Crunch Hype

Apple banned vaping apps in November 2019. Since then, the company has said very little about its decision, leaving many companies upset and confused about its blanket prohibition. Three months later, companies are working around Apple’s ban. Here’s how they’re doing it. Apple’s wide-sweeping ban on vaping affected apps from Juul, Pax and many others, […]

After expressing interest in processing campus security camera footage with facial recognition software, UCLA is backing down. In a letter to Evan Greer of Fight for the Future, a digital privacy advocacy group, UCLA Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck announced the institution would abandon its plans in the face of a backlash from its student […]

The lead European Union privacy regulator for most of big tech has put out its annual report which shows another major bump in complaints filed under the bloc’s updated data protection framework, underlining the ongoing appetite EU citizens have for applying their rights. But what the report doesn’t show is any firm enforcement of EU […]

Amid skyrocketing operating expenses, remote work has become an obsession for Bay Area founders looking to have it both ways, accessing Silicon Valley’s networks of capital and opportunity without paying steep premiums for talent. Daniel Gross has a deeper understanding than most of Silicon Valley’s opportunities. The Jerusalem native was one of Y Combinator’s early […]

Yellow, the accelerator program launched by Snap in 2018, has selected ten companies to join its latest cohort. The new batch of startups coming from across the U.S. and international cities like London, Mexico City, Seoul and Vilnius are building professional social networks for black professionals and blue collar workers, fashion labels, educational tools in […]

Gmail’s search is getting a significant update that will allow users to more easily narrow results to help them find a specific email. Before today, users could type in search filters by hand (e.g. label:work, has:attachment, from:marketing@company.com, etc.) or use the drop-down box to perform an advanced search. But these options were less obvious, cumbersome […]

Netflix announced today that it has acquired “Don’t Look Up,” a comedy written and directed by Adam McKay, with Jennifer Lawrence attached to star. The story sounds like a funhouse reflection of one of today’s other headlines, focusing on two “low-level astronomers” who try to warn the world about the dangers of an asteroid that’s […]

“Yes.” That was Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian’s simple answer when I asked if he thought he’d achieved what he set out to do in his first year. A year ago, he took the helm of Google’s cloud operations — which includes G Suite — and set about giving the organization a sharpened focus by […]

Last week at Stanford, antitrust officials from the U.S. Department of Justice organized a day-long conference that engaged numerous venture capitalists in conversations about big tech. The DOJ wanted to hear from VCs about whether they believe there’s still an opportunity for startups to flourish alongside the likes of Facebook and Google and whether they […]

This is the first Equity Shot in a while. Most of the time Equity comes out on Friday. But sometimes, a topic comes up that demands more immediate attention. That's what happened today.

Over the past 12 months, Maven, the benefits provider focused on women’s health and family planning, has expanded its customer base to include more than 100 companies, and grown its telehealth services to include 1,700 providers across 20 specialties — for services like shipping breast milk, finding a doula and egg freezing, fertility treatments, surrogacy […]

California-based mobility startup Zero Motorcycles has a new e-moto in its lineup — the fully-faired SR/S, unveiled today in New York. The company’s CEO Sam Paschel pulled the cover off the two-wheeled EV, which is based on the platform of the company’s SR/F, released last year. The new SR/S has similar stats to the SR/F: […]

Increased competition from competitors like Hulu and YouTube TV and even Netflix has finally taken its toll on Dish’s live TV streaming service, Sling TV. This week, the company reported its first-ever decline in Sling TV subscribers, with a drop of 94,000 customers in the fourth quarter. In the year-ago Q4, Sling TV had gained […]

We’re not in immediate danger of any asteroids colliding with Earth – at least not as far as anyone’s aware. But it’s not like it hasn’t happened before, and there is an expected near-miss coming up in 2029. Accordingly, it’s probably best to be prepared, and MIT researchers have developed a system that could help […]

TechCrunch is returning to U.C. Berkeley on March 3 to bring together some of the most influential minds in robotics and artificial intelligence. Each year we strive to bring together a cross-section of big companies and exciting new startups, along with top researchers, VCs and thinkers. In addition to a main stage that includes the […]

With the days of desert-themed releases officially behind it, Google today announced the first developer preview of Android 11, which is now available as system images for Google’s own Pixel devices, starting with the Pixel 2. As of now, there is no way to install the updates over the air. That’s usually something the company […]

Founders Fund, the investment firm led by its controversial co-founder Peter Thiel and partners Keith Rabois and Brian Singerman, has closed on $3 billion in new capital across two investment funds, TechCrunch confirmed. News of the firm’s latest fundraising close was first reported in Axios. The firm’s $1.2 billion Founders Fund VII closed in December […]

Google Cloud today announced that its new Seoul region, its first in Korea, is now open for business. The region, which it first talked about last April, will feature three availability zones and support for virtually all of Google Cloud’s standard service, ranging from Compute Engine to BigQuery, Bigtable and Cloud Spanner. With this, Google […]

In the murky world of crypto and blockchain, taking disputes to a traditional court would either land both the plaintiff and the defendant in jail or confuse the court to the point of total befuddlement. You can just imagine the scenario: “What is a DAO?” “It’s a Decentralized autonomous organization, your honor.” “Please speak in […]

TechCrunch Sessions Mobility is gearing up to be a lit event. The one-day event, taking place May 14 in San Jose, has just added Dmitry Shevelenko, co-founder and president of an automatic repositioning startup for micromobility vehicles. Yes, that means we’ll be having autonomous scooters rolling around on stage. #2020 Tortoise, which recently received approval […]

TikTok announced today the introduction of a new set of parental controls, called “Family Safety Mode,” designed to let parents set limits on their teenage children’s use of the TikTok mobile app. The suite of features includes screen time management controls, limits on direct messages, and a restricted mode that limits the appearance of inappropriate […]

The 400,000 distribution yards located in the U.S. are critical hubs for the supply chain. Now one startup is aiming to make the yard truck — the centerpiece of the distribution yard — more efficient, safer and cleaner, with an autonomous system. Outrider, a Golden, Colo. startup previously known as Azevtec, came out of stealth […]

As cybercrime continues to evolve and expand, a startup that is building a business focused on endpoint security has raised a big round of funding. SentinelOne — which provides a machine learning-based solution for monitoring and securing laptops, phones, containerised applications and the many other devices and services connected to a network — has picked up […]

Earlier today TechCrunch covered the launch of a new, $450 million cybersecurity-focused fund, the second from venture group ForgePoint Capital. The new vehicle, inventively named Fund II, will mostly focus on early-stage companies in the cybersecurity space. The fund’s timing is somewhat unsurprising. As we noted in our earlier coverage, the recent IPOs of Cloudflare […]

Weeks after Zomato acquired Uber’s food delivery business in India, its chief local rival is bulking up some ammunition of its own. Swiggy, India’s largest food delivery startup, announced on Wednesday it has raised $113 million as part of its Series I financing round. Prosus Ventures, the biggest venture capital for food delivery startups, led […]

A number of startups are taking on big banks with new apps that offer modern, mobile banking experiences, innovative features and reduced or even zero fees. Entering this now-crowded market is Level, a challenger bank and banking app with advantages like 1% cash back on debit card purchases, 2.1% APY on deposits, early access to […]

Adobe’s Photoshop celebrates its 30th birthday today. Over that time, the app has pretty much become synonymous with photo editing and there will surely be plenty of retrospectives. But to look ahead, Adobe also today announced a number of updates to both the desktop and mobile Photoshop experiences. The marquee feature here is probably the […]

BluBracket, a new security startup from the folks who brought you Vera, came out of stealth today and announced a $6.5 million seed investment. Unusual Ventures led the round with participation by Point72 Ventures, SignalFire and Firebolt Ventures. The company was launched by Ajay Aurora and Prakash Linga, who until last year were CEO and […]

ForgePoint Capital has formally announced its new $450 million fund, which it says is the largest fund dedicated to early stage cybersecurity and privacy startups. The fund, the firm’s second — which it aptly named Fund II — will invest in both early stage and a number of other growth-focused companies. The aim is to […]

Ordway, a Washington, DC startup, is building a platform to deal with all of the stuff that happens after you make sale. It starts with the order and goes all the way to revenue, however that revenue manifests itself — as a one time payment or a recurring subscription. Today the company announced a $10 […]

The internet has, for better or worse, become the default platform for people seeking information, and today one of the companies leveraging that to deliver educational content has raised some funding to fuel its next stage of growth. Udemy, which provides a marketplace offering some 150,000 different online learning courses from business analytics through to […]

Cryptocurrency company has been working with Paysafe to issue the Coinbase Card, a Visa debit card that works with your Coinbase account balance. The company is now a Visa Principal Member, which should help Coinbase rely less on Paysafe and control a bigger chunk of the card payment stack. Coinbase says it is the only […]

Unacademy, one of India’s fastest growing education startups, has just received the backing of a major technology giant: Facebook. The social juggernaut has participated in the four-year-old Indian startup’s Series E financing round, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. General Atlantic is leading the round, the size of which is about $100 million* (see […]

Elon Musk is not one to mince words, but he may have just lost a potential customer because of a cutting tweet. That customer is renowned big deal Bill Gates, who sat down recently with YouTuber Marques Brownlee, who joined the platform in 2009 and has amassed more than 10 million viewers. Gates and Brownlee […]

Over the last year or so, much-to-most of the cryptocurrency world has pivoted from the failure of “fat protocol” tokens and ICOs, and the faltering growth of “Layer 2” payments like Lightning and the late Plasma Network, to the new hotness known as “DeFi,” which this week was used to … hack? acquire? steal? It’s […]

Last week, we interviewed Brendan Wallace, a real estate-focused venture capitalist whose portfolio companies include Opendoor, which buys and sell homes, and scooter company Lime, which helps building owners navigate around parking requirements by installing docking stations instead. We first talked with Wallace almost exactly three years ago when he and partner Brad Greiwe took […]

We all know the cloud infrastructure market is extremely lucrative; analyst firm Canalys reports that the sector reached $30.2 billion in revenue for Q4 2019. Cloud numbers are hard to parse because companies often lump cloud revenue into a single bucket regardless of whether it’s generated by infrastructure or software. What’s interesting about Canalys’s numbers […]

Alphabet today announced that it is calling it quits on its efforts to build and monetize its Makani wind energy kites. Makani, which was founded in 2006, came into Google/Alphabet seven years ago as a Google X project. Last year, the company spun it out of X and made it a standalone Alphabet unit. Now, […]

Meal kit company Blue Apron has long been on the struggle bus — whether it’s been its lackluster debut on the public market, employee lawsuits or layoffs. So, it should come as no surprise that the company is considering selling itself in order to maximize value for shareholders. In addition to a potential sale, Blue Apron […]

Is “Twitter Stories” on the way? Or will we just get tools to send prettier tweets? Well now Twitter has the talent for both as it’s just acquired Chroma Labs. Co-founded by Instagram Boomerang inventor John Barnett, Chroma Labs’ Chroma Stories app let you fill in stylish layout templates and frames for posting collages and […]

Full disclosure one: I’ve hosted a lot of independent podcasts, with varying degrees of success. Full disclosure two: This story is being hosted on a site owned by a corporate media giant. There’s even some chance that, by the time it’s published, the decision will be made to host it behind a paywall. The fact […]

Local authorities in India-controlled Kashmir have opened a case against hundreds of people who used virtual private networks (VPNs) to circumvent a social media ban in the disputed Himalayan region in a move that has been denounced by human rights and privacy activists. Tahir Ashraf, who heads the police cyber division in Srinagar, said on […]

The death of Mobile World Congress 2020 started as a trickle. First, it was an understandably nervous ZTE. As a Chinese company, it was undoubtedly going to receive extra scrutiny — never mind that ZTE’s Shenzhen headquarters are a two-hour flight from Wuhan. Soon enough, South Korea’s LG backed out, followed by Nvidia and Ericsson. […]

Over the past four years, TechCrunch has brought together some of the biggest names in robotics — founders, CEOs, VCs and researchers — for TC Sessions: Robotics + AI. The show has provided a unique opportunity to explore the future and present of robotics, AI and the automation technologies that will define our professional and […]

Patreon, a platform for creators to earn monetary support from fans, is busting out the checkbook. The startup isn’t playing VC quite yet with newly-launched Patreon Capital but they are hocking non-equity cash advances (loans!) for Patreon customers in need of some extra cash for big creative rollouts. Patreon has already made about a dozen […]

A new startup called Arize AI is building what it calls a real-time analytics platform for “observability” in artificial intelligence and machine learning. The company is led by CEO Jason Lopatecki, who has also served as chief strategy officer and chief innovation officer at TubeMogul, the video ad company acquired by Adobe. TubeMogul’s co-founder and […]

Dell Technologies announced today that it was selling legacy security firm RSA for $2.075 billion to a consortium of investors led by Symphony Technology Group. Other investors include Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board and AlpInvest Partners. RSA came to Dell when it bought EMC for $67 billion in 2015. EMC bought the company in 2006 […]

Back in 2018, OurPath emerged as a startup in the U.K. tackling the problem of diabetes. The company helped customers fight the disease, and raised a $3 million round of funding by combining advice from health experts with tracking technology via a smartphone app to help people build healthy habits and lose weight. Now rebranded […]

Support for standalone streaming has come to Pandora’s Apple Watch app. The company today announced the official launch of its new standalone app for Apple Watch that lets you listen to music and podcasts on the go, even without your iPhone. The launch makes Pandora the first major third-party — meaning, first besides Apple Music […]

Toronto-based telecommunications startup Kepler Communications surprised many recently when it revealed plans to establish its own satellite assembly and base the operation in its own hometown instead of contracting the work to an existing manufacturer. It might seem a perplexing and unnecessarily costly choice at first, but I spoke to Kepler CEO and co-founder Mina […]