Crunch Hype

Digital entertainment titan Tencent continues to drum up its music ambitions. On Tuesday, Tencent Music Entertainment, majority-owned by Tencent with a 55.6% stake, announced establishing a new joint label with its licensing partner Universal Music Group to discover, develop and promote Chinese artists domestically and to the world. TME, which spun off from Tencent and […]

Vitesse, the London-based fintech that offers real-time cross-border payments for businesses, has raised £6.6 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Octopus Ventures, with participation from existing backers including Hoxton Ventures and various angel investors. The company says the new investment will be used for growth, including building out its sales and […]

As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And so we arrive at the news, put out yesterday in the horse latitudes of summer via joint press statement, that the EU’s executive body and the US Department of Commerce have begun talks toward fashioning a […]

Eggtronic, the Italy-founded startup developing power electronics, wireless charging and data over power technology and products, has closed around $10 million in Series A funding. Backing the company is Rinkelberg Capital — the investment fund from the founders of TomTom — and funds managed by an unnamed investment bank in Milan. It brings the total […]

Google has rolled out a new Search feature in India that enables influencers, entrepreneurs, freelancers, or anyone else who wants to be easily discovered online create a virtual visiting card in what appears to be the company’s latest attempt to add more LinkedIn -esque functionalities into its search engine. The company said it has rolled […]

Incomlend, a Singapore-headquartered startup that operates a trading platform to connect exporters and importers with investors, has raised $20 million in a new financing round, it said on Tuesday. Sequoia India, the India and SEA investment arm of the storied U.S. headquartered venture firm, led the Series A round in four-year-old Incomlend. The CMA CGM […]

The war between two of China’s largest esports companies may soon come to a truce at the will of their investor Tencent. Tencent, the world’s biggest games publisher, announced late Monday a proposal to consolidate Douyu and Huya, the competing livestreaming sites focused on video games. Rather than paying in cash, the deal will see […]

The public beta of watchOS 7 is here, Amazon may be looking to turn malls into distribution centers and Skillshare raises $66 million. This is your Daily Crunch for August 10, 2020. The big story: Trying on Apple’s watchOS 7 Brian Heater walks us through all the changes coming in watchOS 7. It sounds like […]

Running a startup accelerator comes with a number of occupational hazards, but “skepticism is the easiest thing to fall into when you’ve seen too many companies,” said Y Combinator President Geoff Ralston, “and it’s the thing you have to avoid the most.” Ralston joined me last week for an hour-long Extra Crunch Live interview where […]

Shares of Uber and Lyft dipped modestly after a California judge granted a preliminary injunction that TechCrunch reports could force the two American ride-hailing companies to reclassify drivers as employees in the state. Uber’s stock is off about 1.3% following the cessation of normal trading hours after dipping around 2% in regular trading. Lyft’s stock […]

Reddit is gearing up to run ads for President Donald Trump ahead of the 2020 presidential election despite concerns from employees, TechCrunch has learned. Reddit CEO Steve Huffman addressed some of these employee concerns during an all-hands meeting last week, viewed by TechCrunch. “I know for many of you, [Trump] is simply a symbol of […]

California Superior Court Judge Ethan Schulman has granted a preliminary injunction forcing Uber and Lyft to reclassify its drivers as employees. This order is set to go into effect in 10 days. “The Court is under no illusion that implementation of its injunction will be costly,” Judge Schulman wrote in the order. “There can be […]

SpaceX has big plans for its Boca Chica, Texas site – where it’s currently building and testing Starship, the company’s next-generation passenger and cargo spacecraft. A new job posting spotted by CNBC’s Micheal Sheetz seeks a “Resort Development Manager” to be based out of Brownsville, the nearest neighboring town to the small Boca Chica area […]

The team at DoubleVerify, a company that helps advertisers eliminate fraud and ensure brand safety, said that it’s recently identified a new tactic used by ad fraudsters seeking to make money on internet-connected TVs. Senior Vice President of Product Management Roy Rosenfeld said that it’s harder for those fraudsters to create a legitimate-looking TV app […]

5G is increasingly coming into focus as a set of technologies that has the potential to dramatically expand the quality, bandwidth and range of wireless connectivity. One of the major blocks to actually rolling out these technologies though is simply spectrum: there just isn’t enough of it available for private use. 5G needs spectrum at […]

It wasn't the busiest week in space tech news -- much like a lot of the industry, it feels like we're entering into a bit of a summer doldrums period, when things slow down considerably.

Amazon has amassed at least 1 million subscribers for its Prime loyalty program in India, the e-commerce giant revealed today in a long rundown of how its platform fared during last week’s Prime Day in the world’s second largest internet market. More than a million Prime subscribers in India shopped from small businesses in the […]

Apple’s still-in-beta operating systems will automatically redirect News+ subscribers to the Apple News app when they click on links from a News+ publisher. In other words, if you click or tap on a link to a paywalled story published by a News+ partner — including stories from our own Extra Crunch membership program — iOS […]

Angel funding, seed investing and generally focusing on earlier stage investing is a huge business in the world of startups these days — it helps investors get in early to the most promising companies, and (because of the smaller size of the checks) allows for even the less prolific to spread their bets. There was […]

Hyundai has launched a dedicated EV brand called Ioniq with plans to bring three all-electric vehicles to market over the next four years. The Ioniq brand is part of the Korean automaker’s broader strategy to sell 1 million battery electric vehicles — and take a 10% share of the EV market — by 2025. If […]

Of the big three Apple operating systems, watchOS arguably gets the least love. That goes double in a year that sees macOS getting its biggest overhaul in recent memory. On the whole, the Apple Watch’s software is often overlooked, as smartwatch users tend to focus attention on the addition of new hardware sensors and the […]

We’re excited to announce an update to an existing Partner Perk from design platform Canva . Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can receive 20% off an annual plan for Canva Pro. Canva empowers users to create social media graphics, presentations, posters and other visual content. Featuring a simple drag-and-drop user interface […]

Faraday Future has yet to produce a production vehicle. The company burst out of nowhere in 2015 with wild claims of upsetting the electric vehicle market ruled by Tesla. That hasn’t happened yet, either. Instead, the company has fallen flat with its founder declaring personal bankruptcy, the company losing most of its founding team, and […]

The Polestar 1 is stunning inside and out. But it drives even better than it looks. This is a driver’s car. The Polestar 1 is an electric hybrid sports car, and yet it doesn’t feel like a hybrid. The power plant in the Polestar 1 is fascinating and delivers power in a way that’s different […]

Electric truck maker Nikola announced an order for 2,500 garbage trucks, which sent the startup’s stock soaring today. The order is expected to begin construction in 2023, with on-road testing scheduled for 2022. Republic Services placed the order, which is expandable up to 5,000 trucks. The company is said to be the second-largest recycling and […]

A series of recent and upcoming vehicle reveals have provided yet another reminder of how automakers are doubling down on tech.

Tech stocks retain their highs as the second quarter’s earnings season begins to fade into the rearview mirror, and there are still a number of companies looking to go public while the times are good. It looks like a smart move, as public investors are hungry for growth-oriented shares — which is just what tech […]

This morning, Mux, a startup that provides API-based video streaming tooling and analytics, announced that it has closed a $37 million Series C round of capital. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which included participation from Accel and Cobalt. Prior to this funding round, Mux most recently raised a roughly $20 million round in mid-2019. In […]

Google Maps is now also available on the Apple Watch so you can get your walking, biking and driving directions right on your wrist. Don’t expect to get a full-blown Maps app on your wrist, though. The new app is mostly focused on giving you directions to known places (think home, work, etc.). To start […]

Amazon Prime is highlighting its offerings for gamers today with the launch of a service called Prime Gaming. This is a new version of Twitch Prime, a service that Amazon launched four years ago tied to the popular game streaming service that it acquired in 2014. In both its old and new incarnations, Twitch Prime/Prime […]

At last month’s Early Stage virtual event, channel growth experts joined TechCrunch reporters and editors for a series of conversations covering the best tools and strategies for building startups in 2020. For this post, I’ve recapped highlights of talks with: Ethan Smith, founder and CEO, Graphite Susan Su, startup growth advisor, executive-in-residence, Sound Ventures Asher […]

As it reached an estimated valuation of $100 billion this year, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance solidified its status as the most valuable startup in private markets. Its success outside China has also become a source of envy and inspiration among its local peers. Now, the company’s price tag is under tremendous pressure as it’s set […]

The next few weeks is going to be a critical time for ByteDance-owned TikTok. The company is weeks away from a ban signed by President Trump, and while the company is expected to sue the U.S. federal government this week to block it, clearly the company’s future has at least storm clouds on the horizon. […]

Entrepreneurial creators have to do a lot with limited time. They need to, well, create, but then they also need to build their marketing funnels, convert users to their paid products, and manage business operations. Yet, perhaps the most important task they face is keeping their existing fans engaged, since ultimately, that engagement ties directly […]

We’re excited to announce that Rep. Zoe Lofgren is coming to Disrupt 2020 this September 14-18. Lofgren, a Democrat congresswoman and California native, has served at the heart of Silicon Valley since she was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1995, under which she’s served four presidents — and impeached exactly half […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has utterly decimate a number of industries over the the past several months, but the U.S. gaming industry continues to benefit as people continue to be stuck at home. Yet another report from NPD highlights an excellent quarter, with spending hitting a new Q2 record in the States. According to the figures, […]

As deep space missions and Mars colonies continue to shift from science fiction to potential near future reality, it’s not surprising to see Hollywood think about different types of stories to tell about space exploration. Away, a new series from Netflix premiering on September 4, looks like that kind of story. The show stars Oscar-winner […]

Skillshare CEO Matt Cooper said 2020 has been a year of rapid growth — even before the pandemic forced large swaths of the population to stay home and turn to online learning for entertainment and enrichment. Cooper (who became CEO in 2017) told me that the company decided last year to “focus on our strength,” […]

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 […]

CakeResume is a startup creating an alternative for the tech industry to job search platforms like LinkedIn. The Taipei-based company, founded in 2016, announced today that it has raised $900,000 in seed funding from Mynavi, one of the largest staffing and public relations companies in Japan. The round will be used to expand CakeResume’s operations […]

As countries around the world ban or threaten to restrict TikTok, interest in virtual private networks has spiked. The use of VPNs can let users access an online service from an encrypted tunnel and thus bypass app blocks. “We are seeing an increasing number of governments around the world attempting to control the information their […]

One of the largest owners of shopping mall real estate in the United Stages, Simon Property Group, has been talking to Amazon about transforming its anchor department stores into Amazon distribution hubs, according to the Wall Street Journal. In the case of Simon Property, the anchor tenants like J.C. Penney and Sears that used to […]

The Gillmor Gang — Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Sunday, August 2, 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 […]

Most gamers may not view Apple as a games company to the same degree that they see Sony with PlayStation or Microsoft with Xbox, but the iPhone-maker continues to uniformly drive the industry with decisions made in the Apple App Store. The company made the news a couple times late this week for App Store […]

Timothy Bouré and his co-founder Geoffrey Lucks were both near broke when they moved to Dallas to join the first accelerator they entered after forming VenoStent, a company that aims to improve outcomes for dialysis patients. Failed dialysis surgeries occur in roughly 55% to 65% of patients with end-stage renal disease, according to the company. […]

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that TikTok and Twitter have held talks about a potential merger, even as the video sharing company defends itself against President Donald Trump’s pressure to force the sale of the business or potentially ban it. As the internationally distributed video streaming version of Chinese technology developer Bytedance’s social media […]

TikTok, the video-sharing app that’s moved to the center of the economic conflict between the US and China, is planning to challenge the executive order issued by President Donald Trump that would force the sale or ban the service in the United States. According to a report from National Public Radio yesterday, TikTok could file […]

The first season of “The Umbrella Academy” had its flaws, but empathetic portrayals of its seven superhero siblings (all adults bearing the emotional scars of an upbringing under their strict adoptive father Reginald Hargreeves) more than made up for its meandering plot. In season two, which recently launched on Netflix, the Umbrella Academy has been […]

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Moft is a clever company that makes clever products. For a while there, I was sporting their laptop stand. It was a head-turner when I used to unfold it during meetings — back when we used to do those in-person. The truth is, I ended up having to tear it off the bottom. It lasted […]