Crunch Hype

As the world continues to lean more heavily on remote collaboration technologies, investors and entrepreneurs are growing more curious about how behavioral shifts will impact the future of work and education. Bonsai, a new online platform virtually pairing students and young professionals with mentors in professional fields, is launching today with fresh funding. The startup’s […]

Will‌ ‌receiving‌ ‌PPP‌ ‌funding‌ ‌count‌ ‌against‌ ‌me‌ when I renew my E-2 or file my I-485 for my green card given‌ ‌the‌ ‌“Public‌ ‌Charge”‌ restrictions?

Some Hulu customers found that the video streaming service was no longer working on their Apple devices, beginning in the early morning hours on Tuesday. According to tweets and other social media posts from customers, as well as from websites like DownDetector, Hulu began experiencing issues in the early AM Pacific Time in the U.S., […]

During a virtual conference briefing this week, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk provided more details about a new plan that his company has to mitigate the impact of their Starlink satellite constellation on night sky observation. Musk first revealed on Twitter the intent to build a “sun visor” to lower their visibility, but we […]

In a blog post today, YouTube announced that it’s finally bringing its fact-checking information panels to the U.S. First introduced in Brazil and India, the expansion comes as COVID-19-related misinformation and conspiracy has proliferated online and through certain media. Fact-check articles will begin appearing in relevant search results, using information pulled from a dozen or […]

Spotify is tapping into the increased usage of video conferencing during the coronavirus quarantine to grow its own podcast business. The company’s podcast creation platform Anchor, acquired for an estimated $140 million in 2019, is today introducing a new feature that will allow podcasters to turn their video chats and virtual hangouts into podcast-ready audio. […]

Earlier today at the National Assembly, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe gave a lengthy speech about post-lockdown measures in France ahead of a debate with deputies. The government originally planned to discuss France’s contact-tracing app StopCovid. It broadened the subject of the debate to post-lockdown policies a couple of days ago. But Philippe said that […]

Graduation goes virtual, more details emerge about the U.K.’s contact tracing app and Shopify launches a mobile commerce app. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 28, 2020. 1. Facebook will stream a virtual graduation ceremony featuring Oprah and Miley Cyrus Here’s some consolation for the Class of 2020: a virtual graduation ceremony, which kicks off […]

I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: one step closer to self-powered on-skin electronics; people dressed as car seats; how to […]

Sarah Kunst graduated from college in 2008 and went straight into the luxury marketing world with a job at Chanel. Then, the stock market collapsed and Kunst was laid off. It was that layoff, Kunst says, that brought her to the world of startups and eventually to founding her own firm, Cleo Capital, to invest […]

Celonis has made its name as a process discovery company, helping companies understand the way work flows through its systems to expose inefficiencies, but up until now the company has left it to others to solve those problems. Today it announced the first products that help companies improve those workflows automatically. Alexander Rinke, founder and […]

Three former Uber engineers, who helped build the company’s Michelangelo machine learning platform, left the company last year to form Tecton.ai and build an operational machine learning platform for everyone else. Today the company announced a $20 million Series A from a couple of high-profile investors. Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital co-led the round with […]

More details have emerged about a coronavirus contacts tracing app being developed by UK authorities. NHSX CEO, Matthew Gould, said today that future versions of the app could ask users to share location data to help authorities learn more about how the virus propagates. Gould, who heads up the digital transformation unit of the UK’s […]

New startup Tomorrow Health emerged from stealth today, led by former Oscar Health executive Vijay Kedar and Casper co-founder Gabriel Flateman, with a $7.5 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The goal of the new company is to address a particular aspect of home healthcare – access to the often confusing and frequently difficult […]

As dates for reopening the country are continually pushed back, virtually every aspect of life has been disrupted. Holidays, birthdays, weddings and funerals have begun to be virtualized in order for attendees to maintain social distances. It’s an inevitability the class of 2020 has no doubt been dreading for months. Here’s some consolation from Facebook: […]

Despite fundraising in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that has managed to shut down a significant chunk of global manufacturing, the developer of a metal composite 3D printing technology, Velo3D, has managed to raise $28 million in funding. Over the past fifteen months, the company had bookings of $29 million and revenue of $50 […]

Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has forced millions into isolation, video games are seeing a surge in usage as people seek entertainment and social interaction. When we surveyed gaming-focused VCs in October, Andreessen Horowitz partner Jonathan Lai predicted that “next-generation games will be bigger than anything we’ve seen yet,” eventually reaching “Facebook scale.” This month, […]

This morning, let's talk about SaaS growth, retention, and burn metrics in the new era.

While human travel has become severely restricted in recent months, the movement of goods has remained a constant priority — and in some cases, has become even more urgent. Today, a startup out of Switzerland that builds hardware and operates a logistics network designed to transport one item in particular — pharmaceuticals — is announcing […]

While Shopify is best-known for powering the online stores of more than 1 million businesses, the company is launching a consumer shopping app of its own today, simply called Shop. The app is actually an update and rebrand of Arrive, an app for tracking packages for Shopify merchants and other retailers, which the company says […]

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia and B2B agtech startup Twiga Foods are partnering to deliver produce in Kenya using adaptive measures during COVID-19. In 2019, Jumia became the first VC funded tech company in Africa to list on a major exchange, the NYSE. Based in Nairobi, Twiga raised a $30 million Series B round in October […]

VC firm Partech has raised a new fund focused on seed investments. Named Partech Entrepreneur III, it is the third seed fund from the VC firm. Partech announced the final closing of its previous seed fund in December 2016. The firm is looking for companies at the very early stage, from pre-seed to pre-Series A. […]

Personal Genome Diagnostics, the venture-backed developer of a novel diagnostic kit for genomic profiling of different cancers in lab settings, has received clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its PGDx elio tissue complete test. The test’s approval is another step forward for precision therapies that rely on an understanding of the unique […]

DJI had to kibosh its usual big unveil this time out, for obvious reasons, but the company won’t let a little thing like a global pandemic get in the way of an announcement. A little over two years after unveiling its lightweight Mavic Air, the drone giant is announcing the sequel. When I reviewed the […]

Online lending firms might be beginning to feel the heat of the coronavirus pandemic in Southeast Asia, but investors’ faith in digital insurance startups remains unflinching in the region. Jakarta-based Qoala has raised $13.5 million in its Series A financing round, the one-year-old startup said Tuesday. Centauri Fund, a joint venture between funds from South […]

The New York attorney general’s office reportedly sent a sternly-worded letter to Amazon telling the company that the measures it has taken regarding the COVID-19 pandemic “are so inadequate that they may violate several provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act,” and firing outspoken workers sends “a threatening message to other employees.” The letter, […]

Lyft’s former COO Jon McNeill has had a fairly storied career as an operator. A Northwestern University economics major who worked at Bain & Co. out of college, he went on to start and sell five companies before being introduced in 2015 to Elon Musk by Sheryl Sandberg and spending 2.5 years as Tesla’s president […]

An emergency room physician for the past 12 years, Dr. Robert Mittendorff joined Norwest Venture Partners eight years ago as a healthcare investor; the firm invests in a number of healthcare startups, including Talkspace, which raised a $50 million Series D last year, and TigerConnect. As the COVID-19 pandemic spreads, Mittendorff is spending his weekdays […]

Netflix and Barack and Michelle Obama’s production company have announced their latest film: “Becoming,” a documentary that follows Michelle as she goes on tour to promote her bestselling memoir of the same name. Although the documentary was directed by Nadia Hallgren, it sounds like the film had extensive access to and input from Michelle Obama […]

Ben Horowitz, the co-founder and general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, won’t seek re-election to Lyft’s board, according to a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. Horowitz has served as a board director at the ride-hailing company since June 2016. His venture firm, which he co-founded with Marc […]

Oriente, a Hong Kong-based startup that develops tech infrastructure for digital credit and other online financial services, has raised $50 million for its ongoing Series B round. The funding was led by Peter Lee, co-chairman of Henderson Land, one of Hong Kong’s largest property developers, with participation from investors including website development platform Wix.com. Launched […]

OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (OMERS), has put together a new, $750 million fund to invest in both Europe and North America. The capital vehicle is larger than the group’s preceding European and North American funds combined. In 2019 OMERS Ventures announced a €300 million fund Europe-focused […]

AI is frequently cited as a miracle worker in medicine, especially in screening processes, where machine learning models boast expert-level skills in detecting problems. But like so many technologies, it’s one thing to succeed in the lab, quite another to do so in real life — as Google researchers learned in a humbling test at […]

U.S. pharmaceutical giant ExecuPharm has become the latest victim of data-stealing ransomware. ExecuPharm said in a letter to the Vermont attorney general’s office that it was hit by a ransomware attack on March 13, and warned that Social Security numbers, financial information, driver licenses, passport numbers and other sensitive data may have been accessed. But […]

Bluetooth-powered lost item finder Tile is expanding on its two-year-old partnership with strategic investor Comcast to help customers find misplaced items around their homes. The two companies first announced their intention to partner in early 2018, and later that year introduced a way for Comcast users to locate lost items using their Xfinity X1 Voice […]

A stay-at-home order for seven San Francisco Bay Area counties will be extended through the end of May due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a decision that affects 7 million residents and thousands of businesses. The Public Health Officers of the Counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara as well […]

"If you have to ask people for permission to exist, and the more you rely on those people for yourself to exist, the more risk and exposure you have.”

Earlier this month, edtech unicorn Duolingo raised $10 million in new venture capital from General Atlantic, per an SEC filing. With the raise, the online language learning platform accepted its first outside investor in almost three years. General Atlantic will take a board observer seat at the company, per Duolingo. The company, which was last […]

How do you leave the place that made you? You figure out what it made you for. TechCrunch made me a part of the startup ecosystem I love. Now it’s time to put that love into action to help a new generation of entrepreneurs build their dreams and tell their stories. So it’s “TC to […]

Properly equipped Tesla vehicles can now recognize and respond to traffic lights and stop signs thanks to a software update the company started pushing out to owners over the weekend. The software update had been available to a sliver of Tesla owners, some of whom had posted videos of the new capability. Now, the automaker […]

We weren’t alone in being impressed by Motiv. The startup helped flip the script on wearables by essentially cramming a fitness tracker’s worth of technology into a ring. This week, San Francisco “digital identity” startup Proxy announced that it’s acquiring the company. The company’s site is littered in buzzwords, but Proxy specializes in digital key […]

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has released a video of their ongoing work using input from muscle signals to control devices. Their latest involves full and fine control of drones, using just hand and arm gestures to navigate through a series of rings. This work is impressive not just because they’re using […]

Amazon is piloting a new system aimed at validating the identify of third-party sellers over video conferencing, the company announced on Sunday. The technology is a part of a series of seller-verification processes that Amazon uses to combat fraud on its platform, which the company claims stopped 2.5 million suspected bad actors from publishing their […]

Magic Leap may be on its last legs, the next iPhone could be delayed by a month and WhatsApp says its efforts to slow the spread of misinformation are working. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 27, 2020. 1. Magic Leap’s $2.6 billion bait and switch “Why are people still giving Magic Leap money?” our […]

The original Pixel Buds weren’t very good. No way around it. Here’s a thing I wrote about them in a review titled “A disappointing debut for Google’s Pixel Buds“: As recently as a couple of years ago, they would have been a contender for the most compelling Bluetooth headphones on the market. But given the […]

The co-founders of Walrus.ai, a new software company which raised $4 million in a new round of financing fro Homebrew, Felicis Ventures and Leadout Capital, started their business with one problem. Jake Marsh, Ogden Nathan, and Scott White had a problem had left Wealthfront to launch a new service that would solve what they saw as […]

A group of 471 French cryptography and security researchers has signed a letter to raise awareness about the potential risks of a contact-tracing app. A debate in the French parliament will take place tomorrow to talk about all things related to post-lockdown — including contact-tracing app StopCovid. Among the group of researchers, 77 of them are […]

On May 4, CVS and UPS will begin offering drone-based prescription drug delivery to Florida’s massive retirement community, The Villages. The news is part of a partnership with Matternet that began last year, utilizing the company’s M2 drone system to make similar delivers to customers in North Carolina. Last March, the company announced an initial deal, […]

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding to the mix. You can catch last week’s show with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas right here if […]

SpaceX has been developing its next-generation Starship rocket for some time now, but the large-scale prototypes it’s building in Boca Chica, Texas, have thus far always encountered a fatal error during an important part of testing called “cryo” – or filling the fuel tank to full pressure in conditions that simulate the vacuum of space. […]