Crunch Hype

A 20-month-old startup in India founded by a group of banking veterans that has built a mobile-first credit card and is improving the experience users have with credit cards has secured $10 million in a new financing round. Pune-based FPL Technologies’ $10 million Series A financing round was funded by Matrix Partners India, Sequoia Capital […]

Lightspeed India Partners on Tuesday announced it has closed $275 million from LPs for its third fund as the top American venture firm looks to ramp up its investments in the world’s second-largest internet market. The new fund, its biggest for India, will enable Lightspeed India Partners to make early stage bets on more than […]

What early-stage startup founder wouldn’t love to have a crystal ball? Especially now with a pandemic wreaking economic uncertainty across industries in every corner of the world. We don’t have mystical powers, but we do have the next best thing, and it’s available exclusively to early-stage founders exhibiting in Digital Startup Alley at Disrupt 2020. […]

The battle between Epic Games and Apple continues, Facebook faces criticism in India and Pinterest appoints its first Black board member. This is your Daily Crunch for August 17, 2020. The big story: Epic Games files injunction against Apple Epic’s legal and PR fight with Apple and its App Store policies seems to be escalating. […]

The Creamery was not a place you went for the memories. It was located firmly at the apex of convenience and comfort -- which is why it was the perfect place for the SF technorati to see and be seen.

It’s been 14 years since the launch of Flight Simulator X, which long seemed like it would be the final release in the long-running series. When the company announced it would re-launch the franchise just over a year ago, using a new graphics engine and satellite data from Bing Maps, it sure created a lot […]

Tesla shares surpassed $1,800 for the first time today, the latest in an eye-popping run up of the stock that has propelled the company’s valuation to more than $341 billion. Let’s put these numbers in perspective. Tesla, an automaker that delivered 367,500 vehicles in 2019 and is aiming to exceed the 500,000-mark in 2020, is […]

Washington-based Datasembly aims to take the guesswork out of the pricing for consumer goods. The company founded by Ben Reich and Dan Gallagher initially started as a project the two men developed after working at a retail analytics firm in the DC area. What they observed while trying to collect information on pricing for goods and […]

Pinterest has appointed Andrea Wishom, president of real estate company Skywalker Holdings* and former Harpo Studios executive, to its board of directors. The appointment makes her Pinterest’s first Black board member and third female board member. Pinterest added its first female board member in 2016, when it appointed Michelle Wilson, a former Amazon executive. Wilson […]

Lana, a new startup based in Madrid, is looking to be the next big thing in Latin American fintech. Founded by serial entrepreneur Pablo Muniz, whose last business was backed by one of Spain’s largest financial services institutions, BBVA, Lana is looking to be the all-in-one financial services provider for Latin America’s gig economy workers. […]

After taking a stand against Apple’s hefty cut of the money developers make through the App Store, Fortnite maker Epic Games shows no signs of backing down. The company filed an injunction against Apple in the U.S. District Court for California’s Northern District on Monday after it received a letter notifying Epic that its developer […]

Microsoft’s new Flight Simulator is a technological marvel that sets a new standard for the genre. But to recreate a world that feels real and alive and contains billions of buildings all in the right spots, Microsoft and Asobo Studios relied on the work of multiple partners. One of those is the small Austrian startup […]

TikTok had already offered its statement regarding the Trump Administration’s executive order that will ban the app from the U.S. if it’s not sold by Chinese-owned parent company ByteDance by a given deadline. Today, the company has additionally launched its own online informational hub and a new Twitter account designed to give it a dedicated […]

Small and medium businesses have been some of the hardest hit in the coronavirus pandemic, and in many cases that has had a knock-on effect on the companies that provide services to them. Now, a startup that built a whole business around loaning money to SMBs has been acquired by a giant in the world […]

Disrupt 2020 is right around the corner, and we’ve decided to sweeten the deal for what’s included with your event pass. Buy your ticket now and you’ll get a free year of Extra Crunch, our membership program focused on startups, founders and investors with more than 100 exclusive articles published per month. Extra Crunch unlocks […]

Earlier this month, La Famiglia, a Berlin-based VC firm that invests in seed-stage European B2B tech startups, disclosed that it raised a second fund totaling €50 million, up from its debut fund of €35 million in 2017. The firm writes first checks of up to €1.5 million in European startups that use technology to address […]

A bearded Rihanna gyrates and sings about shining bright like a diamond. A female Jack Sparrow looks like she’d be a right laugh over a pint. The cartoon contours of The Incredible Hulk lend envious tint to Donald Trump’s awfully familiar cheek bumps. Selfie culture has a fancy new digital looking glass: Reface (previously Doublicat) […]

Robinhood announced this morning that it has raised $200 million more at a new, higher $11.2 billion valuation. The new capital came as a surprise. Astute observers of all things fintech will recall that Robinhood, a popular stock trading service, has raised capital multiple times this year, including an initial $280 million round at an […]

The main things shippers want is the ability to dynamically manage supply chain risks and operations and optimize cash flow between corporate buyers and their suppliers.

Verizon and Disney announced this morning that they’re extending and expanding a partnership that gives some Verizon Wireless subscribers access to Disney’s streaming services at no addition charge. The companies announced last fall that Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) would be offering free Disney+ to unlimited wireless customers, and on an earnings call in February, Disney’s […]

Apple is expanding its program that provides parts, resources and training to independent repair shops to now include support for Mac computers. The repair program was first announced last fall, with the goal of making it easier for consumers to repair their out-of-warranty iPhones by allowing them to use third-party shops, including small businesses, that […]

It’s been less than a year since Group Nine Media acquired PopSugar — but it’s been a uniquely challenging time in digital media. Brian Sugar founded the eponymous women’s lifestyle site with his wife Lisa Sugar . Post-acquisition, he’s become president for the entirety of Group Nine (which also owns Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo and […]

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Tuesday, August 11, 2020. For more, subscribe to the Gillmor Gang Newsletter and join the notification feed here on Telegram. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

There are few things that US political leaders can agree on these days, but one of them thankfully appears to be 5G. Manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, health care and many other industries are beginning to incorporate the fast, device-to-device connectivity provided by the fifth-generation wireless standard. But the key 3.5 GHz band of spectrum had been reserved for military and government use.

Every year hackers descend on Las Vegas in the sweltering August heat to break ground on security research and the most innovative hacks. This year was no different, even if it was virtual. To name a few: Hackers tricked an ATM to spit out cash. A duo of security researchers figured out a way to […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Friday that the company was ‘embarrassingly late’ rolling out a security layer known as two-factor authentication for its mobile app. “Sorry, this is embarrassingly late. Two factor authentication via sms or authenticator app is going through final validation right now,” Musk wrote Friday in response to a question from a […]

The controversial facial recognition software maker Clearview AI has a new contract with ICE, the most controversial U.S. government agency. Clearview was already known to work with the branch of Homeland Security fiercely criticized for implementing the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies. The new contract makes it clear that relationship is ongoing — and that […]

In the four years since Help Lightning first began pitching its services out of its Birmingham, Ala. headquarters, the company has managed to sign up 100 customers including some large Fortune 500 companies like Cox Communications, Siemens, and Boston Scientific. Now, with an additional $8 million in financing from Resolve Growth Partners, the company is […]

Rent the Runway and Glossier became unicorns within the same week in June 2019. That same year, only 2.7% of venture capital dollars went toward female-founded companies. Silicon Valley’s disconnect between the monetary success of female-founded companies and funding them in the first place is disheartening. The conversation is there, but the dollar sign momentum […]

At TechCrunch Early Stage, I spoke with Coatue Management GP Caryn Marooney about startup branding and how founders can get people to pay attention to what they’re building. Marooney recently made the jump into venture capital; previously she was co-founder and CEO of The Outcast Agency, one of Silicon Valley’s best-regarded public relations firms, which […]

No matter what you think of Sequoia Capital, the firm doesn’t rest on its laurels. Though it’s now managing ungodly amounts of money and has for decades been considered among the top venture firms in the world, it routinely finds new ways to stay relevant and to ensure that it gets a first look at […]

Andy Rachleff founded Wealthfront a decade ago to give investors a better and smarter way to manage their wealth, building on core academic research showing that a carefully balanced portfolio of low-fee ETFs outperformed more aggressive strategies. Since then, the company has taken in billions of dollars of invested capital under management and expanded into […]

Facebook joined the growing ranks of companies publicly complaining about the 30% fee that Apple collects on payments made through its App Store. Those complaints came midway through a blog post about the social network’s new feature supporting paid online events. Facebook said that to support struggling businesses, it won’t be collecting any fees on those […]

Welcome back to Human Capital. This week, Uber and Lyft's legal battle against a California law pertaining to independent contractors continued, and Pinterest employees reached their breaking point.

Businesses will now be able to monetize online events on Facebook, thanks to a new feature that the social network is launching in the United States and 19 other countries today. In a call with reporters, Head of Facebook App Fidji Simo said that Facebook’s Events feature was designed for in-person events, but with the […]

Initialized Capital, the early-stage venture firm that got its start inside of Y Combinator almost a decade ago and spun out of the organization roughly five years later, has closed its newest fund with $230 million in capital commitments, cofounder Garry Tan announced on Medium earlier today. The fund, its fifth, brings the assets that […]

NASA and SpaceX have set a specific target date for Crew-1, the first operational crewed mission for SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft. Crew-1 will carry astronauts Shannon Walker, Victor Glover, Mike Hopkins and Soichi Noguchi to the International Space Station, and will mark the first regular service mission of the Dragon spacecraft following its certification at […]

As the antitrust drumbeat continues to pound on tech giants, with Reuters reporting comments today from the U.S. Justice Department that it’s moving “full-tilt” on an investigation of platform giants including Google parent Alphabet, startups in Europe’s travel sector are dialing up their allegations of anti-competitive behavior against the search giant. Google has near complete […]

Waste is the cardinal sin of lean methodology.

It’s a whole new playing field these days for music labels and publishers, and today one of the biggies made an acquisition to help it sharpen up its strategy to better understand what people want to see and hear online today. Warner Music — with a market cap of $15.4 billion, one of the big three […]

Facebook is going all-in on short-form videos. After flirting with the idea in Lasso, a TikTok-clone it tested in select markets, and adding a similar feature called Reels to Instagram recently, the company is exploring a new venue for this TikTok -esque experience: The big blue app. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it is […]

Pinterest employees are walking out today to demand change at the company. The walkout is directly in response to recent accusations of racial and gender discrimination at Pinterest. Organizers of the walkout are encouraging employees to post the following message in the #qanda and #pinployees-global channels on Slack: “I am [upset/angry/shocked/unhappy/whatever you’re feeling] about the […]

Thirty Madison, the New York-based startup developing a range of direct to consumer treatments for hair loss, migraines and chronic indigestion, has raised $47 million in new financing. After last week’s nearly $19 billion merger between Teladoc and Livongo, remote therapies and virtual care companies are all the rage among the healthcare industry, and Thirty […]

After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd and the subsequent racial justice uprising, many people in tech shouted from the rooftops that “Black Lives Matter,” despite having subpar representation of Black and Latinx folks at their companies. In some cases, these companies’ proclamations of “Black Lives Matter” felt especially performative in contrast to their respective stances […]

Robots primarily rely on two basic senses: vision and touch. But even the latter still has a long ways to go to get up to the speed with the former. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are looking to hearing as a potential additional sense to help machines increase their perception of the world around them. […]

Before the coronavirus made edtech more relevant, companies in the sector were historically likely to see slow, low exits. Despite successful IPOs by 2U, Chegg and Instructure in the United States, public markets are not crowded with edtech companies. Some of the largest exits in the space include LinkedIn’s scoop of Lynda for a $1.5 […]

I enjoy driving the Polestar 2 more than the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 is more comfortable, seemingly better built and has a better infotainment system. In all the traditional automotive metrics, it’s a better car, and yet I find it hard to recommend it over the Tesla Model 3. The Polestar 2 often […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had the full crew around once again, Natasha Mascarenhas, Danny Crichton, Chris Gates, and myself. And as always, it was key to have the full crew as there was an ocean of […]

Amazon has launched an online pharmacy in Bangalore, the capital of India’s southern Karnataka state, as the e-commerce group looks to spread its tentacles in more categories in one of its key overseas markets. The company said on Friday its new service, called Amazon Pharmacy, has started accepting orders for both over-the-counter and prescription-based medicines […]