Crunch Hype

Early this morning, Fast, a startup building platform-agnostic login and checkout services, announced that Stripe has led a $20 million investment into its business. Prior investors Index Ventures and Susa Ventures took part in the round. Susa previously participated in the company’s late-2019 round that Index led. Coming in late March, the new capital is […]

Since its inception, Cape Town based crowdsolving startup Zindi has been building a database of data scientists across Africa. It now has 12,000 registered on its its platform that uses AI and machine learning to tackle complex problems and will offer them cash-prizes to find solutions to curb COVID-19. Zindi has an open challenge focused […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the company’s factory in Buffalo, New York will open “as soon as humanly possible” to produce ventilators that are in short supply due to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. His comments, which were made Wednesday via Twitter, follows previous statements by the CEO outlining plans to either […]

Netflix is currently experiencing outages around the world, but affecting mostly users in the United States and Europe. According to Down Detector, users began reporting issues around 12PM Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, and many people are still unable to connect to the streaming service on different platforms, including mobile, PCs and smart TVs. Many […]

Formlabs, the privately held, Massachusetts-based 3D-printing company, will soon receive an exemption from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its swab designed for use in COVID-19 test kits, TechCrunch has learned. Global supply chains for test kit components including swabs and chemical reagents have hampered the ability of governments to increase testing to a […]

When Eliot Buchanan tried to use his credit card to pay his Harvard tuition bill, the payment was rejected because the university said it doesn’t accept credit. Realizing the same problem exists for thousands of different transactions like board, rent and vendor payments, he launched Plastiq. Plastiq helps people use credit cards to pay, or […]

Digital collectibles have taken a foothold and are well on their way to increase their presence in our daily lives

While plenty of tech stocks have seen their market caps dive in the past month, Groupon has taken a harder hit than most. The company’s share price has dropped more than 70% in the past five weeks. The reckoning came for Groupon’s leadership today with both CEO Rich Williams and COO Steve Krenzer ousted. In […]

A new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center shows a COVID-19 information divide between people who mostly get their news from social networks and those who rely on more traditional news sources. Pew surveyed 8,914 adults in the U.S. during the week of March 10, dividing survey respondents by the main means they use […]

Medical biotech company Emergent BioSolutions is one of the many health industry players turning its efforts toward addressing the current global coronavirus pandemic. Their work includes a two-pronged effort to pursue plasma-based treatments that could help lessen the impact of COVID-19 on healthcare systems, with a fast-tracked development timeline that could see human clinical trials […]

“Little Fires Everywhere,” a new miniseries on Hulu, can be hard to watch. Based on Celeste Ng’s novel of the same name, it takes place in the planned community of Shaker Heights during the 1990s, where the arrival of artist Mia (Kerry Washington) and her daughter Pearl (Lexi Underwood) sets something into motion that (we’re […]

The impacts of telecommuting, shelter-in-place laws and home quarantines resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak are starting to impact broadband speeds across a number of U.S. cities, a new report has found. According to broadband analysis site BroadbandNow, 88 out of the top 200 most populous U.S. cities analyzed have now experienced some form of network […]

As efforts to flatten the spread of COVID-19 pushes employees from their offices, remote work is undergoing a surge in popularity. Well-known remote-work friendly companies like Zoom have seen a rise in usage, while Slack has already reported that it is successfully converting new users into paying customers, which is pushing up its growth rate. […]

Four years ago, mathematician Vlad Voroninski saw an opportunity to remove some of the bottlenecks in the development of autonomous vehicle technology thanks to breakthroughs in deep learning. Now, Helm.ai, the startup he co-founded in 2016 with Tudor Achim, is coming out of stealth with an announcement that it has raised $13 million in a […]

Eli Cahan Contributor Share on Twitter Eli Cahan is a medical student at NYU on leave to complete a master’s in health policy at Stanford as a Knight-Hennessey Scholar. His research addresses the effectiveness, economics, and ethics of (digital) health innovation. More posts by this contributor How the coronavirus outbreak will stress-test startups Will unreliable […]

Earlier this week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it would be updating its guidance to allow self-swab tests for COVID-19, in which a patient collects a sample for their own nose for a health professional to test. On Wednesday, UnitedHealth Group revealed the results of a peer-reviewed large scale study that […]

With limited prospects for growth, one of the iron laws of economic downturns is that advertising is among the first budgets to be cut. Advertising revenues have already cratered at many alt-weekly newspapers, which heavily rely on local events and restaurants that have been shuttered in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. BuzzFeed even went […]

The world is changing fast. With the spread of coronavirus keeping folks in their homes, there’s no time like the present to connect with people online. Tomorrow at 3pm EDT, betaworks’ John Borthwick and Matt Hartman will be joining us for a live conference call via Zoom (here’s the dial-in link) for everyone on TechCrunch. […]

Victoria Stafford, a third-year student at UC Berkeley, was set to begin working at Yelp in June as a sales intern — the only internship she applied to. And then it was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. “When I first read the cancellation email, I didn’t believe it. I refreshed my inbox; I rubbed […]

Coinbase’s mobile wallet app Coinbase Wallet puts you in control of your crypto assets. The app already lets you access decentralized crypto apps (dapps) using a dapp browser. But Coinbase is going one step further with deep integrations with some of the most popular DeFi projects. DeFi means “decentralized finance,” and it has been a […]

While most domestic and international airlines are cutting thousands of flights from their schedules due to the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, Qatar Airways is taking another route. The airline is actually stepping up some of its flying again, after also announcing some cuts in the last few days, by adding 10,000 extra seats back […]

French startup Mirakl usually works with e-commerce websites in order to help them build out a marketplace with third-party sellers. This time, the company has developed a marketplace called StopCOVID19.fr to centralize the supply and demand of essential products during the fight against COVID-19. The French government is backing the project. While many French companies […]

Babbel, the Berlin-based paid language learning app, today announced that, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is making its service available for free to all K-12 and college students until the end of the term. Previously, the company offered a similar deal for students in Italy, the U.K., Germany, Spain and France. The service […]

The industry has evolved for a variety of reasons, including Google’s algorithm updates and the state of digital media. We’ve had to change along with them.

A $2 trillion stimulus package is moving forward in the United States, Google Podcasts comes to iOS and ClassPass offers livestreamed fitness classes. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 25, 2020. 1. Senate, White House reach deal on $2 trillion stimulus package to lessen COVID-19’s economic impact After five days of negotiations, Senate leaders and […]

Y Combinator wants to bring more startups through its accelerator that can help with the COVID-19 crisis, and the firm is looking to expedite the pace of its application process so it can put money behind the efforts sooner. The accelerator’s most recent batch “presented” just last week in a virtual demo day that was […]

Chris Douvos runs a fund of funds called Ahoy Capital that manages assets on behalf of numerous nonprofit institutions, endowments and foundations throughout the U.S. Outfits that want exposure to startups — but aren’t large enough to contemplate funding them directly — count on Ahoy and funds like it to invest in venture firms on […]

One of the big challenges (among many) with the coronavirus pandemic is that overwhelmed health services do not always know how best to deploy the limited resources that they have to meet the demand of people falling ill with Covid-19. For example, we know that more ventilators and beds will be needed, but where specifically […]

New York State is ramping up efforts to combat the growing coronavirus pandemic, including appeals to all industries for help in the form of much-needed medical equipment for healthcare workers. It’s also specifically asking for help from the tech community, through an open call for contributions from individuals and organizations to help form its “COVID-19 […]

Houzz, the home decorating startup backed by Sequoia Capital, has scrapped a plan that would have seen the company design and sell its own houseware. The plan, a pilot program called Private Label, was still in progress within the company, but given current market conditions, Houzz has set aside its hopes of getting into the […]

Africa is using digital finance as a means to stem the spread of COVID-19. Governments and startups on the continent are implementing measures to shift a greater volume of payment transactions toward mobile money and away from cash — which the World Health Organization flagged as a conduit for the spread of the coronavirus. It’s […]

Spotinst, the startup that helps companies find lower-cost spot instances in the cloud, announced today that it was rebranding as Spot. It also announced a brand new cloud usage dashboard to help companies get a detailed view of their cloud spend. Amiram Shachar, co-founder and CEO at Spot, says the new product is designed to […]

Three years ago, the U.K. government chastised WhatsApp for enabling end-to-end encryption by default. Today, it’s relying on the encrypted messaging app as a vital service for sharing information about the coronavirus pandemic. The new chatbot, supplied by the U.K. government, will let anyone subscribe to official advice about the pandemic, known as COVID-19, in […]

There are already a number of resources available for mapping the spread of confirmed COVID-19 cases both in the U.S. and globally, but IBM and its subsidiary The Weather Company have launched new tools that bring COVID-19 mapping and analysis to more people via their Weather Channel mobile app and weather.com. Existing tools are useful, […]

The innovation arm of the UK’s National Health Service, NHSx has launched a £500,000 funding competition for innovators and startups who can find digital ways to support people in need during the Coronavirus outbreak. The fund will concentrate on tech initiatives that help people with mental health support and those with social care needs, and […]

Espressive, a four-year-old startup from former ServiceNow employees, is working to build a better chatbot to reduce calls to company help desks. Today, the company announced a $30 million Series B investment. Insight Partners led the round with help from Series A lead investor General Catalyst along with Wing Venture Capital. Under the terms of […]

Just in time for our collective house arrests, Google has unveiled a redesigned version of Podcasts. The revamped version of the app is centered around discovery, broken up into three primary tabs. There’s Home, which features your current feeds; Explore, which offers up popular and curated shows; and Activity, which offers a deeper dive into […]

In a prime example of why President Trump shouldn’t be endorsing any unproven potential treatments for the novel coronavirus behind the current global pandemic, a new small-scale study by researchers in China indicates that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine actually isn’t any more effective than standard, existing best practice for conventional care of patients with the […]

The coronavirus demand crunch has taken another bite: Palo Alto-based corporate travel-focused unicorn, TripActions, reportedly laid off hundreds of staff yesterday. Per this post on Blind — written by someone with a verified TripActions email address — the company fired 350 people. Business Insider reported the same figure yesterday. While the Wall Street Journal said […]

Swedish telehealth startup Kry has launched a tool for healthcare professionals to conduct remote consultations during the coronavirus pandemic. Calls for EU citizens to self isolate to reduce the spread of COVID-19 is driving major demand for video appointments, it said. The platform — Care Connect by Kry — is launching in Europe, with ten […]

France’s Ministry of State for Digital Affairs Cédric O and public investment bank Bpifrance announced a comprehensive support plan for startups this morning. Some French startups are going to face revenue issues as well as funding issues in the coming months. The French government wants to temporarily bridge that gap with refinancing and liquidity measures […]

A new study from Italian researchers suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which is the cause of the COVID-19 disease currently causing a global health crisis, is relatively slow to mutate – meaning that any effective vaccine that is developed to prevent people from getting infected should be broadly effective across geographically separated populations over a […]

After five days of negotiations, Senate leaders and the Trump administration said early Wednesday morning they have reached a deal on a $2 trillion stimulus package to help relieve the economic impact of COVID-19. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are done. We have a deal,” White House legislative affairs director Eric Ueland told reporters around 1AM, […]

Esports racing, helped by record-setting viewership, is hitting the big time. Fox Sports said Tuesday it will broadcast the rest of the eNASCAR Pro Invitational iRacing Series, following Sunday’s virtual race that was watched by 903,000 viewers, according to Nielsen Media Research. While those numbers are far below the millions of viewers who watch NASCAR’s […]

Rocket Lab is the latest new space company to feel the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic: The small satellite launcher announced on Tuesday that it would be suspending its next launch, a mission called ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’ that was set to take-off from Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia peninsula […]

The game developer behind Second Life has abandoned its grand efforts for a virtual reality follow-up to its early 2000s hit. SF-based Linden Lab announced today that they’ve sold off assets related to Sansar to a small, little-known company called Wookey Search Technologies, which will take over development of the title. Linden Lab will continue […]

With the COVID-19 crisis, startups across Silicon Valley are looking for opportunities where they can both increase the visibility of their services and be helpful to people and businesses deeply affected by the pandemic. Wefunder, an investment crowdfunding platform, announced an initiative Tuesday to help small businesses impacted by the coronavirus secure loans through its […]

Zoom, a video chat service then popular with corporations, filed to go public on March 22, 2019. Best known in venture and corporate circles, Zoom was far from a household name at the time. However, the groundwork for its 2020-era consumer breakthrough during the novel coronavirus epidemic was detailed during its IPO march in the […]

Polestar has started production of its all-electric Polestar 2 vehicle at a plant in China amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has upended the automotive industry and triggered a wave of factory closures throughout the world. The start of Polestar 2 production is a milestone for Volvo Car Group’s standalone electric performance brand — and not […]

YouTube has announced that videos on the site will default to standard definition (SD) quality for the next month in order to cope with demand from the bored, housebound masses. Similar measures were undertaken by the company in Europe last week, and other big consumers of bandwidth are likewise taking steps to minimize their impact.