Crunch Hype

Facebook is expanding its Community Help hub to better serve local communities amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The hub has already seen significant usage by those requesting food, supplies and information about local resources, as well as use by volunteers and groups willing to lend a hand. Now, Facebook is adding more features to the hub […]

Apple and Google are providing additional resources for developers working with the first version of their Exposure Notification API, the development tools the companies have created and are working on in order to provide a cross-platform way for public health agencies to notify individuals of a potential exposure to a person with a confirmed case […]

Apple announces a new MacBook Pro, tech stocks take a dip and Uber Eats shuts down in seven markets. Here’s your Daily Crunch for May 4, 2020. 1. The 13-inch MacBook Pro gets Apple’s much-improved keyboard Following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and 16-inch Pro, Apple’s 13-inch Pro model is finally getting the […]

On the heels of a spate of reports over the weekend, today Intel confirmed its latest move to grow its automotive division. The chip giant is acquiring Moovit, an Israeli startup previously backed by Intel that analyses urban traffic patterns and provides transportation recommendations with a specific focus on public transit. The deal values Moovit at […]

Backblaze today announced that its B2 Cloud Storage service is now API-compatible with Amazon’s S3 storage service. Backblaze started out as an affordable cloud backup service but over the last few years, the company has also taken its storage expertise and launched the developer-centric B2 Cloud Storage service, which promises to be significantly cheaper than […]

Have you paid more or less attention to your banking and investing-related apps and, more broadly, your financial life?

Icebreaker claims to be Finland’s most active pre-seed VC. The firm, which also invests in Estonia and Sweden, has backed 38 companies in the last three years out of its first fund, with a 65% success rate so far for companies that have been able to raise follow-on funding. Two weeks ago, Icebreaker announced the […]

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which provides data-driven insights about the app economy, has raised $45 million in new funding from Riverwood Capital. This is the first significant investment the now-profitable company has seen since its $1 million seed round in 2013. The investment speaks to the growing demand for data on the […]

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515m. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable blockchains […]

Ransomware is getting sneakier and smarter. The latest example comes from ExecuPharm, a little-known but major outsourced pharmaceutical company that confirmed it was hit by a new type of ransomware last month. The incursion not only encrypted the company’s network and files, hackers also exfiltrated vast amounts of data from the network. The company was […]

It’s a tough media world out there, and few institutions have been spared the transformations underway thanks to the internet. With Disney+ and Netflix posting records streaming numbers, and Quibi posting numbers that are perhaps a wee bit more bite-sized than some execs might have hoped, the competition has become fierce for audiences in our […]

As many Amazon workers called out sick for a May Day Strike, Tim Bray was spending his final day at the company. The VP and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services announced today that May 1 was his final day with the retail giant, citing Amazon’s firings of vocally critical employees. Likely most notable for […]

Layoffs are having a big impact on industries across the board due to COVID-19. This week alone news came out of massive cuts for TripAdvisor, Lyft, and reportedly Juul and Uber. But according to data tracker Layoffs.fyi, the cuts have affected certain job roles more than others. Sales and customer success roles are the most […]

The optimism that confounded many in April may be slipping in May, as stocks fell during Friday’s trading session and are down again this morning. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite is off 0.55% this morning, putting it 13% off its record highs set this year, but also up 29% from its 52-week lows it set directly […]

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday’s episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week. […]

You can now debunk thousands of coronavirus-related hoaxes with a few texts on WhatsApp . Poynter Institute, a non-profit organization that supports journalism, today launched a bot on the Facebook -owned service that will allow people across the globe to debunk over 4,000 hoaxes surrounding the pandemic such as whether the infectious disease originated in […]

As businesses struggle to reinvent themselves in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yelp is launching new features to help highlight these changes. For one thing, it’s adding a new information category called virtual service offerings, which will allow businesses to showcase the fact that they’re providing things like virtual consultations, classes, tours and performances. […]

Namogoo, the Israel-based company that has developed a solution for e-commerce and other online enterprises to prevent “customer journey hijacking,” has acquired behavioural analytics company Personali. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although we understand the Personali is joining Namogoo . Described as a “strategic acquisition,” Personali — which was founded in 2011 and had […]

Following in the footsteps of the MacBook Air and 16-inch Pro, Apple’s 13-inch Pro model is finally getting the company’s much improved keyboard. It’s probably not enough reason for recent MacBook buyers to upgrade, but could well be the thing that pushes the indecisive over the edge. To sweeten the pot, the new laptop gets […]

Uber Eats is pulling out of a clutch of markets — shuttering its on-demand food offering in the Czech Republic, Egypt, Honduras, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay and Ukraine. It’s also transferring its Uber Eats business operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Careem, its wholly owned ride-hailing subsidiary that’s mostly focused on the Middle […]

E-commerce firms Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart, and ride-hailing giants Ola and Uber are partially resuming their services in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government eased some restrictions late last week to revive economic activity that’s been stalled since the stringent stay-at-home orders were imposed across the nation in late March. The companies said in […]

Oxwash, a UK-based laundry startup that’s aiming to disrupt traditional but environmentally costly washing and dry-cleaning processes by using ozone to sterilize fabrics at lower temperatures, along with electric cargo bikes for hyper local pick ups and deliveries, has bagged a £1.4 million (~$1.7M) seed. Backers in the funding round include TrueSight Ventures, Biz Stone […]

It seems the demand for Safaricom’s M-Pesa payment product never eases. Since its 2007 launch in Kenya, the fintech app has commanded over 70% of the mobile money market in that country. When COVID-19 hit the East African nation of 53 million in March, the Kenyan Central Bank turned to M-Pesa as a public health […]

Weeks after Facebook invested $5.7 billion in Jio Platforms, India’s top telecom operator, private equity firm Silver Lake is following suit — and is willing to pay a premium for it. Silver Lake announced on Monday it will be investing 56.56 billion Indian rupees (about $746.8 million) in Jio Platforms for about 1.15% stake in the Indian […]

An India-based startup that has built a Shopify -like platform for coaching centers to accept fees digitally from students, and deliver classes and study material online has received the nod — and capital — from a number of high-profile investors. The business-to-business startup, called Classplus, said on Monday that it has raised $9 million in […]

When Roger Lee, the co-founder of Human Interest, heard that San Francisco imposed shelter-in-place orders, he started blogging about layoff news and posting crowdsourced lists of employees who were laid off. His goal was to increase awareness about layoffs and give recruiters a place to search for candidates. However, one week and 40 startup layoffs […]

Jon Evans Contributor Jon Evans is the CTO of the engineering consultancy HappyFunCorp; the award-winning author of six novels, one graphic novel, and a book of travel writing; and TechCrunch's weekend columnist since 2010. More posts by this contributor Magic Leap’s $2.6 billion bait and switch How to make sense of the coronavirus chaos It’s […]

Some big M&A is afoot in Israel in the world of smart transportation. According to multiple reports and sources that have contacted TechCrunch, chip giant Intel is in the final stages of a deal to acquire Moovit, a startup that applies AI and big data analytics to track traffic and provide transit recommendations to some […]

Since the start of the outbreak, governments and companies have scrambled to develop apps and websites that can help users identify COVID-19 symptoms. India’s largest cell network Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance, launched its coronavirus self-test symptom checker in late March, just before the Indian government imposed a strict nationwide lockdown to prevent the further […]

During these long, mundane physically-distant days, stretching on into an uncertain future like an ever-lengthening beigeish corridor, it’s impossible not to miss hanging out with friends. Especially the kind of hanging out where you’re not really doing anything in particular, not talking about any one thing—just kind of being. As we continue to stay physically […]

We’ll admit it: Some of your Original Content podcast hosts are a little skeptical about improvised comedy. Of course, we can enjoy improv when it’s done well. It’s just that we’ve seen it done less well, often by friends who are so enthusiastic without being particularly funny. And our friends aside, live improv has rarely […]

[Editor’s note: Get this weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use every Saturday morning by email (7am PT). Just subscribe here.] How well is SaaS overcoming business impacts of the pandemic? First, there’s no negative impact on the revenues of big cloud infrastructure providers visible so far, according to a new research […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

Happy Saturday and welcome back to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of Equity where we drill into one particular topic. There was so much news this week in our main areas of focus — startup funding rounds, new venture funds, that sort of thing — that we had to exclude earnings from the main […]

Namely, an eight-and-a-half-year-old, New York-based company that sells payroll, talent management and other HR services to mid-size businesses across the U.S. via subscription software, has let go of upwards of 40% of its roughly 400 employees. The cuts are across the board, from high-ranking staffers, including a CFO who was brought on almost exactly two […]

New vehicles today can produce a treasure trove of data. Without the proper tools, that data will sit undisturbed, rendering it worthless. A number of companies have sprung up to help automakers manage and use data generated from connected cars. Israeli startup Otonomo is one such player that jumped on the scene in 2015 with […]

What to do if your term sheet has too many tough terms, and which are the ones to focus on?

Valve is calling it quits on macOS support for its virtual reality platform. A Valve employee posted an update to the company’s SteamVR forums, noting that “SteamVR has ended macOS support so our team can focus on Windows and Linux.” Apple introduced “Metal for VR” back in June 2017 and highlighted a partnership with Valve. […]

Byju’s, an education learning startup in India that has seen a surge in its popularity in recent weeks amid the coronavirus outbreak, is in talks to raise as much as $400 million in fresh capital at a $10 billion valuation, said three people familiar with the matter. The additional capital would be part of the […]

The COVID-19 crisis is creating an untold amount of uncertainty through every business sector, but for cannabis startups, it’s exacerbating a critical market that was already in decline. TechCrunch spoke to Schwazze CEO Justin Dye following his company’s recent rebrand. He joined the company when it was Colorado’s Medicine Man Technologies (MMT) in late 2019 […]

Amazon is in hot water with a powerful congressional committee interested in the company’s potentially anticompetitive business practices. In a bipartisan letter sent Friday to Jeff Bezos, the House Judiciary committee demanded that the Amazon CEO explain discrepancies between his own prior statements and recent reporting from The Wall Street Journal. Specifically, the letter addressed […]

Quarter after quarter, familiar stories have appeared. The smartphone market, once seemingly bulletproof, has suffered. The list of factors is long, and I’ve written about them ad nauseam here, but the CliffsNotes version is: costs are too high, innovation is too incremental and most people already own a device that will be plenty good for […]

Customs is the sieve of international supply chains. And yet despite its critical role, clearing customs for freight brokers can be a slow and opaque process reliant on manual data entry and prone to errors. Silicon Valley-based KlearNow has developed a platform that aims to bring customs clearance into the digital age. Now, with $16 […]

Automatic, makers of a connected car dongle, emailed customers today to announce that the company will shut down all operations May 28. The company says it’s the casualty of the COVID-19 shutdown. “Like many other companies in the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted our business,” it writes, “and we have made the […]

NASA and SpaceX’s most defining moment of our current space era is coming up at the end of this month, with its Demo-2 mission on May 27. The mission will be the first-ever launch for SpaceX with humans on board, and for NASA, it’ll mark the first return to U.S.-based astronaut launches since the Shuttle […]

Gaming platforms have earned serious clout with investors in recent years. Add in the VC excitement surrounding collaboration tools and it’s no surprised there’s interest in backing another gaming chat app. Guilded is creating a chat platform designed for competitive gaming and esports that focuses heavily on keeping gamers organized and connected with their teams. […]

Back in January, Georgia Tech professor David Joyner got a cryptic email from a student based in Wuhan, China. “I’m under quarantine, but my internet access is okay so I have more time to spend on classwork, I wanted to let you know,” the message read. Unsure why Wuhan would be under quarantine, Joyner did […]

Back in March, Bandcamp announced that it was waiving its share of the revenue for a day, in order to support artists whose livelihood have ground to a screeching halt amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The March 20 event pulled in an impressive $4.3 million for artists, amounting to the biggest sales day in the platform’s […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Friday that the company’s stock price was “too high” in his opinion, immediately sending shares into a free fall and in possible violation of an agreement reached with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last year. Tesla shares fell nearly 12% in the half hour following his stock price tweets […]

While global stay-at-home orders have been a blow to most companies, they’ve also created opportunities for businesses helping to keep people entertained. So if you’re a YouTube creator hoping to capture some additional eyeballs while everyone’s stuck at home, online video agency Butter Works has released an interactive report outlining the most promising topics for […]