Crunch Hype

One would think it’s a given that investment strategies would change in the strange times we find ourselves. With the economy staggering and so much general uncertainty, it seems caution would be the watchword of the day, especially in the enterprise. But enterprise investors aren’t necessarily looking at what’s going on right now. As startups […]

It’s been a big period of positive change for Yugabyte, makers of the open source, cloud native YugabyteDB database. Just last month they brought on former Pivotal CEO Bill Cook as CEO, and today the company announced it has closed a $30 million Series B. 8VC and strategic investor WiPro led the round with participation […]

Database security startup jSonar has secured $50 million in new funding from Goldman Sachs . The company, with offices in Waltham, Mass. and Vancouver, B.C., will use the new funding to grow its database security offering. In return, Goldman Sachs executive David Campbell will join jSonar’s board. jSonar’s database security platform can monitor every one […]

Grammarly, the popular tool that aims to help you avoid grammar and style gaffes, today announced that launch of custom style guides for its paying business users. Like with any style guide, the idea here is to ensure that a business’ communications are consistent. You wouldn’t want one email to say ‘datacenter’ while the other […]

The three founders of Collab Capital, the newly launched Atlanta-based fund with a $50 million target and a mission to help Black entrepreneurs, are intimately aware of the struggles that Black founders face — because they are all Black founders themselves. Managing Partners Jewel Burks, Justin Dawkins, and Barry Givens have all founded companies, have backgrounds […]

The TechCrunch crew has worked to keep tabs on this year’s startup accelerator classes. Conventional wisdom in startup land states that great companies are founded during more trying economic times. Well, a recession was declared yesterday by the National Bureau of Economic Research. We should, therefore, see some breakout startups in the next few years. […]

DNAnexus, which provides a cloud platform for governments, universities, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies to tap into DNA and other clinical datasets and collaborate on scientific research projects, is today announcing a big step ahead in its efforts to grow its reach and purpose. The 10 year-old startup, originally spun out of Stanford’s school of medicine, […]

For years now, analysts and unconfirmed reports have suggested Apple was working on transitioning its Mac line of computers away from Intel -based chips, and to its own, ARM-based processors. Now, Bloomberg reports that the company could make those plans official as early as later this month, with an announcement potentially timed for its remote […]

Apple has updated its own COVID-19 iOS app and website with new features to allow users to anonymously share info including their age, existing health conditions, symptoms, potential exposure risks and the state in which they’re located. This info, which is not associated with any of their personal identifying data in any way according to […]

Beijing Eswin Computing Technology, a Chinese startup that supplies semiconductor design and solution provider, has raised $283 million in a new financing round at a time when the world’s most populous nation is looking to cut its reliance on the U.S. and UK for chipsets. The four-year-old firm said the new round, Series B, was […]

Fintech startup Klarna is launching a rewards program called Vibe this summer. If you use Klarna as your payment method, you’ll start earning points for every $1 you spend. You can then redeem your points for gift cards at Starbucks, Sephora, Foot Locker and Uber. Klarna is best known for its buy now and pay […]

South Africa based renewable energy startup Sun Exchange has raised $3 million to close its Series A funding round totaling $4 million. The company operates a peer-to-peer, crypto enabled business that allows individuals anywhere in the world to invest in solar infrastructure in Africa. How’s that all work? “You as an individual are selling electricity […]

Propzy, a Vietnam-based startup that guides consumers through the entire process of a real estate transaction, announced it has raised a $25 million Series A led by Gaw Capital and SoftBank Ventures Asia, the early-stage venture arm of SoftBank Group. Other investors included Next Billion Ventures, RHL Ventures, Breeze, FEBE Ventures, RSquare and Insignia. Instead […]

Flipkart is rolling out a voice assistant feature to its platform to make it easier for consumers to shop as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant looks to expand its reach in the nation. The AI-powered voice assistant currently supports grocery category, called Supermart, but a company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Flipkart will soon be extending it […]

Wing, an early-stage, Palo Alto, Ca.-based venture firm that was formed in 2013 by veteran VCs Peter Wagner and Gaurav Garg, has closed its third fund with $450 million in capital commitments. That’s substantially larger than the $300 million that the firm raised for its second fund — and it was raised entirely virtually, says […]

The town of New Providence, N.J. may seem like an unlikely home for a company that’s just inked a new deal with Big Hit Entertainment (the label behind the global K-pop supergroup BTS) and raised tens of millions of dollars from some of the largest venture capital firms in the United States, but Kiswe Mobile […]

A South Korean court denied an arrest warrant request for Samsung Group heir apparent Jay Y. Lee, saying that although prosecutors’ secured “a considerable amount of evidence,” it was still not enough to detain Lee. Prosecutors filed for the warrant last week, accusing Lee of accounting fraud and stock manipulation. Prosecutors allege that the value […]

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna announced today that the company would no longer sell facial recognition services, calling for a “national dialogue” on whether it should be used at all. He also voiced support for a new bill aiming to reduce police violence and increase accountability. In a letter reported by CNBC, written in support of […]

While most air travel continues to be ground to a halt, a German startup working on what it hopes will be a major breakthrough in flying has raised more funds to continue building its service. Lilium, which is designing an all-electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft that it plans to build into a taxi-style fleet […]

Meet Silverfin, a startup focused on accounting software. This isn’t about helping small startups handle accounting tasks themselves. Silverfin wants to build the cloud service for small and big accounting firms — Salesforce, but for accounting. The startup just raised a Series B funding round led by Hg — Index Ventures led the previous Series […]

Whether Wall Street agrees with the company’s last valuation (roughly $3.5 billion) or not, as a success story for founders to minimize dilution, it’s a really strong contender outside of pure bootstrapping.

Like many working parents, Vlada Lotkina, the founder and CEO of ClassTag, wanted to be more involved in her daughter’s preschool education. A paper notice about an upcoming field trip, squeezed between messy folders in a backpack, begged for smart technology around parent-teacher communication, she recalls. Lotkina turned to other parents in the preschool class […]

Homeland Security’s cybersecurity advisory unit is warning Windows 10 users to make sure that their systems are fully patched, after exploit code for a “wormable” bug was published online last week. The code takes advantage of a security vulnerability patched by Microsoft back in March. The bug caused confusion and concern after details of the […]

The killing of George Floyd and the nationwide protests that resulted have been a major wake-up call for many with regards to the role of policing in the United States. Yesterday, Floyd’s hometown of Minneapolis announced plans to dismantle the city’s police department via a veto-proof majority in the city council. Among the factors that […]

New York-based fintech startup Wahed (meaning “One” in Arabic) describes itself as a digital Islamic investment platform and as the world’s first “halal robo adviser.” It has now closed a $25 million investment round led by Saudi Aramco Entrepreneurship Ventures (also known as Wa’ed Ventures), a venture capital investment arm of oil giant Saudi Aramco. […]

After an indefinite postponement last week, Sony’s PlayStation 5 event is officially back on. The event has been rescheduled for a live stream on June 11 at 1:00 pm Pacific Time according to a tweet from PlayStation’s official account. It will live stream on Twitch and YouTube. See you Thursday, June 11 at 1:00pm Pacific […]

Lemonade, a heavily-backed startup that sells renters and homeowners insurance to consumers, filed to go public today. The company (backed by SoftBank, part of the Sequoia empire, General Catalyst and Tusk Venture Partners, among others) releasing its financial results helps shed light on the burgeoning insurtech market, which has attracted an ocean of capital in […]

Twitter is developing a new in-app system for requesting verification, according to a recent finding from reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, which Twitter has since confirmed. The discovery involves an added “Request Verification” option that appears in a redesigned account settings screen. This feature is not launched to the public, Twitter says. Wong typically digs […]

Researchers at MIT have published a new paper that describes a new type of artificial brain synapse that offers performance improvements versus other existing versions, and which can be combined in volumes of tens of thousands on a chip that’s smaller physically than a single piece of confetti. The results could help create devices that […]

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what those events mean to people in the rest of the world. This week, we are seeing the backlash Chinese tech companies face around the world as anti-China sentiment escalates. In China, one of the world’s […]

The 2020 Ford Escape plug-in hybrid — a first for the SUV — comes with an EPA-estimated 37 miles of all-electric driving range and 100 miles per gallon equivalent, stats that will put the redesigned model into competition with the new Toyota RAV4 Prime. The Toyota RAV4 Prime has an estimated 42-mile EV range and […]

To help you prepare for what’s next, I’ve talked with software developers who’ve been through previous recessions to get their advice on what moves to make now to put yourself in the best position possible in a recession.

eMarketer tries to quantify the rise of e-commerce, Reddit’s co-founder steps down from the board and SpaceX focuses on its next-generation spacecraft. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 8, 2020. 1. US e-commerce sales to jump 18% in 2020, but not enough to offset retail’s decline U.S. e-commerce sales will jump 18% this year due […]

Google Maps is today introducing a series of new features to better inform travelers and commuters about how their trip may be impacted by COVID-19 — including travel restrictions, COVID-19 checkpoints or even just the crowdedness of public transport. It’s also adding features that will help those traveling to COVID-19 testing centers better understand the […]

What we have here, then, is not merely another unprofitable unicorn. We have a very low-margin, unprofitable unicorn, that is still drawing enough investor interest to raise its IPO range.

While we’re preparing to launch a six-wheeled robotic rover roughly the size of a car to explore Mars, future planetary exploration and science missions could employ much smaller hardware — including, potentially, swarms of robots the size of insects designed to act in concert with one another autonomously. Swarming insect-like robots are being developed by […]

A few days ago, the French government detailed different measures as part of its support plan for startups. France already announced a $4.3 billion (€4 billion) plan back in March. The new announcements are more about refining and adding some additional measures. The French government wanted to act quickly when it made its initial announcement […]

U.S. e-commerce sales will jump 18% this year due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic that forced more shoppers online, according to a new forecast released today by eMarketer. However, the surge in new online orders won’t make up for the overall hit that the U.S. retail sector will take this year, the firm […]

Among countless other unexpected effects, COVID-19 has accelerated the adoption of all manner of new technologies, as people look for ways to reduce transmission of the virus. Yokohama, Japan-based WHILL has already seen a bit of traction for its autonomous mobility device in the forms of global trials in recent years, and now that the […]

The Acura NSX is a fun sports car with a hybrid powertrain that lays out an impressive amount of power. But I’m not here to talk about the car’s performance. One of the car’s best features is its cell phone holder. It’s time for automakers to face the reality that cell phones are a critical […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Here at Equity Monday we look at what happened over the weekend, what’s ahead, and a few recent funding rounds. As you’ll hear, we’re heading back into our normal cadence and topics, but if you do want to […]

A month after TechCrunch watched, discussed and parsed the startups from Techstars’ April batch of virtual demo days, we’re back with the handy May edition. Over the past few days, TechCrunch has been catching up by watching the shared video pitches from the five presenting demo classes, including the Lisbon demo day, its Seattle batch, […]

When Garrett Smith graduated from Stanford University to take a job with the drone startup Kespry, he’d not only wrapped up studying at one of the nation’s most prestigious universities, but also had already completed several combat tours in Southeast Asia and South America with the Marine Corps. At Kespry, Smith met fellow veteran Andrew […]

SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk says that after accomplishing its first human launch, the company’s primary focus going forward will be developing Starship, its next-generation spacecraft. According to an internal email seen by CNBC, Musk said that Starship is job one for the company, with the exception of ensuring that everything goes well with […]

Spanish startup Bnext is revamping its cashback program so that you can buy from partner stores directly from the Bnext app and get some money back. The company has partnered with Button and the feature is available as an open beta. Traditional cashback portals are a bit clunky. When you find an offer that gives […]

Curve, the “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app, is quietly testing its planned “Klarna rival”. Dubbed “Curve Credit“, the new feature is being tested with a small number of customers ahead of a full launch later this year. It offers credit on […]

A sprawling 645,000-square-meter data facility is going up on the top of the world to power data exchange between China and its neighboring countries in South Asia. The cloud computing and data center, perched on the plateau city Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and developed by private tech firm Ningsuan Technologies, has entered pilot operation […]

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. Hi friends and first-time readers. Welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to […]

Mukesh Ambani has courted the seventh major investor for his telecommunications business in just as many weeks. On Sunday, Reliance Jio Platforms said it will sell a stake of 1.16% for $750 million to Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), continuing its eye-catching run of investments at the height of a global pandemic. The three-and-a-half-year-old digital […]

“Space Force” is a new Netflix series that reunites Steve Carell and Greg Daniels, the star and creative force behind the American version of “The Office.” And there’s an amazing supporting cast along for the ride, including John Malkovich, Ben Schwartz, Jimmy O. Yang, Fred Willard, Lisa Kudrow and Jane Lynch. But as we puzzle […]