Crunch Hype

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated its rules around use of experimental treatments for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to include use of “convalescent plasma,” in cases where the patient’s life is seriously or immediately threatened. This isn’t an approval of the procedure as a certified treatment, but rather an emergency clearance that […]

After years of hype, the AR/VR space has certainly grown quieter as of late, but some investors are still coalescing behind a vision that the technologies could one day replace mobile if the technical kinks can be worked out. Creal is a Swiss startup that’s working on some fundamental display technologies that could make VR […]

For the billions stuck at home during the global effort to flatten the curve, gaming is a welcome escape. But it’s also a bandwidth-heavy one, and Microsoft, Sony and others are working to make sure that millions of people downloading enormous games don’t suck up all the bandwidth. Don’t worry, though, it won’t affect your […]

It’s like Google Docs for everything. Screen is a free interactive multiplayer screensharing app that gives everyone a cursor so they can navigate, draw on, and even code within the apps of their co-workers while voice or video chatting. Screen makes it easy and fun to co-design content, pair program, code review or debug together, […]

Y Combinator’s latest class of startups arrived to a fairly lukewarm public reception last week as the world melted down in the midst of the accelerator’s virtual demo day. While the startups didn’t anticipate launching into mid-pandemic markets, some seem more poised to succeed in this new environment than others. For the past several weeks, […]

The COVID-19 pandemic has already triggered a number of layoffs across industries, from travel companies to scooter startups. But, as a gray footnote to all tragedies, we’re starting to see innovation pop through the cracks — and hopefully help some people, as well. Back in November, Alexander Taub and Michael Schonfeld launched Upstream, a social […]

San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors is pushing a number of legislative bodies to offer more protections and benefits for gig workers during COVID-19 pandemic. As gig workers are still out delivering food to people and providing rides, supervisors are asking the SF Office of Labor Standards Enforcement to establish enforcement procedures in compliance with Assembly […]

They’re doing construction in my apartment building right now. I live on the first floor and can hear the distinct sound of jackhammering on concrete coming from the basement below. There’s also the sound of a generator and a far higher-pitched drilling noise. It’s all happening with the perfect combination of frequency and randomness completely […]

Amazon never tires of explaining how great it is to work at one of its warehouses, but as usual the actual employees tell a different story. This particular group of Chicago workers was fed up with the company failing to provide paid time off or vacation it promised to part-time workers. They organized; Amazon resisted […]

Social media companies have been hard at work to make sure they play a helpful rather than harmful role in disseminating news and information about the coronavirus pandemic. Today, Twitter took an extra step beyond its own platform to put its efforts into the wider, already under-pressure world of journalism. Twitter announced that it would […]

Apple has released software updates for the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple Watch, the Apple TV and the Mac. The biggest changes are on the iPad. Starting today, you can pair a mouse or trackpad with your iPad and use it to move a cursor on the display. Apple unveiled trackpad support for iPadOS when […]

The COVID-19 outbreak has led to record Pinterest usage as people stuck at home have increased their searches for things like lesson plans, kids’ crafts, new recipes and gardening ideas. Last weekend, for example, Pinterest saw more searches and saves globally than any other weekend in its history. And in the U.S., it saw record […]

Apple is updating its privacy policy for Apple Card to enable sharing more anonymized data with Goldman Sachs, its financial partner. Apple’s reasoning here is that this will make it able to do a better job of assigning credit to new customers. The data is aggregate and anonymized, and there is an opt-out for new […]

Ford said Tuesday won’t restart its factories in the U.S., Canada and Mexico on Monday, March 30 as the automaker had originally planned. The company, which suspended production at its North American factories due to the continued spread of COVID-19, has decided not to restart operations in light of various governments’ orders to stay and […]

Ranker, an online publisher that turns crowdsourced lists and fan-rankings into a data business, is now turning its attention to the world of streaming services. The company this week launched a new app, Watchworthy, that helps you find something new to watch across TV networks and over 200 streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, […]

Google today announced a small but important addition to its travel search site on both mobile and desktop. When you search for flights, hotels and activities, the site will now highlight active travel advisories for your destination. In addition, now that most airlines have changed their flight change and cancellation policies in light of the […]

Disney+ launches in seven European countries, Microsoft admits to a “critical” Windows security flaw and we review the new iPad Pro. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 24, 2020. 1. Using 25% lower bandwidth, Disney+ launches in UK, Ireland and 5 other European countries, France to come online April 7 As expected, Disney announced that […]

Following the announcement that it’s committing $25 million in waived fees and free services to support local businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Yelp announced a new effort this morning: a partnership with GoFundMe that will bring Donate buttons to businesses’ Yelp profiles. Yelp says that its data shows that U.S. consumer interest in restaurants has […]

Rocket launch startup Astra, which had been attempting to claim DARPA’s prize for successful demonstration of flexible space launch capabilities until earlier this month, will not be moving forward with an attempted flight of its launch vehicle this week as planned. The company’s “One of Three” rocket ran into an “anomaly” during pre-launch testing in […]

A new annual survey taken before the current COVID-19 crisis led to restrictions of movement in much of the U.S. suggests good news for Amazon, Facebook’s dominance unthreatened and continued growth in podcasting. Edison Research and Triton Digital released their annual Infinite Dial survey last week, compiling data on consumers’ use of smart speakers, podcasts, […]

It’s important to stay realistic — what we’re dealing with right now is a temporary situation, not a permanent one.

As companies that used to having workers in the same building struggle to find ways to work from home, one company that has been remote from Day One is GitLab . It recently published a handbook to help other companies who are facing the work-from-home challenge for the first time. Lest you think GitLab is […]

If you’re looking for toothbrushes, skin-care face masks, mattresses, glasses or even socks, there’s a digitally-native, direct-to-consumer (D2C) company or two that can help you out. And thanks to smart digital marketing, the cult followings that ensue and the economics of e-commerce, D2C has changed how we relate to consumer goods (while attracting a waterfall […]

The battle with the current pandemic is being fought in clinics, doctor’s offices, hospitals and via telehealth sessions as I write this, and there is no time to waste.

UPS is working with German startup Wingcopter to develop a new type of delivery drone, to be used for the logistics company’s growing commercial drone deliver efforts both in the U.S. and globally. Wingcopter has already designed an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that have ranges of up to 75 miles, and can […]

Ford announced the details of its current manufacturing efforts around building much-needed medical supplies for front-line healthcare workers and COVID-19 patients on Tuesday. Its efforts include building Powered Air-Purifying Respirators (PAPRs) with partner 3M, including a new design that employs existing parts from both partners to deliver effectiveness and highly-scalable production capacity. Ford says that […]

Amazon said on Tuesday that it is temporarily discontinuing accepting orders for “lower-priority” products in India and prioritizing servicing urgent items such as household staples, health care, and personal safety products as the e-commerce player — along with several of its competitors — grapples with coronavirus outbreak in one of its key overseas markets. “To […]

Brex wants to help startups get the money that traditional big banks won’t lend them, and it just acquired three companies to help it do so: Neji, Compose Labs and Landria. Per Brex, 12 new people will be joining Brex in total from the three companies. While the San Francisco fintech startup declined to share […]

Disney+, the streaming service from the Walt Disney Company, has been rapidly ramping up in the last several weeks. But while some of that expansion has seen some hiccups, other regions are basically on track. Today, as expected, Disney announced that it is officially launching across 7 markets in Euopre — but doing so using […]

Meet Imatag, a French startup that has been working on a watermarking product. Watermarking is nothing new, but the company has found a way to mark images even if they are resized, cropped, edited or compressed. Many photographers and brands watermark their photos so that you can see who’s the original source when the photo […]

Netflix said on Tuesday that it is lowering its traffic on network providers by 25% in India for a period of 30 days, following a similar move in Europe in a bid to reduce the congestion on internet pipelines. The American giant said that despite lowering the strain it puts on internet service providers, it […]

April Underwood, who until early last year was Slack’s chief product officer, has joined Obvious Ventures as a venture partner, she announced on Twitter today. Underwood said that as part of the firm’s team, she will “invest in great companies seeking to solve the big problems facing humanity: our climate, human health and wellness, and […]

Compass, the real-estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6 billion in venture funding, has laid off 15% of its staff as a result of the shifting economic fortunes created by the global response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to an internal email seen by TechCrunch. Citing economic fallout that has seen stock markets plummet […]

The world has been turned upside-down the past few weeks, with flight cancellations, global travel bans and a massive slowdown of worldwide commerce. For immigrants to the United States here on work visas, these are particularly ambiguous and challenging times. We’ve had prominent Silicon Valley immigration attorney Sophie Alcorn of Alcorn Immigration Law talk about […]

Startups continue to find new ways to contribute to ongoing efforts to fight the global spread of COVID-19 during the current global coronavirus pandemic, and personal health hardware-maker Oura is no exception. The smart ring startup is working with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) on a new study to see if its device […]

The FDA has updated its guidelines for COVID-19 testing procedures to make the process easier and less uncomfortable for patients, as well as to help limit the impact of testing on the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) used by healthcare workers, including protective masks, face shields, gloves and gowns. The change means that people […]

Through real-time monitoring, companies will be given visibility into the “black box” to see exactly how their AI and ML models operate.

To help gig workers make ends meet during these times of job insecurity amid COVID-19, New York City is offering gig workers who are licensed with the TLC to help with delivery work. While the demand for drivers is currently small, NYC says it expects demand to increase for meal delivery to senior citizens and […]

The vicissitudes of social distancing have taken many people by surprise, making video calls a new necessity for distant socializing. But which of the two dozen apps out there should you and your (perhaps not as tech-savvy) friends and family use? Here are our recommendations, whether it's for a coffee meeting, a family get-together, or a late night gaming hangout.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles said Monday it will start manufacturing face masks in the coming weeks and donate the critical medical equipment to first responders and healthcare workers — the latest automaker to direct its manufacturing expertise toward the COVID-19 pandemic. The automaker confirmed to TechCrunch that production capacity is being installed this week at one […]

For much of the history of enterprise technology, companies tended to buy from a single vendor because it made managing the entire affair much easier while giving them a “single throat to choke” when something went wrong. On the flip side, it also put customers at the mercy of said vendor — and it wasn’t […]

Smart thermometer maker Kinsa has been working on building accurate, predictive models of how seasonal illnesses like the flu travel in and among communities — and its fever map is finding new utility as the novel coronavirus pandemic grows globally. While Kinsa’s US Health Weather Map has no way of tracking the spread of COVID-19 […]

Last week, popular music platform Bandcamp announced that it would be waiving its revenue shares from all sales for 24 hours, starting Friday morning. The move was an effort to help boost income for the innumerable artists who have been struggling to make ends meet as live performances have been canceled for the foreseeable future […]

Amazon is going to be working with a new research initiative backed in part by the Gates Foundation that will distribute at-home coronavirus assessment kits, and then deliver the collected samples to FDA-approved test facilities. Amazon Care, the health arm formed by Amazon initially for internal employee care, will be handling the delivery of the […]

San Francisco-based Instacart today announced it will bring on 300,000 shoppers for its grocery delivery platform over the next three months. The move is meant to manage an uptick in demand due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The platform lets users shop from home from well-known grocery stores like Costco, Safeway, Kroger and more. Once […]

Earlier this month, the FCC issued a new measure aimed at easing some of the burdens on consumers as COVID-19 continues to have an increasingly profound impact on nearly every aspect of life. Most or all major internet and wireless providers in the U.S. signed up for the pledge, agreeing to take actions like waiving […]

Over-the-top live TV streaming service fuboTV announced today it plans to merge with the virtual entertainment technology company, FaceBank Group. The proposed merger would retain the name fuboTV for the combined company, consisting of fuboTV’s direct-to-consumer live TV streaming platform and FaceBank’s technology IP in sports, movies and live performances. FaceBank is not a household […]

Amid expectations that early-stage funding and valuations will decline due to an economic downturn caused by the novel coronavirus outbreak, young startups like the Brazilian dental company SouSmile, which raised in the time before COVID-19, are feeling grateful for secured runway. SouSmile is a direct to consumer dental company based in São Paulo. SouSmile has […]

If you heard the collective grieving shriek of a thousand Instagram influencers, YouTubers, and their followers, it’s because VidCon has been canceled. It’s the latest mega-event to fall prey to the social distancing measures put in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19. In a statement, the conference organizers said: VidCon is dedicated to delivering […]

Working from home is having a moment amid the COVID-19 pandemic, but some startups are having an easier time of it than others. Collage, an e-commerce site for custom gifts, has been all-remote since its inception; co-founders and co-CEOs Joe Golden and Kevin Borders started the company while Golden lived in Seattle and Borders was […]