Crunch Hype

Porsche typically concerns itself with terrestrial vehicle designs, but for a new project it worked with Lucasfilm designers in collaboration on a new starfighter for the Star Wars universe. The starfigher, called the Tri-Wing S-91x Pegasus, obviously doesn’t exist in full-scale flyable form, but it is being built out as a five-foot-long highly-detailed sub-scale model, […]

If you didn’t watch last night’s Game Awards, you may have missed it. But Xbox Series X is the company’s next-generation console, and will be arriving in late 2020. Thankfully, Microsoft has kindly cataloged all of the images, media and even a little information online. Oh, and we’ll almost certainly be hearing a LOT more […]

Bluespace.ai, a new autonomous driving startup focused on mass transit, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by Fusion Fund. Other investors include YouTube co-founder Steve Chen; UMC, the Taiwanese semiconductor foundry; Kakao Ventures; GDP Ventures; Atinum; Wasabi Ventures; Blue Ivy Ventures; Plug n Play; and SLV Capital. The startup […]

Sleek, a startup that is making it easier for other startups and companies to incorporate and operate in Singapore and Hong Kong, said today it has extended its seed financing round to raise $5 million. The extended seed round for the two-year-old startup was led by private investors Pierre Lorinet and Fabio Blom, and MI8, […]

Reliance Industries, one of India’s largest industrial houses, has acquired a majority stake in NowFloats, an Indian startup that helps businesses and individuals build online presence without any web developing skills. In a regulatory filing on Thursday, Reliance Strategic Business Ventures Limited said (PDF) it has acquired an 85% stake in NowFloats for 1.4 billion Indian […]

Salesforce announced today that it has named Bret Taylor as president and chief operating officer of the company. Prior to today’s promotion, Taylor held the position of president and chief product officer. In his new position, Taylor will be responsible for a number of activities, including leading Salesforce’s global product vision, engineering, security, marketing and […]

Bill.com went public today after pricing its shares higher than it initially expected. The B2B payments company sold nearly 10 million shares at $22 apiece, raising around $216 million in its IPO. Public investors felt that the company’s price was a deal, sending the value of its equity to $35.51 per share as of the […]

Last month, Carbon announced its first new CEO in the company’s history. With $260 million worth of investments and a $2.5 billion, it’s a big job. But Carbon’s 500-person headcount is small potatoes compared to Ellen Kullman’s last gig. For six years, Kullman headed up DuPont, the culmination of a nearly 30-year career at the […]

Pandora has begun to test a new type of advertising format that allows listeners to respond to the ad by speaking aloud. In the new ads, listeners are prompted to say “yes” after the ad asks a question and a tone plays. The ads will then offer more information about the product or brand in […]

DataRobot, a company best known for creating automated machine learning models known as AutoML, announced today that it intends to acquire Paxata, a data prep platform startup. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. Paxata raised a total of $90 million before today’s acquisition, according to the company. Up until now, DataRobot has concentrated […]

After last year’s stellar turn out of almost 1,000 Silicon Valley shakers and movers, TechCrunch is returning with the 3rd Annual Winter Party at Galvanize in San Francisco on February 7. The party will feature tasty beers, wine and canapés, party games and activities, plenty of photo ops (and our infamous karaoke), giveaways and some […]

Google Cloud today announced Transfer Service, a new service for enterprises that want to move their data from on-premise systems to the cloud. This new managed service is meant for large-scale transfers on the scale of billions of files and petabytes of data. It complements similar services from Google that allow you to ship data […]

New real estate technology 2.0 entrants would do well to learn from the mistakes of their 1.0 predecessors as they scale in coming years.

Olivia Moore Contributor Share on Twitter Olivia Moore is a venture investor at CRV and co-founded Cardinal Ventures alongside her sister, Justine. More posts by this contributor After a breakout year, looking ahead to the future of podcasting What VidCon means for the future of social media platforms Justine Moore Contributor Share on Twitter Justine […]

Small-satellite startup Kepler Communications is teaming up with SpaceX to make good on its deployment goals for its first nanosatellite constellation. SpaceX will carry two separate batches of nanosatellites from Kepler aboard its Falcon 9 launch vehicles. Kepler Communications, a Toronto-based space startup, will be building out a low-power, direct IoT connectivity satellite-based network, as […]

Hulu today is launching a new kind of ad experience that allows brands to specifically target binge-watchers — that is, viewers who are watching multiple episodes of a favorite program over a long stretch of time. These “binge watch ads” utilize machine learning techniques to predict when a viewer has begun to binge watch a […]

Atlassian has a portfolio of developer tools like Bitbucket, Jira and Confluence. It also has a marketplace with thousands of add-ons. But what it lacked was a development platform to call its own. Today, that changed when the company announced the Forge platform. “Forge will empower developers to more easily build and run enterprise-ready cloud […]

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, Samsung Electronic’s President Young Sohn revealed the company had sold 1 million foldable Galaxy Fold smartphones. Estimates from October pegged sales at that time at 500,000 units. “And I think that the point is, we’re selling [a] million of these products,” Sohn said. “There’s a million people that want to […]

Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ […]

The directional trends are clear: chatbots are an important component of our AI-driven future, and the C-suite is taking notice.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. This morning we’re digging into the current IPO market, asking ourselves how much damage WeWork really did to other companies hoping to go public. Is the IPO window closed, and if not, what sort of companies […]

Waymo has acquired Latent Logic, a UK company that spun out of Oxford University’s computer science department, as the autonomous vehicle company seeks to beef up its simulation technology. The acquisition also marks the launch of Waymo’s first European engineering hub will be in Oxford, UK. This likely won’t be the end of Waymo’s expansion and […]

After rolling out on smart speakers and displays earlier this year, Google’s interpreter real-time translation mode finally landing on mobile. A far more handy application for such functionality, the feature arrives on both Android and iOS handsets globally, starting today. The feature works in tandem with Assistant. Say something like, “Hey Google, be my German […]

One share of Amazon stock costs over $1700, locking out less wealthy investors. So to continue its quest to democratize stock trading, Robinhood is launching fractional share trading this week. This lets you buy 0.000001 shares, rounded to the nearest penny, or just $1 of any stock with zero fee. The ability to buy by […]

Star Wars has come to Facebook’s Messenger app. Facebook today announced a new set of Star Wars-themed features for Messenger users, including a chat theme, reactions, stickers, and AR effects. The features were developed in partnership with Disney to help promote the upcoming film, “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” which premieres nationwide on December […]

Business-to-business payments company Bill.com priced its IPO today at an above-range $22 per share. The firm, selling 9.82 million shares in its offering, will raise around $216 million at a roughly $1.6 billion valuation. The company’s IPO pricing comes during a modestly uncertain time for unprofitable companies looking to go public. Following the WeWork IPO […]

If you want to win on Wall Street, Yahoo Finance is insufficient but Bloomberg Terminal costs a whopping $24,000 per year. That’s why Atom Finance built a free tool designed to democratize access to professional investor research. If Robinhood made it cost $0 to trade stocks, Atom Finance makes it cost $0 to know which […]

Space industry heavyweight Northrop Grumman has signed a costumer for the launch of its first OmegA rocket, a medium/heavy lift launch vehicle that it’s currently readying for flight with a target of spring 2021 for its first ever flight. OmegA will unlock additional payload capacity vs. the launch systems that Northrop Grumman has developed and […]

GetYourGuide has made a name for itself as the startup that helped the stale idea of guided tours for travellers on its head. Tapping into the generation of consumers who think of travel not just as going somewhere, but having an “experience” (and, ideally, recording it for Insta-posterity), it has built a marketplace to connect […]

TechCrunch is running an end-of-year review for the European tech startup industry. We’d love your input on the feature! We’d like to know what particular topics really resonated with you in 2019 and what your predictions are for 2020. Fill in the survey here. Please give us your thoughts in the survey below. The more […]

Streaming services are popping up like weeds these days, but MUBI has been at it basically since streaming video first emerged as a business. Founded in 2007, MUBI focuses on curated, independent film from international artists and creators, and the company has recently further differentiated itself from its competitors by becoming a distributor and production […]

Lidar startup Aeva has deepened its relationship with VW Group with a new investment from Porsche Automobili Holding SE, thanks to a next-generation sensor that is headed for the ID Buzz AV, an electric reboot of the automaker’s iconic bus that will be used as autonomous taxis. Aeva’s newest lidar product called Aeries has a […]

Many companies realized that there was a huge opportunity when it comes to on-demand delivery of food and groceries. And apparently, too many companies as Glovo co-founder Sacha Michaud expects some consolidation in the space in the near future. At TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin, the General Manager of Northern, Central and Eastern Europe for Uber Eats […]

Portify, the London fintech startup that offers an app and various financial products to help gig economy and other modern, flexible or “self-employed” workers better manage their finances, has raised £7 million in Series A funding. The round, which comes a year after the company raised £1.3 million in seed investment, is led by Redalpine […]

Good morning! Disrupt Berlin Day 2 begins now, and boy do we have a show for you! Today, we’ll hear from Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation), Carolina Brochado (Softbank Investment Advisors) and Andrei Brasoveanu (Accel), Young Sohn (Samsung), and Matthew Prince (Cloudflare), live from the Main Stage. On the Extra Crunch stage, panelists will discuss important […]

French startup Yubo has raised a $12.3 million funding round led by Iris Capital and Idinvest Partners. Existing investors Alven, Sweet Capital and Village Global are also participating. The startup has managed to attract 25 million users over the years — there are currently tens of thousands of people signing up to the platform every […]

Jeff Bezos-founded Blue Origin has recorded another successful mission for its New Shepard sub-orbital launch vehicle, which is a key step as it readies the spacecraft for human spaceflight.

Today at TechCrunch Berlin, four of Atomico’s most senior partners took the stage together for the first time, flying into the city from London, Stockholm and Geneva to talk about a wide range of issues. Among the many things we discussed with the four — including Sophia Bendz, Siraj Khaliq, Niall Wass and Hiro Tamura […]

Google today released its annual “Year in Search” data that takes a look back at some of the most notable searches of 2019. Specifically, Google looked at the biggest trends — meaning, search terms that saw the largest spikes in traffic over a sustained period in 2019 compared to 2018. In the U.S., Disney’s new […]

Fourteen startups presented onstage today at Disrupt Berlin, giving live demos and rapid-fire presentations on their origin stories and business models, then answering questions from our expert judges. Now, with the help of those judges, we’ve narrowed the group down to five startups working on everything from productivity to air pollution. These finalists will be […]

This week Gtmhub announced a $9 million Series A led by CRV. The investment was not a large round, even for an A. But the capital found its way into one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies that we’ve spoken with recently, which made it interesting all the same. And, the firm was willing to talk […]

A year ago, we asked some of the most prominent smart home device makers if they have given customer data to governments. The results were mixed. The big three smart home device makers — Amazon, Facebook and Google (which includes Nest) — all disclosed in their transparency reports if and when governments demand customer data. […]

Facebook’s founding got the movie treatment with Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Network.” The story of how Snapchat came to be will be a flagship series on the upcoming streaming service, Quibi. Today, Spotify is the latest startup to get its story told on screen — this time, as a new Netflix show. Netflix says it’s […]

After last year’s stellar turnout of almost 1,000 Silicon Valley shakers and movers at our Winter Party, TechCrunch is returning with the 3rd Annual Winter Party in San Francisco on February 7. The party will feature tasty cocktails and canapés, party games and activities, plenty of photo ops, giveaways and some fun surprises. As you […]

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. The iPhone’s new parental controls can limit who kids can call, text and FaceTime and when With the release of iOS […]

Shares of popular home exercise company Peloton are off 7% in regular trading today as the company continues to reel in the wake of an advertisement it released that went viral for the wrong reasons. The ad is to blame for Peloton being in the public eye for the wrong reasons, but can’t be framed […]

In YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki’s quarterly letter last month, the exec said the company was working to develop a new harassment policy. Today, YouTube is sharing the results of those efforts with the release of an updated policy which now takes a stronger stance against threats and personal attacks, addresses toxic comments, and gets tougher […]

Google Cloud today announced the launch of its new E2 family of compute instances. These new instances, which are meant for general-purpose workloads, offer a significant cost benefit, with saving of around 31% compared to the current N1 general-purpose instances. The E2 family runs on standard Intel and AMD chips, but as Google notes, they […]

The Porsche Taycan Turbo, one of several variants of the German automaker’s first all-electric vehicles, has an EPA estimated range of 201 miles, according to government ratings posted Wednesday. This is the first variant of the Taycan — Porsche’s first all-electric vehicle — to receive an estimated range from the EPA. The range, which indicates […]