […]

Eduardo Saverin will forever be known for cofounding Facebook 16 years ago with four other Harvard classmates (one of whom is still running the company). But even before splitting in 2009 for Singapore with his shares of the company, Saverin’s attention was on startup investing, and since 2015, he has been laser focused on B […]

A district court denied Epic Games’ motion to temporarily restore Fortnite game to the iOS App Store, but also ordered Apple to not block the gaming giant’s ability to provide and distribute Unreal Engine on the iPhone-maker’s ecosystem in a mixed-ruling delivered Monday evening. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said Apple can’t retaliate […]

Supermetrics, the data management and analysis tool for marketers, has raised €40 million in new funding. Leading the round is Highland Europe, with participation from IVP, while the injection of capital will be used by the profitable Finland-based company for further expansion, including bringing data warehousing to the marketing sector. Founded in in 2013 by […]

After restricting access to a popular group with posts critical of Thailand’s monarchy, Facebook is planning legal action against the Thai government, which the social media giant says forced it to restrict content deemed to be illegal. On Monday, Reuters reported access to Royalist Marketplace had been blocked within Thailand. Users there who try to […]

For iRobot, much of the last several years has been devoted to making its line of home-cleaning robots smarter. There hasn’t been much in the way of new hardware in a while, as the company focuses on things like connectivity, smart home integration and smarter cleaning. This latest update touches on all three, but primarily […]

Researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have developed a way for a fully wireless system to monitor not only movement and vital signs contact-free, but also to track activities – in a more privacy-preserving way without using video. The system has the potential to be used at long-term care and assisted […]

Palantir’s mysterious work and its founding origins with Trump ally and anti-press crusader Peter Thiel have inspired a number of controversies in recent years, none as divisive as its ongoing business with ICE. But with a direct listing around the corner, the famously secretive company is in for a lot more scrutiny. In Palantir’s forthcoming S-1 […]

Asana, the project management software developer, dropped its filing for a direct listing on one of the busiest days of a surprisingly busy late summer. The task management toolkit provider started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early FB employee Justin Rosenstein isn’t as well known or as well financed as today’s other big public […]

The path to deploying commercial aircraft that can handle all aspects of flight without a pilot is long, winding, expensive and riddled with regulatory and technical hurdles. Marc Piette, the founder of autonomous aviation startup Xwing, aims to make that path to pilotless flight shorter and more cost-effective. Instead of building autonomous helicopters and planes […]

Today was part one of Y Combinator’s two-parter Summer 2020 Demo Day, where nearly 100 companies debuted their efforts to the world for the first time. The Summer 2020 batch of companies was the first fully remote YC cohort, with the ongoing pandemic leading the accelerator to take its program entirely virtual. But it was […]

It’s been quite a day in the tech world, with a bushel of S-1s being filed to go public. Not to be left out, the ever acquisitive Palo Alto Networks announced its intent to acquire The Crypsis Group, an incident response, risk management and digital forensics consulting firm, for a crisp $265 million. Nikesh Arora, […]

Startup incubator and investment group Y Combinator today held the first of two demo days for founders in its Summer 2020 batch. So far, this cohort contains the usual mix of bold, impressive and, at times, slightly wacky ideas young companies so often show off. This was Y Combinator’s second online demo day, its first […]

TikTok fights its U.S. ban, Twitter takes action against another Trump tweet and Unity files to go public. This is your Daily Crunch for August 24, 2020. The big story: TikTok sues the U.S. government TikTok is fighting back against the Trump administration’s decision to ban the popular video app in the U.S. market (unless […]

Today is the day for huge VC returns. We talked a bit about Sequoia’s coming huge win with the IPO of game engine Unity this morning. Now, Sequoia might actually have the second largest return among companies filing to go public with the SEC today. Sequoia strikes gold with Unity’s IPO filing Snowflake filed its […]

Snowflake filed to go public today joining a bushel of companies making their S-1 documents public today. TechCrunch has a longer digest of all the IPO filings coming soon, but we could not wait to get into the Snowflake numbers, given the huge anticipation that the company has generated in recent quarters. Why? Because the […]

Unity, the company founded in a Copenhagen apartment in 2004, is poised for an initial public offering with numbers that look pretty strong. Even as its main competitor, Epic Games, is in the throes of a very public fight with Apple over the fees the computer giant charges developers who sell applications (including games) on […]

Triller, an app that functions similarly to TikTok, has inked a strategic partnership with a platform owned by India’s richest man to cash in on the Chinese app’s ban in its biggest international market. The Los Angeles-headquartered firm said on Monday it has partnered with Reliance’s JioSaavn music app to embed Triller videos into the […]

Travel has undoubtedly been one of the industries hardest hit in the coronavirus pandemic, constrained by restrictions on how people can move between and within countries, many venues closing, new rules to minimise gatherings, shrinking economies, and a general reluctance among consumers to engage in getting out and about. One startup in the space has […]

Bolt Bikes, the electric bike platform marketed to gig economy delivery workers, has a new name and a fresh injection of $11 million in capital from a Series A funding round led by Australian Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The round also included equity from Hana Ventures and existing investors Maniv Mobility and Contrarian Ventures, together […]

We’re excited to announce that government, nonprofit and military employees can get an Extra Crunch membership at a discounted rate of $50 per year, plus tax. If interested in claiming the deal, please contact our customer service team from your .org, .gov, .mil or similar work-related email domain. We’ll also accept other forms of verification, […]

Amanda Milligan Contributor Share on Twitter Amanda Milligan is the marketing director at Fractl, a prominent growth marketing agency that’s helped Fortune 500 companies and boutique businesses alike earn quality media coverage, backlinks, awareness and authority. More posts by this contributor We throw away 80% of our content ideas, and you should too What we’ve […]

It’s a classic “last but not least” moment for the all the savvy early-stage startup founders exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley at Disrupt 2020. The final webinar in our three-part interactive series takes place on August 26 at 1 p.m. PT / 4 p.m. ET. Don’t forget to register right here. Pro tip: You must […]

Cloud photo storage app Ever is shutting down, citing increased competition with the default services offered by Apple and Google as the cause. The company, however, had other issues beyond the plight of a small startup trying to compete with tech giants. Last year, NBC News reported the company had been using its customers’ photos […]

Facebook France is going to pay $125 million (€106 million) in back taxes. Business magazine Capital first reported the agreement. French tax authorities raided Facebook’s offices in Paris in 2012 and later opened an investigation on unpaid taxes covering activities between 2009 and 2018. “This year, we also reached an agreement with the tax authorities […]

A big payday is on the way for Sequoia and its partners, assuming they beat the final boss. Today after much anticipation, video game engine Unity filed its Form S-1 with the SEC as it prepares a roadshow to go public in the coming weeks. We discussed quite a bit about Unity’s business fundamentals, product […]

If you’re currently building a startup, you know what product you want to build. But do you know if people are actually going to notice you? That’s the question I asked of Red Antler co-founder Emily Heyward during our virtual TechCrunch Early Stage event. In case you’re not familiar with Red Antler, Heyward’s branding company […]

TikTok is suing the U.S. government in federal court over the Trump Administration’s decision to ban TikTok in the U.S. market. Reports that TikTok would soon file a legal challenge to the ban were already making the rounds this weekend, ahead of TikTok’s formal announcement of the lawsuit, shared today on its company blog. TikTok […]

Setting our dive into Palantir’s gross margins aside for another day, Sumo Logic filed to go public this morning. The Redwood City-based, former startup raised around $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. You can read it every morning on Extra Crunch, or get The Exchange newsletter […]

It’s time to mobilize for early-bird savings on passes to the all-virtual TC Sessions: Mobility 2020, which takes place October 6-7. Prices will continue to increase as the event draws near. Buy your pass before September 4 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and you’ll save $100 over full price. This ain’t no two-day webinar, friends. We […]

Why should you attend Disrupt 2020? We live in unprecedented times and face unprecedented challenges. But unprecedented opportunities are also part of this equation, and now is the time for creative startup minds and makers to go full-tilt disruptive. We reengineered Disrupt, which takes place September 14-18, into a virtual global tech summit. And we’ve […]

As the COVID-19 pandemic reshapes our world, more consumers have begun shopping online in greater numbers and frequency. According to new data from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. Department stores, as a result, are seeing significant declines. In the […]

Enterprise cloud giant Cloudera has pulled several of its cloud storage servers offline, despite initially claiming the servers were “open by design,” after a security researcher found sensitive internal files inside. Chris Vickery, director of risk research at security firm UpGuard, found the cloud storage servers — known as buckets — hosted on Amazon Web […]

Luminar, the lidar startup that burst onto the autonomous vehicle scene in April 2017 after operating for years in secrecy, is merging with special-purpose acquisition company Gores Metropoulos Inc., with a post-deal market valuation of $3.4 billion. Gores Metropoulos, which is listed on the Nasdaq exchange, is a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC sponsored by […]

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 […]

More entrepreneurs and investors are willing to throw caution to the wind and go after core segments like search, email and video conferencing with gusto.

Yac, the digital voice messaging service that launched last year, has raised new money from the Slack Fund as it continues to gain ground among companies looking to give their employees new communication tools for remote working. The Florida-based startup initially spun out of a pitch at Product Hunt’s Maker Festival. Developed by the digital […]

Long story short, I borrowed a new Bentley Bentayga for 24 hours. What follows is a brief overview of the $177,000 sport utility vehicle. As I had the vehicle for a short time, I was unable to dive deep into the SUV, and it feels disingenuous to write a full review after driving just a […]

Zoom video calls and webinars are also suffering because of the outage.

In 2010, TV show host Conan O’Brien was abruptly asked to give up the time slot he’d been handed just six months earlier by his longtime employer NBC. Instead, he famously gave the network the figurative finger, taking his act to the basic cable network TBS later that same year and — embraced by legions […]

SugarCRM announced this morning it has acquired customer intelligence startup, Node. The companies did not reveal the purchase price, but the deal has closed. While Sugar gains a ton of AI expertise, it also adds a customer prediction element to the platform such as figuring out the customers most likely to convert or most likely […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday 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. Let’s […]

Still working to turn a profit and shake off its fake-goods reputation, China’s e-commerce upstart Pinduoduo set itself another ambitious goal for 2025: surpass 1 trillion yuan or $145 billion annual gross merchandise volume of agricultural products. The announcement arrived with the company’s Q2 results last Friday. For some context, online sales of agricultural goods […]

Twitter flagged one of President Donald Trump’s tweets on Monday, placing it behind a notice that warns users it violates the platform’s rules against dissuading people from voting. In the tweet, posted on Monday, Trump claimed mail drop boxes are a “voter security disaster” and also said they are “not COVID sanitized.” Twitter’s notice says […]

Jimmy Qian and Lucia Huang, the co-founders of Osmind, a new clinical practice management and data analysis platform for mental health providers focusing on cutting edge psychedelic treatments, met at Stanford University. The two both come from healthcare backgrounds. Huang, whose mother was a biomedical engineer, worked as an associate at Warburg Pincus focused on […]

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. You can subscribe to the newsletter here if you haven’t yet. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Palantir and the great revenue mystery As […]

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. The public markets are staying receptive to tech IPOs, and tech unicorns are trying to recover from pandemic damage, polish up their financials, and head back towards the starting gates. This week, it’s […]

Amit Garg and Sanjay Rao have spent the bulk of their professional lives developing technology, founding startups and investing in startups at places like Google and Microsoft, HealthIQ, and Norwest Venture Partners. Over their decade-long friendship the two men discussed working together on a venture fund, but the time was never right — until now. […]

Apple’s a hard company to like these days. Their glory days behind them, they have relentlessly pursued a misguided concept of optimization that has alienated their user base and compromised their products. A MacBook SE would go a long way toward smoothing the wake they’ve left behind them. I was excited that this would be […]

Bletchley Park is an English country house that became the principal centre of Allied code-breaking during the Second World War. It built the world’s first programmable digital electronic computer, cracking the Enigma Machine and thus helping turn the tide of the war against Nazi Germany. But now the institution that preserves that history is in […]