Crunch Hype

One of the most consistent pieces of advice from health organizations about COVID-19 has been that everyone do their utmost to limit contact with people who may have been exposed to the novel coronavirus that causes the disease. That’s difficult in a hospital setting, where medical professionals regularly have to take patient vital sign measurements […]

The United States is currently in the middle of an affordable housing crisis that’s putting the nation’s most economically insecure citizens at risk of becoming homeless even as a pandemic continues to spread across the country. But one Atlanta startup called PadSplit is using the same model that Airbnb created (which ultimately drove up rental […]

Josh Mendelsohn, the former Bloomberg digital campaign advisor and venture studio founder, thinks that cash constrained government agencies from the local to the federal level aren’t using technology effectively enough to meet the challenges they face. That’s why the founder of Engine and former managing director of Hattery launched Hangar with a $15 million commitment […]

A class action style suit has been filed in the UK against hotel group Marriott International over a massive data breach that exposed the information of some 500 million guests around the world, including around 30 million residents of the European Union, between July 2014 and September 2018. The representative legal action against Marriott has […]

Tristan Thomas, Monzo’s long-standing VP of Marketing — who joined the challenger bank almost five years ago when it had less than 15 employees! — has announced internally that he is departing at the end of the year. For the time being, his destination is unknown (even to himself, I gather), and once he’s served […]

iKala, a Taiwanese startup that offers an artificial intelligence-based customer acquisition and engagement platform, will expand into new Southeast Asian markets after raising a $17 million Series B. The round was led by Wistron Digital Technology Holding Company, the investment arm of the electronics manufacturer, with participation from returning investors Hotung Investment Holdings Limited and […]

Bengaluru-based Pixxel is getting ready to launch its first Earth imaging satellite later this year, with a scheduled mission aboard a Soyuz rocket. The roughly one-and-a-half-year old company is moving quickly, and today it’s announcing a $5 million seed funding round to help it accelerate even more. The funding is led by Blume Ventures, Lightspeed […]

Google said on Wednesday it has expanded its jobs app, called Kormo Jobs, to India as the Search giant looks to offer a helping hand to millions looking for entry-level roles and further displace Microsoft’s LinkedIn relevance in the world’s second largest internet market. The company first launched Kormo Jobs in Bangladesh in 2018 and […]

Multimodal travel platform Omio (formerly GoEuro) has raised $100M in late stage funding to help see its business through the coronavirus crisis. It also says it’s eyeing potential M&A opportunities within the hard-hit sector. New and existing investors in the Berlin -based startup participated in the late stage convertible note, although omio isn’t disclosing any […]

In Indonesia, about half of adults are “underbanked,” meaning they don’t have access to bank accounts, credit cards and other traditional financial services. A growing list of tech companies are working on solutions, from Payfazz, which operates a network of financial agents in small towns, to digital payment services from GoJek and Grab. As a […]

In recent years, China’s online shopping titans have been muscling into the prescription drug market. When JD.com, Alibaba’s archrival, realized the health market spans well beyond retail, it spun out its healthcare unit into a subsidiary last May for a potential initial public offering. That startup, JD Health, gained a staggering valuation of $7 billion […]

Dutchie, a nearly three-year-old, Bend, Ore.-based software company focused on connecting consumers with cannabis dispensaries that pay it a monthly subscription fee to create and maintain their websites, process their orders, and track what needs to be ready for pickup, has raised $35 million in Series B funding. The capital came both new investors Thrive […]

The food blogging community in China is booming, and many creators have been cashing in big time by touting food products to loyal followers, a business model that has lured investors. This week, Hong Kong-based startup DayDayCook announced that it has raised $20 million to expand its multifunctional food platform, whose users mainly come from […]

The first all-virtual Democratic National Convention is in full swing, but don’t expect fireworks. The event runs through Thursday in a truncated-for-TV two hours a night that’s apparently not setting any viewership records, even with most Americans stuck at home. It likely won’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s followed former Vice President Joe […]

Kentaro Kawamori and Jason Offerman, the co-founders of new startup Persefoni, which aims to make carbon reporting easier for large corporations, know a few things about carbon emissions. The two men met at Chesapeake Energy Corp., an Oklahoma City-based energy company focused on oil and gas extraction that ranks as one of the biggest polluters […]

SpaceX raises a huge funding round, Apple launches new radio stations and we review the Samsung Galaxy Note 20. This is your Daily Crunch for August 18, 2020. The big story: SpaceX raises its biggest round yet The $1.9 billion round was disclosed in an SEC filing. Bloomberg had previously reported that the round was […]

Jelani Memory, an entrepreneur and father, had been wanting to write a kids book for years. While in the midst of raising a Series B round for his startup Circle Media, he started to feel burned out and wanted to start doing something more creatively fulfilling, Memory told me. That’s what led Memory to create […]

The future market opportunities enabled by the disruption in space transportation are enormous. Undoubtedly, it will lead to a space gold rush that will drive human civilization’s development for generations to come.

If, like me, you can’t afford a full-sized Tesla because your life has been a series of bad investments (one day my early Fyre Festival backing will pay off) then Radio Flyer’s newest product might be just the thing for you. It’s a scaled down Model Y, designed for use by kids aged 18 months […]

Reliance Retail has bought a 60% stake in pharma marketplace Netmeds for about $83.2 million, it said today as India’s largest retail chain looks to expand into new categories and compete more closely with American e-commerce group Amazon. The all-cash deal valued Netmeds, which serves 5.7 million customers in more than 670 cities and towns […]

Google Maps is getting a significant update that will bring more detail and granularity to its map, with changes that encompass both natural features and city-level details alike. For the former, Google says it’s leveraged computer vision techniques to analyze natural features from satellite imagery, then color-coded those features for easier visual reference. Meanwhile, select […]

You can grow your following, increase your brand awareness and get website traffic by simply piggybacking off popular Tweets.

We did miss out on a lot we were hoping for, but even with virtual desks and virtual Demo Day, SkyDeck is absolutely worth it.

Machine learning models for predicting behavior will need to change, and companies should take a proactive approach to leveraging new technology that can help with these fluctuations.

Layoffs are never easy, but one the most important things to remember is to take off the boss hat, use empathy and show gratitude.

InVision, the design firm that’s raised more than $350 million from investors FirstMark, Spark, Battery and Tiger Global Management, has today announced the appointment of Eleanor Morgan as chief product officer. The company is also introducing a brand new Design System Manager, giving teams much more flexibility and control in both creating and maintaining their […]

SpaceX has raised $1.9 billion in new funding, per a filing with the SEC from Tuesday which was first spotted by Reuters. The company had been reported to be in the funding process earlier by Bloomberg, which pegged the post-money valuation of SpaceX at $46 billion following this raise. The new funding for the still […]

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and we’re excited to give the first peek of what and who is coming to the main stage. We’re not revealing everything just yet, but already this agenda highlights some of the best and brightest minds in autonomous vehicles, electrification and shared mobility. Before we get into who is coming, […]

Walmart’s investments in e-commerce, including online grocery delivery and pickup, are continuing to pay off for the retailer. In the company’s Q2 earnings, released this morning, Walmart reported its U.S. e-commerce sales were up 97% — an increase attributed to more customers shopping online during the pandemic, stocking up on household supplies, and shopping for […]

In less than three months and notwithstanding intervention, TikTok will be effectively banned in the U.S. unless an American company steps in to save it, after the Trump administration declared by executive order this week that the Chinese-built video sharing app is a threat to national security. How much of a threat TikTok poses exactly […]

Playdots — developer of the mobile games Dots, Two Dots and Dots & Co. — has reached an agreement to be acquired by publisher Take-Two Interactive. Take-Two will pay $192 million for the deal, $90 million in cash and the remaining $102 million in stock. Playdots was founded in 2014 by Paul Murphy and Patrick […]

SpaceX has successfully launched 58 more Starlink satellites for its growing internet broadband constellation. This is the 11th batch of Starlink satellites to go up, bringing the total on orbit to well over 600. Today’s mission also carried three Planet satellites, and used a Falcon 9 first stage booster that broke a record by flying […]

Chamath Palihapitiya, the founder of Social Capital, does not do minority investing anymore. If he finds a startup he likes, he just buys it outright. The billionaire co-founded Social Capital in 2011, and seven years later, he pivoted the investment firm into a technology holding company. The transition wasn’t one that the investors hired into […]

Buildkite, a Melbourne-based company that provides a hybrid continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform for software developers, announced today that it has raised AUD $28 million (about USD $20.2 million) in Series A funding, bring its valuation to more than AUD $200 million (about USD $145 million). The funding was led by OpenView, an […]

The Galaxy Note Ultra is a $1,399 smartphone. Even by Samsung’s standards, this is a high-end luxury device. It’s the phone for people who board the plane early and derive a sense of pride in watching the rest of us slowly shuffle onto the plane, wondering just how close to the back we’ll get. Sure, […]

Apple is revamping its streaming radio service. Starting today, its flagship radio station Beats 1 will be rebranded to Apple Music 1 — a change that more closely associates the station with Apple’s subscription-based streaming music service, Apple Music. In addition, the company is launching two more radio stations: Apple Music Hits, featuring top songs […]

Walmart reported earnings this morning. Most of the numbers are immaterial to you and I, having little to nothing to do with the world of private capital and startups, but one metric did leap out: In its quarter ending July 31, Walmart’s U.S. “e-commerce sales” grew by 97% compared to the year-ago quarter, with what […]

Website-building platform Wix is expanding today with the launch of a customer support product (and new company) called Wix Answers. Joe Pollaro, the general manager of Wix’s U.S. business, said that while the company has “been expanding into much larger types of users, enterprise-class users,” Wix Answers wasn’t part of that grand strategy. Instead, it’s a […]

Amazon today announced an upcoming hiring spree set to bring 3,500 jobs to a half-dozen U.S. cities. The news is, of course, particularly notable amid a pandemic that has cause many industries to freeze hiring, while unemployment claims have soared across the country. It also finds the company doing that hiring in cities — many […]

An AI-based technique to accelerate MRI scans has been shown to produce as good or better results than traditional methods in a blind comparison by expert radiologists. The system halves or even quarters the time necessary to get a good scan without sacrificing quality, which could reduce wait times and costs correspondingly. FastMRI is a […]

Movable Ink, a company that helps businesses deliver more personalized and relevant email marketing, is announcing that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding. The company will be 10 years old in October, and founder and CEO Vivek Sharma told me that it’s always been “capital efficient” — even with the new round, […]

The restaurant industry has been slammed hard by the coronavirus outbreak, with venues in many cities in the US and beyond shuttered or restricted in how they can serve customers — to say nothing of the comfort level of customers themselves to dine in public venues — in the name of helping contain the spread […]

Current smartphone-based exposure notification systems (ENS) like the one created jointly by Apple and Google are a clever way of leveraging modern technology to support comprehensive contact tracing efforts by health agencies worldwide. But the COVID-19 pandemic is not what anyone had in mind when the Bluetooth standard was created, so the Bluetooth Special Interest […]

Launch startup Skyrora had a successful test launch of its Skylark Micro rocket from Iceland on Sunday, with the rocket achieving its highest ever altitude at a height of 26.86 km (just under 17 miles). The four meter (13 foot) sub-orbital rocket took off from a mobile launch site at Iceland’s Langanes Peninsula that was […]

Quell is positioning itself as a kind of low-cost take on Peloton (less than 1/10th the price, it notes). You might too, if you were in the London-based startup’s place. With the stationary bike-maker’s value skyrocketing amid COVID-19 lockdowns, fitness startups are all the rage — heck, just look at Lululemon’s recent Mirror acquisition. A […]

The uptick in robotics funding continues this week with a big round for Calgary, Alberta’s Attabotics. The warehouse fulfillment startup announced a $50 million Series C, led — interestingly enough — by the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, Canada’s largest pension plan. It’s a pretty hot moment for robotics and automation investing, as more industries […]

Samsung Pay Card, a new Mastercard debit card from the mobile handset giant, has launched in the U.K. today. Powered by London-based fintech Curve, it lets you consolidate all of your other existing bank cards into a single card and digital wallet, making it easy to manage your money and, of course, use Samsung Pay […]

SpaceX is set to launch is latest batch of Starlink satellites on Tuesday at 10:31 AM EDT (7:31 AM PDT). This is the 11th of SpaceX Starlink missions so far, and will include 58 of the company’s broadband internet satellites, as well as three of customer Planet’s SkySats spacecraft. This mission is important as SpaceX […]

Canoo, the Los Angeles-based electric vehicle startup, has struck a deal to merge with special-purpose acquisition company Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp., with a market valuation of $2.4 billion. The announcement Tuesday marks the fourth time this summer that an electric vehicle company has skipped the traditional IPO path and instead taken the company public through […]

A month after Europe’s top court struck down a flagship data transfer arrangement between the EU and the US as unsafe, European privacy campaign group, noyb, has filed complaints against 101 websites with regional operators which it’s identified as still sending data to the US via Google Analytics and/or Facebook Connect integrations. Among the entities […]