Crunch Hype

Muslim matchmaking app Muzmatch is getting (slightly) involved with video: It’s adding a button to enable users to request a video chat with a prospective match’s father. If the user impresses on camera, the dad can grant a ‘Dad Verified’ badge to add to their profile — as an added layer of parental vetting for […]

While the origins of its coronavirus testing program were muddled by President Trump’s misleading announcements attributing its efforts to Google and inflating its scale, Alphabet’s Verily health sciences subsidiary has established and grown its community-based California testing initiative, deploying drive-up testing sites and ramping the number of tests completed from just over 1,200 last Wednesday […]

Confluence, Atlassian’s content-centric collaboration tool for teams, is making it easier for new users to get started with the launch of an updated template gallery and 75 new templates. They incorporate what the company has learned from its customers and partners since it first launched the service back in 2004. About a year ago, Atlassian […]

Ixigo, a 13-year-old travel and hotel booking service in India, said on Monday it is cutting the salary of its entire staff as the firm grapples with severe disruption in its business due to the coronavirus outbreak that has pushed New Delhi to issue a nationwide lockdown. Aloke Bajpai, co-founder and chief executive of Ixigo, […]

Another tech unicorn is feeling the pinch of doing business during the coronavirus pandemic. Today, Kabbage, the SoftBank-backed lending startup that uses machine learning to evaluate loan applications for small and medium businesses, is furloughing a “significant number” of its U.S. team of 500 employees, according to a memo sent to staff and seen by […]

Work-from-home policies, social distancing and government lockdowns have increased the demand for video conferencing apps, for both business and personal use. According to a new report from App Annie, out on Monday, business conferencing apps have been experiencing record growth as a result, and just hit their biggest week ever in March, when they topped […]

This morning, let's remind go over what happened in the first wave of recent unicorn layoffs (Zume, Oyo, Uber, etc) and how it compares to what is happening today as ZipRecruiter, Bird and TripActions cut staff of their own.

High-altitude launch startup Stratolaunch has gone through some changes, but on Monday it revealed design details of two hypersonic aircraft, along with a space plane, all designed to take-off from its flying carrier plane launch platform. If all goes to plan, test flights of the first of these new vehicles will begin in 2022, and […]

"I think it's part of my job as a VC to remain calm, look at the numbers, look at the data and — you know, my beliefs haven't changed for what the future is going to look like."

A voter contact and canvassing company, used exclusively by Republican political campaigns, mistakenly left an unprotected copy of its app’s code on its website for anyone to find. The company, Campaign Sidekick, helps Republican campaigns canvass their districts using its iOS and Android apps, which pull in names and addresses from voter registration rolls. Campaign […]

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. If you missed Friday’s main episode, it was a fun one so take the time if you have the minutes; we’re settling into a new hosting lineup that is shaping up to be our best ever, so we’re […]

The global coronavirus pandemic has meant that there’s a widespread effort to develop and advance creative solutions to new problems, like worldwide shortages of necessary front-line medical equipment. One piece of gear that’s necessary for protecting the health of medical workers treating COVID-19 patients are N95 respirator masks, which are masks that specifically filter out […]

DLR, German’s space agency and NASA equivalent, is doing what it can to support the global shortages of personal protective equipment (PPE) used by frontline healthcare workers in their efforts to treat those affected by COVID-19. DLR announced that it has successfully tested converting its on-site 3D printers, typically used for producing aerospace-grade parts, to […]

While economic conditions and the ongoing global coronavirus pandemic may not make for the best atmosphere for raising funding, some companies are still announcing round closures with significant money committed. Cambridge-based ElevateBio, for instance, revealed a $170 million Series B funding on Monday, with participation from new investors The Invus Group, Surveyor Capital, EDBI, and […]

The coronavirus pandemic has all but halted a lot of business activity, but today comes news of a deal that underscores how M&A is still happening in some sectors despite (not because of) everything else going on. One.com — the big hosting provider in Europe with around 1.5 million customers, itself acquired just over a […]

Online learning looks likely to be a key beneficiary of the social distancing and quarantine measures that are being applied around the world as countries grapple with the COVID-19 pandemic. In turn, this looks set to buoy some relative veterans of the space. To wit: Preply, a 2013-founded tutoring marketplace, is today announcing a $10 […]

Air Doctor, the health tech startup that connects travellers with local doctors, has raised $7.8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Kamet Ventures (the AXA-backed venture builder), and The Phoenix Insurance Company. Founded in 2016, Air Doctor aims to empower travellers who get sick when abroad and need non-emergency advice or […]

Hello folks, welcome back (or hi for the first time) to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to the all the ways people and packages move around this world. I’m your host, Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. I also have started to publish a shorter version of the newsletter on TechCrunch . That’s […]

Lawmakers and security experts have long warned of security flaws in the underbelly of the world’s cell networks. Now a whistleblower says the Saudi government is exploiting those flaws to track its citizens across the U.S. as part of a “systematic” surveillance campaign. It’s the latest tactic by the Saudi kingdom to spy on its […]

Only a few days after saying that he would like to see the country “opened up and raring to go by Easter” and maybe relax rules for at least some parts of the U.S. sooner than later, President Trump today announced that he is extending the government’s social distancing guidelines through April 30. “Nothing would […]

Microsoft is pulling out of an investment in an Israeli facial recognition technology developer as part of a broader policy shift to halt any minority investments in facial recognition startups, the company announced late last week. The decision to withdraw its investment from AnyVision, an Israeli company developing facial recognition software, came as a result […]

On CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, the leading U.S. authority on the COVID-19 pandemic made some grim predictions about the course of the novel coronavirus as it rages through communities within the United States. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and emerging face of American […]

Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren may have ended her 2020 presidential run, but the tech used to drive her campaign will live on. Members of her staff announced they would make public the top apps and digital tools developed in Warren’s bid to become the Democratic nominee for president. “In our work, we leaned heavily on […]

After the shutdown, the testing and tracing. “Trace, test and treat is the mantra … no lockdowns, no roadblocks and no restriction on movement” in South Korea. “To suppress and control the epidemic, countries must isolate, test, treat and trace,” say WHO. But what does “tracing” look like exactly? In Singapore, they use a “TraceTogether” […]

The North American International Auto Show, which was scheduled for June in Detroit, has been canceled as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and the city prepares to repurpose the TCF Center into a temporary field hospital. NAIAS is held each year in the TCF Center, formerly known as the Cobo Center. Organizers said they […]

TechCrunch is out hunting for bright spots in the startup world as we all come to grips with the pandemic — particularly where checks are actually being written despite everything. D2C is back to the future First up this week, we surveyed top direct-to-consumer investors, and they seemed pretty optimistic despite the struggles of some […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry saw a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s “State of Mobile” annual report. […]

Netflix’s “Tiger King” is a docuseries focusing on the man who calls himself Joe Exotic — owner of a private park full of tigers and other big cats. We learn in the opening minutes of the first episode that he’s been accused of hiring a contract killer to murder an animal rights activist. A documentary […]

The relationship between the United Kingdom and Australia is not usually a flashpoint in international relations. After all, the two allies share a common language, ancestry, and monarch. So what caused a dustup recently that saw a senior Australian parliamentarian rebuke the British foreign secretary, and for a group of Australian MPs to then cancel […]

There’s a new COVID-19 test from healthcare technology maker Abbott that looks to be the fastest yet in terms of producing results, and that can do so on the spot right at point-of-care, without requiring a round trip to a lab. This test for the novel coronavirus causing the current global pandemic has received emergency […]

StockX, the high-flying resale marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of sneakers, streetwear, handbags and other collectible items, has seen its fortune rise along with the $6 billion global sneaker resale market, which is part of the broader $100 billion sneaker category. In fact, the company, which was assigned a billion-dollar-plus valuation last year, says […]

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of hopping on Zoom with betaworks’ John Borthwick and Matt Hartman to discuss the tech world’s adaptation to this new locked-down world, the future of new media and answer questions from the audience. We discussed whether new media companies can raise capital right now, and touched on emerging trends around […]

One of the newer companies attempting to join the rarified group of private space launch startups actually flying payloads to orbit has redirected its entire UK-based manufacturing capacity towards COVID-19 response. Skyrora, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland, is answering the call of the UK government and the NHS to manufacturers to do what they […]

With shortages of N95 face masks persisting nationwide, healthcare facilities are scrambling to find ways to clean and treat the masks for reuse to protect doctors and nurses most at risk of exposure to COVID-19. Duke University thinks it has found a solution using vaporized hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate the masks. The process uses specialized […]

Having the right technology in place to sustain work-from-home practices is more important now than ever before.

President Donald Trump signed Friday a presidential directive ordering GM to produce ventilators and to prioritize federal contracts, just hours after the automaker announced plans to manufacture the critical medical equipment needed for patients suffering from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The order, made under the Defense Production Act, marks a sudden reversal […]

More than a decade after announcing that it would keep Polaroid's abandoned instant film alive, The Impossible Project has done the... improbable: It has officially become the brand it set out to save. And to commemorate the occasion there's a new camera, the Polaroid Now.

We had a great time hosting noted immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn on a live conference call with Extra Crunch members earlier this week. Sophie writes our “Dear Sophie” column, where she answers questions about immigration status, particularly for founders and others in the tech ecosystem who want to work in the United States. Dear Sophie: […]

On Thursday, the FDA amended their emergency policy around diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19. Following on a change made March 16, the agency opened the door for a number of specific private entities and labs to develop and distribute tests that can provide results on the spot in as little […]

Earlier this year, Microsoft made waves in the corporate community by coming out with one of the most ambitious and wide-ranging strategies to reduce carbon emissions from the company’s operations. Part of that plan was a $1 billion fund that would invest in climate change mitigation technologies — specifically focused on decarbonization. At the time, […]

There are times when, no matter how hard you try, you’re just not going to be able to close a deal.

While there has been a drop in interest so far, there is still a lot of activity and VCs seem to still be reading pitch decks.

NASA has tapped SpaceX as the first provider of space-based logistics to deliver experiment materials, cargo and supplies to its lunar Gateway, the agency announced on Friday. This means SpaceX will be among the companies that NASA can turn to when it needs things shuttled via spaceship between Earth and this forthcoming platform, which will […]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced Friday that his company would be donating more than $800 million in ad credits and cash to help government orgs and small businesses respond to the COVID-19 crisis. The announcement gives a full breakdown of the deployment, the bulk of which is in credits for Google services: Google will be […]

New York University is among the many academic, private and public institutions doing what it can to address the need for personal protective equipment (PPE) among healthcare workers across the world. The school worked quickly to develop an open-source face-shield design, and is now offering that design freely to any and all in order to […]

Instacart shoppers, led by the folks over at Gig Workers Collective, are planning a nationwide strike in protest of the company’s practices amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Vice first reported. Shoppers, who are responsible for grocery shopping and deliveries, say they have urged Instacart to take proper safety precautions, such as providing hand sanitizer and disinfectant […]

A massive bipartisan effort to provide relief to a U.S. economy on ice just leapt over its last major hurdle. On Friday, the House of Representatives passed a historic stimulus package known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security or “CARES” act, which contains an unprecedented $2.2 trillion in total financial relief for businesses, […]

Broadband constellation satellite operator OneWeb will file for bankruptcy protection in the U.S., likely some time Friday, after attempts to secure new funding, including from existing investor SoftBank, fell through, TechCrunch has learned. The Financial Times also reported on the failure of its funding attempt on Friday, based on its own separate sources. The company […]

Extra Crunch is excited to announce a new community perk from cross-platform calendar tool, Woven. Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch can receive 20% off premium plans from Woven. You must be new to Woven to claim this offer. Built from the ground up for busy people, Woven comes stacked with powerful […]