Crunch Hype

In an SEC filing dating back to last week, Uber disclosed plans to layoff 3,700 employees. The figure amounts to around 14% percent of the ride hailing giant’s total workforce. In the document, the company states that the job loss is part of a planned reduction in operating expenses “in response to the economic challenges […]

Today we're taking stock of what's happening to a number of unicorns, both public and private.

Even though Apple did not invent the mouse pointer, history has cemented its place in dragging it out of obscurity and into mainstream use. Its everyday utility, pioneered at Xerox Parc and later combined with a bit of iconic* work from Susan Kare at Apple, has made the pointer our avatar in digital space for […]

The days of the big product event are on hold for the foreseeable future. Until then, a big blog post will have to do. A day after announcing that Microsoft would be shifting focus away from dual-screen devices, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took to the company’s Devices blog to show off a slew of […]

Covariant this week announced that it has raised a $40 million Series B, led by Index Ventures. The funding brings the three-year-old Berkeley startup’s total funding up to $67 million. Co-founded by top UC Berkeley professor Pieter Abbeel, the company is dedicated to building autonomy for industrial robotics. It’s a category that’s growing hotter than […]

In the early 2000s, VMware introduced the world to virtual servers that allowed IT to make more efficient use of idle server capacity. Today, Run:AI is introducing that same concept to GPUs running containerized machine learning projects on Kubernetes. This should enable data science teams to have access to more resources than they would normally […]

Uber Eats is introducing a new feature that lets customers send food to friends, family or coworkers and share details to make it easier track the deliveries. Uber Eats customers have been able to order and send food to friend. But in the past, it required the sender to track the delivery and provide updates […]

Alphabet-owned Loon, the company focused on providing connectivity via high-altitude, stratosphere skimming balloons that can act as on-demand, deployable cell towers, has signed a new agreement with AT&T. This partnership will help Loon ensure it’s in a much better position to address any potential need for disaster response cellular network coverage, thanks to AT&T and […]

Gatik, the autonomous vehicle startup focused on the ‘middle mile’ of logistics, has added box trucks to its fleet as Walmart and other customers look for ways to boost efficiency and shore up the supply chain amid surging demand from consumers ordering goods online. Gatik came out of stealth nearly a year ago with a […]

SpaceX’s Starship prototype is on a streak of successes, at a key moment for the spacecraft’s development. The Starship SN4 (so-named because it’s the fourth full-size prototype) tester managed to pass a test of its Raptor engine firing while installed on the test stand. SN4 previously passed a crucial low temperature pressure test designed to […]

The Europas Awards — which have been recognising the hottest European tech startups in since 2009 — are now open for the public voting stage, prior to the formal judging process. The entries have been sorted and sifted by journalists to compile an editorially-driven ‘long list’ of some of Europe’s most exciting startups and investors. […]

Facebook has a new connectivity app called Discover to help those who can’t afford to get online access information on the web. The service, available through mobile web and Android app, allows users to visit any website in text format (no video, images, audio and other elements that eat up large amounts of data) and […]

You can’t make access to your website’s content dependant on a visitor agreeing that you can process their data — aka a ‘consent cookie wall’. Not if you need to be compliant with European data protection law. That’s the unambiguous message from the European Data Protection Board (EDPB), which has published updated guidelines on the […]

When Allison Rapaport was pregnant for the first time, in 2013, she struggled to find workout classes that didn’t completely go against the advice her OB-GYN gave her. Conflicted on whether to trust online workouts or just slow down altogether, Rapaport went to a personal trainer, Leah Keller. The result? A program that was clear, […]

A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups. The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment […]

Banked, a London-based fintech using open banking to enable account-to-account payments at checkout (and beyond), has raised £2.35 million in further seed funding. The round was led by Force Over Mass, with participation from previous investors Backed and Acrew Capital, along with a number of high-net-worth individuals, such as Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com). It […]

AskRobin, an Estonia-founded fintech that operates a financial services marketplace for “underbanked” customers in Latin America, has picked up $1.7 million in funding. The seed round is backed by VC funds Change Ventures, Vereeni Early Stage Fund, BENE Asia Capital, and Lemonade Stand. In addition, a number of tech entrepreneurs from Estonia participated, such as […]

As the country wrestles with the COVID-19 epidemic, home health testing, checkups and diagnostics have never been more important and companies like LetsGetChecked are filling a void left in a U.S. healthcare system consumed by the outbreak. The surge in demand for the company’s services has led to an equal surge in investor interest, and […]

Wunderlist is going away, but fans of the productivity app may find some consolation in founder Christian Reber’s announcement that he is launching a new startup called Superlist. “Superlist will be more than just a todo app, but never as bloated as the project management software you loathe to use,” he tweeted. “Slick, fast, and […]

Volkswagen plans to start selling the launch edition of its ID.3 vehicle next month to customers who placed pre-orders of the all-electric hatchback. Customers who made reservations for the launch edition, known as ID.3 1st, will be able to order their vehicle starting June 17, according to a tweet posted by Volkswagen board member Jürgen […]

Earlier this week, Amazon informed staff members at its Staten Island fulfillment center that a worker had died from COVID-19. The news was first noted by The Verge. The employee began to exhibit symptoms in early April, before being placed on quarantine April 11. He never returned to the site. “We are deeply saddened by […]

The peacetime CEO/wartime CEO framework is clearly valuable — it forces us to dissect the behavioral shifts necessary to survive in a crisis. That being said, it needs to evolve.

Twitter announced today it’s introducing a new layout for replies that will use lines and indentations to make it easier to understand who you’re replying to and how the conversation is flowing. The company will also test putting engagement actions — including likes, Retweet and reply icons — behind an extra tap to make replies […]

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the […]

AI algorithms for deep-reinforcement learning have demonstrated the ability to learn at very high levels in constrained domains.

Creatively was supposed to launch this summer, according to CEO Greg Gittrich. And then COVID-19 happened. “We made the decision to fast-track the launch when the pandemic hit, because we felt like launching as a beta would really help the creative community,” Gittrich told me. The startup was founded by Stacey Bendet and Joe Indriolo, […]

Graduation season is here, and to celebrate we are offering annual Extra Crunch memberships to students for half price. That’s a full year of Extra Crunch for only $50 (plus tax). To sweeten the deal, you’ll be grandfathered in at the discounted price for future years until you cancel. Take the summer to focus on […]

In the midst of the day’s news chaos both political and business-oriented, you might have missed Wayfair’s big moment: In regular trading today, shares of the online home goods retailer shot 23% higher. It was an eye-catching gain during a period when the domestic economy is troubled, unemployment is rising and consumer spending is slowing. Why […]

The Indian government has said that its contact tracing app Aarogya Setu “by design” fetches the location data of its 90 million users and allows them to view the concentration of people who have tested positive for the coronavirus in their vicinity. New Delhi issued the statement after France-based security researcher Baptiste Robert found what […]

Like other accelerators, Techstars, a network of more than 40 corporate and geographically targeted startup bootcamps, has had to bring its marquee demo day events online. Over the last two weeks of April, industry-focused accelerators working with startups building businesses around mobility technologies (broadly) and the future of the home joined programs in Abu Dhabi, […]

Ensuring that a company’s information assets and technologies are protected remains a tall order for many a chief information security officer (or CISO). Cybercriminals can be both persistent and creative. Now, a group of 46 of these professionals is taking the wraps off a syndicate that allows them to compare notes and war stories and […]

Virgin Galactic today revealed a new partnership with NASA, in pursuit of the goal of developing a high-speed vehicle for point-to-point travel across Earth. NASA has been pursuing development of high-mach air travel itself, with the development of its Supersonic X-59 low-boon supersonic test plane built by Lockheed Martin, but this new partnership agreement with […]

NASA is indeed working with actor Tom Cruise on a film to be shot in space — aboard the International Space Station (ISS), it turns out. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine confirmed the news, which was detailed in an earlier report, via a tweet today. The ISS setting is a new detail to the plan, which […]

A month ago, we asked several venture capitalists if they planned to change the way they invest or lead rounds during COVID-19 — most said no, but they noted that valuations were coming down and founders in their portfolio companies were responding to the crisis. Northzone’s Paul Murphy predicted fewer FOMO rounds because investors will […]

This afternoon Airbnb, a well-known private company that connects travelers with places to stay, announced that it was laying off around a quarter of its workforce. The company cited revenue declines and a need to curtail costs in a memo that TechCrunch viewed. In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the […]

In its latest effort to deal with rampant harassment on its platform, Twitter will look into giving users a second chance before they tweet. In a new feature the company is testing, users who use “harmful” language will see a prompt suggesting that they self-edit before posting a reply. When things get heated, you may […]

Facebook has been struggling to keep its VR hardware supply chains open for months, but at the same time they’ve reportedly been hard at work on the next generation of their popular Quest headset. According to a report in Bloomberg, Facebook had been planning to release a new version of the Oculus Quest later this […]

Daniel Carraway spent his entire career working in paper and bioplastics. The serial entrepreneur began his career at International Paper working in their research division before founding two previous companies that became cornerstones of the bioplastics industry. His latest venture, RWDC Industries, has raised $133 million in recent financing to build a new sustainable manufacturing […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

Cutting the cord with cable or satellite TV used to mean a cost savings. But with the growing number of streaming services on the market, many consumers are finding that becoming a cord cutter is just as expensive, if not more so, as being a pay TV customer. As a result, many consumers continue to […]

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with city attorneys from Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco, filed a lawsuit asserting Uber and Lyft gain an unfair and unlawful competitive advantage by misclassifying workers as independent contractors. The suit argues Uber and Lyft are depriving workers of the right to minimum wage, overtime, access to […]

In the startup world, the more confusing the sector is, the riper the opportunity to make a friendly user interface and rack in millions of dollars of venture capital. There’s Robinhood to make investing more transparent, Vested and Carta to make equity more transparent, and the list goes on. But when it comes to healthcare, […]

Last month, the Extra Crunch Live team hosted conversations with folks from all over the venture community that ranged from the pre-seed world with Charles Hudson to shark territory with Mark Cuban. We’re starting off May with a packed agenda, including talks with Hunter Walk of Homebrew and Kirsten Green of Forerunner Ventures. Kirsten Green […]

We’ve always wanted to make the Disrupt SF (September 14-16) experience available to people who can’t travel to San Francisco. Nothing like a global pandemic to shift priorities and spur innovation. We’ve reserved the Moscone Center for September 14-16, but if you can’t attend in person — for any reason — why not join us […]

YouTube is joining the ranks of online platforms offering the graduating class of 2020 some consolation as ceremonies all over the world have been canceled or put on hold during the COVID-19 pandemic. The streaming platform revealed its list of guest speakers today, and it’s certainly giving other sites a run for their money, in […]

Gig workers have become an essential part of our society during the COVID-19 global health crisis. But even before the pandemic, gig workers had become a staple in the lives of many people who use services like Uber, Lyft, Instacart, DoorDash and Postmates. Despite the growing presence of gig workers, little has been known about […]

Mozilla today launched version 76 of its Firefox browser, and with that, it’s launching a couple of new features that you’ll likely notice if you’re already using the open-source browser. The highlight of today’s release is the enhanced password manager. Firefox Lockwise, as it is called these days, will now ask you for your device […]

Tom Cruise is talking to SpaceX about taking the ultimate step to top his crazy movie stunts, Apple and Google’s exposure notification API will not provide access to detailed location data and we survey seven VCs about the new media landscape. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 5, 2020. 1. Tom Cruise reportedly talking to […]

Back in March, Apple joined a rapidly growing number of companies announcing an online-only model for their annual tech events. At the time, SVP Phil Schiller promised the event would be “an innovative way to reach millions of developers around the world, bringing the entire developer community together with a new experience,” as planners across […]

Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round. ​CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. “Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to […]