Crunch Hype

Fifth Wall Ventures, a four-year-old, the L.A.-based, real-estate focused venture firm, has just closed a $100 million vehicle called that it’s calling its “retail fund.” The vehicle comes hot on the heels of a $212 million debut fund that Fifth Wall closed in 2017, which was itself soon followed by a second, $503 million flagship […]

India is unlikely to have any substantial coverage of 5G until at least the end of next year, with telecom operators in the country yet to participate in spectrum auction. But that hasn’t stopped Chinese vendors Oppo, Vivo, and Xiaomi from bringing 5G-enabled smartphones to the world’s second largest handset market. Xiaomi, Vivo’s sub-brand iQoo, […]

When it comes to the internet, content may be king, but in many cases, the emperor has no clothes. That is to say, the masses may click on interesting stories, video, music and other media, but building a lucrative business around that content can be a struggle, with advertising-based models often providing little in the […]

Snapask, an on-demand tutoring app, announced today that it has raised $35 million in Series B funding. Earmarked for the startup’s expansion in Southeast Asia, the round was led by Asia Partners and Intervest. Launched in Hong Kong five years ago, Snapask has now raised a total of $50 million and operates in Hong Kong, […]

Stonly is building a service for customer support teams so that they can share step-by-step guides to solve the most common issues. The startup just raised a $3.5 million funding round led by Accel with business angels also participating, such as Eventbrite CTO Renaud Visage and PeopleDoc founders Jonathan Benhamou and Clément Buyse. The startup […]

Welcome to the $100 million ARR club, BounceX. This morning (evening, timezone depending), BounceX, a New York-based marketing technology startup, announced that it has reached the $100 million annual recurring revenue (ARR) threshold, adding its name to our running list of companies that have crossed over into nine-figure revenue while remaining private. BounceX also announced […]

UK startup Babylon Health pulled app data on a critical user in order to create a press release in which it publicly attacks the UK doctor who has spent years raising patient safety concerns about the symptom triage chatbot service. In the press release released late Monday Babylon refers to Dr David Watkins — via […]

The student loan crisis in the U.S. has left venture capitalists searching for novel approaches to financing higher education, but can the same systems designed for helping coders in Silicon Valley get jobs at Google help underserved students in developing countries become part of a global work force? Similar to the buzzy San Francisco startup […]

It’s been a big news day for Salesforce . It announced that co-CEO Keith Block would be stepping down, and that it had acquired Vlocity for $1.33 billion in an all-cash deal. It’s no coincidence that Salesforce targeted this startup. It’s a firm that builds six industry-specific CRMs on top of Salesforce — communications, media […]

Checkout.com, the quiet London-based payment platform, has acquired its first startup, ProcessOut. Checkout.com surprised everyone last year when it announced a gigantic $230 million Series A round. It turns out the payment processing boom is not over yet. Checkout.com focuses on enterprise clients with customers all around the world. It provides a full-stack payment service, […]

Let’s talk about money. More specifically, let’s talk about how much things cost. A few years back, the price of flagship smartphones leapt above the $1,000 threshold, owing largely to the cost of screen technology. It’s a tough calculus, but that’s the price of innovation. The rising cost of smartphones is largely regarded as a […]

Salesforce today announced that Keith Block, the company’s co-CEO, is stepping down. This leaves company founder Marc Benioff as the sole CEO and chair of the CRM juggernaut. Block’s bio has already been wiped from Salesforce’s leadership page. Block stepped into the co-CEO role in 2018, after a long career at the company that saw […]

The Walt Disney Company announced this afternoon that Robert Iger, the company’s long-time CEO who ushered in the company’s lush franchise and entertainment platform profits, will step down immediately as chief executive. Bob Chapek, a long-time senior exec at the company who most recently held the position of chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, […]

Facebook is aiming to build on its VR hardware launches of 2019 with an investment in virtual reality software. Facebook announced today that it has acquired Bay Area VR studio Sanzaru Games, the developer of “Asgard’s Wrath,” considered by many enthusiasts to be one of the Oculus Rift’s best games. Terms of the deal weren’t […]

A significant majority of Americans have lost faith in tech companies’ ability to prevent the misuse of their platforms to influence the 2020 presidential election, according to a new study from Pew Research Center, released today. The study found that nearly three-quarters of Americans (74%) don’t believe platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google will be […]

Comcast has acquired Xumo, a free, ad-supported streaming service with more than 190 channels. The service has a complicated ownership history — it began in 2011 as a joint venture between Panasonic and Myspace parent company Viant, which was acquired by Time Inc. in 2016, and then Time Inc. was later acquired by Meredith. The companies […]

Security is all too often focused on keeping hackers out and breaches at bay. But in the case of Remine, a real estate intelligence startup, it left its doors wide open for anyone to run rampant. Remine is a little-known but major player in the real estate analytics and intelligence market. It works by collecting […]

Just under a month ago Facebook switched on global availability of a tool which affords users a glimpse into the murky world of tracking that its business relies upon to profile users of the wider web for ad targeting purposes. Facebook is not going boldly into transparent daylight — but rather offering what privacy rights […]

Vimeo signaled last year its plans to move further into the social video creation and editing space with its acquisition of short-form video editor Magisto. Today, the company is unveiling the results of its work in the months following the deal’s close with the debut of Vimeo Create. The new app includes a set of […]

Silicon Valley air purifier startup Molekule was born out of an idea Dr. Yogi Goswami had back in the ’90s using photo-voltaic technology to kill air pollutants. His son, a young boy at the time, suffered from severe allergies and Dr. Goswami wanted to build something those like him could use in their home to […]

The launch industry is undergoing a number of major changes, among them the shift from traditional manufacturing to 3D printing — which Relativity Space is spearheading. The company plans to build 95% of its rocket using the world’s biggest 3D printers, and could launch as early as next year. Co-founder and CEO Tim Ellis will […]

Pan-African e-commerce company Jumia got into the black (by a small amount) on its gross profit vs. fulfillment expenses, expanded financial services and still posted losses. The online sales company, with an operations center in China, also anticipates some negative impact on 2020 growth from the coronavirus outbreak, CEO Sacha Poigonnec said. These were highlights […]

Artificial intelligence is one of the most important fields in technology right now, which makes it ripe for buzzword-savvy startups to leverage for attention. But while machine learning and related technologies are now frequently employed, it’s less common that it’s central to a company’s strategy and IP. It’s important to note that this sort of […]

French startup Cityscoot is raising a $25.6 million (€23.6 million) funding round from Allianz France, Demeter as well as existing investors Groupe RATP and Banque des Territoires. The startup is also raising at least $6.5 million (€6 million) in debt in order to finance its service. Cityscoot is a free-floating electric scooter service (moped scooters). […]

Amazon expands its Just Walk Out technology beyond convenience stores, Intuit acquires Credit Karma in its biggest acquisition ever and Grab raises hundreds of millions of dollars. Here’s your Daily Crunch for February 25, 2020. 1. Amazon opens its first cashierless grocery store Amazon is opening its first grocery store to pilot the use of […]

Hotstar, India’s largest on-demand video streaming service with over 300 million users, has blocked the newest episode of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” that was critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a move that has angered many of its customers ahead of Disney+’s launch in one of the world’s largest entertainment markets next […]

To ward off a hostile takeover bid by Xerox, which is a much smaller company, HP (not to be confused with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a separate public company) is promising its investors billions and billions of dollars. All investors have to do to get the goods is reject the Xerox deal. In a letter to […]

Recapped. Layoffs. Slowdown. CEO transition. Budget cuts. Downsizing. In spite of a spate of massive startup exits the last few months, culminating in fintech’s shining moment yesterday with Intuit’s $7.1 billion acquisition of Credit Karma, it’s been a tough period for the startup world. Layoffs abound, centered perhaps on SoftBank’s Vision Fund portfolio but hardly […]

A new web browser from Opera launching today aims to help users get their chaotic mess of open tabs back under control. In the latest release of Opera’s desktop browser (codenamed R2020), the company is introducing a new feature called “Workspaces” that allows you to organize your tabs based on different contexts — for example, […]

The night before the Robotics + AI event at UC Berkeley, TechCrunch is hosting a private Pitch Night, featuring innovative startups in robotics and artificial intelligence. After reviewing hundreds of applications, TechCrunch selected the early stage startups below to pitch in front of industry executives, TC writers and our expert panel of judges – Brian […]

Six weeks after we broke the news that cannabis startup Eaze was running out of money, laying off more employees and scrambling to pay its bills and stay afloat as it worked on a pivot to selling its own supply rather than just that of third-party providers, the company has finally closed some funding and […]

Another on-demand transport app is making a move into payments to expand the existing relationship with its customers (and subsequent margins that it makes from serving them). Bird today announced the launch of Bird Pay, a service that will let people use its app not just to hire e-scooters, but to purchase items from local participating […]

TripActions, a Palo Alto-based, corporate travel-focused unicorn, has secured a new, half-billion-dollar credit facility to help support the launch of its second product line. Called TripActions Liquid, the service helps companies that do not offer corporate cards to workers a way to avoid forcing those employees to use their personal cards to float costs for […]

Mozilla will bring its new DNS-over-HTTPS security feature to all Firefox users in the U.S. by default in the coming weeks, the browser maker has confirmed. It follows a year-long effort to test the new security feature, which aims to make browsing the web more secure and private. Whenever you visit a website — even […]

Southeast Asian on-demand transport startup Gojek denies that it is involved in talks to merge with Grab but today Grab announced a piece of news that — at the very least — will divert attention from that story, or more likely stoke the fires of speculation that it is indeed gearing up for a deal: […]

Speedinvest, the European seed-stage VC that was started from Vienna but has since added offices in London, Berlin, Munich and San Francisco, has raised a new €190 million fund. It brings the firm’s total assets under management to more than €400 million. Describing its third fund as “oversubscribed” and ahead of schedule, SpeedInvest’s remit remains […]

The U.K. has a strong history when it comes to processors, but the global chip market has seen some ups and downs of late. Today comes some big news that underscores how investors are doubling down on one of the big hopefuls for the next generation of chipmaking to see it through any possible winter […]

Fintech startup Revolut is raising a large Series D round of funding. TCV is leading the $500 million round, valuing the company at $5.5 billion. Over the past few years, Revolut has raised $836 million in total. Some existing investors are also participating in today’s funding round, but Revolut isn’t sharing names. Previous investors include […]

Oxx, a European venture capital firm co-founded by Richard Anton and Mikael Johnsson, this month announced the closing of its debut fund of $133 million to back “Europe’s most promising SaaS companies” at Series A and beyond. Launched in 2017 and headquartered in London and Stockholm, Oxx pitches itself as one of only a few […]

The specter of constant surveillance hangs over all of us in ways we don't even fully understand, but it is also possible to turn the tools of the watchers against them. Forensic Architecture is exhibiting several long-term projects at the Museum of Art and Design in Miami that use the omnipresence of technology as a way to expose crimes and violence by oppressive states.

Boris Renski, the co-founder of Mirantis, one of the earliest and best-funded players in the OpenStack space a few years ago (which then mostly pivoted to Kubernetes and DevOps), has left his role as CMO to focus his efforts on a new startup: FreedomFi. The new company brings together open-source hardware and software to give […]

Allowance is going digital. Venmo has been spotted prototyping a new feature that would allow adult users to create for their teenage children a debit card connected to their account. That could potentially let parents set spending notifications and limits while giving kids more flexibility in urgent situations than a few dollars stuffed in a […]

Jordi Greenham, the co-founder and CEO of Mexican long-term rentals startup Homie, has resigned after a sexual harassment investigation was carried out by the company’s ethics board. On February 14, Homie launched an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Greenham, according to a corporate Facebook post. The message followed reports of sexual harassment that […]

MWC may have been canceled on account of rising coronavirus concerns, but the party still went on for Huawei (albeit to what appears to have been a mostly empty room). A year after wowing crowds with the Mate X, the company is introducing the Mate Xs. Rather than a proper successor, the device appears to […]

Busy week for SpaceX: funding, space tourism and next-gen spacecraft. There's also a space station resupply mission coming up, and its first human spaceflight mission is imminent.

The week is kicking off with a major piece of M&A in the world of financial technology startups. Today Intuit — the accounting, tax filing and financial planning software giant behind QuickBooks, TurboTax and Mint, confirmed that it plans to acquire Credit Karma — the fintech startup with more than 100 million registered users, 37 […]

Inspired by the work of Instacart shoppers over the last few years, a handful of workers at Target-owned Shipt, a grocery delivery service, are beginning to organize. With the help of two key Instacart shopper-activists, Vanessa Bain and Sarah Clarke, who goes by a pseudonym, Shipt workers are now demanding better wages and the elimination […]

The new season of Fortnite’s second chapter finally landed last week, shaking up a reimagined map that burst dramatically out of a black hole in the game last year. Over the weekend, we scoped out what’s changed in a game now sprinkled with secret agents, laser beams and all manner of things dipped in gold. […]

Which one should you attend? How do you get in? And above all, what is it that you want to get out of this schmooze session?

Netflix is adding a new feature that will rank the 10 most popular programs on its service in your country, the company announced today. Its top 10 Overall list will display the most popular programs from across all Netflix content, including both movies and shows. In addition, separate top 10 lists for just movies and […]