Crunch Hype

While SaaS as a cohort isn't having a very good time lately, there are still outlier valuations available for stand-out companies in the category.

The European Commission announced yesterday it’s reached a data-sharing agreement with vacation rental platforms Airbnb, Booking.com, Expedia Group and Tripadvisor — trumpeting the arrangement as a “landmark agreement” which will allow the EU’s statistical office to publish data on short-stay accommodations offered via these platforms across the bloc. It said it wants to encourage “balanced” […]

Tens of millions of merchants and users in India are struggling to make online transactions and use several popular services after the nation’s central bank seized control of Yes Bank, the fourth largest lender in the country. The emergency takeover of the private sector bank has taken off several financial startups that rely on it […]

Convert Group, a startup based in Athens that offers a SaaS to help FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) brands understand how they are performing across e-commerce, has raised €1.2 million in seed funding. The investment comes from Uni.fund, which is backed by the EquiFund investment platform (an initiative created by cooperation between the Hellenic Republic and […]

ChatableApps, a U.K. startup commercialising the work of auditory neural signal processing researcher Dr. Andy Simpson, has quietly picked up seed money from Mark Cuban. The company has built a smartphone app that provides hearing assistance by removing background noise in near real-time. Alongside Simpson, the company’s co-founders are Brendan O’Driscoll, Aidan Sliney and George […]

As more COVID-19 cases are identified in the United States, some companies are asking employees to work from home if possible. But that impacts the jobs of people who work in on-site operations, including many who are paid by the hour. Today Microsoft said that it will continue paying all vendor hourly service providers in […]

Spindrift, maker of fizzy soda and sparkling water, has raised $29.8 million in a funding round, per an SEC filing. The Charlestown, Mass. company was founded by Bill Creelman and has raised $70 million in known venture capital funding to date, per Crunchbase data. The company did not immediately respond to request for comment. Previous […]

Axiom Space is looking to make history by sending three passengers on a round-trip journey to the International Space Station for the low, low price of $55 million. The Houston -based, venture-backed company has signed a contract with SpaceX for a Crew Dragon flight which will transport a commander trained by Axiom along with three […]

Another afternoon, another round of funding for a mobile banking app. This time, it’s Empower Finance, a San Francisco-based company that’s headed up by former Sequoia Capital partner Warren Hogarth and which just closed on $20 million in Series A funding from Icon Ventures and Defy Ventures. David Velez, who is the founder and CEO […]

Social networks are in for a rude copyright awakening. A new European Union law called Article 17 essentially eradicates safe harbor and requires that they’ve made their “best effort” to get licenses from rights holders for all content on their platform. If a user uploads a video with a popular song in the background, tech […]

Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments. The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most interested in here. “Building AI supercomputers is exciting […]

Are you tired of TechCrunch reporting on the daily stock market gyrations? Well, we’re tired of writing about them. And yet here we are, because stonks yet again did wild things that we have to talk about. Markets are still skittish about the effect the rapidly spreading novel coronavirus, COVID-19, will have on the economy. […]

Founded in 2005, Etsy was born before cloud infrastructure was even a thing. As the company expanded, it managed all of its operations in the same way startups did in those days — using private data centers. But a couple of years ago, the online marketplace for crafts and vintage items decided to modernize and […]

The $71 million in financing that quantum computing technology developer Rigetti Computing recently raised came at a significant cut to the company’s valuation, according to several sources with knowledge of the company. The company declined to comment on its valuation or the recent round of funding it secured. Rigetti is one of a handful of […]

It has become a part-time job to navigate and if necessary block the ads and other nuisances that plague practically every website today. DuckDuckGo is hoping to make this easier and more lightweight with its own list of prime offenders that’s kept constantly fresh by its own crawlers. Naturally, it’s free. In a blog post […]

Google this week issued a recommendation for all Washington State employees to work remotely, citing growing fears around the spread of COVID-19. A spokesperson confirmed the recommendation in an email with TechCrunch. The move comes after a consultation with local health officials. The software giant has not closed the offices outright, nor is it planning […]

Last year, Twitter expanded its rules around hate speech to include dehumanizing speech against religious groups. Today, Twitter says it’s expanding its rule to also include language that dehumanizes people on the basis of their age, disability or disease. The latter, of course, is a timely addition given that the spread of the novel coronavirus […]

Walmart is looking to hook more consumers on its online grocery shopping experience by adding Walmart Grocery to its main Walmart mobile application. For years, the retailer has operated two separate apps: its flagship Walmart app (the blue one) and its separate Walmart Grocery app (the orange one). This meant shoppers had to download and […]

The next NASA rover to go to Mars has shed its code name and assumed a new one, sourced from the ingenuous youth of our nation. Keeping with the tradition of using virtues as names, the Mars 2020 rover will henceforth be known as “Perseverance.” This particular virtue was suggested by Alexander Mather, a middle-schooler […]

Ridesharing company Lyft has advised its San Francisco employees to go home after learning one staff member was in contact with someone exposed to coronavirus, or COVID-19. The team member has not exhibited any symptoms and is in touch with medical professionals, Lyft spokesperson Alexandra LaManna told TechCrunch. “We are basing every step of our […]

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey might not spend six months a year in Africa, claims the real product development is under the hood, and gives an excuse for deleting Vine before it could become TikTok. Today he tweeted, via Twitter’s investor relations account, a multi-pronged defense of his leadership and the company’s progress. The proclamations come […]

Kinnos, a New York-based startup, was founded six years ago, but what the five-person company produces is suddenly top of mind — and a new round of funding reflects as much. To wit, Kinnos, which makes additives that cause disinfectants to turn blue long enough to ensure a surface has actually been covered, just closed […]

We all know the disruptive stories of female-founded startups like Glossier and ezCater. And we also know how those success stories belie the much harder time thousands of other women entrepreneurs have when it comes to raising capital. That’s why it’s so important to have historical data and a window into how these things may […]

The Chinese government has been removing criticism of its coronavirus response from apps like Weibo, the local equivalent of Twitter. But before it can, that content is being saved, decentralized, and highlighted thanks to Arweave’s Permaweb. Today it’s announcing another $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. Arweave has […]

When Ada Health was founded nine years ago, hardly anyone was talking about combining artificial intelligence and physician care — outside of a handful of futurists. But the chatbot boom gave way to a powerful combination of AI-augmented health care which others, like Babylon Health in 2013 and KRY in 2015, also capitalized on. The […]

Those TCL concept phones that were set for Mobile World Congress have finally arrived in prototype form. The Chinese hardware maker showcased a pair of devices this week, including one that saw a brief unveiling during a CES event. The usual concept caveat certainly applies here. As with concept cars, TCL is clearly gauging consumer […]

Frontline Ventures, based between Dublin and London, has announced a new $80 million fund designed to assist US tech companies expanding into Europe. The new FrontlineX fund — which means the firm now has $200 million under management — focuses mainly on growth-stage B2B companies and invest up to $5 million per company alongside lead […]

Reddit, a discussion website and home to thousands of communities, announced this week a new partnership with mental health service, Crisis Text Line. The company offers a mental health text line offering live, 24/7 support for people in crisis, including those considering suicide or engaging in self-harm. With this partnership, Reddit users will be able […]

This morning Airbase, a startup that sells spend and budgeting software for companies, announced a $23.5 million extension to its Series A. TechCrunch covered the company’s first Series A tranche last year when it put together a $7 million round. The firm has now raised a hair under $31 million, including a founder-supplied $300,000 initial […]

The priorities of venture capitalists don’t always align with those of startup founders and their workers. That’s why we’ve started to see more conversation and activity around cooperatives and the idea of Exiting to Community, spearheaded by Nathan Schneider, a professor of media studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Where startups can hit a […]

Apple this week alerted developers to a new set of App Store Review Guidelines which detail which apps will be accepted or rejected, and what apps are allowed to do. The changes to the guidelines impact reviews, push notifications, Sign in with Apple, data collection and storage, mobile device management, and more, the company says. […]

Cobalt.io wants to change the way companies purchase and pay for pen testing services, which test an application for vulnerabilities before it goes live. Today, the company announced a number of enhancements to the platform. Jacob Hansen, CEO and co-founder at Cobalt, says the pen testing business typically involves an expensive and time-consuming exercise, which […]

After going “back to the future” with a $600 million fund last year, VC firm Kleiner Perkins is aiming for some “returns of the Jedi” with its freshest (and refocused) fund. With Star Wars references on the forefront in its announcement, the firm today announced that it has closed its largest fund to date: KP […]

Emma, the personal finance management app that bills itself as your best “financial friend,” has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. Connect Ventures led the round, with participation from Ithaca Investments, Tiny.vc and existing investor, Aglaé Ventures. The fintech previously raised $700,000 in angel funding in June 2018. Launched in the U.K. in early 2018 […]

Chargify, the subscription billing platform, announced today that it has acquired event streaming company, Keen for an undisclosed amount. One interesting aspect of this deal is that both companies are part of the Scaleworks private equity firm’s stable of companies. Keen gives Chargify an event streaming business, and it has taken advantage of that by […]

Google Cloud today announced a new solution for its telecom customers: Anthos for Telecom. You can think of this as a specialized edition of Google’s container-based Anthos multi-cloud platform for both modernizing existing applications and building new ones on top of Kubernetes. The announcement, which was originally slated for MWC, doesn’t come as a major […]

Bluecrew, a flexible staffing business owned by holding company IAC, is launching a new mobile app called Bluecrew Manager. Rather than relying on a network of independent contractors, Bluecrew hires its own W-2 employees, who in turn have the option to accept hourly jobs from Bluecrew customers. The company already offered web-based management tools for […]

We’re excited to announce a new community perk in partnership with Crunchbase. Starting today, annual and two-year members of Extra Crunch that are new to Crunchbase can get 20% off a Crunchbase Pro subscription. Crunchbase is the leading provider of private-company prospecting and research solutions. More than 55 million users — including salespeople, entrepreneurs, investors […]

The next-gen flavor of mobile connectivity, 5G, is now live in 24 markets globally, per global mobile industry association the GSMA — which has just published its annual state of the global mobile economy report. The cutting edge network tech is capable of supporting speeds up to 100x faster than LTE/4G and delivering latency of […]

An Indonesian startup called Newman’s is using telemedicine to help Indonesian patients get care for stigmatized health issues. Part of Y Combinator’s winter 2020 batch, the startup launched last month with prescription hair loss treatments and plans to expand into other verticals, including erectile dysfunction and smoking cessation. Newman’s was founded by Elsen Wiraatmadja, Alfred […]

Five years ago, it was hard to come by any numbers for annual VC investment in Africa. These days the challenge is choosing which number to follow. That’s the case for three venture funding studies for Africa that turned up varied results. The numbers and variance Investment stats released by media outlet Disrupt Africa, data-base […]

Camille Samuels has spent the last five years as a partner with the healthcare venture firm Venrock and a dozen years before that with Versant Ventures, where she was a managing director. This self-described “grizzled veteran” of the industry has participated in companies that have collectively taken half a dozen drugs to market, though she […]

Anthony Levandowski, the engineer and autonomous vehicle startup founder who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been ordered to pay $179 million to end a contract dispute over his departure from Google. Reuters was the first to report the court order. An arbitration panel ruled in December […]

Last July, Hawaii representative and longshot Democratic presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard filed a lawsuit against Google, accusing the company of violating her First Amendment rights to free speech when it briefly suspended her campaign’s ad account. On Wednesday, California’s Central District Court rejected the suit outright. Gabbard’s campaign, Tulsi Now, Inc., asked for $50 million […]

Boosted, the startup behind the Boosted Boards and, more recently, the Boosted Rev electric scooter, has laid off “a significant portion” of its team, the company announced today. The company is now actively seeking a buyer. Boosted attributes the layoffs to the costs of developing, producing and maintaining electric vehicles and the “unplanned challenge with […]

San Francisco is poised to pass a controversial proposition that would almost certainly limit further office space development in the city, perhaps pushing more tech companies and startups to set up their HQs elsewhere. Prop E‘s passing, which seemed likely Wednesday afternoon following Tuesday’s election, ties office development approval to the city’s ability to meet […]

While the aftermath of Super Tuesday has left the Democratic Party riven between its more liberal and moderate wings, investors viewed last night’s results as a win for business and markets. Shaking off the steady beat of bad news about the advance of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 within the U.S., major markets rose on Wednesday […]

Today after the bell, Zoom reported its Q4 earnings. The company’s recorded revenue of $188.3 million and its adjusted per-share profit of $0.15 were ahead of expectations, including $176.55 million in revenue and earnings per share of $0.07, according to Yahoo Finance averages. Down several points during a broad market rally, Zoom has been a […]

Across the U.S., sustainable microgrids are emerging as a vital tool in the fight against climate change and increasingly common natural disasters.

It’s the best and worst of times for travel startups. Massive growth over the past few decades has made tourism one of the big global industries, covering everything from recreation to business conferences to shopping sprees. But doubts about the future of the industry are growing — and not just because of the novel coronavirus […]