Crunch Hype

Today SiteMinder, an Australian software company focused on the hotel industry, announced a $70 million (USD) round that values the company at $750 million. That’s about $1.08 billion in Australian dollars, making the firm a Down Under Unicorn, even if it’s a bit shy here in America. According to SiteMinder, the round was “led by […]

Sleep is the next battleground on which the war for wearable health will be waged. Smartwatch and fitness band makers have been dipping their collective toes in the water for a few years now, but there’s only so much that can be done from the wrist. I wrote a CES trend piece earlier this week […]

Goldman Sachs is investing in African tech companies. The venerable American investment bank and financial services firm has backed startups from Kenya to Nigeria and taken a significant stake in e-commerce venture Jumia, which listed on the NYSE in 2019. Though Goldman declined to comment on its Africa VC activities for this article, the company […]

Forget the consumer market for electric vehicles. It turns out delivery vehicles could be the ‘Trojan horse’ for electric to really take off. Korean auto giants Hyundai and Kia put over $110 million in UK startup Arrival, which emerged from relative stealth today. The investment immediately makes Arrival one of Britain’s most valuable startups, valuing […]

Matera, the French startup formerly known as illiCopro, is raising an $11.2 million funding round (€10 million). The company has been building a SaaS platform to give you all the tools you need to handle property management for your residential building. Index Ventures is leading the round, with existing investor Samaipata also participating. Business angels, […]

With the Tokyo Summer Olympics rapidly approaching, 2020 is shaping up to be a big year for TRI-AD (Toyota Research Institute – Advanced Development). Opened in 2018, the research wing is devoted to bringing some of TRI’s work into practice. The organization is heavily invested in both autonomous driving and other key robotics projects. TRI-AD’s […]

Despite the U.S. government’s concerns over TikTok which most recently led to the U.S. Navy banning service members’ use of the app, TikTok had a stellar 2019 in terms of both downloads and revenue. According to new data from Sensor Tower, 44% of TikTok’s total 1.65 billion downloads to date, or 738+ million installs, took […]

Here is a small but useful new feature in Google Chrome: global media controls that allow you to control all of the audio and video sources in your current tabs from a single widget. With this, you can switch to the next song from your favorite web-based music streaming service, start and stop a YouTube […]

Venture Highway, a VC firm in India founded by former Google executive Samir Sood, said on Thursday it has raised $78.6 million for its second fund as it looks to double down on investing in early-stage startups. The firm, founded in 2015, has invested in more than two dozen startups to date, including social network […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. After a short pause, we’re back on the topic of unicorn layoffs. While it’s cheery that a number of companies are chugging ahead with ARR growth powered by efficient spend, not every company has taken […]

Pinterest today released its latest diversity report, showing slight gains in representation of underrepresented minorities while also hitting its three hiring goals. The company has long been recognized as an industry leader when it comes to promoting diversity and inclusion. It was one of the first tech companies to publicly release diversity data, and in […]

WorkBoard, a SaaS startup that provides goal setting and management software to other companies, announced today that it has closed a $30 million Series C. The new capital comes less than a year after the startup raised a $23 million Series B. WorkBoard has raised $66.6 million to date, according to Crunchbase. Andreessen Horowitz’s David […]

The loss of several big-name streamers is finally taking its toll on Twitch, according to a new report from StreamLabs and Newzoo out today. In August 2019, top streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, announced his intention to leave Twitch for Microsoft Mixer. Several others have since defected as well, including competitive gamer Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek, who […]

Epsagon, an Israeli startup that wants to help monitor modern development environments like serverless and containers, announced a $16 million Series A today. U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a new investor led the round. Previous investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and StageOne Ventures also participated. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $20 million, according to the […]

The Allen Institute for AI (AI2) started its incubator up two years ago, helping launch companies like Xnor.ai, Blue Canoe, and WellSaidLabs. Their success has attracted funding from not just local Seattle VC outfit Madrona, but Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, and Two Sigma as well, resulting in a new $10M fund that should help keep the […]

Cyral, an early stage startup that helps protect data stored in cloud repositories, announced an $11 million Series A today. The company also revealed a previous undisclosed $4.1 million angel investment, making the total $15.1 million. The Series A was led by Redpoint Ventures. A.Capital Ventures, Costanoa VC, Firebolt, SV Angel and Trifecta Capital also […]

India’s trade minister isn’t impressed with Amazon’s new $1 billion investment in the country. A day after Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos announced that his company is pumping in an additional $1 billion into its India operations, making the total local investment to date to $6.5 billion, the nation’s trade minister Piyush Goyal said Amazon’s […]

Companies keep trying to make glassholes happen. Understandably. After the smartphone and the wrist, the face is the next local battlefield for computational space, if decades of science fiction movies have taught us anything. But we’ve seen the Google Glass, the Snapchat Spectacles, The Magic Leap, the whatever that thing that Samsung just semi-announced was. […]

Wipro Ventures, the investment arm of one of India’s largest IT companies by market capitalization, said on Thursday it has raised $150 million for its second fund as it looks to invest in more enterprise startups and venture capitalist funds. As with its $100 million maiden fund in 2015, Wipro Ventures will use its second […]

Bolt, the billion-dollar startup out of Estonia that’s building a ride-hailing, scooter and food delivery business across Europe and Africa, has picked up a tranche of funding in its bid to take on Uber and the rest in the world of on-demand transportation. The company has picked up €50 million (about $56 million) from the European […]

Irina Haivas, the surgeon-turned-VC that joined London-based VC firm Atomico in late 2018 and has already led several investments on behalf of the firm, has been promoted to partner. Her Atomico investments to date include: Healx, the Cambridge, U.K.-based startup using AI to help discover new treatments for rare diseases (and is clearly a big […]

Getsafe, the German insurtech that offers home contents insurance via an app, has launched in the U.K., despite an increasingly competitive market for insurance in the country, and the thorny regulatory issue of Brexit. This has seen Getsafe incorporate an independent British subsidiary based in London, in order to shield it ahead of future political […]

I love music. Seriously, it’s one of the few things that brings solace in this cold, lonely world. Want to go deep on Joni Mitchell, William Onyeabor or Pablo Casals? I’m game. Yes, I worked at multiple record stores years before TechCrunch. Yes, I will always be that guy. What I will never be, however, […]

“I think there are fewer fake robots this year.” I spoke to a lot of roboticists and robot-adjacent folks at this year’s CES, but that comment from Labrador Systems co-funder/CEO Mike Dooley summed up the situation nicely. The show is slowly, but steadily, starting to take robotics more seriously. It’s true that words like “fake” […]

Joby Aviation has raised a $590 million Series C round of funding, including $394 million from lead investor Toyota Motor Corporation, the company announced today. Joby is in the process of developing an electric air taxi service, which will make use of in-house developed electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that will in part […]

Xnor.ai, spun off in 2017 from the nonprofit Allen Institute for AI, has reportedly been acquired by Apple for about $200 million. A source close to the company corroborated a report this morning from GeekWire to that effect.

If you’re a current student and you love robots — and the AI that drives them — you do not want to miss out on TC Sessions: Robotics + AI 2020. Our day-long deep dive into these two life-altering technologies takes place on March 3 at UC Berkeley and features the best and brightest minds, […]

In a tweet late Tuesday, President Trump criticized Apple for refusing “to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements.” Trump was specifically referring to a locked iPhone that belonged to a Saudi airman who killed three U.S sailors in an attack on a Florida base in December. It’s only the latest […]

Precise.ly, the new genomics startup launched by 23andMe co-founder Linda Avey and Aneil Mallavarapu, is taking its spin on direct to consumer personalized genomics to India through a partnership with Naryana Health, one of India’s leading specialty hospital networks. Narayana, a company that operates a network of 24 hospitals serving 2.5 million patients, is one […]

Mobileye has built a multi-billion-dollar business supplying automakers with computer vision technology that powers advanced driver assistance systems. It’s a business that last year generated nearly $1 billion in sales for the company. Today, 54 million vehicles on the road are using Mobileye’s computer vision technology. In 2018, the company made what many considered a […]

Startups are paying for more subscription services than ever to drive collaboration during working hours, but–whether or not the Slack-lash is indeed a real thing–the truth is that filling your day with meetings can sometimes be detrimental to actually… working. Time management software and daily planners put the accountability on the individual, but when you’re […]

NextNav LLC has raised $120 million in equity and debt to commercially deploy an indoor-positioning system that can pinpoint a device’s location — including what floor it’s on — without GPS . The company has developed what it calls a Metropolitan Beacon System, which can find the location of devices like smartphones, drones, IoT products […]

Collaborative Fund emerged on the scene nearly 10 years ago to fund seed-stage and, as time passed, early-stage startups, many of them in New York, where the firm is based. Apparently, the firm has ambitions to do more later-stage investing, too. It just brought aboard Ian Friedman, former co-head of Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Venture […]

Mozilla laid off about 70 employees today, TechCrunch has learned. In an internal memo, Mozilla chairwoman and interim CEO Mitchell Baker specifically mentions the slow rollout of the organization’s new revenue-generating products as the reason for why it needed to take this decision. The overall number may still be higher, though, as Mozilla is still […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re continuing our exploration of companies that have reached material scale, usually viewed through the lens of annual recurring revenue (ARR). We’ve looked at companies that have reached the $100 million ARR mark and a […]

Late last year, Boeing flew a key orbital flight test of its Starliner commercial crew spacecraft, a key test prior to the vehicle being able to actually carry astronauts on board. That test didn’t go exactly as planned, since the Starliner didn’t rendez-vous and dock with the International Space Station as outlined in the actual […]

Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has lost his campaign’s chief information security officer, citing “differences” with the campaign over its security practices. Mick Baccio, who served under the former South Bend mayor’s campaign for the White House, left his position earlier this month. The Wall Street Journal first reported the news. TechCrunch also confirmed Baccio’s resignation, […]

Google Cloud today announced the launch of its premium support plans for enterprise and mission-critical needs. This new plan brings Google’s support offerings for the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in line with its premium G Suite support options. “Premium Support has been designed to better meet the needs of our customers running modern cloud technology,” […]

Last September, YouTube began testing a new feature called profile cards, which showed a user’s public information and comment history on the current channel. The feature was touted as a way for creators to more easily identify their biggest fans by offering easy access to their past comments. Now, YouTube is launching the product to […]

The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Four years after being acquired, Hipmunk is shutting down Founded by Adam J. Goldstein and Reddit co-founder Steve “spez” Huffman, Hipmunk […]

The market for companies developing dairy substitutes is really getting frothy. In December, the startup Perfect Day Foods announced it had raised $110 million in financing for its dairy replacement and now Califia Farms, the producer of a range of oat and almond milk products (along with a slew of coffees, juices, and non-dairy snacks) […]

Right on schedule, Microsoft today released the first stable version of its new Chromium-based Edge browser, just over a year after it first announced that it would stop developing its own browser engine and go with what has, for better or worse, become the industry standard. You can now download the stable version for Windows […]

Following the big revamp of Google Shopping last fall, Google today is updating the shopping experience on Google Search, on mobile. Now, when you do a web search for clothing, shoes, and accessories, you won’t just get a set of links to different products and stores. Instead, Google will present a new section where it […]

Uber’s JUMP has started its adaptive scooter pilot in partnership with San Francisco Bike Rentals. This is part of Uber’s permit with the city of San Francisco, which requires all electric scooter operators pilot adaptive scooter share. “We’re committed to helping improve access to transportation for everyone in San Francisco and we believe our adaptive […]

With distributed workforces all the rage in the tech community these days, startups are trying to build new tools to keep those teams connected and communicating in the ways that make folks most comfortable. One of these companies is the Orlando, Fla.-based startup, Yac, which just raised $1.5 million in financing from a clutch of […]

It’s easy to remember the big names in tech. But we often forget about the operators who help them along the way. When it comes to the person behind the person, few are as notable and experienced as Brooke Hammerling. I sat down with the Brew PR founder (and new pop culture newsletter author), who […]

Hulu is preparing to roll out new forms of advertising this year — one which will allow viewers to have more say in the ads that plays, and another that lets the viewer engage with the brand in question, either by getting information sent directly to their mobile phone or by using QR codes. In […]

For the last few years blockchain startup Kadena, has been working on a vision of bringing blockchain to the enterprise. Today it announced the final piece of that vision with the launch of the Kadena public blockchain. In earlier releases, the company offered the ability to build private blockchains on AWS or Azure. Company co-founder […]

Madrona Venture Group announced today that is has hired former Docker CEO Steve Singh as a managing director at the firm. Singh stepped down as CEO of Docker last May and Seattle-based Madrona seems like logical landing spot. He is a long-time resident of Seattle, and has been working behind the scenes with Madrona for […]