Crunch Hype

SaaS is hot in 2020. Tooling that helps facilitate remote work is hot in 2020. And we all know that anything related to video chatting in particular is on fire this year. In the midst of all three trends is Kudo, which just raised $6 million in a round led by Felicis. But Kudo’s video […]

Ready to do everything in your power to keep your startup on track for success — and keep more of your hard-earned currency in your wallet? Listen up. Early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt 2020 ends in less than two weeks. Buy your pass before the bird expires on July 31 at 11:59 p.m. PDT, […]

Reflect, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2020 class, is building a tool to automate website and web application testing, making it faster to get your site up and running without waiting for engineers to write testing code, or for human testers to run the site through its paces. Company CEO and co-founder Fitz […]

A few days ago, Ilan Abehassera and Carlos Diaz announced Diaspora Ventures, their new VC fund. The duo plan to invest in French founders who have a global mindset: They might be based in France and willing to relocate to the U.S., in the U.S. already or they might be starting a remote company from […]

Amazon today announced a slew of new features for developers who want to write Alexa skills. In total, the team released 31 new features at its Alexa Live event. Unsurprisingly, some of these are relatively minor but a few significantly change the Alexa experience for the over 700,000 developers who have built skills for the […]

Dexterity emerged from stealth this week to announced its full-stack solution aimed at creating collaborative robotics systems. The hardware-software system is designed for a variety of different tasks, including bin picking and box packing, targeted at warehouse fulfillment and logistics needs. The Bay Area-based startup has already built up significant support from the investment world, […]

Facebook’s messaging app is adding new privacy controls, the company announced this morning. Initially, this will include today’s launch of App Lock for iOS, which allows users to lock access to their private chats by way of the device’s built-in security mechanisms, including Touch ID and Face ID. A second privacy feature, which involves new […]

There are few better ways to bridge that gap than a thoughtful implementation of messenger tools, those chat bubbles many big brands use to offer real-time customer support.

Deciding whether or not to sell your company stock (or when to sell it) is not a decision to enter into lightly.

Spotify this morning announced a global, multi-year licensing agreement with Universal Music Group, which secures the label’s catalog for streaming rights but also signs it on to be an early adopter of Spotify’s future products and provide feedback to Spotify’s development team as those products are being built. Deal terms were not disclosed, but “multi-year” […]

After the bell yesterday, Apple-device management company Jamf announced its final IPO pricing. We’ve been tracking the Jamf IPO for some time, as it is yet another example of a technology company worth $1 billion or more going public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in March, we’d have guessed that today’s IPO market would be […]

Workplace instant messaging platform Slack has filed an antitrust complaint against Microsoft in the European Union accusing the tech giant of unfairly bundling its rival Teams product with its cloud-based productivity suite. A spokeswoman for the Commission’s competition division confirmed receipt of a complaint, telling us via email: “We confirm that we received a complaint […]

Cooks Venture has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by SJF Ventures and Cultivian Sandbox, with participation from Larry Schwartz and John Roulac. At its most basic level, Cooks Venture provides a proprietary breed of chicken to grocery stores for consumption. The company also lists Fresh Direct and direct online sales to its […]

Apple recently announced that they would be transition their Mac line from Intel processors to their own, ARM-based Apple Silicon. That process is meant to begin with hardware to be announced later this year, and last two years according to Apple’s stated expectations, and while new Intel-powered Macs will be released and sold leading up […]

Gaming phones are a weird one. They make sense on paper to some degree. As we well know, everyone’s a gamer these days, and much or most of that gaming happens on mobile devices. So why aren’t devoting gaming phones a more popular phenomenon? It’s not for lack of trying. Lenovo’s the latest company to […]

Misfits Market, the ecommerce platform that sells ‘ugly’ produce (among other things), has today announced the close of an $85 million Series B financing round. The funding was led by Valor Equity Partners, with participation from Greenoaks Capital, Third Kind Venture Capital, and Sound Ventures. Misfits Market started out as a subscription box that allowed […]

We’re expecting to get a green card interview scheduled soon. What should we expect and how should we prepare?

When big platforms have carved out large swaths of the delivery market, the best thing for an upstart company to do is to specialize. For Chowbus, that meant building a food-delivery business that finds restaurants whose cuisines specialize in regional cuisines from Northern and Southern China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. It’s a strategy […]

Indian fitness and wellbeing startup Cure.fit, which has established a market leading position in the country in four years of its existence, is ready to stretch to a new geography. The Bangalore-headquartered startup said on Wednesday it has launched a range of its digital services — including its fitness service Cult.fit and Mind.fit, through which […]

Startups building tech-based platforms to help make investments continue to be in high demand, building on an expanding market of investors getting more confident to rely on technology to undercut broker fees and speed up the process. Today, one of the hopefuls in the space is announcing a growth round to capitalise on that opportunity. […]

Having left his previous company under unceremonious circumstances, Rayhan Rafiq-Omar, who founded Unmortgage, is launching his next proptech venture. Called Free.co.uk, the startup wants to eradicate listing fees when selling your house, as well as streamlining other parts of the house selling process. Instead of charging for a listing on Rightmove, it hopes to make […]

Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten has decided not to renew its contract with WeWork when it expires next month, according to a report in the Japan Times. Rakuten had leased about 700 desks in Tokyo, but is now planning to move employees from its fintech division into its own new offices. Both WeWork and Rakuten declined […]

AB Tasty has raised a new $40 million funding round led by Credit Mutuel Innovation with existing investors Korelya Capital, Omnes, Partech and XAnge also participating. Overall the startup has raised $64 million. The startup is focused on improving user experience on e-commerce platforms, travel portals, fashion websites and more. It lets you customize the […]

Tech firms around the world are in an overdrive to help battle the coronavirus pandemic. Research showed that 6.5% of COVID-19 patients can suddenly progress to serious illness, and among them the mortality rate can be as high as 49%. Therefore one of the key tasks for health authorities is to identify and treat patients […]

Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles have inked a deal to develop and test autonomous cargo vans and other light commercial vehicles designed to shuttle goods. The agreement is an expansion of a partnership that kicked off four years ago with a focus on self-driving Pacifica hybrid minivans meant to transport people. The deal is the […]

Emily Kramer joined the Silicon Valley company Carta to build up the company’s brand. Now, the company’s former VP of marketing is looking to shine a light on Carta for another reason: in a new lawsuit against Carta, which makes equity management software, Kramer accuses the eight-year-old outfit of gender discrimination, retaliation, wrongful termination, and […]

Twitter announced Tuesday that many accounts spreading the pervasive right-wing conspiracy theory known as QAnon would no longer be welcome on its platform. Citing concerns about “offline harm,” the company explained that it would begin treating QAnon content on the platform differently, removing related topics from its trending pages and algorithmic recommendations and blocking any […]

Apple says it’s going fully carbon neutral by 2030, Spotify adds video to its podcast strategy and the U.S. charges two alleged Chinese spies in what it describes as a global hacking campaign. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 21, 2020. The big story: Apple commits to carbon neutrality Apple announced today that it plans […]

Tesla’s six-month average trailing market capitalization hit $150 billion on Tuesday after a four-month run up of the automaker’s share price that theoretically unlocks a multi-billion-dollar vesting option for CEO Elon Musk. Once Tesla hit the six-month average trailing market cap of $150 billion, which Reuters first reported, Musk became eligible to access the second […]

Bangladesh’s regulator has ordered telecom operators and other internet providers in the nation to stop providing free access to social media services, becoming the latest market in Asia to take a partial stand against zero-rating deals. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, the local regulator, said late last week that it had moved to take this decision […]

Audience measurement company Nielsen announced today that it plans to change the methodology behind its digital products, including Digital Content Ratings, Total Content Ratings, Digital in TV Ratings, Digital Ad Ratings and Total Ad Ratings. The company plans to start rolling out the new methodology in phases in 2021. It isn’t sharing the full details […]

For the first few months it was operating, Shelf Engine, the Seattle-based company that optimizes the process of stocking store shelves for supermarkets and groceries, didn’t have a name. Co-founders Stefan Kalb and Bede Jordan were on a ski trip outside of Salt Lake City about four years ago when they began discussing what, exactly, […]

As a new or seasoned technology worker developing AI-powered tools, it’s never too early or too late to consider how your tools are perceived by and impact your users.

NBCU’s Peacock appears to be having a somewhat better launch than Quibi did, based on data from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. While numbers pointing to new app downloads aren’t a complete picture of consumer adoption for a cross-platform service, they can provide a window into early traction outside of any official numbers provided […]

Meet Diaspora Ventures, a new VC fund based in the U.S. founded by two partners who grew up in France but have been in the U.S. for more than a decade — Ilan Abehassera (pictured above, right) and Carlos Diaz (pictured above, left). As the name suggests, Diaspora Ventures wants to invest in the French […]

When Quizlet became a unicorn earlier this year, CEO Matthew Glotzbach said he’d prefer to distance the company from the common nomenclature for a startup valued at or above $1 billion. “The way Quizlet has gotten to this point is by building and growing a very responsible business,” he said. “It’s the result of the […]

Create a system that helps identify which users are at risk so you can proactively reach out to them before they leave.

A look at the dangers of concentration, the benefits of diversification and how to take control.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ongoing protests for racial justice, people have been looking for different ways to contribute, which in turn has led tech companies to launch new features and campaigns. Now there’s a new fundraising platform called Project Bento, created by chef and restauranteur Marcus Samuelsson (best […]

U.S. prosecutors have charged two Chinese nationals, said to be working for China’s state intelligence bureau, for their alleged involvement in a massive global hacking operation that targeted hundreds of companies and governments for more than a decade. The 11-count indictment, unsealed Tuesday, alleges Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 33, stole terabytes of data […]

After Wisam Dakka and André Madeira left Snap in 2018 the two longtime product developers and coders cast about for a new app to build. Looking around they realized there was no financial product that spoke to the generation of consumers they’d spent the last bit of their professional lives working to build for, so […]

At Microsoft Inspire today, the company made several Dynamics 365 announcements, including Dynamics 365 Customer Voice, a real-time customer feedback tool that could compete with Qualtrics, the company SAP bought in 2018 for a cool $8 billion. Microsoft General Manager Brenda Bown says that as more customers move online during the pandemic, it’s more important […]

Think back to the last time you onboarded at a new job. Was it a mishmash of documents and calendar invites and calls and, generally speaking, a mess? Probably. That’s likely because onboarding is a process that often depends on disparate, unconnected HR tools. Sora, a startup that today announced $5.3 million in collected fundraising, […]

Instagram today announced a new tool for personal fundraisers. The company says it’s beginning a small test of the feature, which will allow users to link directly to a fundraiser from their profile page. The test will initially run in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland on Android, followed by iOS. While users can choose to […]

Bang & Olufsen is taking its excellent track record for delivering maximum quality, natural-sounding audio and wrapping it in a sports-oriented package with the Beoplay E8 Sport ($350). These totally wireless earbuds come with a long list of great features, including IP57 water resistance, 30 total hours of battery life including up to seven hours on […]

As the nature of work changes and employees demand that their employers do better, companies are looking to raise the bar.

OnePlus’s first fully wireless earbuds just aren’t very good. It doesn’t give me joy to say that. OnePlus is a fascinating company that has produced some really great handsets at prices that don’t break the bank — and that’s precisely what gave me high hopes for the Buds. But they’re just not good. They don’t […]

While other premium smartphone makers were exploring mid-tier devices amid slowing sales, OnePlus’s prices were slowly creeping up. It’s true that the company never cracked the $1,000 price point (beyond a few limited-edition models), but for those following the company’s story, it felt like it was straying a bit from its biggest appeal: flagship-quality devices […]

Speed sells. When Tesla launches a new vehicle or updates an existing vehicle, the car company often leads with 0-60mph time. These numbers often outclass those from gasoline cars thanks to how electric motors deliver power. These 0-60 times are often irrelevant to daily driving, and yet, Tesla, like most automakers, sees them as a […]

Spotify today announced the global launch of video podcasts. The new feature at launch will allow users, including both free users and paid subscribers, to watch the video content from a select group of creator podcasts. But unlike on YouTube, where only paid subscribers can listen to YouTube video content in the background while they […]