Crunch Hype

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 […]

Triplebyte, a technical recruiting platform that emphasizes a candidate’s skills rather than background, has incubated nonprofit ColorStack, which aims to increase the number of Black and Latinx people enrolled in computer science programs. ColorStack, a mentorship-driven community of Black and Latinx engineering students, officially launched in May, but got its bearings at Cornell, where founder […]

As we approach the age of quantum computing, it is no longer a question of ‘if,’ but rather one of ‘when’ this technology finally matures and ‘who’ will lead this emerging industry.

Cash App, the peer-to-peer payments service from Square, is giving select users a way to get short-term loans. The company said it’s only testing the feature with around 1,000 users for now. But it could become more broadly available — and there are probably plenty of people who could use the money, given the state […]

CRISPR pioneer Mammoth Biosciences has secured an exclusive license to a new family of CRISPR proteins, from UC Berkeley, which covers R&D and commercialization across all potential fields. This is a significant addition to Mammoth’s intellectual property holdings, since this new family of CRISPR proteins, known as the Casɸ family, is roughly half the size […]

As the coronavirus hampers the fitness industry, leading to a rapid evolution toward digital classes, ClassPass is pressing onward with its product roadmap, albeit a bit ahead of schedule. The company, which has raised more than $500 million from investors such as General Catalyst, Thrive, GV, Temasek, Apax Digital and L Catterton, is introducing personal […]

Adaptive Shield, a Tel Aviv-based security startup, is coming out of stealth today and announcing its $4 million seed round led by Vertex Ventures Israel. The company’s platform helps businesses protect their SaaS applications by regularly scanning their various setting for security issues. The company’s co-founders met in the Israeli Defense Forces, where they were […]

The bar for being a successful VC just keeps getting higher. With more and more capital sloshing around and not enough founders and startups to invest in, founders are getting the opportunity to be choosier and choosier about who they want to work with on their cap tables. You can’t just bring a checkbook anymore […]

Varjo, the Finnish startup that has developed a virtual and mixed reality headset capable of “human-eye resolution” for use in various enterprise applications, has closed a $51.7 million in Series C funding. Backing the round is Tesi, NordicNinja, and Swisscanto Invest by Zürcher Kantonalbank. Existing investors including Lifeline Ventures, Atomico, EQT Ventures and Volvo Cars […]

I can’t recall the last time people were this intrigued by a (non-Xbox) piece of Microsoft hardware. Announced a little under a year ago amid a deluge of new devices, the Surface Duo turned a lot of heads, leaving many wondering whether the product amounted to more than a concept device. Today, however, the dual-screen […]

Until late last year social video app TikTok was using an extra layer of encryption to conceal a tactic for tracking Android users via the MAC address of their device which skirted Google’s policies and did not allow users to opt out, The Wall Street Journal reports. Users were also not informed of this form […]

Habito, the London startup that has spent the last few years moving the mortgage process online, including offering its own mortgages beyond acting as a broker, has completed £35 million in Series C funding. The newly disclosed round — comprising an earlier Series C equity raise and a more recent Series C extension in the […]

La Famiglia, the Berlin-based “female-led” VC firm that invests in European B2B tech startups at seed-stage, has raised a second fund totalling €50 million, up from its debut fund of €35 million in 2017. Investors in La Famiglia have ties to numerous industry giants in Europe and beyond. They include the Mittal, Pictet, Oetker, Hymer […]

Pinterest’s former chief operating officer has filed a lawsuit accusing the company of gender discrimination. Françoise Brougher, who says she was abruptly fired from the company in April, is suing the company to hold it “accountable for discrimination, retaliation, and wrongful termination in violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), and the Labor […]

Rivian has asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Tesla, arguing that two of the three claims in the case fail to state sufficient allegations of trade-secret theft and poaching talent and instead was an attempt to malign its reputation and hurt its own recruiting efforts. One remaining claim of breach of contract […]

Joe Biden’s decision to name California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate in the quest to unseat President Trump means that the next vice president could be not only the first Black and Asian American woman on a presidential ticket in the U.S — historic milestones by any account — but also a Californian […]

A state court has dismissed a high-profile case showing unsportsmanlike conduct by Google, which was caught red-handed using lyrics obviously scraped from Genius. Unfortunately for the latter, the complaints amount to a copyright violation — which wasn’t what the plaintiffs alleged, sinking the case. The lawsuit, filed in December, accused Google of violating Genius’s terms […]

Google is using accelerometers in an interesting new way, Twitter allows everyone to limit tweet replies and Mozilla announces major layoffs. This is your Daily Crunch for August 11, 2020. The big story: Android phones become earthquake detectors Google said that smartphone accelerometers are sensitive enough to detect P-waves, which are the first waves to […]

The last few months have provided a steady trickle of information about the next Xbox console — or the Xbox Series X, as it’s known. We know what it looks like. We know a lot about what’s inside. We know about more than a dozen titles currently being built for it. One thing we didn’t […]

Today after the close of regular trading Tesla, a well-known American electric vehicle company, announced that it intends to split its shares 5 for 1. The split announcement comes after a sharp rally in the value of Tesla equity in recent quarters. The company’s shares quickly rallied on the news, picking up 8% in after-hours […]

Tomorrow’s a big day for early-stage startup founders preparing to exhibit in Digital Startup Alley at Disrupt 2020. We’re kicking off the first of three exclusive, interactive webinars to help exhibitors make the most of their Startup Alley experience. Tune in tomorrow, August 12 at 1 p.m. PT/ 4 p.m. ET for The Dos and […]

Several companies offering phone-spying apps — known as “stalkerware” — are still advertising in Google search results, despite the search giant’s ban that took effect today, TechCrunch has found. These controversial apps are often pitched to help parents snoop on their child’s calls, messages, apps and other private data under the guise of helping to […]

The automotive industry is knee deep in the vast transition to electric, but one place where gas is still going strong is out on the water. Zin Boats wants to start what you might call a sea change by proving, as Tesla did before it, that an electric boat is not just better for the planet, it's better in almost every other way as well.

Every other expense in my life has gone digital, but the most significant purchase I’ve ever made required hundreds of signatures and several handwritten checks delivered in person.

SlideShare has a new owner, with LinkedIn selling the presentation-sharing service to Scribd for an undisclosed price. According to LinkedIn, Scribd will take over operation of the SlideShare business on September 24. Scribd CEO Trip Adler argued that the two companies have very similar roots, both launching in 2006/2007 with stories on TechCrunch, and both […]

Cities and tech companies need to plan for accessibility early in the design process, include disabled people in solutions, and review the many published accessibility guidelines.

Jason Green, co-founder and partner at Emergence, has made some solid enterprise SaaS bets over the years, long before it was fashionable to do so. He invested early in companies like Box, ServiceMax, Yammer, SteelBrick and SuccessFactors. Just those companies alone would be a pretty good track record, but his firm also invested in Salesforce, […]

Now a private investor, former Moovit president Omar Téllez offers a look inside the company's early growth strategy, its efforts to achieve product-market fit and how rapid growth in Latin America sparked its rapid ascent.

Twitter may describe itself as the town square, but that doesn’t mean you have to talk to everyone walking past your seat at the cafe. Today, to increase the amount of “meaningful conversations” that take place on Twitter, and to help people weed out abuse and spam in their replies, the company announced that it […]

According to The Wall Street Journal, Airbnb could file confidentially to go public as early as this month. The same report states that Airbnb could follow that filing with an IPO before year’s end. Morgan Stanley and Goldman are helping the former startup with its IPO process, the Journal writes. The news that Airbnb’s IPO […]

Valence, the Los Angeles-based online community dedicated to increasing economic opportunity for the Black community, has raised $5.25 million in financing as it looks to continue to expand its network for Black professionals in all fields. The timing for the investment is critical as the country reckons with the implications and effects of systemic racism. […]

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Pattern, a Lehi, Utah-based reseller that offers large and small brands a way to optimize their sales on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart and Google Shopping, has raised $52 million in growth funding, the company said. The money, from Ainge Advisory and KSV Global, will be used to expand the company’s business worldwide. Founded in […]

This year’s TC Sessions: Mobility on October 6 & 7 will be a fantastic opportunity to find out all the latest on advancements in autonomy, micro-mobility, transportation AI and much more. Argo AI co-founder and CEO Bryan Salesky is among the best-positioned people in the world to speak to all those topics, and how they […]

Till, a platform that serves as an intermediary between landlords and renters, has raised an $8 million seed round led by Route 66 Ventures with participation from MetaProp Ventures and NextGen Venture Partners. Till was founded on the premise that people are not always able to pay their rent on the 1st of the month, […]

The summer is coming to an end, and fall is almost here. Which means it’s time for students to “return” to school. To help those looking to get ahead, we are offering an annual Extra Crunch membership to students for $50 off. That’s a full year of Extra Crunch for only $50 (plus tax). You’ll […]

Mozilla today announced a major restructuring of its commercial arm, the Mozilla Corporation that will see about 250 employees lose their jobs and the shuttering of the organization’s operations in Taipei, Taiwan. This move comes after the organization already laid off about 70 employees earlier this year. The most recent numbers from 2018 put Mozilla […]

Fintech is quite possibly the hottest investment area in the venture world these days, and that is why we are so excited to have one of the world’s leading operators and investors talk more about the future of fintech, wealth management, neobanks, infrastructure and more later today on Extra Crunch Live at 1 p.m. EDT/10 […]

Many workers today are still stuck doing a bushel of manual tasks, copying and pasting data into spreadsheets, sending out the same emails every morning and generally lacking any kind of automation because they lack coding skills. Parabola wants to change that with a simple drag and drop workflow set up, and today the startup […]

More worries for TikTok: A European data watchdog that’s landed the biggest blow on a tech giant to date — slapping Google with a $57M fine last year (upheld in June) — now has an open investigation into the social video app du jour, TechCrunch has confirmed. A spokeswoman for France’s CNIL told us it […]

Venture capitalists and other investors have poured capital into fintech startups around the world in recent years, including a record number of rounds worth $100 million or more in the second quarter of 2020. In Q2 2020 venture-backed fintech startups raised 28 nine-figure rounds, underscoring the scale of the bet investors are making on fintech’s […]

S2G Ventures, the Chicago-based investment firm focusing on startups developing technology and services for human and planetary health, is launching a new investment vehicle focused on seafood and oceanic cultivation. The firm was an investor in Beyond Meat, the $9 billion-valued publicly traded meat replacement startups that’s been one of the biggest recent success stories […]

As the COVID-19 epidemic spread across the US earlier this year, Nurx, like most other digital providers of healthcare and prescription services saw a huge spike in demand. Now, with $22.5 million in new financing and a surging annual run rate that could see the company hit $150 million in revenue, the company is emerging […]

Google has updated its Lookout app, an AI toolkit for people with impaired vision, with two helpful new capabilities: scanning long documents and reading out food labels. Paper forms and similarly-shaped products at the store present a challenge for blind folks and this ought to make things easier. Food labels, if you think about it, […]

Sonny Vu, the former founder and chief executive of the wearable technology company, Misfit, has had a busy summer since he was named the new chief executive of 3D printing technology company, Arevo. Vu’s new startup brought on a new executive management team, launched a crowdfunding campaign for its 3D printed Superstrata bicycle and is […]

Google is launching a handful of new Android features today that don’t really have a lot in common but that are all interesting in their own right. There are updates to Android Auto and Android’s emergency location service, new accessibility features thanks to an updated Lookout app, and the promise of better sleep thanks to […]

Mobile device maker HMD Global has announced a $230M Series A2 — its first tranche of external funding since a $100M round back in 2018 when it tipped over into a unicorn valuation. Since late 2016 the startup has exclusively licensed Nokia’s brand for mobile devices, going on to ship some 240M devices to date. […]

Lucid Motors said Tuesday that its upcoming all-electric luxury sedan can travel 517 miles on a single charge — a range that, if validated by the U.S. EPA, blows past every other EV on the road today including Tesla. The estimated EPA range was released ahead of the September 9 reveal of the Lucid Air. […]