Crunch Hype

A number of high-profile Twitter accounts were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday by attackers who used the accounts — some with millions of followers — to spread a cryptocurrency scam. Apple, Elon Musk and Joe Biden were among the accounts compromised in a broadly targeted hack that remained mysterious hours after taking place. Those accounts and […]

Virgin Galactic is shuffling its uppermost leadership ahead of the private space tourism company’s commercial service launch: It just announced Michael Colglazier, who had been President and Managing Director of Disney Parks International, will join as the new Virgin Galactic CEO, replacing George Whitesides who will assume the newly-created position of Chief Space Officer. Whitesides […]

Navistar and TuSimple deepened their two-year relationship on Wednesday, announcing plans to develop and begin producing autonomous semi trucks by 2024. The strategic partnership includes Navistar taking an undisclosed stake in self-driving trucks startup TuSimple. The plan is to move away from retrofitting the Navistar International commercial trucks that TuSimple currently uses and instead develop […]

What if you could mix and match different tracks from your favorite artists, or create new ones on your own with their voices? This could become a reality sooner than later, as AI models similar to the ones used to create computer-generated art images and embed deepfakes in videos are being increasingly applied to music. […]

Game publisher Tilting Point announced today that it has made its third acquisition in eight months, buying games, key employees and “most of the assets” from FTX Games and Plamee Studios — both previously owned Playtech, which will be focusing on its gaming and sports betting software moving forward. Plamee previously developed Narcos: Cartel Wars, […]

Amazon is giving livestreamers a new way to earn commissions on purchases of products showcased in their streams. The company is today adding livestreaming to its existing Amazon Influencer Program which before today, allowed social media influencers to earn money by pointing fans to their favorite Amazon products through posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and […]

Google is launching a major update to its G Suite productivity tools today that will see a deep integration of Gmail, Chat, Meet and Rooms on the web and on mobile, as well as other tools like Calendar, Docs, Sheets and Slides. This integration will become available in the G Suite early adopter program, with […]

Snap debuted its developer platform two years ago, and though it’s amassed several hundred integrations inside third-party apps, the company is still looking to scale deeper relationships with the developers on Snap Kit. Today, the social media company announced Yellow Collabs. The remote 13-week program allows companies to dive deeper into integrating their apps with […]

What are the most important things to get right about remote work? What needs to be prioritized? With more and more teams being thrown headfirst into remote work, I spent a few weeks talking with some of the people who know the topic better than just about anyone: the founders and execs who’ve put countless […]

Arvind Gupta, the founder and head of IndieBio, is leaving the accelerator whose portfolio he helped build into a $3.2 billion life sciences powerhouse, to join the venture capital fund Mayfield. The move is a signal both of Mayfield’s increasing commitment to invest in a thesis around human and planetary health, and of the growing […]

SpaceX’s Starlink service appears to be getting very close, as the company sent out requests for specific address information to anyone who has registered interest in its beta program this week. Now, a leak initially discovered via the Starlink subreddit (via Business Insider) has provided an early look at how the beta program will operate, […]

TC Early Stage is kicking off on July 21 & 22 which is just a few short days and we’re excited to be able to gather the most prominent experts in marketing, contract building, hiring and funding to help early stage founders succeed. Consider it our version of a founder masterclass where you can arm […]

Apple News is getting a significant upgrade. The news aggregation app, which ships preinstalled on Apple devices, is introducing several new features for readers and premium subscribers, including audio stories, a daily audio briefing called “Apple News Today,” and expanded local coverage. The audio briefing is somewhat of a competitor to Alexa’s Flash Briefing, which […]

Jason Green, co-founder and partner at Emergence, is one of the leading VCs investing in enterprise startups at the moment. But even with the focus on B2B, many of their companies have become household names — Zoom, Yammer, Box and Salesforce among them. Now, we’re all living in a climate where everything has been turned […]

In the worlds of journalism and publishing, it’s fairly common for the wealthy to attempt to shut down reporting with legal threats. For those publishing on large platforms with plenty of resources, such challenges can be a massive headache. For independent writers and publishers, on the other hand, the consequences can be far more dire. […]

Atlassian today announced a number of updates to both its Confluence workspace and its Trello collaboration and project management tool. the focus here, the company says, is on supporting “the next phase of remote work.” Trello alone saw a 73% rise in signups in mid-March 2020, just as companies started shifting to work-from-home, compared to […]

Those forced to acclimate to remote work understand what a pain it can be. Sure, there are certainly benefits to not having to commute into work each day, but among other things, you lose a lot when you eliminate human interaction. Apps like Zoom and Slack have their place, certainly, but none does a particularly […]

A team of researchers working out of the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a two-way wireless data connection for use underwater. Strong wireless data connections are basically taken for granted in our daily lives, from cell service to home WiFi networks, but it’s actually tremendously challenging to create high-speed wireless […]

Over 2,500 mobile games have been removed from China’s App Store during the first week of July, according to a new report from app store intelligence firm Sensor Tower. The removals were expected due to a planned crackdown on unlicensed games, but this data is the first to demonstrate the impact on the app economy. […]

The U.S.’s COVID-19 caseload continues to set records as major states move to reshutter their economies in hopes of stemming its spread. For many workers the situation means more time in the home office and less time in their traditional workplace. What the world will look like when safety eventually returns is not clear, but […]

The BeanBon Coffee Roaster is kicking off a crowdfunding campaign for its countertop smart roaster device today, seeking a total of $10,000 over the next month. The BeanBon is already a fully realized product, and I was able to test one out to confirm it matches its creator’s claims – and it does indeed offer […]

Crisp, a demand forecasting platform for the food industry, has today announced the close of a $12 million Series A funding round led by FirstMark Capital, with participation from Spring Capital and Swell Capital. Crisp launched out of beta in January of this year with a product that aimed to give food suppliers and distributors […]

The Cusp, a newly launched startup offering telemedicine services for women in perimenopause and menopause, is launching an at-home hormone test service that slashes the cost of in-office visits and lab tests. Women in California can order the test at a cost of $159 for a telemedical consultation and test, versus roughly $500 for having […]

Nick Dazé, the co-founder and chief executive of the new Los Angeles-based apartment rental services company PocketList likes to say that his company is the first one to put the renter at the core of the platform. The company Dazé has built with co-founder Julian Vergel de Dios, has, in fact, flipped the traditional script […]

SocialChorus, a startup that helps distribute communications internally in a similar way marketers reach customers externally, announced a $100 million investment today led by Sumeru Equity Partners. With this investment, the firm has bought a majority stake in the company. As part of today’s deal, Sumeru will be adding three members to the SocialChorus board. […]

The founders of the alternative dairy protein manufacturer, Perfect Day, have joined with a longtime product developer in the dairy industry to create a new sustainably focused consumer food company called the Urgent Company. Focused on creating sustainable food brands manufactured, packaged and sold in a more environmentally friendly way, the Urgent Company is unveiling […]

Frankie Bernstein, the Venice, Calif.-based serial entrepreneur, knows marketing. At his last startup, Markett, Bernstein turned college students into brand ambassadors who were paid by the companies they repped for proselytizing about them on campuses. Now he’s using that knowledge to launch Kickback on iOS and Android. It’s invite-only at this point, but the idea […]

Zoom has become the de facto standard for online communications during the pandemic, but the company has found that it’s still a struggle for many employees to set up the equipment and the software to run a meeting effectively. The company’s answer is an all-in-one communications appliance with Zoom software ready to roll in a […]

Seattle-based space ride share service provider Spaceflight Inc. revealed its next-generation orbital transfer vehicle today, the Sherpa-FX. The new spacecraft acts as a deployment spacecraft for combined payloads on rideshare rocket launches – essentially providing last-mile transportation from the point at which the launch vehicle deploys the combined payload, to the actual desired target deployment […]

Scooters, a common sight on the streets of Taiwan, give commuters an alternative to cars in the country’s densely-populated cities. But they also contribute to pollution and jam-packed parking spaces. Over the past few year, several companies haven taken on the challenge of creating more environmentally-friendly alternatives to traditional gas scooters. Gogoro is probably best-known […]

Virtual card payment startup Privacy.com has raised $10.2 million in a Series A fundraise, the company announced Wednesday. The round was led by Teamworthy Ventures, with participation from Tusk Venture Partners, Index Ventures, Quiet Capital, Exor Seeds, and Rainfall Ventures. The startup, if you’re unfamiliar, lets anyone generate virtual and disposable payment card numbers for […]

Lemonade today launched pet insurance, marking its entry into a new vertical of insurance for the first time since it launched its renters/home owners insurance in 2016. Lemonade CEO Daniel Schreiber told TechCrunch back in February that some 70 percent of Lemonade customers with a home owners or renters policy are also pet owners, and […]

The General Court of the European Court of Justice has annulled an EU decision that involved Apple’s subsidiaries in Ireland. Four years ago, the European Commission said that Ireland had failed to collect €13 billion in taxes from Apple — roughly $15 billion. According to the press statement, “the Commission did not succeed in showing […]

Neobank Revolut launched in the U.S. a couple of months ago. The startup is slowly catching up with features that are available in the U.K. and Europe. This time, Revolut is adding cryptocurrency trading through a partnership with Paxos. Users in the U.S. can now buy, hold and sell Bitcoin and Ethereum from the Revolut […]

Google has become the latest high-profile firm to back India’s Reliance Jio Platforms. The search giant is investing $4.5 billion for a 7.73% stake in the top Indian telecom network, Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani said on Wednesday. The investment today from Google is one of the rare instances where the Android-maker has joined its […]

There is a lot riding on the use of artificial intelligence technology to help us take giant leaps ahead in solving complex challenges — whether it’s medical breakthroughs, building better cybersecurity, or better navigation systems for cars and other moving objects. But the more advanced the application, the bigger the need for hardware that can […]

Ravelin, the London-based company using machine learning to help companies fight fraud when accepting online payments, has raised $20 million in new funding. The Series C round is led by Draper Esprit, with participation from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, BlackFin Tech, and Passion Capital. Ravelin disclosed $10 million in Series B funding in September […]

Nissan unveiled today the Ariya, an all-electric SUV with an estimated 300 miles of range and a starting price tag of $40,000 that marks the beginning of a four-year plan aiming for growth and profitability. The Nissan Ariya will first be sold in Japan in mid-2021, before heading to dealerships in the U.S. and Canada […]

Layer is not trying to replace Excel or Google Sheets. Instead the Berlin-based productivity startup wants to make life easier for those whose job entails wrangling massive spreadsheets and managing data inputs from across an organization — such as for budgeting, financial reporting or HR functions — by adding a granular control access layer on […]

The speculation that Alibaba’s fintech affiliate Ant Group will go public has been swirling around for years. New details came to light recently. Reuters reported last week that the fintech giant could float as soon as this year in an initial public offering that values it at $200 billion. As a private firm, details of […]

The e-reader category was exciting once — or at least as exciting as one could hope from such a space. It was a vibrant category, with plenty of key players, each looking to outdo one another. But as is the case with a depressing number of verticals, Amazon has largely wiped the floor with the […]

Adam Neumann, the controversial co-founder and former CEO of WeWork, has taken a 33% equity stake in GoTo Global, a shared mobility company that operates in Israel and Malta and aims to expand into Europe later this year. Neumann’s family office, 166 2nd Financial Services, invested $10 million into GoTo Global, as part of a […]

Lawmakers in Texas just gave Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk another incentive to locate its next factory there. Commissioners in Travis County, home to Austin and the possible next Tesla factory, approved Tuesday property tax breaks worth at least $14.7 million — and potentially more — over 10 years. The incentives are on top […]

Here’s another edition of “Dear Sophie,” the advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

VidMob, which started out as a marketplace connecting marketers and video editors, now bills itself as a “creative technology platform.” Now there’s a “creator network” that’s part of a broader suite of tools for managing video production and turning those videos into online ads. And the company has continued to evolve during the COVID-19 pandemic. […]

TechCrunch launches a major new initiative, Amazon tests a smart shopping cart and ICE backs down from its controversial student visa rule change. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 14, 2020. The big story: Behold, The TechCrunch List Back in June we published a story with the rather grandiose headline “How we’re rebuilding the VC […]

Facebook is preparing to launch officially licensed music videos on its social network in the U.S. next month, in a direct challenge to YouTube. In materials reviewed by TechCrunch, Facebook informed Page owners linked to artists they’ll need to toggle on a new setting to add their music videos to their page ahead of an […]

Starlink, the high-bandwidth, low-latency broadband internet service that SpaceX is in the process of deploying, has sent out an email to those who’ve registered their interest in becoming beta testers. The email asks for a specific address, to replace the previously requested zip codes (or area codes in Canada) for potential testers to help them […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk disputed a German court ruling issued today that bans the company from using on its website or other advertising terms like Autopilot or “full potential for autonomous driving.” In a tweet, Musk said “Tesla Autopilot was literally named after the term used in aviation. Also, what about Autobahn!?” The Wettbewerbszentrale, an […]

BlueOcean is a new startup offering companies a relatively fast and affordable way to see how their brands are performing and what they can do to improve. CEO Grant McDougall and COO/President Liza Nebel (the pair founded BlueOcean with Chief Data Scientist Matthew Gross) told me they’ve been developing the technology for two years. And […]