Crunch Hype

Seventy-five-million-dollar-funded legal services startup Atrium doesn’t want to be the next company to implode as the tech industry tightens its belt and businesses chase margins instead of growth via unsustainable economics. That’s why Atrium is laying off most of its in-house lawyers. Now, Atrium will focus on its software for startups navigating fundraising, hiring and […]

Visa announced today that it is buying financial services API startup Plaid for $5.3 billion. Plaid develops financial services APIs. It is akin to what Stripe does for payments, but instead of facilitating payments, it helps developers share banking and other financial information more easily. It’s the kind of service that makes sense for a […]

Last Halloween, we broke down some “good news” from a Canalys report: the smartphone industry saw one-percent year-over-year growth — not exactly the sort of thing that sparks strong consumer confidence. In short, 2019 sucked for smartphones, as did the year before. After what was nearly an ascendant decade, sales petered off globally with few […]

The New Majority of entrepreneurs is here to stay, and our morality clause is just the beginning of a new path to small business success.

As Google Cloud looks to convince more enterprises to move to its platform, it needs to be able to give businesses an onramp for their existing legacy infrastructure and workloads that they can’t easily replace or move to the cloud. A lot of those workloads run on IBM Power Systems with their Power processors, and, […]

Kleiner is known for many things. Among them, increasingly, is the growing number of people who’ve logged time at the firm, then struck out on their own to hang their own shingles. The latest among them: Lynne Chou O’Keefe, who joined Kleiner Perkins in 2013 as a partner in its life sciences group, where she […]

Taking a ride on an electronic scooter soon? Wear your helmet! According to a recent study published in JAMA Surgery, not wearing headgear or taking other precautions while riding is increasingly sending young people to the hospital — leading to more than 40,000 broken bones, head wounds and other injuries. Unfortunately, less than 5% of […]

For many gamers, Pokémon GO was an exciting fad that ate up their summer and was just another chapter in a franchise. A lot of these people would already treat the game like some sort of nostalgic mid-2010s hit, but the game is minting cash from users at a more expansive rate that ever. A […]

Every radical turn in technology history has its great entrepreneur, and for space that person is SpaceX founder Elon Musk. His unswerving conviction that “space must be affordable” led him to disrupt the old-school space launch industry with reusable Falcon 9 boosters, an achievement that has inspired hundreds of entrepreneurs and investors to take up […]

Last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Quibi executives — including CEO Meg Whitman and founder/chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg — took the stage in a keynote laying out their vision for the mobile video service. Katzenberg is a longtime Hollywood executive who led Walt Disney Studios during its animation renaissance in the late […]

Away co-founder Steph Korey, the one who stepped down as CEO following reports of her role in creating a toxic culture, is back at the helm of the luggage startup, The New York Times reports. The original plan was for Lululemon COO Stuart Haselden to take over today and, in a way, he will. Though, […]

Adobe announced today that Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) is now available as a cloud-native SaaS application. Prior to this, it was available on premises or as a managed service, but it wasn’t pure cloud-native. Obviously being available as a cloud service makes sense for customers, and offers all of the value you would get from […]

It’s no secret that the Google Cloud management team has decided to focus its efforts on a select number of enterprise verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, financial services, energy and life sciences. Retail, too, has long been a growth market for the company, especially as Amazon’s competitors are looking to run their services on clouds that […]

Samsung this morning announced that it has completed the acquisition of TeleWorld Solutions. The Virginia-based telecommunications company provides wireless networking and consulting services. It’s TWS’s 5G solutions that Samsung is clearly the most interested in as part of this deal. The electronics giant says it plans to leverage TWS’s services to help U.S.-based networks build […]

Good morning friends, and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a short-form audio hit to kickstart your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years don’t worry — we’re not changing the main show. (Here’s last week’s episode with Danny Crichton, which was a lot […]

Welcome back for the first Max Q of 2020! As should be expected, the holiday and New Year’s weeks didn’t produce all that much news in the space industry – but that changed fast as the decade got underway last week. 2020 promises to be a huge year for commercial space and private space technology […]

Netflix looks like a serious contender at this year’s Academy Awards, with its films receiving 24 nominations — more than any other Hollywood studio. “The Irishman” received 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Director (Martin Scorsese), Actor in a Supporting Role (Al Pacino and Joe Pesci), Adapted Screenplay (Steven Zaillian) and Visual Effects. Another Netflix movie, […]

Bay Area-based Bossa Nova Robotics this morning announced plans to bring its shelf-scanning inventory robot to 1,000 Walmart stores in the U.S. The plan adds an additional 650 locations to the growing army of retail robots, up front its current number of 350. It’s a sizable presence for the startup, which was founded in Pittsburgh […]

How many times have you gone into a store and found the shelves need restocking of the very item you came in for? This is a frequent problem and it’s difficult, especially in larger retail establishments, to keep on top of stocking requirements. Zebra Technologies has a solution: a robot that scans the shelves and […]

Salesforce announced some new developer tools today, designed to make it easier for programmers to build applications on top of Commerce Cloud in what is known in industry parlance as a “headless” system. What that means is that developers can separate the content from the design and management of the site, allowing companies to change […]

The tours and experiences market is projected to be worth $183 billion this year, and today a startup that has made inroads into the space through bootstrapping is announcing its first outside investment. ToursByLocals — which sources local guides in some 162 countries, and then helps tourists search and book them for either individual or […]

Skyqraft, a Swedish startup using AI and drones for electricity power-line inspection, has picked up $505,000 in early backing. Leading the round is “startup generator” and investor Antler, with participation from a number of angels including Claes Ekström and Tomas Kåberger. Founded in March 2019 and launched that September, Skyqraft provides what it calls “smart” […]

Jolt, an education startup that describes itself as an alternative to traditional MBA courses, has raised $14.1 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Balderton Capital, with participation from Hillsven Capital and Octopus Ventures. It brings Jolt’s total funding to $23.3 million in three years. The company plans to use the additional […]

I hope you’ve all had a good week. Normally I’m behind the scenes (where I’m most comfortable), but I’ll be managing the Startups Weekly newsletter until I assign it to someone else. More on that in a few weeks. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here for this and other great newsletters we have […]

Netflix’s “6 Underground” feels like a movie that belongs on the big screen. Sure, it isn’t part of a giant franchise (yet), and it doesn’t feature any well-known superheroes — but it does star “Deadpool”‘s Ryan Reynolds as a wise-cracking hero who criss-crosses the globe, going from one spectacularly destructive set piece to another. And […]

Two co-founders of Google Pay in India are building a neo-banking platform in the country — and they have already secured backing from three top VC funds. Sujith Narayanan, a veteran payments executive who co-founded Google Pay in India (formerly known as Google Tez), said on Monday that his startup, epiFi, has raised $13.2 million […]

At a certain point during the last week, I found myself wandering the halls of CES, looking for the gadget that would fix all of my problems. Maybe it’s the modern condition, or just a sign of having been involved in this industry for far too long. Technology, of course, has a long and sometimes […]

Yoav Leitersdorf is the founder of YL Ventures, a 12-year-old, Mill Valley, California.-based seed-stage venture firm that invests narrowly in Israeli cybersecurity startups and closed its fourth fund with $120 million in capital commitments last summer — a vehicle that brings the capital it now manages to $260 million. The outfit takes a concentrated approach […]

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. At the beginning of each year, a large crowd of developers, content creators and digitally-savvy business owners gather in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou […]

A strange new sensation has settled across the tech industry, one so foreign, so alien, it’s almost hard to recognize. A sense that some great expectations are being radically revised downwards; that someone has turned down a previously unquenchable money spigot; that unit economics can matter even when you’re in growth mode. Could it be […]

We got a bit of a surprise at the end of CES: some hands-on time with Samsung’s latest rugged phone for the enterprise, the Galaxy XCover Pro. The XCover Pro, which is officially launching today, is a mid-range $499 phone for first-line workers like flight attendants, construction workers or nurses. It is meant to be […]

Hey everyone, welcome back to Week in Review where I dive deep into a bit of news from the week or just share some thoughts and go over some of the more interesting stories of the week. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox here, and follow […]

A few buffet mistakes aside, NuraLoop were the biggest disappointment of my 2019 CES. When the headphones showed up at the show as dummy units, it hurt my heart a little. The original Nuraphones made an appearance on my 2017 best of the year list, and the idea of a portable version I could take […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The app industry is as hot as ever with a record 203 billion downloads in 2019 and $119 billion in consumer spending, according to preliminary year-end data […]

Throughout 2019, a number of mobility companies launched in additional markets, while many pulled out of areas that no longer served them. Meanwhile, transportation startups continued to raise more money even as they laid off employees, a sign that industry consolidation has officially begun. In October, Bird raised a $275 million Series D round at […]

Every year, Consumer Electronics Show attendees receive a branded backpack, but this year’s edition was special; made out of transparent plastic, the bag’s contents were visible without the wearer needing to unzip. It isn’t just a fashion decision. Over the years, security has become more intense and cumbersome, but attendees with transparent backpacks didn’t have […]

The road to “solving” self-driving cars is riddled with challenges, from perception and decision making to figuring out the interaction between humans and robots. Today we’re announcing that joining us at TC Sessions: Robotics+AI on March 3 at UC Berkeley are two experts who play important roles in the development and deployment of autonomous vehicle […]

Celebrities or influencers with millions of followers have a large service industry and tech stack to serve their needs. But the standard toolkit of a microinfluencer is still evolving.

Amazon has fired a number of employees after they shared customer email address and phone numbers with a third-party “in violation of our policies.” The email to customers sent Friday afternoon, seen by TechCrunch, said an employee was “terminated” for sharing the data, and that the company is supporting law enforcement in their prosecution. Amazon […]

This story was reported in partnership with health news site The Mighty. Every day, millions of new medical images containing the personal health information of patients are spilling out onto the internet. Hundreds of hospitals, medical offices and imaging centers are running insecure storage systems, allowing anyone with an internet connection and free-to-download software to […]

In recent years, the venture capital and startup worlds have seen a significant shift towards globalization. More and more startups are going global and breaking borders.

TikTok has spawned countless memes formats from its creative effects, challenging Instagram for the filtered video crown. Now nearly five years after launching Boomerang, Instagram’s back-and-forth video loop maker is finally getting a big update to its own editing options. Users around the globe can now add SlowMo, “Echo” blurring, and “Duo” rapid rewind special […]

A cannabis company won a CES award for 2020. Called Keep, the desktop storage device features biometric security to secure cannabis products, and looks good while doing it. The CTA gave them an Innovations Award Nominee in October and then weeks later told the company they were unable to use the word “cannabis” when exhibiting. […]

General Motors could be bringing back the Hummer brand. According to this report by The Wall Street Journal, an all-electric Hummer pickup will be sold under the GMC brand and LeBron James is enlisted to help market the vehicle. There are no details about the pickup’s capability, including electric range or seating capacity. The move […]

The changing of the guard at Alphabet continues. Roughly one month after Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin announced they’d be stepping down as the CEO and president of the search giant’s parent company, one of their top lieutenants, Alphabet’s chief legal officer, David Drummond, told employees that he, too, is leaving the company. In […]

This week we’ve covered layoffs at unicorns both inside the Vision Fund and out. This afternoon we add two more to our list: Oyo and Rappi. The staff reductions are surprising — and not. They are surprising, as Oyo (India-based, low-cost hotels) and Rappi (Latin America-focused e-commerce) were bright lights in the Vision Fund’s crown. […]

E-commerce phenom and D2C bright light Casper has filed to go public. The New York-based company that raised nearly $340 million while private, according to Crunchbase data, expects to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CSPR.” Its S-1 filing includes a $100 million placeholder figure for its possible capital raise. […]

When the Lora DiCarlo wagon finally arrives, the rolling glass box’s back door opens and another journalist pops out to get on his way. The sex tech company has a week packed full with 20-minute rolling interviews with a curious tech press. No time to spare; I step up, sit down, and we’re on our […]

Most cookie consent pop-ups served to internet users in the European Union — ostensibly seeking permission to track people’s web activity — are likely to be flouting regional privacy laws, a new study by researchers at MIT, UCL and Aarhus University suggests. “The results of our empirical survey of CMPs [consent management platforms] today illustrates […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? Positive adjusted EBITDA, or something close to it. That’s the message from scooter unicorn Lime, which announced this week that it was cutting about 14% of […]