Crunch Hype

The use of third party cookies for ad tracking and targeting by data broker giants Oracle and Salesforce is the focus of class action style litigation announced today in the UK and the Netherlands. The suits will argue that mass surveillance of Internet users to carry out real-time bidding ad auctions cannot possibly be compatible […]

After Epic Games picked a fight with Apple over the sizable chunk of fees the company takes on transactions in its mobile ecosystem, it looks like the Fortnite developer will be waging a war on two fronts. Epic added a direct payment option to its mobile game early Thursday, prompting Apple to remove Fortnite from […]

Epic Games takes on Apple, Instagram fixes a security issue and Impossible Foods raises $200 million. This is your Daily Crunch for August 13, 2020. The big story: Apple removes Fortnite from the App Store The controversy over Apple’s App Store policies has expanded to include Epic Games and its hit title Fortnite. The company […]

A lot of studies and discussion of social media use time spent on the platforms as evidence for various theories and conclusions — but it turns out that people are actually super bad at telling how long they spend on them, according to research from Facebook. If you were conducting a study that was looking […]

Uber and Lyft have lost their bid to delay a preliminary injunction that will force the two ride-hailing app companies to reclassify drivers as employees. A California superior court judge denied Thursday the companies request to delay the order from going into effect August 20. The decision sets the stage for a legal fight and […]

Epic Games is launching an all-out campaign against Apple and its App Store rules. Thursday morning, Epic Games introduced a new payment mechanism through a server-side update that allowed gamers to purchase Fortnite’s in-game currency directly, allowing the app to bypass Apple’s in-app purchase framework and the substantial cut that Apple takes. Apple quickly acted […]

After its creator Epic Games implemented a workaround to duck Apple’s hefty developer fees, Fortnite has vanished from the App Store. The popular game’s disappearing act came the same day that Epic added a new direct payment option for in-game currency on mobile, offering an enticing 20% discount for players who pay the company for […]

Impossible Foods has raised $200 million more for its meat replacements. The new round values the company at a Whopper-sized $4 billion valuation, according to the data tracker PrimeUnicorn Index. The new round was led by Coatue, a technology-focused hedge fund; another New York-based hedge fund, XN, also participated in the round. Since its launch […]

One of the most exciting moments in the life of every newly christened founder is the sweet relief of seeing a term sheet come in from an investor. After weeks, perhaps months (but hopefully not years!), of work fundraising and pitching, there is nothing like getting that email with a PDF attached to it laying […]

A security researcher was awarded a $6,000 bug bounty payout after he found Instagram retained photos and private direct messages on its servers long after he deleted them. Independent security researcher Saugat Pokharel found that when he downloaded his data from Instagram, a feature it launched in 2018 to comply with new European data rules, […]

We believe there’s an enormous opportunity to digitize behavioral health right now—and COVID-19 is only making it bigger.

Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, which spun out of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs to fund and develop the next generation of infrastructure, has taken the covers off its first big project — the launch of a subsidiary called Cavnue to develop roadways for connected and autonomous vehicles. Starting in Michigan, Cavnue will be working with partners including Ford, […]

Russell Kirsch, whose research going back to the ’50s underlies the entire field of digital imaging, died earlier this week at the age of 91. It’s hard to overstate the impact of his work, which led to the first digitally scanned photo and the creation of what we now think of as pixels. Born to […]

Lyft is sticking to its previous target to hit quarterly adjusted profitability by the fourth period of 2021, a milestone it says it can achieve even with fewer rides. The company reiterated its quarterly adjusted profit target timeline — a milestone based on earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization — during its second-quarter earnings […]

As North America’s fourth-largest city, Toronto is one of the world’s top startup ecosystems. After spawning companies like Eventbrite and Crowdmark, Ontario’s capital has attracted international talent that complements its homegrown population of entrepreneurs and technical talent. Six investors we surveyed who work and live in the area said they believe Toronto will continue to […]

California-based startup Mission Bio has raised a new $70 million Series C funding round, led by Novo Growth and including participation from Soleus Capital and existing investors Mayfield, Cota and Agilent. Mission Bio will use the funding to scale its Tapestri Platform, which uses the company’s work in single-cell multi-omics technology to help optimize clinical […]

Mirantis, the company that recently bought Docker’s enterprise business, today announced that it has acquired Lens, a desktop application that the team describes as a Kubernetes-integrated development environment. Mirantis previously acquired the team behind the Finnish startup Kontena, the company that originally developed Lens. Lens itself was most recently owned by Lakend Labs, though, which […]

A lot of “partnerships” between tech companies don’t get very far beyond a press release and maybe some half-hearted co-selling attempts. When Atlassian sold its chat services to Slack in 2018, the two companies said they would form a new partnership and with Atlassian leaving the chat space, a lot of people were skeptical about […]

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Like so many industries, the last five months have been absolutely devastating for movie theaters. As far as sheer volumes go, no one has been harder hit than the world’s largest theater chain. AMC has had plans to reopen theaters for some time — but things change, particularly when you’re dealing with something as uncertain […]

It’s been a wild year for modern software companies, often called software as a service (SaaS) firms due to how they deliver their product, from a strong start to the year to a rapid devaluation in the face of a global pandemic and a return-to-form after it became clear that software wasn’t a category that […]

This morning Cube announced that it has closed a Seed round worth just over $5 million. The software startup, focused on financial planning and analysis (FP&A) work, raised $3.8 million of the total recently, with remaining $1.25 million having come in an earlier Pre-Seed round. Christina Ross, Cube’s CEO and founder, told TechCrunch that she […]

In the past two years, Waymo has scaled up a robotaxi service in the Phoenix area, locked in or expanded partnerships with Volvo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, acquired at least one company, launched a lidar business and ramped up testing of its automated trucks. Standing at the frontline of this change — and Waymo’s future […]

With a hot IPO market and a world accelerating its shift to digital technologies amidst a pandemic, it’s a busy time for late-stage startups. Happily, the current moment is generating a wave of leaks and news. So much so, it’s actually been pretty hard to keep up. In honor of the somewhat crazy week we’ve […]

In the latest sign of US platforms bracing for the 2020 US presidential election in November, Twitter has said it will step up efforts to prevent its service from being used to target voters with false information around election participation. Earlier today Facebook announced the launch of a voting hub aimed at combating election misinformation […]

By all accounts, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of robotics and automation by months, if not years. The reasons are fairly clear — robotics don’t call in sick, nor are they disease vectors in the same manner as their human counterparts. As food production and agriculture are looking to be among the biggest […]

While you may have heard this phrase several hundred too many times this year, it remains true: These are unprecedented times. At least a dozen industries are in a state of flux, and only time (a relatively short amount of time) will tell if they can evolve quickly enough to stay in the game. A […]

Omaze, the startup became famous for its celebrity-centric fundraisers, is announcing that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Some of the company’s best-known campaigns include opportunities to meet Michelle Obama, meet Star Wars cast members and visit the set of “Star Trek Beyond.” (I’ll admit that I thew my hat in the […]

Google today announced a few new features Wear OS we can expect from the next over-the-air update, which is slated to arrive this fall. The focus here, Google says, is on fundamentals and that includes improved performance, for example, with up to 20% speed improvements for app startup times, for example. The company also said […]

Apple is reportedly getting ready to launch new bundles of its various subscription services, according to Bloomberg. The bundled services packages, said to be potentially called ‘Apple One,’ will include Apple services including Apple Music, Apple Arcade, Apple TV+, Apple News+ and iCloud in a number of different tiered offerings, all for one fee lower […]

As TikTok’s fate remains in flux, its smaller rival Likee has been making waves around the world, garnering 150 million monthly active users as of this June. That’s according to the earnings report of Chinese internet company Joyy, the owner of Likee. For comparison, TikTok recorded about 200 million daily active users in early 2020, […]

Eager to avoid a repeat of its disastrous role as a super-spreader of misinformation during the 2016 election cycle, Facebook is getting its ducks in a row. Following an announcement earlier this summer, the company is now launching a voting information hub that will centralize election resources for U.S. users and ideally inoculate at least […]

Ever hear the expression, “every master was once a disaster?” Now apply that to developing a well-crafted pitch. It takes practice and honest feedback to make a masterful pitch, and that’s exactly what you’ll get when you participate in our next Pitchers & Pitches. It’s 50 percent competition, 50 percent masterclass and 100 percent free. […]

Earlier this year, the founders of Stream, a five-year-old, 60-person startup with offices in Boulder and Amsterdam, weren’t feeling so great about their prospects. As COVID-19 began its spread in the U.S., some smaller customers of the startup — whose APIs enable product teams to build chat and activity feeds for their applications — began […]

Investors are betting on the automation of human resources management in China. We reported last year that Moka, one of the key players in the space, secured roughly $27 million for its Series B led by Hillhouse Capital. This week, the startup announced closing a Series B+ at over 100 million yuan ($14.4 million), lifting […]

Music is front and center in the rise of TikTok and other short-video apps. It’s not just the video platforms that are harvesting the fruit of their surging popularity. Music rights holders are also prepared to extract money from the millions of songs found in snappy user-generated videos. To detect copyrighted content, record labels and […]

Chinese giant ByteDance is engaging in early discussions with Reliance Industries Limited for backing TikTok’s business in India in a move to potentially save the popular video app’s fate in its biggest market by users, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. TikTok has been banned in India since June 29 as a fallout […]

At TechCrunch Early Stage, Minted CEO and serial founder Mariam Naficy got into the weeds with us on some of the topics founders don’t often discuss. What’s the difference between expectations and reality when it comes to entrepreneurialism? How do you split responsibilities between co-founders? What’s the key to being great at hiring? We also […]

For decades, Burning Man has represented an escape from the current reality. An event for free-er spirits to rethink new age ideals inside a stateless entity where art, music and partying reign supreme on the desert plains. Over the years, the Bay Area-founded event has dealt with an internal clash as the gathering has grown […]

You could Zoom call into your science class, or you could conduct a lab experiment in virtual reality. During the coronavirus pandemic, the latter has never felt more full of potential. The global need for learning solutions beyond Zoom is precisely why Labster, a Copenhagen-based startup that helps individuals engage in STEM lab scenarios using […]

Today after the bell, Lyft reported its second-quarter financial performance. The American ride-hailing company’s results helped illustrate just how much the economy has changed in the wake of COVID-19 and its resulting disruptions to life, travel and work. Uber’s own results, which were shared last week, provided hints of what was coming for Lyft. The […]

For writer-comedian Sarah Cooper, the pandemic hasn’t been so terrible. In fact, by making the best of a lousy situation — in this case, opening a TikTok account while sheltering in place and lip syncing to the often-bizarre ramblings of Donald Trump to underscore their absurdity — she has become an outlet for a country […]

The private space launch industry has expanded significantly since the debut of SpaceX, but some markets, like India, are just now getting the regulatory support to clear the way for private players to participate. Now that those barriers are coming down, however, private launch startup Skyroot is leaping ahead on its way to becoming the […]

Samsung makes good smartwatches. The fact tends to get lost in discussions about a category that’s traditionally been so dominated by a single player. Things have shifted a bit of late, globally. Apple’s market share has slipped somewhat and Huawei and Samsung have been there to pick up some of the pieces. Here in the […]

It’s 2020 and the world has changed remarkably, including in how companies screen data science candidates.

Fundraising was once a formal process. A decade ago, founders would make pilgrimages to the stodgy investor offices that line Sand Hill Road. Now, as the coronavirus ravages the world and venture capital grows as an asset class, a first “yes” can come from an investor-matching tool built on Notion, or an entire fund can […]

Philips has steadily expanded its Hue line of smart lighting products to cover the entire home, inside and out. But while the ability to remotely control your lighting, including adjusting color, intensity and brightness is great, one of its more recent products focuses more on how to turn all those connected lights into a dynamic, […]

If you’re tech-obsessed about the future of moving people, products and packages around the world, you do not want to miss TC Sessions: Mobility 2020 on Oct. 6-7. Two packed days of online programming feature the people leading the charge — creative thinkers, innovative makers, dedicated engineers and savvy investors across the mobility and transportation […]

Uber could be forced to shut down its ride-hailing app in California for several months if a court doesn’t overturn a recent ruling that classifies its drivers as full-time employees, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in an interview with MSNBC. “It’s hard to believe we’ll be able to switch our model to full-time employment quickly,” Khosrowshahi […]

Michael Waxman, co-founder and CEO of dog food startup Sundays, acknowledged that dog owners have no shortage of options when it comes to feeding their beloved pets — but he still thinks there’s room for something new. “There’s a sort of ‘Water everywhere, but not a drop to drink’ phenomenon,” Waxman said. “There are over […]