Crunch Hype

As a result of the pandemic, accelerators have moved operations fully remote to abide by social distancing. The shift has forced well-known programs like 500 Startups, Y Combinator and Techstars to go fully online, while encouraging existing venture capital firms to launch new digital-only fellowships like Cleo Capital and NextView Ventures. Before the pandemic, accelerators […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to Point B. It’s […]

We’re T-minus five and counting, startup fans — counting the days you have left to save up to $300 on passes to Disrupt 2020. The early-bird clock stops ticking on July 31 precisely at 11:59 p.m. PT. Be a savvy saver. Beat the clock, buy your pass and keep that extra cash in your wallet. […]

Stanford’s success in spinning out startup founders is a well-known adage in Silicon Valley, with alumni founding companies like Google, Cisco, Cloudflare, LinkedIn, Youtube, Snapchat, Instagram, and yes, even TechCrunch. And venture capitalists routinely back more founders coming out of the Stanford business program than any other university in the country. One group of Stanford […]

Walmart’s recent partnership with Shopify to expand its online marketplace appears to already be paying off. The retailer in June announced it was opening its marketplace to Shopify’s small business sellers with the goal of onboarding 1,200 new sellers by the end of 2020. Following the Shopify announcement, the marketplace added 3,000 more sellers in […]

We’re excited to announce a new event at Disrupt 2020. Called Pitch Deck Teardown, top venture capitalists and entrepreneurs will evaluate and suggest fixes for Disrupt 2020 attendees’ pitch decks. First impressions are everything, and pitch decks are often the first glimpse of companies by investors and business partners. It’s critical that these decks accurately […]

Smart assistants are sensitive to their wake words but who among us doesn’t trigger the smart speakers in their house with alarming frequency? Add in some heavily detailed privacy mishaps and a general feeling of distrust and there’s plenty of reason you might want to silence your smart speaker, occasionally. A new device promises to […]

Analogue has repeatedly proven that it’s the gold standard when it comes to retro gaming, delivering extremely faithful, but modern hardware to play original NES, SNES, Sega cartridges and more. The company revealed its forthcoming Analogue Pocket last October, and now it’s about to kick off pre-orders for the portable classic console, which can play […]

Over the weekend, software giant SAP announced that it will take Qualtrics public, with the German software company retaining a majority stake in the Utah-based “experience management” firm after its forthcoming debut. SAP paid $8 billion in cash for Qualtrics back in 2018, right before the smaller firm was set to go public. Chatting with […]

In the spirit of reaching impact at scale faster, we rounded up our top five lessons to take to heart if you want to turn your world-changing idea into a tech nonprofit.

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 […]

"If it's providing continuous value, then it should be worth paying for," Y Combinator Partner Eric Migicovsky tells TechCrunch.

The largest trial yet for a potential COVID-19 vaccine began on Monday, as drug company Moderna began providing the first of an anticipated 30,000 volunteers with shots of its candidates. This is a blind trial, wherein some participants will get the vaccine and some will get placebos. Each participant will get two does, and researchers […]

Cloudflare today announced the private beta launch of Workers Unbound, the latest step in its efforts to offer a serverless platform that can compete with the likes of AWS Lambda. The company first launched its Workers edge computing platform in late 2017. Today it has “hundreds of thousands of developers” who use it and in […]

Tire Agent, an Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator-backed startup that is looking to bring the tire industry into the 21st century, has today announced the close of a $5 million funding round led by American Family Ventures, with participation from ERA, Sidekick Fund, NY Angels and HBS Angels. According to Consumer Reports, the average tire costs about […]

Ford is going to employ two of Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot’ robots, which are four-legged, dog-like walking robots that weigh roughly 70 lbs each, to help them update the original engineering plans for one of the transmission manufacturing plans. The plants, Ford explains, have undergone any number of changes since their original construction, and it’s difficult […]

Berlin -based cargo.one, which runs a marketplace for booking air freight, has closed an $18.6 million Series A round of funding led by Index Ventures. Next47 and prior backers Creandum, Lufthansa Cargo and Point Nine Capital also participated in the round, along with a number of angel investors — including Tom Stafford of DST Global […]

India, which blocked 59 apps developed by Chinese firms late last month on the grounds that they pose a threat to nation’s security, has banned an additional 47 apps. The nation’s Ministry of Electronics and IT’s new ban order, issued on late Friday according to a person familiar with the matter, is aimed at those apps […]

Well, this isn’t a story you see every day. Less than two years after German software giant SAP snatched experience management platform Qualtrics for $8 billion days before the startup’s IPO debut, it has now decided to spin out the company in a brand new IPO. https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/11/sap-agrees-to-buy-qualtrics-for-8b-in-cash-just-before-the-survey-software-companys-ipo/ In a press statement released Sunday, SAP said […]

If your phone takes amazing photos, chances are its camera has been augmented by artificial intelligence embedded in the operating system. Now videos are getting the same treatment. In recent years, smartphone makers have been gradually transforming their cameras into devices that capture data for AI processing beyond what the lens and sensor pick up […]

The easy startup ideas have all been done — the ones that just required some homebrew hardware hacking or PHP dorm-room coding to get off the ground. These days, you might need multiple advanced technical degrees to accomplish something significant. At least that's what Danny Crichton muses grimly this week, in an essay entitled "The two PhD problem of startups today." Here's one newsy example:

An ongoing global outage at sport and fitness tech giant Garmin was caused by a ransomware attack, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the incident. The incident began late Wednesday and continued through the weekend, causing disruption to the company’s online services for millions of users, including Garmin Connect, which syncs user activity […]

In this series, we help you keep up with the latest news from the world of apps, delivered on a weekly basis.

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange! I’m incredibly excited that this newsletter is finally in your hands. There’s so much to chat about, dissect and grok. We’re going to be very busy.

Welcome back to Tech at Work, a bi-weekly roundup and analysis of labor, and diversity and inclusion in tech. This week, we’re looking at Uber’s anti-racism commitment, Shipt shoppers walking off the job, Facebook’s diversity report and Black gig workers organizing against tech companies. Also, hear from CODE2040 CEO Karla Monterroso on tech’s response to […]

A customer advisory board (CAB) can be an invaluable resource for startups, but many founders struggle with putting together the right group of advisors and how to incentivize them. At our TechCrunch Early Stage event, Saam Motamedi, a general partner at Greylock Partners, talked about how he thinks about putting together the right CAB. “We […]

Earlier this year, the oft-mocked but actually pretty important new branch of the military, the Space Force, revealed an image that was suspiciously reminiscent of Star Trek. Now the Space Force has revealed a new, sharper graphic that is the force’s actual logo — and a motto to go with it: “Semper Supra,” or “always […]

Peter Barrett might be best known today as co-founder and CTO of Playground Global. But his experience in the technology world stretches back to when he was a teenager. Barrett’s first security program got the attention of the NSA when he was just 19 years old. His career has been an adventure ever since, starting […]

Chauffeured group transportation — the vehicles used for corporate outings, special events and even weddings — is a fragmented industry, with hundreds of small operators that rely on analog systems to book customers. Now in this era of COVID-19, these operators are being squeezed as travel and tourism have dwindled and companies have opted to […]

The cold email worked — you’ve landed a meeting with your dream investor. Hell, you even set aside $40,000 for a pitch deck consultant to make sure your presentation looks suave. One thing to figure out before you pick out a Zoom background: what information actually goes into those slides? Lo Toney, founding managing partner […]

Here are four key practices that chief data officers/scientists and chief analytics officers (CDAOs) should employ when creating their own ethical data and business practice framework.

Helping Americans get their 40 winks has never been more necessary as the country faces what some health experts have called a sleep epidemic, and Snoop Dogg’s cannabis-focused firm Casa Verde Capital wants to help. The firm is leading a $9.5 million investment into a company called Proper, which is launching with a combination of […]

On day one of TechCrunch’s Early Stage virtual conference, Ali Partovi joined us to discuss best practices for startups looking to hire engineers. It’s a subject that’s near and dear to his heart: Partovi is co-founder and CEO of Neo, a venture aimed at including young engineers in a community alongside seasoned industry vets. The […]

Rivian has started to run a pilot production line at its factory in Normal, Illinois, as the electric vehicle startup prepares to bring its pickup truck and SUV to market in summer 2021. In an email sent to prospective customers, Rivian said deliveries of its R1T electric pickup truck will begin in June 2021. Deliveries […]

European data watchdogs have issued updated guidance in the wake of last week’s landmark ruling striking down a flagship transatlantic data transfer mechanism called Privacy Shield. In an FAQ on the Schrems II judgement, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) warns there will be no regulatory grace period. The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield is dead, and […]

Have you ever taken something apart, like a clock or a motor? The method is particularly useful when it comes to learning how things work — or how they don’t, in some cases. During TechCrunch’s Early Stage event, two venture capitalists took pitch decks and evaluated them with a critical eye on content, presentation and […]

Whether you’re an early-stage startup founder, investor, enthusiast or another integral member of the community, you can’t afford to miss Disrupt 2020 — THE tech conference at the epicenter of the startup ecosystem. Here’s something else you can’t afford to miss — early-bird pricing. Buy your pass before July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT and […]

Fintech startup Revolut just announced that it has raised $80 million as part of its Series D round that it announced in February. The new influx of funding comes from TSG Consumer Partners. In February, Revolut raised a $500 million led by TCV at a $5.5 billion valuation. Today’s new funding extends that funding round […]

Online shopping service Instacart says reused passwords are to blame for a recent spate of account breaches, which saw personal data belonging to hundreds of thousands of Instacart customers stolen and put up for sale on the dark web. The company published a statement late on Thursday saying its investigation showed that Instacart “was not […]

The manufacturer of a vegan collagen, Geltor, has raised a new round of financing — $90 million, according to people familiar with the company. It’s another sign of the newfound viability of sustainability and cell-based, vegetarian replacements for animal products. Sustainable bio-products, whether plant-based, genetically modified or cell-cultured, are having a big year. In the […]

For anyone interested in the contested question of how much ‘value’ — or, well, how little — publishers derive from the privacy-hostile practice of tracking web users to behaviorally target them with ads, pro-privacy browser Brave has published some interesting data, obtained (with permission) from the Netherland’s public broadcaster, NPO. The data shows the NPO […]

Scores of online learning startups have emerged in India in recent years to serve school-age students. More than 250 million students are enrolled across schools in urban and rural parts of the country. Whether one is in kindergarten, or preparing to join a college to pursue an undergraduate course, there are several startups offering a […]

Gaming has always been one of the world’s most massive niches, but as game-streaming and esports have drifted to the forefront of mainstream culture, it’s clear that there’s plenty of room left for the industry to expand. One harbinger of this shift has been the widespread adoption of esports leagues in high schools and colleges […]

On the heels of Hippo’s funding round and our exploration of how the private markets appear to be more conservative than public investors at the moment, we’re asking a new question: are a bunch of insurtech startups undervalued? Hippo — an insurtech startup focused on home insurance — put together a $150 million round at a […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Up top the crew this week was the regular contingent: Danny Crichton, Natasha Mascarenhas, and myself. As a tiny programming note, we’re going back to posting some videos on YouTube in a few weeks, so […]

NASA’s latest mission won’t actually reach space – but it will come very close, with a massive observation craft made up of a football stadium-sized high-altitude balloon, along with a special stratospheric telescope instrument that can observe wavelengths of light blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, cast from newly-formed stars. The mission is called the ‘Astrophysics Stratospheric […]

Apple’s contract manufacturing partner Foxconn has started to assemble the current generation of iPhone units — the iPhone 11 lineup — in its plant near southern city of Chennai, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. A small batch of locally manufactured iPhone 11 units has already shipped to retail stores, but the production […]

The Not Company, Latin America’s leading contender in the plant-based meat and dairy substitute market, is about to close on an $85 million round of funding that would value it at $250 million, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The latest round of funding comes on the heels of a series of successes […]

One little-known home and retail automation startup might seem like an unlikely candidate to help combat the ongoing pandemic. But its founder says its technology can do just that, even if it wasn’t the company’s original plan. Butlr, a spin-out of the MIT Media Lab, uses a mix of wireless, battery-powered hardware and artificial intelligence […]

The state of New York voted this week to pause any implementation of facial recognition technology in schools for two years. The moratorium, approved by the New York Assembly and Senate Wednesday, comes after an upstate school district adopted the technology earlier this year, prompting a lawsuit in June from the New York Civil Liberties […]