Crunch Hype

Nigeria’s e-commerce startup TradeDepot, which connects international brands to small businesses in Africa, has raised $10 million in a new round of funding to expand its business into financial services and credit offerings for retailers. First launched in 2016, TradeDepot has built up a network of 40,000 small businesses in Nigeria and connects them to […]

Huawei reported a 13.1% year-over-year revenue growth in the first half of 2020, even if countries around the world continued to weigh up bans on its equipment and smartphone sales shrink amid the pandemic, the telecom giant said in a brief on Monday. The firm’s revenue reached 454 billion yuan ($64.88 billion) in the period, […]

Luckin Coffee has replaced co-founder and (now ex-) chairman Charles Zhengyao Lu, despite his efforts to maintain control over the troubled Beijing-based coffee chain. The company disclosed in an SEC filing on Monday that Jinyi Guo, another co-founder, board member and former acting chief executive of Luckin, has been appointed as its new chairman and […]

The Bronco is officially back. After 24 years, Ford relaunched the 2021 Bronco in a splashy reveal streamed Monday evening on ABC, ESPN and National Geographic, each short film showcasing a different member of the family: the Bronco 2-door, Bronco 4-door and Bronco Sport. The Bronco 2021 — Ford’s flagship series of 4×4 vehicles — […]

As expected, BigCommerce has filed to go public. The Austin, Texas, based e-commerce company raised over $200 million while private. The company’s IPO filing lists a $100 million placeholder figure for its IPO raise, giving us directional indication that this IPO will be in the lower, and not upper, nine-figure range. BigCommerce, similar to public […]

Snapchat could be gearing up to more directly challenge TikTok. The company confirmed it’s testing a new experience that allows users to move through Snapchat’s public content with a vertical swiping motion — a gesture that’s been popularized by TikTok, where it allows users to advance between videos. Snapchat says the feature is one of […]

Virtual classes might make it easier to work out anywhere, anytime, but not for anyone. Mainstream fitness tech often targets the young and fit, in advertisements and cardio-heavy exercises. It effectively excludes aging adults from participating. This gap between mainstream fitness and elders is where Mighty Health, a Y Combinator graduate, comes in. Mighty Health […]

Startup accelerators tend to grow the size of each new class over time, as more of their portfolio companies find exits, their network of mentors expands and they find new ways to scale things up. The most recognized example of this is almost certainly Y Combinator, which started with a group of just eight companies […]

After a heated run, SaaS and cloud stocks dipped sharply during regular trading on Monday. According to the category-tracking Bessemer cloud index, public SaaS and cloud stocks dropped around 6.5% today, a material blow to the value of some of the world’s most highly valued companies, measured by sector-averaged revenue multiples. After recovering all their […]

The last three-and-a-half years have been hell for immigrants and hell for immigration lawyers. Probably a lot of caring government immigration adjudicators have felt it, too. But it’s like an abusive relationship

Over the last few months, just about any tech company that can go remote has gone remote. Are companies adopting remote for the long haul, or is it just a holdover until they can get people back in the office? What are newly remote companies getting wrong or right in the transition? If a company is […]

It’s been two weeks since Reddit and Twitch made key moves to ban political content over service violations. As Twitch noted at the time, its suspension of the official Trump account was just temporary. Following earlier reports, the service confirmed with TechCrunch that the account had been reinstated. A spokesperson for the company also reiterated […]

The world’s massive experiment with remote learning has done more than emphasize the cracks in the way we learn. It’s brought much needed attention and capital to potential solutions. But it’s not just investors who are flurrying to the space; edtech incumbents are taking notice, too. Recent acquisitions show that edtech’s growth spurt is forcing […]

It’s beginning to be a sign of the times: smaller or younger space companies getting acquired by larger entities. Today, the company being acquired is Pioneer Astronautics, which has been bought by Voyager Space Holdings in a combined cash and stock deal. Voyager, which bills itself as the “first space-focused holding company,” now has a […]

There’s one thing I can’t stop thinking about every time I look at the Superstrata: Just how quickly the thing would get stolen. That’s no knock against the bike itself — in fact, it’s probably a point in its favor. If anything, it’s probably just another in a long list of signs that I’ve been […]

We’re a few days away from kicking off TC Early Stage 2020. Join us on July 21-22 for a two-day online masterclass designed to help early-stage startup founders build their business and keep moving forward. Bonus: Buy your ticket now and you’ll get a free annual membership to Extra Crunch, our subscription program focused on […]

The stakes keep getting higher for American discount brokerage Robinhood, which today disclosed that it has added hundreds of millions of dollars to its previously disclosed funding round. Including the $280 million that the company had already announced, Robinhood said that it was “pleased to share” that it “raised an additional $320 million in subsequent […]

The second quarter’s venture capital results are coming into focus. The Exchange will have more notes on Q2’s venture results this week, but this morning we’re digging into our first dataset concerning what happened in the world of private capital from April through June. Crunchbase News — a place I used to work, it feels […]

Global enterprises will transform education, recruitment and training post COVID-19, permanently altering how we value and participate in higher learning.

After a series of closed alpha tests, Microsoft’s Xbox Game Studios and Asobo Studios today announced that the next-gen Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 will launch on August 18. Pre-orders are now live and FS 2020 will come in three editions, standard ($59.99), deluxe ($89.99) and premium deluxe ($119.99), with the more expensive versions featuring more […]

Skydio has raised a $100 million Series C funding round, which was led by Next47 and includes participation from other new investors Levitate Capital and NTT DOCOMO Ventures, as well as existing investors A16Z, IVP and Playground. This new funding will help the drone maker move faster on its product development efforts, and expand its […]

Apple announced this morning it’s allocating more than $400 million toward affordable housing projects and other homeowner assistance programs in California, as a part of its earlier multiyear pledge of $2.5 billion to address the state’s housing crisis and homelessness issues. The funding is expected to support thousands of Californians with first-time homebuyer assistance or […]

India should set up a data regulator to oversee how companies collect, process, store, monetize and even destroy nonpersonal data (or data that has been anonymized), a panel tasked by New Delhi has recommended in a draft report. The eight-person panel said that companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Uber have benefited from a […]

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 week-starting primer in which we go over the latest news, dig into the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dive into the latest big news from the startup world. (You […]

Less than a month after picking up Simplecast for its podcast distribution and analytics tools, SiriusXM today is announcing an even bigger acquisition to raise its game in the realm of streamed spoken-word content. The satellite radio company said it has reached a deal to acquire Stitcher from E.W. Scripps for $325 million, a return of more than double […]

If you’re currently building a startup, you know what product you want to build. But do you know if people are actually going to notice you? Emily Heyward from Red Antler can tell you how to get people obsessed with your brand. Join us at TC Early Stage online to understand what makes a specific […]

Paige, the startup that spun out of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and launched in 2018 to help advance cancer research and care by applying AI to better understand cancer pathology, is today announcing a milestone in its growth story: it has raised a further $20 million from Goldman Sachs and Healthcare Venture Partners, […]

Google today announced that it has signed up Verizon as the newest customer of its Google Cloud Contact Center AI service, which aims to bring natural language recognition to the often inscrutable phone menus that many companies still use today (disclaimer: TechCrunch is part of the Verizon Media Group). For Google, that’s a major win, […]

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has shared the results of a new project in which it built a two-fingered robotic gripper, which has soft pads for dedicated and fine manipulation of objects like cables, sheets and more. The robot’s design is based on how humans use their fingers to do things like […]

Analog Devices didn’t waste any time kicking off the week with a bang when it announced this morning it was acquiring rival chipmaker Maxim Integrated Products for $20.91 billion (according to multiple reports). The company had a market cap of $17.09 billion as of Friday’s close. The deal, which has already been approved by both […]

The chief executive of UK incumbent telco BT has warned any government move to require a rapid rip-out of Huawei kit from existing mobile infrastructure could cause network outages for mobile users and generate its own set of security risks. Huawei has been the focus of concern for Western governments including the US and its […]

Last year, Gartner found that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the fastest growing category in enterprise software. So perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that UiPath, a leading startup in the space, announced a $225 million Series E today on an eye-popping $10.2 billion valuation. Alkeon Capital led the round with help from Accel, […]

Amid intense scrutiny over TikTok, WeChat, the essential tool for Chinese people’s day-to-day life, is also taking the heat from the U.S. White House trade advisor Peter Navarro told Fox Business on Sunday that “[TikTok] and WeChat are the biggest forms of censorship on the Chinese mainland, and so expect strong action on that.” Navarro […]

Google said on Monday that it has partnered with CBSE, an Indian government body that oversees education in private and public schools in the country, to deliver a “blended learning experience” across 22,000 schools in the world’s second largest internet market by the end of this year. The Search giant, which today also announced plans […]

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and state investment firm Temasek announced today that Project Ubin, its blockchain-based multi-currency payments network, has proven its commercial potential after tests with more than 40 companies. The initiative was launched in 2016. A prototype developed by Temasek and J.P. Morgan began undergoing testing last year to see how […]

Google said on Monday that it plans to invest $10 billion in India in the next five to seven years as the search giant looks to help accelerate adoption of digital services in the key overseas market. Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, today unveiled Google for India Digitization Fund through which the company will […]

Microsoft is shedding its empathetic chatbot Xiaoice into an independent entity, the U.S. software behemoth said (in Chinese) Monday, confirming an earlier report by the Chinese news site Chuhaipost in June. The announcement came several months after Microsoft announced it would close down its voice assistant app Cortana in China among other countries late last year. […]

Tesla has lowered the price of another vehicle. This time it’s the Model Y, an electric SUV the company started shipping in March. The long-range all-wheel drive version of the car is now listed with a purchase price of $49,990, or $3,000 less than what it was before. The car’s new pricing was first reported […]

After aggressive cost-cutting measures, including mass layoffs and selling several of its businesses, WeWork’s chairman expects the company to have positive cash flow in 2021. Marcelo Claure, who became WeWork’s chairman after co-founder Adam Neumann resigned as chief executive officer last fall, told the Financial Times that the co-working space startup is on target to […]

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, the unprecedented national security law descended on Hong Kong, changing the day-to-day life of the people there, as well as businesses across the […]

Qualcomm has become the newest high-profile backer of four-year-old Reliance Jio Platforms, which has raised more than $15.7 billion in the past 12 weeks from as many investors. On Sunday evening, Qualcomm Ventures said it will invest $97 million in Reliance Jio Platforms to acquire a 0.15% equity stake “on a fully diluted basis” in the […]

Editor’s note: Get this free weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7am PT). Subscribe here. You could almost hear the internet cracking apart this week as international businesses pulled away from Hong Kong and the US considered a ban on TikTok. Software can no longer eat the entire […]

With the release of “Hamilton” on Disney+, Jordan and Darrell finally got to watch the musical biography of Founding Father Alexander Hamilton — albeit in recorded form, rather than live on-stage. And as we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, they were pretty delighted by what they found. Not that a […]

This week we dig into the news of a possible TikTok ban in the U.S. Also, both Android and iOS saw beta launches. We also look at the coronavirus' impact on the app economy in Q2, and more.

Welcome to The Exchange, an upcoming weekly newsletter featuring TechCrunch and Extra Crunch reporting on startups, money, and markets. You can sign up for it here to receive it regularly when it launches on July 25th. You can email me about it here, or talk to me about it on Twitter. Let’s go! Ahead of parsing […]

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has admitted that there is no practical way for Americans to avoid having their movements tracked by its license plate readers, according to its latest privacy assessment. CBP published its new assessment — three years after its first — to notify the public that it plans to tap into a […]

We look at Rackspace’s finances, a Facebook code change causes numerous app issues and electric vehicle company Rivian raises $2.5 billion. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 10, 2020. The big story: Rackspace is going public again The cloud computing company first went public in 2008, before accepting a $4.3 billion offer to go private […]

Google announced its plans to acquire Fitbit for $2.1 billion back in November. As of this writing, the deal has yet to go through, courtesy of all the usual regulatory scrutiny that occurs any time one large company buys another. EU regulators are often a key hurdle for these sorts of deals, and this time […]

In its first few weeks of release, the latest game from QuizUp founder Thor Fridriksson took the top spot in the Games Section of Apple’s App Store and was the top app (for a brief time) in the App Store at large. Since its launch on June 17, Trivia Royale has been downloaded more than […]

Replicated, the Los Angeles-based company pitching monitoring and management services for Kubernetes-based applications, has managed to bring on the former head of product of the $2.75 billion-valued programming giant GitLab as its new chief product officer. Mark Pundsack is joining the company as it moves to scale its business. At GitLab, Pundsack saw the company […]