Crunch Hype

Tesla is pushing back plans to produce and deliver its all-electric Class 8 truck until 2021, the company said in its quarter earnings report Wednesday. The move puts the Tesla Semi two years behind the automaker’s previous target. “We are shifting our first Tesla Semi deliveries to 2021,” the company said without providing any more […]

Researchers at NYU have identified hundreds of groups of Instagram users, some with thousands of members, that systematically exchange likes and comments in order to game the service’s algorithms and boost visibility. In the process, they also trained machine learning agents to identify whether a post has been juiced in this way. “Pods,” as they’ve […]

The global pandemic has tested the bounds of businesses across the world and transformed the way many of us live our lives. For those among us who are unable to leave our homes at all as COVID-19 virus rages, online retail and food services have been a kind of lifeline. But as contact-free delivery becomes […]

The quarantine lockdown is driving a record number of users to Facebook’s products. On a conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed a number of new metrics highlighting a significant bump in Facebook usage during the broader quarantine lockdown. In the past month, more than 3 billion internet users logged onto a Facebook service, including its […]

Tesla reported Wednesday that it earned $16 million and generated $5.985 billion in revenue in the first quarter, results buoyed by improved automotive margins and reductions in operating expenses. Tesla’s first quarter earnings were lower than the fourth period as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted operations and dampened sales. But the company still managed to squeeze […]

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads […]

If you think that action movies generally suffer from an excess of characterization, then “Extraction” is the movie for you. Almost everything about the film that’s not an action scene is dealt with in a perfunctory way, starting from the sketchy characterization of our hero Tyler Rake (played by Chris Hemsworth) — he’s muscular, good […]

The coronavirus pandemic is significantly slowing the growth of Facebook’s ads business, but investors seems pleased with the company’s performance in Q1 after Facebook released its earnings report Wednesday. The company beat Wall Street expectations on revenues, sharing that they had made $17.74 billion on while follow short on earnings per share at $1.71. The […]

Today Microsoft reported its third-quarter, fiscal 2020 quarter earnings, the period of time corresponding to Q1 2020 on the regular calendar. The technology giant generated $35 billion in revenue, up 15% from the year-ago period. That top line led to $13 billion in operating income (+25% YoY), and $10.8 billion in net income (+22% YoY). […]

Face ID was a great idea — until large swathes of the world were forced to wear face masks, rendering it largely useless. Apple has apparently heard our pain. Users are reporting a subtle new feature in the latest developer version of iOS 13.5 that will make it easier to unlock your iPhone without having […]

The COVID-19 testing picture in the U.S. is far from easy to understand, given the disparate agencies and public and private health organizations involved. Johns Hopkins, building on its excellent work developing COVID-19 case tracking and basic information resources, has developed a new hub called the COVID-19 Testing Insights Initiative that breaks down what kinds […]

The NFL’s Thursday Night Football is returning to stream on Amazon. The companies announced today they’ve renewed their agreement, which will allow Amazon Prime Video to offer a live, digital stream of Thursday Night Football to a global audience through the 2022 season. This time around, the NFL and Amazon also announced a new deal […]

Juul is set to eliminate between 800 to 950 jobs, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Those massive cuts would amount to around a third of the Bay Area vaping giant’s entire workforce. While the news comes amid a deluge of layoff reports, Juul’s troubles are said not to be a […]

Edtech was long defined by stodgy sales cycles, sluggish adoption and splashy pitches to K-12 districts with tight budgets, but the COVID-19 pandemic turned that reputation on its head in short order. Now, companies in the space are entering Q2 — traditionally a slower time reserved for product development and extra focus on existing clients […]

GM said Wednesday that it will postpone its upcoming reveal of a GMC-branded electric Hummer due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Hummer EV debut, which was scheduled to occur May 20, is the latest automotive event to be delayed in recent months due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The Geneva Motor Show […]

Apple and Google have released the very first version of their exposure notification API, which they previously called the contact tracing API . This is a developer-focused release, and is a seed of the API in development with the primary intent of collecting feedback from developers who will be using the API to create new […]

Twitter is making it possible for developers and researchers to study the public conversation around COVID-19 in real-time with an update to its API platform. The company is introducing a new COVID-19 stream endpoint to those participating in Twitter Developer Labs — a program that offers access to new API endpoints and other features ahead […]

The year’s already off to a rocky start for hardware companies, and we’re only beginning to see the true impact COVID-19 will ultimately have on the market. Arm — the U.K. company behind the designs of chips for everyone from Apple to Qualcomm to Samsung — is hoping to kickstart developing by offering up access […]

Politics is about leverage. Startups now have it. They should take advantage of it before things change again.

Less than 24 hours after it was reported that Uber was considering layoffs of 20% of staff, its big rival Lyft is announcing its own cuts. Today the company said it would be reducing employee count by 17%, working out to 982 employees, and furloughing an additional 288, due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic […]

Google is making a big push for its Zoom competitor, Samsung outlines how COVID-19 is reshaping consumer demand and Ford delays its autonomous vehicle plans. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 29, 2020. 1. Google is making Meet free for everyone Meet is Google’s video meeting tool for businesses. (Hangouts is the company’s free consumer […]

Google Cloud today announced the official opening of its Las Vegas data center region. With this, Google Cloud now operates four regions in the western U.S., with Las Vegas complementing Google Cloud’s existing data centers in Los Angeles, Calif.; The Dalles, Ore. and its recently opened Salt Lake City, Utah region. In total, Google now […]

The makers of the world’s most ethical smartphone, the Fairphone 3, have teamed up for a version of the device with even less big tech on board. The Netherlands-based device maker has partnered with France’s /e/OS to offer a “de-Googled” version of its latest handset, running an Android AOSP fork out of the box that’s […]

As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding. New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and […]

Twitter has said that tweets posted early Tuesday morning by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk that irresponsibly call for restrictions put in place to defend against the spread of COVID-19 don’t violate its guidelines around inaccurate or disputed information about the coronavirus that could cause harm. Musk tweeted a series of things on Tuesday, […]

The coronavirus pandemic, however, is having an outsized impact on Latin America’s startup activity compared to other regions, judging by Q1 2020 activity numbers.

You know that old saying, “you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone?” Sometimes that’s quite literally true. Take Shoelace, a social app introduced by Google’s Area 120 incubator last summer. There are a number of reasons you likely haven’t heard of the thing. For starters, it was considered an “early experiment” by Google. […]

COVID-19 has changed how much people move around, hampering Uber's business.

The coronavirus pandemic has sent record numbers of new users to video chat apps. Now, video messaging app Marco Polo aims to capitalize on the increases it’s also seeing to launch its new subscription business, Marco Polo Plus. The service delivers a handful of new features — including support for HD video, voice-only messaging options, […]

Zoom is an enterprise software company built to help employees meet virtually, it was never intended to be the social platform that guided a disconnected world through a lockdown. On the back of a big quarantine usage bump, Squad, a social screen-sharing mobile app popular with teen girls, is looking to eat away at Zoom’s […]

Puppet, the Portland-based infrastructure automation company, today announced that it has named former Cloud Foundry Foundation executive director Abby Kearns as its new CTO. She’s replacing Deepak Giridharagopal, who became CTO in 2016. Kearns stepped down from her role at the Cloud Foundry Foundation earlier this month after holding that position since 2016. At the […]

The coronavirus may be decimating some corners of the economy, but the impact on the digital music, as evidenced by the world’s biggest music streaming company, appears to be minimal. Today Spotify reported its earnings for Q1 with revenues of €1.848 billion ($2 billion at today’s rates) and an inching into a positive net income […]

Is it feast or famine for food delivery startups during the coronavirus pandemic? The UK’s Deliveroo has confirmed it’s axing more than 350 staff — or around 15% of its global headcount. Late yesterday the Telegraph reported that the London-based startup will be cutting 367 staff and furloughing a further 50 out of a total headcount […]

With $13.6 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a new collaboration will pull together researchers at UCSF, Stanford and CZI-adjacent medical research nonprofit the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub to study the spread of COVID-19 in the Bay Area. The research team will conduct two separate large-scale studies over the course of nine months as […]

Google today announced that it is making Meet, its video meeting tool for businesses that directly competes with the likes of Zoom, available for free to everyone. Until now, you could participate in a Meet call without being a paying user, but you needed a paid G Suite account to start calls. You won’t be […]

European VC firm Atomico announced this week that it has hired Sasha Astafyeva as a new investment partner. Astafyeva previously spent three years as a principal at Felix Capital . In her new role, she’ll lead “sourcing, due diligence, and management” of consumer tech companies, according to a company statement. Originally from Ukraine, Astafyeva was […]

In its first-quarter earnings report today, Samsung said it expects the COVID-19 pandemic to continue impacting its business for the rest of the year, cutting into sales for smartphones and TVs, but increasing demand for PCs, servers and memory chips as people continue to work or study from home. Samsung’s results for the first-quarter of […]

A functioning healthcare system depends on caregivers having the right data at the right time to make the right decision about what course of treatment a patient needs. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 epidemic and the acceleration of the consumer adoption of telemedicine, along with the fragmentation of care to a number of different […]

Thuan Pham, hired as Uber’s chief technology officer by former CEO Travis Kalanick back in 2013, is leaving the company in three weeks, the ride-share giant revealed today in an SEC filing that came out just as The Information reported that massive layoffs at Uber are being proposed to preserve some of the company’s dwindling capital […]

WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the company has listed credit as one of the areas it will pursue in the country. The Facebook -owned […]

Today after the bell, Alphabet, parent company of Google, reported its Q1 2020 performance. The company’s $41.16 billion in revenue for the three-month period came in ahead of expectations, besting analyst estimates of $40.33 billion. However, its earnings per share came in under expectations, with the street anticipating $10.38 in per-share profit, while Alphabet delivered […]

Widespread theatrical closures have forced the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to loosen the rules around which films qualify for Oscars. This might not seem like much of a breakthrough in a year when Netflix got the most Oscar nominations of any studio, and when the streamer’s original films ultimately walked away with […]

SiriusXM’s first-quarter 2020 earnings today painted a picture of what’s ahead for the music and entertainment service in light of the coronavirus outbreak. While the company surprised with both an earnings and revenue beat in the quarter ended March 2020, its satellite radio business also lost net subscribers due to declines in auto shipments, and […]

In a blog post, TripAdvisor CEO and co-founder Stephen Kaufer announced that the company would be reducing its workforce in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has wrought particular havoc on the travel industry. The layoffs will reduce the company by 900 employees — nearly a quarter of its workforce. Of the cuts, 600 are […]

Ford said Tuesday it will delay until 2022 plans to launch an autonomous vehicle service, as the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted the company to rethink its go-to-market strategy. The news was shared as part of Ford’s quarterly earnings, which was released after the market closed Tuesday. Ford reported a $2 billion loss in the first […]

Earlier this month, Zetta Venture Partners, a B2B, AI-focused venture outfit, announced a new $180 million fund. As new VC funds are anecdotally a bit thinner on the ground these days — and because we’re in the midst of economic upheaval, which is changing investing patterns and shaking up startup verticals — I got on […]

In its quarterly earnings today, iRobot announced an indefinite delay of its lawnmowing robot, Terra. The Roomba maker has abandoned plans to launch to the long-awaited home robot in 2020. No surprise, the company says fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is to blame for the uncertainty. More specifically, it blames “current market realities.” Here’s the […]

Rapid7 announced today after the closing bell that it will be acquiring DivvyCloud, a cloud security and governance startup for $145 million in cash and stock. With Divvy, the company moves more deeply into the cloud, something that Lee Weiner, chief innovation officer says the company has been working towards, even before the pandemic pushed […]

Apple has now added COVID-19 testing sites to its Apple Maps app across the U.S., covering all 50 states and Puerto Rico. The update provide testing locations including hospitals, clinics, urgent car facilities, general practitioners, pharmacies and more, as well as dedicated COVID-19 testing sites, where tests are available. In addition, COVID-19 is now a […]

The coronavirus pandemic has paralyzed the global economy, but large tech companies remain relatively well-positioned to reach into their deep pockets to make big moves. In an effort to call attention to the plight of smaller businesses — and the disproportionate power and resources of larger ones — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria […]