Crunch Hype

Augmented reality headset maker Magic Leap has struggled with the laws of physics and failed to get to market. Now it’s seeking an acquirer, but talks with Facebook and medical goods giant Johnson & Johnson led nowhere according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Ed Hammond. After raising over $2 billion and being valued between […]

The Trump administration is preparing an executive order to ban federal departments and agencies from buying or using foreign-made drones, citing a risk to national security, TechCrunch has learned. The draft order, which was drafted in the past few weeks and seen by TechCrunch, would effectively ban both foreign-made drones or drones made with foreign […]

As a cell phone plan, Yahoo Mobile seems pretty straightforward — there’s just one pricing tier, where you pay $39.99 per month for unlimited calls, data and mobile hotspot usage. But you may be wondering why Yahoo is getting into the phone business. It makes more sense when you recall that Yahoo is owned by Verizon, […]

Slack has confirmed that “Slack Calls are experiencing some connectivity difficulties right now.” The company said it is working to resolve the issue “as quickly as possible.” The difficulties coincide with the push from tech companies to move workers to remote-only meetings and conference calls, amid the outbreak of COVID-19. Slack did not comment on […]

Amazon has instituted a new policy which will see all Amazon employees diagnosed with COVID-19 or placed into quarantine receiving up to two-weeks of pay. The additional pay is to “ensure employees have the time they need to return to good health without the worry of lost pay,” the company said in a statement. That […]

Superpeer is giving YouTube creators and other experts a new way to make money. The startup announced today that it has raised $2 million in pre-seed funding led by Eniac Ventures, with participation from angel investors including Steven Schlafman, Ankur Nagpal, Julia Lipton, Patrick Finnegan, Justin De Guzman, Chris Lu, Paul Yacoubian and Cheryl Sew […]

Stocks listed on American exchanges today fell sharply, erasing their Tuesday rebound and adding to their Monday declines. On a day that saw the World Health Organization declare that the spread of COVID-19 has officially become a pandemic, with 4,000 deaths reported from the illness so far, stock markets seemed more affected by the prolonged […]

NASA's ambitious plan to put boots on the Moon in 2024 is looking increasingly costly — and increasingly unlikely — if the current cost overruns and delays are any indication, according to a report by the agency's Office of the Inspector General.

These days, most of the games developed need to be social, multi-platform and extensible, but there are only a few developers with the expertise to bring those toolsets to the profusion of new games that crop up every year. Well, now those development studios can turn to Pragma, which is building the back-end toolkit for […]

Google Cloud today announced the beta launch of Cloud AI Platform Pipelines, a new enterprise-grade service that is meant to give developers a single tool to deploy their machine learning pipelines, together with tools for monitoring and auditing them. “When you’re just prototyping a machine learning (ML) model in a notebook, it can seem fairly […]

Software giant Salesforce announced this week the addition of a few new tools in healthcare management to the Salesforce Health Cloud, with the goal being to help payers and providers utilize a more comprehensive system. The first is a healthcare provider management feature allowing doctors and other healthcare workers a way to efficiently manage new […]

Unity has acquired AI game developer tools startup Artomatix. The Dublin startup builds developer tools that allow game studios to more easily create deep learning-enhanced textures that scale more convincingly. Developers can use the startup’s ArtEngine platform to bring real-world materials to their game worlds, adapting the visual patterns to their 3D worlds more quickly […]

On Wednesday, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios convened representatives from a number of the tech’s biggest companies to gameplan a response to the worsening global coronavirus pandemic. According to The Washington Post, the meeting, held remotely over the phone and through video calls, served as a brainstorming session for tech and the White House […]

"We've had employees that have started here say that they felt more welcome here being all remote than they ever did with a co-located job."

YouTube today announced a change in policy regarding the novel coronavirus or COVID-19. Previously, YouTube’s advertising guidelines prevented monetization of videos that included more than a passing mention of the coronavirus as part of its “sensitive events” policy. The policy is meant to protect advertisers from being associated with videos about things like mass shootings, […]

Despite the many jokes made at the expense of the first new U.S. military branch in nearly 80 years, industry experts say the Space Force represents a massive — and strategically significant — shift for America’s defense. Many of modern life’s conveniences depend on the ability to consistently and securely access information provided by thousands […]

What do you do when you’re rich in cryptocurrencies but you don’t want to sell your positions? The company named Blockchain thinks it has found a solution. It lets you borrow money against cryptocurrencies held in your Blockchain wallet. As soon as you lock cryptocurrencies in your wallet, you receive USD PAX, a stablecoin that […]

Law enforcement agencies in India used facial recognition to identify more than 1,100 individuals who allegedly took part in communal violence in the national capital last month, a top minister said in the lower house of the parliament on Wednesday. In what is the first admission of its kind in the country, Amit Shah, India’s […]

Meet Alma, a French startup that helps you offer a new payment option for your expensive goods. Like Klarna, clients can choose to pay over three or four installments. But the comparison stops here, as Klarna isn’t available in France. Alma just raised a $14.1 million (€12.5 million) funding round. Idinvest, ISAI and Picus Capital […]

Tesla plans its next massive “gigafactory,” Google steps up efforts against COVID-19 and NEA raises a $3.6 billion fund. Here’s your Daily Crunch for March 11, 2020. 1. Tesla is eyeing Nashville for Cybertruck gigafactory Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday evening that the company is “scouting” locations to build a new U.S. “gigafactory” that […]

CRM software accounts for one-quarter of all enterprise IT spend. But ironically, while a lot of money is spent on platforms like Salesforce or SAP to manage incoming calls and outgoing marketing and sales activity, not a lot of attention is given to the issue of how to help the teams using all that software work […]

With the markets in turmoil and fear running rampant through the global economy, you might not think it’s the right moment to start a company. According to at least one well-known venture capitalist, however, it’s a great time to start up. TechCrunch recently caught up with former founder and active venture capitalist Jason Lemkin to […]

AWS has launched its own open-source operating system for running containers on both virtual machines and bare metal hosts. Bottlerocket, as the new OS is called, is basically a stripped-down Linux distribution that’s akin to projects like CoreOS’s now-defunct Container Linux and Google’s container-optimized OS. The OS is currently in its developer preview phase, but […]

"We are a fund, we are not guys who are funding companies as a charity."

Another major tech show has fallen victim to COVID-19 concerns. Rumors around E3’s cancelation began swirling around last night, with a number of publications reporting from sources close to the show. Governing body the Entertainment Software Association made the news official. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, the ESA noted, After careful consultation with our […]

Robotics have found a lot of success in the shipping and warehouse fulfillment categories for their ability to give logistics companies an edge in timing. Amazon is probably the best and most prominent example, with more than 200,000 robots currently deployed in its centers across the U.S. As the retail giant has shifted expectations to […]

The European Commission has set out a plan to move towards a ‘right to repair’ for electronics devices, such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops. More generally it wants to restrict single-use products, tackle “premature obsolescence” and ban the destruction of unsold durable goods — in order to make sustainable products the norm. The proposals […]

Users of Storz & Bickel’s vaporizers can once again connect their vapes to iPhones. The company’s solution comes several months after Apple enacted a ban on apps for tobacco and cannabis vaporizers. This time around, Storz & Bickel turned to a web app to provide iPhone users with expanded controls over their vapes. I found […]

The European Parliament is instructing managers to prepare for all but a minority of staff to work remotely for 70% of the week as of next Monday — dialling up its response to Covid-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Full-time remote working may follow, it has also said. In an email sent today […]

Some Libra Association members like Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase Ventures are double-dipping, backing a competing cryptocurrency developer platform. Launching today with over 50 partners, non-profit The Celo Foundation’s ‘Alliance For Prosperity’ offers a way for developers to build decentralized mobile apps that are based on Celo’s blockchain platform and USD stablecoin. The open-source Celo platform […]

Small and medium enterprises make up the vast majority of businesses globally, and today a startup building merchant services to help them operate is announcing a growth round to address that opportunity. SpotOn — which provides point of sale payment solutions, alongside a number of related tools such as marketing, appointment booking and loyalty services […]

Disney+ has arrived in India — weeks ahead of its scheduled launch date. The American giant revamped Hotstar app and populated the on-demand video streaming service with Disney+ original catalog on Wednesday morning (local time). Unlike in most other markets such as the U.S., Canada, and Australia; in India, Disney is launching Disney+ through an existing […]

Just days ago, Y Combinator announced that its upcoming Demo Day event would be moving online due to “growing concern over COVID-19.” The event, previously planned to span across two days at San Francisco’s Pier 48 building, would instead be hosted entirely online on March 23rd. More changes this evening: YC is shifting Demo Day […]

The number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. crossed 1,000 on Tuesday as President Donald Trump met with the nation’s largest insurers and members of his cabinet to discuss how to pay for treatment and lessen the financial blow of the disease’s spread. With the nation’s healthcare apparatus beginning to get a better understanding of […]

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 Will unreliable research bury your healthcare startup? How healthtech […]

Tesla is in talks with Nashville officials to locate a factory there that will produce its all-electric Cybertruck and Model Y crossover, according to a source familiar with the discussions. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday evening that the company is “scouting” locations to build a new U.S. gigafactory that will produce the Cybertruck and […]

Hitachi Vantara, the wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi that focuses on building hardware and software to help companies manage their data, today announced that it has acquired the assets of Containership, one of the earlier players in the container ecosystem, which shut down its operations last October. Containership, which launched as part of our 2015 […]

Fitness, wallpaper, and lost item-finding startups could have a big new competitor baked into everyone’s iPhones. Leaks of the code from iOS 14 that Apple is expected to reveal in June signal several new features and devices are on the way. Startups could be at risk due to Apple’s ability to integrate these additions at […]

Drones making deliveries is of course the hot new hyperlocal tech play, but where are these futuristic aircraft supposed to land? On the lawn? Matternet has built a landing station for its cargo drones that looks less like a piece of infrastructure and more like a death ray from a ’60s sci-fi movie. Far from […]

Last week, Google sent out a memo to staff recommending that Washington State-based employees work remotely, in order to mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19. Today, the suggestion has been dramatically expanded, in line with the spread of the virus. A new note from the company recommends similar action for employees across North America. A […]

Sometimes, it takes only the promise of a massive government bailout to put that rose-colored filter on the effluent sandwich of today’s economic realities. After yesterday’s terrifying sell-off, American equities recovered today, with the major domestic indices rising to close the day. While the day’s gains do not erase yesterday’s losses, they are a welcome […]

I see far more research articles than I could possibly write up. This column collects the most interesting of those papers and advances, along with notes on why they may prove important in the world of tech and startups. This week: crowdsourcing in space, vision on a chip, robots underground and under the skin and […]

Organizers of the 2020 New York International Auto Show have postponed the event until August due to concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak. The New York Auto Show, which is organized by the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association, was scheduled to begin April 10 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. […]

Startups have welcomed proposals from the European Commission aimed at cutting red tape and shrinking cross-border barriers for small businesses as part of a new EU industrial strategy plan with a twin focus on digital and green transitions unveiled today. Among the package of measures being proposed by the European Union’s executive body are for […]

Dell’s 2015 decision to buy EMC for $67 billion remains the largest pure tech deal in history, but a transaction of such magnitude created a mountain of debt for the Texas-based company and its primary backer, Silver Lake. Dell would eventually take on close to $50 billion in debt. Years later, where are they in […]

The underpinnings of how app store analytics platforms operate were exposed this week by BuzzFeed, which uncovered the network of mobile apps used by popular analytics firm Sensor Tower to amass app data. The company had operated at least 20 apps, including VPNs and ad blockers, whose main purpose was to collect app usage data […]

Twitter today updated its Developer Policy to clarify rules around data usage, including in academic research, as well as its position on bots, among other things. The policy has also been entirely rewritten in an effort to simplify the language used and make it more conversational, Twitter says. The new policy has been shortened from […]

I’m supposed to marry my American fiancé next month, but I really wanted to immigrate based on my own accomplishments. What should I do?

Two video startups are making dueling legal claims against the other. The Wall Street Journal broke the news yesterday that interactive video company Eko is accusing Quibi of infringing on its patented technology. At around the same time, The Hollywood Reporter noted that Quibi (which is launching its short-form mobile video service next month) has […]