Crunch Hype

We're talking about three trends this morning: The sharp decline in Q1 U.S. seed rounds, how mega-rounds ($100 million and larger funding events) are holding up the sky for domestic venture totals, and what March might tell us about what's going on with COVID-19 and VC activity today.

The story behind Frame, the startup aiming to be the nation’s gateway into the world of therapy and mental wellness, seems like a tailor-made story of American entrepreneurial success. Its co-founders, Kendall Bird and Sage Grazer, ran their first business in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles years ago, selling out their entire inventory […]

There’s no doubt that the coronavirus has had a monumental impact on the way we view technology’s relationship with education. For now, students are learning from home. But what happens when they return to school? Picking up where we left off in last week’s survey, we asked top investors in the space for their predictions […]

A startup that created a dedicated gadget to help ensure the safety of electrical industry workers has turned their talents to addressing the need for similar workplace protections in the face of another threat: COVID-19. Vancouver-based Proxxi is launching Halo, a wrist-worn wearable device that can provide a vibration notification to alert someone of the […]

Stackery, a 4-year old Portland startup, wants to help development teams deliver serverless resources on AWS more easily, and today it announced several enhancements to the platform. With serverless applications, the development team outlines a set of trigger events and the cloud infrastructure vendor — in this case AWS — provides the exact amount of […]

Kumu Holdings, a live streaming startup based in the Philippines, announced today it has raised about $5 million in Series A funding, earmarked for new features and growing its operations. The round was led by Openspace Ventures, an early investor in Go-Jek, with participation from Kickstart Ventures, media conglomerate ABS-CBN, Gobi-Core Philippine Fund, and returning […]

More than half a dozen volunteers have banded together in India to launch a crowdsourced tool to help people in the nation identify and locate nearby grocery stores, pharmacies, and cash machines as New Delhi extends the nationwide lockdown to May 3. The service, called Covidmaps, allows people to locate operational grocery stores, pharmacies, cash […]

As the coronavirus crisis continues, hiring data is emerging that paints a mixed picture for U.K. tech, which, in the preceding months and years has been stuck on a growth trajectory of up and to the right. That appears to have changed almost over night. According to numbers shared exclusively with TechCrunch from job sites […]

Greater availability of African genomic data could lead to medical breakthroughs for the continent’s 1.2 billion people. That’s the driving proposition of 54gene — a U.S. and Nigeria based startup — that collects African genetic code for use in health research and drug development. The company has closed a $15 million Series A round, in […]

Reddit announced an update to its policy for political advertising that will require campaigns to leave comments open on ads for the first 24 hours. The platform also launched a new subreddit, r/RedditPoliticalAds, that will include information about advertisers, targeting, impressions and spending by each campaign. In a post, Reddit said “we will strongly encourage […]

Mighty Jaxx, which makes licensed collectibles, has raised 4.5 million Singapore dollars (about $3.2 million) in funding for MightyVerse, its platform for tech-enabled figures. Led by the investment arm of KB Financial Group, one of South Korea’s largest banks, the round also included participation from Greycroft Partners’ gaming fund GC VR Gaming Tracker Fund and […]

The coronavirus pandemic, which has forced billions of people to stay home, has led to a surge in new downloads of several consumer and enterprise focused apps in the west. But in India, the biggest open market globally, things have taken a slightly different turn. Daily downloads for several popular apps including TikTok, WhatsApp, Truecaller, […]

One month after President Trump declared a national emergency and announced commitments from some of the nation’s largest companies to help expand testing capabilities in the U.S., most regions still lack access to the necessary tests and equipment they require. When the president stepped to the podium in the Rose Garden in March surrounded by […]

Layoffs have struck the startup world swiftly, hurting hospitality and travel startups, as well as recruitment and scooter companies. New data shows that some of those layoffs, brought on by COVID-19, might be disproportionately impacting satellite campuses. By nature, satellite offices are secondary to a startup’s headquarters. Opening smaller offices is a strategic move when […]

Marty Pichinson gets called a lot of things: Silicon Valley’s undertaker, its terminator, a grave digger. These aren’t meant as slights; Pichinson is the founder of Sherwood Partners, a restructuring firm that Bay Area venture firms frequently turn to when they need someone to help sell off the assets of startups they have funded. The […]

Emerging from the smoldering wreckage of Echo Fox and Vision Venture Partners, the investor Stratton Sclavos is rising again to launch a new esports-related venture — a gaming-focused digital network also backed by the WME talent agency and Daylight Holdings. Tapping Daylight and WME’s roster of talent, Sclavos has created Players Ntwrk, a new gaming-focused production […]

Hi and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to the future (and present) of transportation. I’m your host, Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. What you’re reading now is a shorter version of the newsletter, which is emailed every weekend. If you want to subscribe, go here and click The Station. […]

The fact that so many people are stuck at home makes for strange opportunities. Italy’s confined populace has taken to singing from the balconies — and now researchers are asking them to use those same balconies to help accomplish a bit of citizen science. The project, created by the Italian National Research Council, aims to […]

It’s a mark of 2020 that the image of throngs of Americans flocking to polling places to exercise their right to vote, once a heartening symbol of democracy in action, is now a nightmare scenario that could visit widespread death on unsuspecting communities nationwide. In the midst of a viral outbreak that’s infected more than […]

Adobe was scheduled to hold its annual conference in Las Vegas two weeks ago, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the company to make alternate plans. In less than a month, its events team shifted venues for the massive conference, not once, but twice as the severity of the situation became clear. This year didn’t just […]

Last week, Apple and Google announced a partnership that will soon let users opt-in to a decentralized tracing tool, designed to help determine if a person has come into contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. The opt-in system uses Bluetooth to transmit a randomized and anonymous identifier to nearby devices. A user can […]

Price Technologies, the operator of the comparison shopping website Price.com and its related browser extension, is adding a feature to show product availability for a few essential items that have had supply issues caused by the COVID-19 outbreak in the U.S. Products like aspirin, acetaminophen, facial tissues, hand sanitizer, ibuprofen, rice, soap, soup, toilet paper […]

Frank, a New York-based student-facing startup, has raised $5 million in what the company described as an “interim strategic round” that Chegg, a public edtech company, took part in. According to Frank founder and CEO Charlie Javice, previous investors Aleph and Marc Rowan took part in the round alongside new investor GingerBread Capital. The education […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to different outcomes for different businesses. While some have stood to benefit (think Zoom, Facebook and bidet startup Tushy), others have been hit hard and laid off employees in order to survive. But there are some that fall somewhere in the middle. Autonomous driving startup Voyage believes it is not […]

Ford has expanded its plan to produce critical medical equipment and supplies, including a new effort to make reusable gowns from airbag materials as well as a partnership with scientific instrument provider Thermo Fisher Scientific to ramp up production of COVID-19 collection kits to test for the virus. This broader plan highlights the latest effort […]

The coronavirus outbreak has forced millions of U.S. employees to work from home — many for the first time. But remote work can be lonely and isolating, as people feel disconnected from their team and co-workers due to the lack of face-to-face conversations. That’s where the new startup, Hallway, aims to help. The service re-creates […]

Clearbanc, a Toronto-based company that funds startups through equity-free investments, has laid off 17 employees to help it navigate the long-term economic impact of COVID-19, TechCrunch has learned. The cuts impact about 8% of the staff, affecting roles ranging from office managers to recruiters and sales. Co-founder Michele Romanow says the company will use its […]

There are early signs that media will be one of many industries to take a huge blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, with sharp declines in ad revenue and significant layoffs. Podcasting is unlikely to be an exception; Podtrac recently reported that downloads have fallen 10% since the beginning of March, while unique listeners fell by […]

Fintech companies have been lobbying for weeks to be able to participate in the U.S. government’s emergency lending program for small businesses. Now those efforts have paid off, as PayPal, Intuit and Square have all been approved to participate in the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) Paycheck Protection Program, which provides aid in the form […]

Apple and Google reveal a joint effort to track the spread of COVID-19, a new study shows how fringe coronavirus theories are making their way to the mainstream and — in happier news — we get some hints on Apple’s hardware plans for the fall. Here’s your Daily Crunch for April 13, 2020. 1. Apple […]

The Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group said it would lose a staggering $24 billion on investments made through its Vision Fund and bets on the co-working real estate company WeWork and satellite telecommunications company OneWeb. Ultimately, the company expects the losses to help generate a $7 billion total loss for the technology giant for the […]

Consumption of all types of kids-focused digital media has soared with a large portion of the world’s children home from school right now. At all times of day, children are playing games, watching shows and using edtech tools — often in a social context with friends online. This only accelerates the normalization of virtual spaces […]

The first private company scheduled to make a delivery of scientific cargo on behalf of NASA has specified a landing site and a target date for its mission. Intuitive Machines will seek to land its Nova-C lunar lander at a site called the Vallis Schröteri, which is the largest valley found on the Moon, and […]

Virgin Orbit is closer than ever to its goal of launching orbital satellites from a platform carried aboard a modified 747 aircraft. The company flew a successful cryogenic captive carry test of its LauncherOne rocket, carried by the Cosmic Girl carrier aircraft. This test marks the first time that the LauncherOne flew aboard the aircraft […]

Amazon is putting new online grocery customers on a waitlist due to rising demand for its grocery pickup and delivery services amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The retailer on Monday announced it will ask new Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market delivery and pickup customers to sign up for a waitlist if they’re interested in either […]

To get a handle on what’s going on in Utah, TechCrunch spoke with Qualtrics’ CEO and co-founder Ryan Smith about his home state.

Amazon has already hired over 100,000 new employees in the past four weeks as a result of the uptick in demand it’s seeing due to the global coronavirus pandemic, but it’s looking to add 75,000 more workers in the U.S., across both full- and part-time positions. The company revealed the expanded hiring efforts in a […]

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Before we jump into today’s show, don’t forget that the long-form Equity that started in the unicorn era and continue in today’s changed world still drops on Friday. We had a blast last week, so make sure to […]

Apple is readying a new iPhone for fall to replace the iPhone 11 Pro this fall, Bloomberg reports, as well as follow-ups to the iPhone 11, a new smaller HomePod, and a locator tag accessory. The top-end iPhone 11 Pro successors at least will have a new industrial design that more closely resembles the iPad […]

Google has launched a website dedicated to coronavirus updates in India and tweaked its search engine and YouTube to prominently display authoritative information and locally relevant details about the pandemic from the nation’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, the company said on Monday. Additionally, Google is also showing more than 1,500 food and night […]

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has provided an emergency use authorization (EUA) for a decontamination process provided by company Advanced Sterilization Products (ASP) that could see as many as 4 million N95 respirators per day sterilized for re-use. That’s a significant potential dent in the ongoing shortage of supplies faced by medical professionals […]

Kargo, a Jakarta-based logistics startup co-founded by veteran Uber Asia executive Tiger Fang, has raised $31 million to scale its business and help firms in the Southeast Asian nation fight the coronavirus. Silicon Valley-based Tenaya Capital, Sequoia India, Mirae Asset Management, and Intudo Ventures among others financed Kargo’s Series A round. The startup, which has […]

Here come the blood tests, and it’s about time. Serosurveys, to determine what percentage of populations have already contracted COVID-19. And, individually, tests to indicate whether you, too, already caught it, but suffered only mild symptoms, or none at all. In America alone, millions will soon be recovered from COVID-19 infection. Half the people I […]

Some of us have learned how to be uniquely scrappy during this pandemic. I’m talking socks as masks and chickpea water as a vegetarian egg-white replacement type of scrappy. And you will learn in this week’s installment of Tech For Good startups are no exception. Companies around the world are pivoting and partnering their way into […]

While consumer tech has matured as a startup category in recent years, many investors continue to be bullish on specific trends like online gaming, voice, and the unbundling of platforms in favor of focused social networks.

As workers moved from office to home and students moved to being educated online, demand for new PCs surged in Q1, but Canalys found that shipments actually dropped 8% in spite of this, due to COVID-19 related supply chain problems. The 8% drop was the worst since 2016 when shipments dropped 12%, according to the […]

Another week in quarantine. As the world adjusts to working from home under mandatory stay-at-home orders, hackers are keeping busy. Microsoft said this week that coronavirus-related attacks are on the rise but still make up just a fraction of the overall malicious activity. Cybersecurity companies seem to be faring mostly well — in part thanks […]

Emily de La Bruyère Contributor Share on Twitter Emily de La Bruyère is co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategy consultancy focused on documenting the military, economic, and technological implications of China’s approach to global competition. Nathan Picarsic Contributor Nathan Picarsic is co-founder of Horizon Advisory, a strategy consultancy focused on documenting the military, economic, and […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting mobile apps, how WhatsApp is fighting fake news and how home quarantines are impacting online grocery and dating apps.

Tesla started Friday to furlough its sales and delivery workforce — with the least experienced employees bearing the brunt of the action — days after a companywide email announced salary cuts and reductions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Several employees, who work in sales and delivery and spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity, reported […]