Crunch Hype

Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is admitting that the short-form video service’s launch hasn’t gone the way he’d hoped — and he knows what to blame for its issues. “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg said in an interview with The New York Times. “Everything. But we own it.” Back in April, […]

Smartphone shipments are reportedly beginning to see signs of line China, after a sizable dip from the COVID-19 pandemic. New numbers from China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (a government connected agency) point to a 17% rise in shipments for April, pointing to some recovery for the market. The figure, from the China state […]

Uber is in talks to buy GrubHub in an all-stock deal, The Wall Street Journal reports. According to the WSJ’s sources, GrubHub wants 2.15 Uber shares for each GrubHubs share. Uber first approached GrubHub earlier this year with an offer, but the two companies are still in talks, according to the WSJ. A Bloomberg report […]

As parents across the country are tasked with managing their children’s schooling amid a pandemic, investors are betting on a homeschooling startup that’s aiming to provide parents with services that can simplify the process of giving their kids a tailored education at home. Founder Ryan Delk says his startup Primer is building the “full-stack infrastructure” […]

When it comes to corporate venture capital, semiconductor giant Intel has shaped up to be one of the most prolific and prescient investors in the tech world, with investments in 1,582 companies worldwide, and a tally of some 692 portfolio companies going public or otherwise exiting in the wake of Intel’s backing. Today, the company announced its […]

It seems like only yesterday that we were all complaining about the boring uniformity of smartphone designs. In the last couple of years, companies have worked to offer some alternative through dual-screen devices, foldables and a slew of concept form factors — few of which have really gained much traction. Even so, the LG Wing […]

Atlassian announced today that it was acquiring Halp, an early stage startup that enables companies to build integrated help desk ticketing and automated answers inside Slack. The companies did not disclose the purchase price. It was a big day for Halp, which also announced its second product today called Halp Answers. The new tool will […]

Over the past three years the Los Angeles-based startup Maple Media has amassed a portfolio of roughly thirty companies and one hundred apps in its quest to become the IAC of app store businesses. And now, even with the economy continuing to collapse, the company is on the prowl for new acquisitions and expects to […]

Spotify is expanding the capabilities of its parental controls on its Spotify Kids app, aimed at children ages 3 and up on a parent’s Spotify Premium Family plan. Before, parents could only select whether the child was directed to the experience for younger or older children. Now, they’ll be able to specifically block content from […]

Sevetri Wilson founded her first company, a public relations firm catering to non-profit organizations, as soon as she graduated from Louisiana State University back in 2009. Eleven years later, and with a fresh $8 million round of funding in the bank, Wilson has taken the experience she amassed working in the nonprofit world and turned […]

It’s been a few years since August introduced any new hardware, but its August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, which it debuted at CES this year, is now available. This is the new flagship in the August lineup, replacing the August Smart Lock Pro as the latest and greatest feature-packed connected lock from the company, and it […]

Rising healthcare costs, an aging population, stifling regulations and the complexity of present-day technological offerings make the trillion-dollar healthcare industry ripe for disruption. Not only are we finding new and innovative ways to get medical help, this global pandemic has led to explosive growth in telemedicine, digital devices and health-tracking apps — much of which […]

When the world is in an unprecedented state, it’s fair — and appropriate — to challenge the status quo. Today at 11 a.m. PST, Jordan Crook and Natasha Mascarenhas are hosting a Extra Crunch Live chat with Kirsten Green, founder of Forerunner Ventures. This is our latest chat in our series of discussions with investors […]

Carnegie Mellon University is one step closer to operating its robotic rover on the surface of the Moon: The school’s diminutive bot has passed a crucial NASA design review, performed by the agency in collaboration with Astrobotic, whose Peregrine lunar lander will be providing the ride for the robot down to the surface of the […]

If you read the headlines, you'd be excused for thinking that venture capital investment into financial-technology companies is at an all-time high.

As the healthcare industry moves to value-based care, physician practices and health networks need to shift the things they bill for. Now it’s about maxing out patient “care” rather than the number of procedures physicians can perform. In this move to a more high-touch, rapid communication world where doctors need to take (and document) every […]

POCO, a brand that spun out of Chinese electronics giant Xiaomi earlier this year, today launched the POCO F2 Pro smartphone as it kickstarts its new journey as an independent firm. The POCO F2 Pro, like its two-year-old predecessor Pocophone F1 smartphone, punches above its price class. It features an all-screen 6.67-inch FHD+ AMOLED display […]

With a large part of the working world doing jobs from home when possible these days, the focus right now is on how best to recreate the atmosphere of an office virtually, and how to replicate online essential work that used to be done in person. Today, LinkedIn announced a couple of big new feature […]

UpKeep, a mobile-first platform for maintenance and operations collaboration, has today announced the close of a $36 million Series B financing round. The round was led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors Emergence Capital, Battery Ventures, Y Combinator, Mucker Capital and Fundersclub. UpKeep was founded by Ryan Chan. Chan worked at Trisep Corporation, […]

Arch Rao closed the $10.1 million financing round for Span, his company pitching homeowners on an upgrade to the fuse box, in the middle of February. The company had already seen what was happening in China and had a sense of how tough things could be, but was undeterred by the bad news and its […]

Krishna Rangasayee, founder and CEO, at SiMa.ai, has 30 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He decided to put that experience to work in a startup and launched SiMa.ai last year with the goal of building an ultra low-power software and chip solution for machine learning at the edge. Today he announced a $30 […]

Sketchfab is enabling multiplayer mode today with a new Sketchfab for Teams feature. The startup lets you share 3D models with other people in your company so that they can view, edit and download models. It could be particularly useful for companies working on augmented reality products, video games or even e-commerce websites with 3D […]

One of the approaches therapeutics companies are taking to developing vaccines for COVID-19 relies on what’s called an mRNA (messenger RNA, which essentially provides cells with protein production instructions) vaccine, a relatively novel method that hasn’t yet resulted in a vaccine approved for human use (though approved mRNA vaccines do exist for veterinary treatment). Making […]

The retirement wars are heating up. As millions of baby boomers leave their jobs in the coming years and transition into retirement, there is a huge competition for who will manage their savings. On one hand are traditional wealth managers, firms like Edward Jones, who either employ full-time human financial advisors or empower independent contractors […]

The developer of a machine learning enhanced baby monitor, Nanit, has managed to nab $21 million in financing even amid the teeth of an epidemic that has slowed venture financing across the board. The round came from existing investors including: Jerusalem Venture Partners, Upfront Ventures, RRE Ventures, and Rho Capital Partners, and brings the company’s total capital […]

Yubico, a maker of security keys, has launched a new service that lets enterprise customers ship its YubiKey security keys directly to their employees, partners and customers — even to their homes. The service, dubbed YubiEnterprise Delivery, is a cloud-based dashboard that is available from anywhere. IT staff can log in, check their inventory levels […]

The current state of our COVID-19 world has underscored more than ever the need for reliable delivery and e-commerce services: consumers sheltering in place are shopping at unprecedented levels online and getting items brought directly to their homes; and retailers urgently need web-based platforms that can help them manage, sell and bring their goods to […]

PlayPlay, the Paris-based startup behind a video creation tool that enables comms, marketing and social media teams to produce high-quality video content “in minutes”, has raised €10 million in funding. Leading the Series A round is Balderton Capital, with participation from Point Nine, and Kerala Ventures. Founded in 2017 by ex-Eurosport social media director Thibaut […]

Canadian coffee-and-doughnut chain Tim Hortons has secured a heavyweight partner to further its China expansion. The company announced on its social media account (in Chinese) on Tuesday that it has landed funding from Tencent, the Chinese social networking and gaming giant, without disclosing the size of the proceeds. Tim Hortons did not immediately respond to […]

Construyo, a Berlin-based startup that offers a “holistic” project management service that connects the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, has raised €2 million in seed funding. The round is led by Talis Capital, and follows €300,000 of previous backing from Florian Swoboda, founder of Liberty Ventures; Florian Leibert, founder of D2iQ, and Jan Kanieß, […]

Listeners of podcasts, audiobooks and other audio shows are estimated to number 542 million in China this year, according to a third-party survey by marketing firm iiMedia. It’s a healthy jump from the 489 million users recorded in 2019, and it no doubt has attracted new players to the game. That includes Tencent Music Entertainment […]

Small- to medium-sized businesses are one of the most important parts of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many have trouble securing growth capital from traditional financial institutions. Validus wants to fix the financing gap with its peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects accredited lenders with SMEs. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $20 million […]

On the same day that Elon Musk defied local regulations and reopened Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, the CEO put a new person in charge of production. Musk named Richard Miller, who was director of paint operations at Tesla, to head of production at the factory, according to an internal email sent to employees Monday […]

Soft robots have been a booming category for research and manufacturing in recent years, due to a number of beneficial characteristics. The field has become increasingly important to things like robotic graspers, which rely on their compliance to pick up fragile objects like fruit. Speed, on the other hand, doesn’t tend to be a word […]

Haje Jan Kamps is a founder, photographer and journalist who logged time as a TechCrunch writer years ago and who has since launched a platform for virtual conferences called Konf. In a recent catch-up with him about work and life during COVID-19, we wound up talking at some length about Facebook, which is seeing record […]

Enterprise search has always been a tough nut to crack. The Holy Grail has always been to operate like Google, but in-house. You enter a few keywords and you get back that nearly perfect response at the top of the list of the results. The irony of trying to do search locally has been a […]

When Zach Sims first started pitching his coding startup, Codecademy, he framed it to investors as a corporate tutoring company. That was intentional, despite the fact that edtech is a $5 trillion business. “It was much easier for investors to understand instead of an education company,” he said, noting that the industry has long been […]

Instagram Lite, the two-year-old version of the Instagram app aimed at emerging markets, has quietly disappeared. The previously highly ranked app vanished from the Google Play charts on April 13 in the countries where it was active, including Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Existing Instagram Lite users have been directed to the main Instagram […]

Self-driving vehicle startup Voyage said Monday that it has inked a deal with Fiat Chrysler to supply purpose-built vehicles, a partnership that will help accelerate its plan to launch a fully driverless ride-hailing service. Voyage, a three-year-old startup that tests and operates a self-driving vehicle service (with human safety operators) in retirement communities in California […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Monday that the company’s factory in Fremont, California is open and has restarted production despite a stay-at-home order issued by Alameda County. Musk said in tweet Monday afternoon that he will “be on the line,” a reference to the assembly line at the factory where Tesla makes the Model X, […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced a lot of otherwise traditional industries to become creative and flexible in ways that might have seemed entirely out of the realm of possibility only a few months ago. With most of the country at home, social distancing, a number of networks have turned to consumer technologies in order to […]

Slack has started to strip uploaded photos of their metadata. What may seem like an inconsequential change to how the tech giant handles storing files on its servers, it will make it far more difficult to trace photos back to their original owners. Almost every digital file — from documents on your computer to photos […]

Around 100 Uber and Lyft drivers are staging a caravan protest at Uber’s San Francisco headquarters to demand Uber comply with gig worker protections law AB 5, pay into the state’s unemployment insurance fund and drop the ballot initiative it proposed along with Lyft and DoorDash that aims to keep gig workers classified as independent […]

Heading into earnings season, you might have expected Uber and Lyft to suffer. After all, global travel slowed toward the end of Q1, so how could these companies have done well? Continuing the same line of thinking, given that they are both unprofitable and are valued more on growth than trailing earnings, with growth slowing […]

We recently interviewed Jon McNeill to learn more about his newest project, a startup studio called DeltaV Ventures. But we also wanted to hear about what it’s like to work inside of Tesla and Lyft. McNeill spent two-and-a-half years as the carmaker’s president, heading up global sales, marketing, delivery and government relations before heading to […]

After investigative reporting revealed his undisclosed involvement in shooting at a synagogue with KKK members at age 17, the CEO of Banjo will leave the company he founded. In a short blog post, the company announced a “change in leadership” and the resignation of its founder and CEO Damien Patton. The Utah-based company will transition […]

Twitter on Monday announced it will begin to add warning messages and labels to tweets spreading disputed or misleading information about COVID-19. The labels will direct users reading these tweets to a Twitter-curated page or to external resources that offer additional information and context about the claims being made in the tweet. The warnings, meanwhile, […]

Another chapter is opening up for Fair.com, the car subscription startup backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from SoftBank and others: Today the company announced that Bradley Stewart, who had been CEO of aviation startup XOJet from 2013 to 2018 (when it was acquired by Vista Global), is joining as CEO. At the same […]

Facebook today revealed its plans to celebrate the 2020 graduates this week across both Facebook and Instagram. The series of events, starting today on May 11, will include the company’s previously announced plans to air a virtual graduation ceremony on May 15, featuring celebs like Oprah Winfrey, Awkwafina, Jennifer Garner, Lil Nas X, Simone Biles […]

Tesla turns to litigation in an attempt to reopen its California factory, we review Microsoft’s Surface Go 2 and Mount Sinai hospital starts using Nest cameras to monitor patients. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 11, 2020. 1. Tesla sues Alameda County to force California factory reopening Tesla filed a lawsuit Saturday in an effort […]