Crunch Hype

French startup Zyl has released a major update of its mobile app for iOS and Android. The app is all about finding long-forgotten memories of important life events in your photo library. Zyl scans your photo library and magically finds photos that matter. Every day, the app sends you a notification to tell you that […]

Today, Apple launched its own coronavirus screening site (apple.com/covid19) and iOS app developed alongside the White House, CDC and FEMA. The site is pretty simple, with basic information about best practices and safety tips alongside a basic screening tool which should give you a fairly solid idea on whether or not you need to be […]

A fundraising program that Yelp and GoFundMe put in place this week to help local businesses impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic has been paused after public outcry over how it was rolled out — specifically, controversy over how the two provided no easy and quick way to opt out of the fundraising. Yelp’s initial announcement was […]

There is a serious flaw in how businesses are funded, and it's the same discussion we had twenty and thirty years ago about who was at the table in managing businesses.

We're wrapping the week with Lime, scooters and the divergence between Uber and Lyft and their two-wheeled rivals.

The major American stock market indices are down sharply this morning at the open, with stocks falling after a multi-day rally helped shave some losses off their calendar-year results. So far, 2020 has proven to be a toxic year for publicly traded equity, as a decade-long bull market collided with a global pandemic and stark […]

A social media platform used to match advertisers with thousands of influencers has been hacked. Social Bluebook, a Los Angeles-based company, allows advertisers to pay social media “influencers” for posts that promote their products and services. The company claims it has some 300,000 influencers on its books. But in October 2019, the company’s entire backend […]

NASA provided an official update about the status of its Commercial Crew program, the project it’s working on with partners SpaceX and Boeing to return astronaut launch capabilities to American soil via private launch partners. This week, SpaceX encountered an issue while testing the parachute system that will be used on its Crew Dragon spacecraft, […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The three of us were back today — Natasha, Danny and Alex — to dig our way through a host of startup-focused topics. Sure, the world is stuffed full of COVID-19 news — and, to be clear, the […]

Wheels, which recently paused its shared bike service to limit the spread of COVID-19, is making its pedal-less e-bikes available for gig workers, restaurants, non-profits or any other people who do their own deliveries. What’s different about these bikes is they will come with self-cleaning NanoSeptic handlebars and brake levers. NanoSeptic’s technology, which is powered by […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the lives of billions of people around the world. For many parents with young children in the United States, shelter in place orders implemented in different areas over the past few weeks mean they now spend each day balancing work with taking care of their families. For child care providers, […]

On-demand video streaming service Hooq said on Friday it has filed for liquidation after it failed to grow rapidly and cover its increasing operating costs. Hooq Digital, a joint venture among Singapore telecom group Singtel (majority owner), Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros Entertainment, said the company sailed through “significant structural changes” in the on-demand video […]

Notarize, the platform that enables digital notarizations, announced that it is adding 1,000 notaries to address demand as more Americans are ordered to shelter in place because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but still need to sign important documents. The startup is partnering with the National Notary Association to verify notaries have been screened and have […]

Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian founded Initialized Capital roughly nine years ago and they’ve closed four funds since, including most recently in late 2018. That $225 million vehicle is roughly twice the size of their previous fund, but because of the coronavirus, the firm, and its portfolio companies — some of which include Opendoor, Instacart […]

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Thursday that it is temporarily relaxing enforcement of environmental regulations and fines during the COVID-19 outbreak. The “enforcement discretion policy” applies retroactively to March 13, with no end date set yet. The new policy follows lobbying from industries including oil and gas, which told the Trump […]

Smart telescopes and shutter units will save observatories time and money by protecting images that are incredibly complicated to generate.

Apple announced today that they are temporarily extending the free trials on Final Cut Pro X and Logic Pro X from 30 days to 90 days, giving potential customers stuck at home a longer window of time to try out the software. Apple said the company hopes the promotion will benefit creative Mac users, and […]

Self-driving truck startup TuSimple is partnering with automotive supplier ZF to develop and produce autonomous vehicle technology, such as sensors, on a commercial scale. The partnership, slated to begin in April, will cover China, Europe and North America. The two companies will co-develop sensors needed in autonomous vehicle technology such as cameras, lidar, radar and […]

The long-running Folding@Home program to crowdsource the enormously complex task of solving molecular interactions has hit a major milestone as thousands of new users sign up to put their computers to work. The network now comprises an "exaflop" of computing power: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 operations per second.

On Thursday, the United States crossed an unfortunate milestone in the global fight against the novel coronavirus: leading the world in confirmed cases. By Thursday afternoon around 3 p.m. PT, the U.S. reports 82,404 confirmed cases of the coronavirus to China’s 81,782 according to a popular COVID-19 tracking tool from Johns Hopkins. Italy, regarded as […]

During a recent visit, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella reiterated his company’s commitment to India and revealed a new fund to help SaaS startups in the country. And then Nadella and Anant Maheshwari, president of Microsoft India, discussed the success story of B2B platform Udaan in three separate onstage public appearances. Headquartered in Bangalore, Udaan […]

A school in Norway has stopped using popular video conferencing service Whereby after a naked man apparently “guessed” the link to a video lesson. According to Norwegian state broadcaster NRK, the man exposed himself in front of several young children over the video call. The theory, according to the report, is that the man guessed […]

Stocks soared on Thursday even as the U.S. reported its worst unemployment numbers in 50 years of tracking data. The pain felt on Main Street was offset for investors by the federal government opening its wallet to Wall Street, businesses and (at some point) workers in the form of the $2 trillion stimulus package designed […]

The impending shortage of ventilators for U.S. hospitals is likely already a crisis, but will become even more dire as the number of patients with COVID-19 that are suffering from severe symptoms and require hospitalization grows. That’s why a simple piece of hardware newly approved by the FDA for emergency use – and available free […]

Facebook today unveiled Coronavirus Community Hub on Messenger that offers tips, authoritative information and other resources to help people stay connected and informed about the coronavirus outbreak, weeks after launching a similar information hub on WhatsApp, its other messaging service. The launch of the coronavirus hub on Messenger, used by more than a billion people, comes […]

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed its 134th successful launch, continuing its perfect track record with a mission today for the U.S. Space Force. This is the first ever dedicated mission for the Space Force, a new branch of the U.S. armed forces dedicated to the defense and protection of America’s strategic assets in […]

Forcing founders to wean themselves off conferences and events as a "go-to" business development tactic might not be a bad thing in the long run.

Facebook has filled the lead independent board director role with former Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and U.S. Ambassador to Germany Robert M. Kimmitt. His job will be to serve as the go-between connecting Facebook CEO and controlling shareholder Mark Zuckerberg with the rest of the board. Meanwhile, the CEO of The Cranemere Group Limited […]

Chubb, a major cybersecurity insurance provider for businesses hit by data breaches, has itself become a target of a data breach. The insurance giant told TechCrunch it was investigating a “security incident” involving the unauthorized access to data belonging to an unnamed third-party. Chubb spokesperson Jeffrey Zack said the company had “no evidence” the incident […]

Toyota, Honda and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will not reopen North American factories at the end of the month as planned, as the COVID-19 disease spreads and dampens demand for new cars, trucks and SUVs. FCA said Thursday that plants across the U.S. and Canada, as well as headquarters operations and construction projects, are intended to […]

Startups across the nation and around the world are looking for ways to relieve shortages of much-needed personal protective equipment and sanitizers used to halt the spread of COVID-19. While some of the largest privately held technology companies, like SpaceX and Tesla, have shifted to manufacturing ventilators, smaller companies are also trying to pitch in […]

Several months ago, we surveyed more than 20 leading real estate VCs to learn about what was exciting them most in the real estate tech sector and hear their opinions on proptech trends like co-working, flexible office space and remote office space. Since we published our survey, COVID-19 has flipped the real estate sector on […]

Two Tesla employees, who had been working at home for nearly two weeks, have tested positive for COVID-19, according to an internal email sent Thursday morning by the company’s head of environmental, health, and safety department and viewed by TechCrunch . The employees were not symptomatic in the office, and both are quarantined at home […]

To someone with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail — and as expected, the tech sector is hard at work hammering every nail it can find. But the analytical prowess of the modern data ecosystem is especially limited when attempting to tackle the problem of potential coronavirus treatments.

Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are the landlords. Amidst the Coronavirus economic crisis, startups need a break from paying rent. They’re in a cash crunch. Revenue has stopped flowing in, capital markets like venture debt are hesitant, and startups and small-to-medium sized businessesf are at risk of either having to lay off huge numbers of employees […]

It was only a week ago that Google said it would hit pause on Chrome and Chrome OS releases “due to adjusted work schedules” in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, however, the company announced that it would resume releases — but with an adjusted schedule. In the age of rapid-release schedules for browsers, the […]

Ads for face masks are still appearing on Facebook, Instagram and Google, according to a review of the platforms carried out by the Tech Transparency Project (TTP). This despite pledges by the platforms that they would stamp out ads which seek to profit from the coronavirus pandemic. Facebook said on March 6 that it would […]

Airbnb says it will subsidize housing for 100,000 workers at the front lines of COVID-19 care, Groupon gets a new CEO and Stripe invests in a universal checkout startup. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 26, 2020. 1. Airbnb to provide free or subsidized housing for 100,000 COVID-19 healthcare workers Airbnb’s effort will work by […]

The Senate’s historic $2 trillion stimulus package will make history in one more way: by providing some financial assistance to gig workers. Late last night, the Senate passed a $2 trillion stimulus bill in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As part of the bill, which makes its way to the House of Representatives for a […]

Yaguara, a Denver-based startup that wants to help e-commerce companies understand their customers better to deliver more meaningful experiences, announced a $7.2 million seed investment today. The round was led by Foundation Capital with participation from Gradient Ventures, Rainfall Ventures and Zelkova. It also had help from some e-commerce heavy hitters including Warby Parker, Harry’s […]

The hospitality and travel industry may be reeling, but Airbnb is still doing what it can to support the global effort to fight the spread of the coronavirus causing a worldwide pandemic. The company announced today that it will provide “free or subsidized housing” for 100,000 people working as frontline healthcare, relief for first response […]

The demand for remote friendly services is probably bigger than we thought.

Earlier this year, personalized news aggregation app Flipboard expanded into local news. The feature brought local news, sports, real estate, weather, transportation news and more to 23 cities across the U.S. Today, Flipboard is bringing local news to 12 more U.S. metros and is adding critical coronavirus local coverage to all of the 35 supported […]

Huawei has unveiled new flagship phones today, the P40, P40 Pro and P40 Pro+. These are beautiful phones with great specs. But it would only take you a few minutes to realize that there’s something odd with them. There is no Gmail, no Google Maps and no Google Play Store. Last year, the U.S. government […]

Entrepreneur First (EF), the the London-headquartered company builder and “talent first” investor, unveiled its latest cohort of “deep tech” companies in a first virtual Demo Day, amid the novel coronavirus pandemic. Presenting startups, in the format of a slick pre-recorded video, are made up of teams formed across EF’s three European locations: London, Berlin and […]

SendBird has built a highly successful business with a chat API, but the company never intended to stop there, and today it announced it was adding voice and video capabilities to its communications platform. “We’re creating more of an interaction platform to allow not just text messaging, but also voice calling and video recording capabilities […]

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) has a mission today, launching a specialized secure communications satellite for the U.S. Space Force. That’s the new space-focused arm of the U.S. military that was officially formed last year, in response to what the administration has characterized as a growing need to ensure America’s assets in space are properly […]

Watchdogs have started to raise the issue that new working practices and online activity necessitated by the spread of the coronavirus pandemic are creating new sets of privacy, security and data protection challenges. Today a startup is announcing a growth round of funding to help online businesses navigate those issues better. DataGuard, a Munich-based startup […]

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank that now counts over 4 million account holders, has lost its CTO, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, Meri Williams, who joined the fast-growing fintech in September 2018 to much fanfare, announced internally that she was departing, saying that she wanted to voluntarily help with cost-cutting measures. However, it […]

MX Player, the on-demand video streaming service owned by India’s conglomerate Times Internet, is expanding to more than half a dozen new international markets including the U.S. and the UK to supply more entertainment content to millions of people trapped in their homes. The Singapore-headquartered on-demand video streaming service, which raised $111 million in a […]