Crunch Hype

UK food delivery giant Deliveroo has been called on to do more to protect riders’ incomes and safety during the coronavirus crisis. The ‘meals-on-wheels’ service couriers provide makes them key workers in a pandemic characterized by social distancing and ‘shelter in place’ lockdowns, is the key argument. More than forty MPs from across the political […]

LeoLabs has been building out its global network of space-scanning radars for the last couple years, leading up to today’s launch of its Collision Avoidance system, essentially satellite-monitoring-as-a-service. It should prove an indispensable asset to startups that don’t happen to have their own state of the art radar setup. Space is full of junk, and […]

Justine and Olivia Moore, the twin investors behind the CRV-backed Liftoff List have long believed in the power of student entrepreneurship. The twin sisters were among the early architects of Stanford University’s student investment program, Cardinal Ventures, and even back then they’d noticed that it was hard for student entrepreneurs to get press and coverage […]

This morning, let's talk about ActiveCampaign, Recorded Future, and ON24.

Israeli cybersecurity company CyberArk has acquired identity startup Idaptive for $70 million in an all-cash deal. CyberArk is one of the shining stars in the Israeli cybersecurity scene before its initial public offering in 2013 saw it go public on the Nasdaq. To date, its share price has almost quadrupled. At the core of CyberArk’s […]

Loon, the Alphabet -owned company that’s using stratospheric balloons to provide high-speed bandwidth to hard-to-serve areas without strong ground infrastructure, has signed a new deal with carrier Vodacom to expand its offering in Africa to Mozambique. This is the second commercial agreement that Loon has in place in the continent, and its close proximity to […]

As we move through life in the pandemic, companies are being forced to review and understand how workflows happen. How do you distribute laptops to your workforce? How do you make sure everyone has the correct tool set? FortressIQ, a startup that wants to help companies use data to understand and improve internal processes, announced […]

With November looming, the scramble to protect the 2020 U.S. election from coronavirus chaos is on. To that end, a small, skilled cluster of voting rights advocates are launching a new voter mobilization project. Called VoteAmerica, the new non-profit shares DNA with Vote.org, the esteemed nonpartisan voter mobilization site VoteAmerica founder Debra Cleaver first launched […]

Even in these trying economic times, there are some services that companies can’t do without. Having good security tools is one of them. Expel, a 4-year old startup that offers security operations as a service, announced a $50 million Series D financing today. CapitalG led the round with participation from existing investors Battery Ventures, Greycroft, […]

As millions of students and teachers shift to learn from home in response to the novel coronavirus disease, modern-day flashcard business Quizlet has raised $30 million in a Series C round led by General Atlantic. Quizlet’s chief executive officer Matthew Glotzbach said that the new funding values the business at $1 billion, up five times […]

Rocket Lab is already in the testing phase for a new engine it’s building to propel its forthcoming Photon Lunar spacecraft, according to CEO and founder Peter Beck . Beck shared an image of the engine, called hyperCurie, undergoing tests conducted by the company’s propellant team. HyperCurie, as its name implies, is an evolution of […]

I’ve been following the Nura story since the Australian startup brought an unfinished prototype of its first headphones to our offices four years back. When I finally had the opportunity to review the Nuraphones the following year, I put the noise-adapting headphones at the top of my list of 2017’s best gadgets. There was a […]

Rakuten, often referred to as the “Amazon of Japan” with extensive holdings in e-commerce and streaming media, has made an acquisition that will help it build up and flex a newer arm of its business: communications services. Today, the company announced that it is buying Innoeye, an engineering company based out of Herndon, VA, with […]

Click Materials, a Vancouver-based developer of “smart glass” has inked a major partnership with one fo the largest manufacturers of windows for the home, Cardinal Glass, as it looks to challenge the billion dollar-backed View Inc. Founded in 2016 by a University of British Columbia professor, Curtis Berlinguette, Click Materials has raised only a few […]

SirionLabs, a startup that provides contract management software to enterprises, has raised $44 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand and handle surge in demand from clients. Tiger Global and Avatar Growth Capital led the Seattle-headquartered startup’s Series C round. The eight-year-old startup, which was founded in India, has raised $66 […]

The Minneapolis-based outdoor furniture brand Yardbird, which makes its wares in part from recycled plastic harvested from beaches and ocean-bound waterways, has raised $4.4 million in financing. Even heading into the teeth of a pandemic, American consumers won’t be denied their sustainably manufactured patio furniture. Yardbird, which closed the round in March, makes its furniture […]

There is immense opacity in the venture capital industry, and that has made comparing venture funds notoriously difficult. Traditional benchmarks calculated by groups like Cambridge Associates bucket VC funds into “vintage years” and place funds into quartiles based on metrics like IRR (rate of return adjusted for time) and DPI (or the amount of capital […]

Berlin -based recruitment startup, Zenjob, which operates a digital platform connecting students with highly flexible temp jobs in sectors such as retail, logistics and hospitality, has closed a €27 million ($30M) Series C led by Forestay Capital. Also participating in the funding round: Redalpine, Acton Capital, Axa Venture Partners and Atlantic Labs. Prior to this […]

Scratchpay, the Pasadena, Calif.-based provider of petcare financing plans, is now offering lending services for dental, optical and chiropractic care for humans in a broad expansion of its services. The expansion into human health and wellness was always on the company’s roadmap, according to chief executive John Keatley, but those plans accelerated as the company […]

Twilio’s video player will be used as the backbone for the new video consultation service that Zocdoc is launching for its customers today, the two companies said in a statement. As the COVID-19 epidemic reshapes healthcare in the U.S. more service providers are going remote with the delivery of healthcare consultations and encouraging entire generations […]

London-based femtech hardware startup Astinno has picked up an Innovate UK grant worth £360k ($450k) to fund further testing of a wearable it’s developing for women experiencing a perimenopause symptom known as hot flushes. The sensor-packed device, which it’s calling Grace, is being designed to detect the onset of a hot flush and apply cooling […]

Children and teenagers in China are hyper-connected and using the internet in ways that were unimaginable and inaccessible to earlier generations. As many as 175 million people under the age of 18, or 93.1% of the country’s underage population, were internet users in 2019, according to a joint report released by the government-affiliated China Internet […]

Emteria, is a startup that emerged out of the limitations of the official Android Open Source Project. AOSP just isn’t good enough to be used in industrial applications which means if industry wants to use it, the platform must be extended and customized. Some industries still use outdated platforms like Windows CE to power things […]

M17, the Taiwan-based live streaming entertainment startup, announced that it has raised a $26.5 million Series D. The round was led by Vertex Growth Fund, with participation from Stonebridge Korea Unicorn Venture Fund, Innoven Capital Singapore, Kaga Electronics and ASE Global Group. The new funding will be used for growth in Japan, one of M17’s […]

Alameda County officials announced today that Tesla can reopen as soon as next week if it implements additional safety recommendations. The statement from the Alameda County Public Health Department said that after receiving Tesla’s COVID-19 site-specific safety plan for its Fremont plant, officials “held productive discussions today with Tesla’s representatives about their safety and prevention […]

Modulr, the U.K. fintech that offers ‘Payments as a Service’ as an alternative to commercial and wholesale transaction banking, has secured £18.9 million in growth funding. Leading the round is Highland Europe, with participation from existing investors including Frog Capital. Modulr says the injection of capital will be used to further develop the payments platform […]

VanMoof, the Dutch e-bike startup which launched in 2009, is now officially a “scale-up” after attracting a €12.5M / $13.5M investment from London VC Balderton Capital and SINBON Electronics, the Taiwan-based electronics manufacturer which is its bike assembly partner. The funds will be used for international expansion, following the launch of the new electric VanMoof […]

Update: Slack says connection issues are now fixed for everyone. Everyone should be able to connect to Slack now. Please let us know at feedback@slack.com if you have any connection trouble. Thank you for being patient with us, we appreciate it. https://t.co/AALbQGsDHq — Slack Status (@SlackStatus) May 13, 2020 Slack is currently fixing issues that […]

When you think of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, the words “emotional” and “expressive” probably don’t come to mind. Instead, there’s that recognizably flat and polite voice, devoid of all affect — which is fine for an assistant, but isn’t going to work if you want to use synthetic voices in games, […]

Alon Gilady, CEO of RenovAI, told me his startup is trying to solve the problem that many of us face when we’re moving into a new home — we aren’t interior designers, but we can’t afford to hire real designers, either. Apparently Gilady’s co-founder and vice president of products, Alon Chelben, had this issue himself […]

Global investment firm KKR is betting on the pizza business — it just led a $43 million Series C investment in Slice. Formerly known as MyPizza, Slice has created a mobile app and website where diners can order a custom pizza delivery from their local, independent pizzeria. And for those pizzerias, CEO Ilir Sela said […]

This morning, Snap joined a host of startup accelerators shifting its demo day online amid the COVID-19 quarantine. With its third class of startups, Yellow, Snap’s in-house startup accelerator that launched in 2018, brought investors and founders together in private slack channels after a live-streamed presentation. The event kicked off with a few words from […]

Facebook has agreed in principle to pay $52 million to compensate current and former content moderators who developed mental health issues on the job. The Verge reported Tuesday that the settlement will cover more than 11,000 content moderators who developed depression, addictions and other mental health issues while they worked moderating content on the social […]

In an open letter to Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, a coalition of AGs have jointly called on Amazon to strengthen protections for a strained workforce amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The letter, penned by Massachusetts state AG Maura Healey — along with attorneys general from Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, […]

Facebook’s AI tools are the only thing standing between its users and the growing onslaught of hate and misinformation the platform is experiencing. The company’s researchers have cooked up a few new capabilities for the systems that keep the adversary at bay, identifying COVID-19-related misinformation and hateful speech disguised as memes. Detecting and removing misinformation […]

Online retailers are seeing Black Friday-like sales due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their business. According to new data from Adobe’s Digital Economy Index, U.S. e-commerce jumped 49% in April, compared to the baseline period in early March before shelter-in-place restrictions went into effect. Online grocery helped drive the increase in sales, […]

As the world looks to reopen after weeks of lockdown, governments are turning to contact tracing to understand the spread of the deadly coronavirus. Most nations are leaning toward privacy-focused apps that use Bluetooth signals to create an anonymous profile of where a person has been and when. Some, like Israel, are bucking the trend […]

2020 sucks. Want to let your brain slip back to 1999 for a while? This news might help: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 and 2 are coming back, complete with a full-blown graphic overhaul, online multiplayer — and, yes, the song “Superman” by Goldfinger. Here’s the announcement trailer, which does a great job of showing […]

Earlier today news broke that Uber is pursuing an acquisition of Grubhub. The global ride-hailing giant is worth a multiple of the American food delivery service, making the tie-up financially feasible, provided that a palatable price can be found for both parties. The Wall Street Journal broke the news; you can read TechCrunch’s coverage of […]

As most countries across the globe scramble to build an app to trace the spread of coronavirus, India’s solution is growing at an unprecedented scale — despite being dogged by privacy concerns. New Delhi’s contact tracing app, called Aarogya Setu, has reached 100 million users in 41 days since its release. A representative at think-tank […]

SpaceX has launched a new browser-based simulator that provides an idea of what it would be like to manually control the docking process of its Crew Dragon spacecraft, the first human-carrying spaceship the company has made. Crew Dragon actually docks with the International Space Station (ISS) fully autonomously, but astronauts are able to take over […]

Earlier today, Jack Dorsey sent an email to Twitter staff, notifying employees that they will be ale to continue working from home as long as they see fit. The CEO notes that Twitter was an earlier adopter of a work-from-home model, though — like much the rest of the world — that push has been […]

As part of its anti-bullying efforts, Instagram today announced a series of new features aimed at helping users better manage negative comments as well as highlight positive ones. It’s also adding new controls to manage who can tag or mention you on Instagram, which can be another source of online bullying. The first of the […]

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Messaging service Telegram said on Tuesday it is abandoning its blockchain platform Telegram Open Network (TON) after a lengthy battle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “Today is a sad day for us here at Telegram . We are announcing the discontinuation of our blockchain project,” wrote Pavel Durov, the founder and chief executive […]

Waymo has added an additional $750 million to the $2.25 billion funding round that it first announced in March, bringing the total size of the financing (its first from investors outside of Alphabet) to $3 billion. The extension comes from new investors including those managed by T. Rowe Price, Perry Creek Capital, Fidelity Management and […]

LinkedIn adds new features to support virtual events, Elon Musk escalates his battle with Alameda County and Banjo’s CEO resigns after some disturbing revelations. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 12, 2020. 1. LinkedIn adds polls and live video-based events in a focus on more virtual engagement Microsoft -owned LinkedIn announced a couple of big […]

LaunchNotes, a startup founded by three ex-Atlassian employees, makes it easier for businesses to communicate the changes in their software products to both their internal teams and external customers. In practice, you can think of it as a product similar to Statuspage, which made it easier for companies to communicate the status of their systems. […]

Sleeper is widening its ambitions to esports as the arena sports world goes into hibernation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. While CEO Nan Wang has high hopes that the upcoming NFL season can proceed amid the pandemic, he’s hoping to expand his fantasy sports app’s appeal to gamers by launching support for the intensely popular title […]

Google is making it easier for Google Play Music users to make the switch to the company’s now preferred music app, YouTube Music, ahead of its plans to shut down Google Play Music later this year. Starting today, Google Play Music users will be able to move their libraries, personal taste preferences and playlists to […]