Crunch Hype

Simply put: alternative assets are the things that probably wouldn’t come up when you meet with your financial advisor.

Products and services that have material impact on basic needs and livelihoods and address a core draw on a consumer’s time, money or energy present great opportunities.

As earnings season winds down, we’re getting a solid picture on just how profoundly the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted corporations’ bottomline. Taiwan-based manufacturing giant Foxconn is among those companies that were utterly walloped over the previous quarter. Plant shutdowns — particularly in China — lead to a 90% year-over-year drop in profits for the quarter. […]

Chris and Alex Naoumidis came to hypnotherapy through dresses. As The New York Times reported last year, the two brothers initially started their careers as startup entrepreneurs with a peer-to-peer dress-sharing app for women. The Australian natives, overcome with doubt, about their ability to succeed in startupland and when apps didn’t work, their father suggested […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Are you a regular Equity listener? Take our survey here! We talk about it on the show, and it’s embedded below in case you don’t want to click a link. From home once again this week, Danny, Natasha, […]

Therapeutics company Sorrento has made what it believes cold be a breakthrough in potential treatment of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that leads to COVID-19. The company released details its preclinical research on Friday, announcing that it has found an antibody that provides “100% inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 virus infection of healthy cells after four days incubation.” These […]

New numbers from NPD confirm what we’ve known for a while: the first quarter of 2020 was a very good one for gaming companies. The new report notes that sales hit a record $10.86 billion in the States between January and March of this year, marking a 9% increase over a year prior. $9.58 billion […]

Zomato, an India-headquartered food delivery startup, is cutting 13% of its workforce and enforcing a pay cut for rest of the employees as it looks to reduce cost and tide the coronavirus crises that has made many cautious about ordering food online. The 11-year-old firm did not disclose the exact number of people it was letting […]

Taking care of your emotional wellbeing is as important as physical health, but in Asia, the topic is often stigmatized. Intellect, a Singapore-based startup, wants to make the idea of mental health more approachable with an app that offers self-guided exercises based on cognitive behavorial therapy techniques. The company develops consumer and enterprise versions of […]

Months into this global pandemic, many questions remain about whether and when companies of all sizes will return to their offices and what will be required of the move. The future is so unclear that even people steeped in the real estate industry don’t have all the answers — though they’re starting to make educated […]

Opera’s Africa fintech startup OPay remains committed to building a multi-service super app in Nigeria as the foundation to expand on the continent. OPay also continues to operate ORide for limited passenger service — though the company is shifting the motorcycle ride-hail operation toward logistics businesses. These were some of the updates offered by Opera’s […]

The Luckin saga continues as the Chinese coffee challenger seeks solutions to the undesirable consequences of a $310 million fraud. On Tuesday, the company announced sacking chief operating officer Liu Jian, the alleged mastermind behind the fraud, and chief executive officer Qian Zhiya, a rare female leader of a Chinese internet firm. Despite the scandal, the […]

Amazon has secured rights to premiere seven Indian movies that were initially scheduled for a theatrical release directly on its Prime Video on-demand streaming service in a move that has prompted two major movie theater chains to express “extreme displeasure” and “disappointment.” The e-commerce giant, which is reportedly in talks to buy AMC theater chain, said on […]

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world’s largest contract semiconductor foundry, said today that it plans to build an advanced chip foundry in Arizona with support from the state and the United States federal government. The announcement follows a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that White House officials were in talks with TSMC and […]

For the past two years the founding team of Immunai had been working stealthily to develop a new technology to map the immune system of any patient. Founded by Noam Solomon, a Harvard and MIT-educated postdoctoral researcher, and former Palantir engineer, Luis Voloch, Immunai was born from the two men’s interest in computational biology and […]

“The first Asian Jew in fake space” — that’s how Josh Burstein introduced himself to me when we hopped on the phone earlier this week. The fake space in question is the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), where NASA has been periodically isolating teams of astronauts to study how they respond to the […]

Sony has developed an interesting new hybrid technology: An image sensor with AI processing system built into the hardware, making it a single integrated system. The benefits and applications for this are potentially enormous as imagery and code continue to merge. The idea is fairly simple in concept. You take a traditional CMOS image sensor […]

After plenty of talk about AR as the next computing platform, Apple may have more interest in virtual reality than they’ve previously forecasted. Following an April report from 9to5mac, today Apple confirmed to Bloomberg the acquisition of VR broadcasting startup NextVR. A note on NextVR’s website now highlights that the company is “moving in a […]

“In general, the consumer has proven to be more resilient than I would have thought,” said Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures, which has investments in breakout D2C stars like Glossier, Hims and Bonobos. She joined us for an Extra Crunch Live conversation to help us better understand buying habits in the COVID-19 era. With […]

Today, Apple released its 2020 Supplier Responsibility progress report. In it, Senior Vice President of Operations Sabih Khan published a letter that details an outline of the plan it created to increase safety and protection efforts in its supply chain worldwide. As far as I can tell this is the first time that Khan has […]

Ettitude, the Los Angeles-based, direct-to-consumer startup making sustainable bedding and sleepwear from bamboo fibers, has raised a sustainably sized round that should keep the company going even in the face of an economic recession. Co-founded by the Melbourne, Australia native Phoebe Yu and serial entrepreneur Kat Dey, ettitude sells high-end bamboo bedding made using a […]

Scener, a browser extension that allows users to co-watch Netflix — similar to the newly popular Netflix Party Chrome add-on — is expanding to support HBO NOW and HBO GO. The additions come alongside a full relaunch of Scener, which is reinventing its product for the coronavirus era as a virtual movie theater experience where […]

In a time when package deliveries are more essential than ever, the future of the United States Postal Service is very much in limbo. The president of the United States has waged a one-man war on America’s most-liked government agency, calling it a “joke” and insisting it raise prices before it receives the manner of […]

Cruise, the self-driving car subsidiary of GM that also has backing from SoftBank Vision Fund, automaker Honda and T. Rowe Price & Associates, is laying off nearly 8% of its more than 1,800-member workforce today as it tries to reduce costs during the COVID-19 pandemic. The layoffs will affect employees in Cruise’s product, marketing and […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been touting forthcoming battery technology improvements, going so far as to dub a forthcoming company talk “battery day” in prior public comments. Now Reuters is reporting that the automaker plans to unveil new advanced battery technology it has developed that can produce power sources for its EVs which last for […]

For immigrants in the United States, representation can feel complex, celebrated and oftentimes a mix of the two. And that’s exactly why sister duo Vanessa and Kim Pham launched Omsom, a seed-stage food startup that sells packaged “starters” to recreate authentic Asian dishes at home. The starter contains sauce, spices and aromatics, and the co-founders […]

SpaceX and NASA are planning a triumphant return to American human spaceflight on May 27, with the SpaceX Demo-2 mission for its Crew Dragon spacecraft. This is the final step required for Crew Dragon to become certified for human flight, after which it’ll enter into regular operational service ferrying people (and some cargo) to the […]

Zoom was never meant to be a social network, but the enterprise video chat app has become essential software for those looking to stay in touch with friends and family during the pandemic. Today, Facebook looks to steal back the service’s social video chat growth as it globally launches Messenger Rooms, its new group video […]

Earlier today, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors Access Industries and Andreessen Horowitz. The capital comes after the SMB and developer-focused cloud infrastructure company raised nine-figures worth of debt back in February. DigitalOcean is a large private company that generated revenue at a run rate of around $250 million towards […]

Donald Trump this week signed an extension of last year’s national emergency declaration aimed at barring commercial trade with certain foreign telecom companies. The extension comes nearly a year to the day after the first order, this time extending things through May of 2021. Per the original language, the order invokes the International Emergency Economic […]

Among the many problems with the prison system are enormous fees for things like video calls, which a handful of companies provide at grossly inflated rates. Ameelio hopes to step in and provide free communication options to inmates; its first product, sending paper letters, is being welcomed with open arms by those with incarcerated loved […]

After testing the waters this spring with its incubator-esque MVP Lab, Mozilla is doubling down on the effort with a formal program dangling $75,000 investments in front of early stage companies. The focus on "a better society" and the company's open-source clout should help differentiate it from the other options out there.

France’s lower chamber of the parliament has voted in favor of a controversial law against hate speech on social networks and online platforms. As I described last year, online platforms will have to remove within 24 hours illicit content that has been flagged. Otherwise, companies will have to pay hefty fines every time they infringe […]

Parenting benefits company Cleo is partnering with on-demand childcare service UrbanSitter to address a problem facing many parents today amid the pandemic: a lack of childcare, even as they’re required to return to work. With summer camps, daycares and schools shut down for the months ahead, parents who need to work outside the home (or […]

Just weeks after announcing a deal to acquire 5G specialist Affirmed Networks, Microsoft is making another acquisition to strengthen its cloud-based telecoms offering. It’s acquiring Metaswitch Networks, a U.K.-based provider of cloud-based communications products used by carriers and network providers (customers include the likes of BT in the U.K., Sprint and virtual network consortium RINA. […]

On May 21 at 3pm ET/12pm PT, we’re hosting an Extra Crunch Live session with Steve Case and Clara Sieg of Revolution. This chat is the latest in our growing series featuring notable investors, entrepreneurs and technologists. Previously, TechCrunch editorial staff sat down (virtually, of course) with Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Ted Wang, Sequoia’s […]

Uber announces some COVID-19 related changes, Google’s Chrome browser is giving users a way to organize their tabs and the Senate rejects an amendment that would have raised the bar for law enforcement access to browsing data. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 14, 2020. 1. Here’s how your Uber ride will change, starting May […]

Starting today, TechCrunch readers can send an Extra Crunch annual membership as a gift to a friend, family member or co-worker. For a limited time we’re offering the gift at a discounted rate of $99/year (plus tax). The gifting feature can be found here. Extra Crunch membership is designed for startup teams, entrepreneurs, investors and […]

SoftBank Investment Fund and WeWork Labs say they’ve officially kicked off the first session of Emerge, an accelerator program designed for underrepresented founders. In their press release, the companies describe Emerge as “launched by SoftBank with support from WeWork Labs” (that’s the co-working company’s global accelerator program), with a goal of bringing more equality to […]

Amazon-owned game streaming site Twitch announced today the formation of a new group that will guide decision-making around new policies and products, the Twitch Safety Advisory Council. The eight-person council consists of both online experts and Twitch creators, who have a deep understanding of the Twitch platform, its content, and community, the company says. “When […]

A little over a year after its graduation from Y Combinator’s demo day, the on-demand construction materials delivery service Curri is beginning to offer its services in all 50 states. Co-founded by Matt Lafferty and Brian Gonzalez Curri aims to solve one of the major hurdles for local construction suppliers who miss out on sales because […]

With the global economy still sorting itself out in the face of the pandemic, we’re hearing about fewer new venture capital funds these days. However, today is an exception, as Cathay Innovation has raised a $550 million second fund, which is about double the size of its first fund and, according to its leader Denis […]

Back in March, Headspace announced that it would offer free content to all COVID-19 frontline responders. Now the meditation app is expanding the offer to include all unemployed people in the U.S. You can go here to sign up, by entering information on your most recent job, including the employer’s name and the date you […]

In the age of digitization, we are lucky enough to be able to reach our audiences and co-workers despite worldwide lockdowns, but people are selective about how they spend their time.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. The resilience of the American stock market in the face of near-record unemployment (there were nearly three million more unemployment claims reported this morning) has become a regular topic of conversation. The disconnect between what […]

Just as the electrification of America brought the nation out of the Great Depression, the Wi-Fi-cation of the nation can ease us out of the COVID-19 collapse.

It seems that we are in the middle of a mini acquisition spree for Kubernetes startups, specifically those that can help with Kubernetes security. In the latest development, Venafi, a vendor of certificate and key management for machine-to-machine connections, is acquiring Jetstack, a UK startup that helps enterprises migrate and work within Kubernetes and cloud-based ecosystems, […]

Most companies don’t have the personnel to do AI well, so they turn to platform vendors like Adobe for help. Like other platforms, it has been building AI into its product set for several years now, but wanted to give marketers a set of tools that take advantage of some advanced AI capabilities out of […]

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Tokyo are showcasing a new composite material with self-healing properties that take cues from lizard tails and starfish arms. MWCNTs-PBS — a composite of polyborosiloxane (PBS) and material multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) — is at the heart (so to speak) of the ‘Self-healing UI.’ When cut in […]

“I spend a lot of time being angry — but I’m still hopeful. Gender bias in medicine is systemic,” says Carine Carmy, the fast-talking CEO and co-founder of Origin, during a condensed chat about her startup mission to make physical therapy for women and mothers accessible and affordable across the US, both online and through […]