Crunch Hype

Atomico is among the most widely respected venture firms in Europe, ranking right up there with friendly rivals like Accel London and Index Ventures. It’s also just 13 years old at this point, compared with its more established peers. It’s easy to overlook this, considering the impact the firm has made on the European startup […]

After a three-day trial, Elon Musk was found not liable for defamation in a federal court today in Los Angeles, where Musk reportedly owns a cluster of six homes as well as oversees the operations of both SpaceX and Tesla. British diver Vernon Unsworth had brought the suit against Musk in the fall of 2018 […]

Unlike many derived SaaS metrics, the 4x2 chart is based on very simple numbers, thus “the figures don’t lie.”

Boeing and launch partner United Launch Alliance (ULA) completed a key step today in pursuit of launching U.S. astronauts aboard their commercial spacecraft. The Boeing CST-100 Starliner crew capsule was atop the ULA Atlas V rocket at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station’s Launch Complext 41 in Florida, with the rocket fully fuelled while the combined […]

Bird has laid off less than two dozen employees, The San Francisco Chronicle first reported. The layoffs affect employees Bird brought on board as part of its ~$25 million acquisition of Scoot earlier this year. Those affected were salaried employees and/or people with technical backgrounds, according to Bird. “The integration of Bird and Scoot does not […]

Sara Mauskopf Contributor Share on Twitter Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a marketplace for daycare and preschool helping over 4 million parents across the U.S. Prior to founding Winnie, Sara held product leadership roles at Postmates, Twitter, YouTube and Google. Four years ago when I founded Winnie, I set out to […]

With less than two months left in the decade, advertising is again entering a new phase of rapid expansion with customer experience front and center.

“Despite the fact that I went to MIT, despite the fact that I managed a billion-dollar product at JPMorgan Chase and even built a huge digital product, I was still a Silicon Valley outsider."

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. Uber reveals thousands of sexual assault reports last year Uber just released its first-ever safety report, stating that it received 2,936 […]

There have been holiday gift guides for VR for the past five years or so and for most of that time, buying a VR headset was generally a bad call.

Magic Leap just announced that they’re in the midst of closing a Series E round of funding, but it sounds like they’re going to have to clinch that investment with some pretty troubling sales numbers for their only device on the market. The Information‘s Alex Heath is reporting that Magic Leap managed to sell just […]

Meatable, the Dutch startup developing cruelty-free technologies for manufacturing cultured meat, is pivoting to pork production as a swine flu epidemic ravages one quarter of the world’s pork supply — and has raised $10 million in financing to support its new direction. When the company unveiled its technology last year, it was one of several […]

While file sharing, time tracking, email integration, Gantt charts and budget management are usually some of the most requested features in the average project management platform, we still have a proliferation of tools taking a multiplicity of approaches to the problem of just managing something. Most people in tech are by now familiar with Slack, […]

There could be as many as 1 billion remote workers by 2035, but the world isn't ready for the digital nomad movement.

Canva, the design company with nearly $250 million in funding, has today announced a variety of new features, including a video editing tool. The company has also announced Canva Apps, which allows developers and customers alike to build on top of Canva. Thus far, Dropbox, Google Drive, PhotoMosh and Instagram are already in the Canva […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

Streaming aggregator Reelgood capitalized on the overabundance of streaming services available today by offering consumers a universal dashboard where you can track what you’re watching and discover your next binge. It then translated the activity from its over 10 million users into data it licenses to major companies, including Roku, Microsoft, smart TV makers, NYPost, […]

Lego already debuted its own take on the divisive Tesla Cybertruck design, but theirs was purely for the lols. This Lego Cybertruck, however, submitted to the official Lego Ideas crowdsourcing website, is actually a remarkably faithful representation, and comes completely with fully articulating tailgate and ‘frunk’ (front truck, for the uninitiated). The design, by Lego […]

Rocket Lab launched its tenth Electron spacecraft on Friday morning, successfully delivering payloads for clients Spaceflight and Alba Orbital. The launch company also had an important secondary mission for this launch: testing the guidance, control and navigation systems of their first-stage rocket recovery system. Rocket Lab announced earlier this year that it would be aiming […]

Style Theory, a platform for renting designer apparel in Indonesia and Singapore, announced today it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The startup says this is the first closing of the round. It was led by SoftBank Ventures Asia, the early-stage venture arm of SoftBank Group, with participation from other investors, including Alpha […]

There have been a lot of bumps in the road for startups building used-car marketplaces, but now one of the longer-standing of them has closed a major round of funding — a clear sign of the mileage left in this category. Vroom has raised $254 million, a Series H that it plans to use to […]

Netflix continues to bet heavily on India, one of the world’s largest entertainment markets where it competes with more than three dozen rivals including Disney. Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix, said on Friday that the company is on track to spend 30 billion Indian rupees, or $420.5 million, on producing and licensing content […]

European Union finance ministers have agreed a defacto ban on the launch in the region of so-called global ‘stablecoins’ such as Facebook’s planned Libra digital currency until the bloc has a common approach to regulation that can mitigate the risks posed by the technology. In a joint statement the European Council and Commission write that […]

Uber's U.S. Safety Report sets forth in some detail the number of fatal accidents, and the good news is that the overall rate per mile is about half the national average. But the report makes some puzzling choices as far as what is included and excluded from its counts.

Uber just released its first-ever safety report that covers sexual assault. Let’s jump right in. In 2017, Uber received 2,936 reports pertaining to sexual assault, and received 3,045 in 2018. Despite the increase in raw numbers, Uber saw a 16% decrease in the average incident rate, which it suggests may correlate with the company’s increased […]

A run-of-the-mill money-making operation used tawdry, hateful clickbait and evaded Facebook's apparently negligible protections.

The McLaren Senna GTR shouldn’t exist. This feat of engineering and design isn’t allowed on public roads. It’s built for the track, but prohibited from competing in motorsports. And yet, the GTR is no outlier at McLaren. It’s part of their Ultimate Series, a portfolio of extreme and distinct hypercars that now serve as the […]

A key ask from gig workers this year has been the right to unionize. Now, Senator (and presidential candidate) Elizabeth Warren is reportedly drafting a bill that would enable gig workers to do just that, CNBC reports. In collaboration with Congressperson David Cicilline, the legislation would also ban “mega mergers” between companies where one has […]

We’ve known for a while that Pokémon GO creator Niantic feels a bit limited in what it can do with augmented reality today. Between the latency limitations of 4G cellular networks and the need for players to wave a smartphone around to do anything in AR, the tech just isn’t where Niantic wants it to […]

Today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell joined AWS CEO Andy Jassy onstage to announce a new partnership to use machine learning to help reduce head injuries in professional football. “We’re excited to announce a new strategic partnership together, which is going to combine cloud computing, machine learning and data science […]

Spotify reportedly spent nearly $500 million on podcasts in 2019. The good news is that the rest of us can get into that world for considerably less. In fact, the low barrier of entry has always been one of podcasting’s primary selling points.Before we go any further, I’d recommend everyone check out our on-going series “How I Podcast,” in which top podcasters give a peek behind the curtain at their podcasting rigs. The standard disclaimer applies here, as ever: there’s no one size fits all solution to any of this. One’s needs will vary greatly depending on how much you’re willing to spend and what the recording setup is (remote vs. in-person).

"The S-1 is going to be MOST disrupted FASTEST in the next 3 YEARS? Caps for effect."

Google’s AI-powered voice recorder app introduced at Google’s October hardware event was one of the company’s more impressive demos. The new app taps into advances in AI, speech processing and speech recognition in order to automatically transcribe a voice recording with few mistakes, in real time as the person is speaking. Unfortunately, Google’s Recorder app […]

Because many Latin American gig economy workers don't have access to basic financial services like bank accounts, personal loans and insurance, fintechs are springing up to serve them.

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. 300M-user Imgur launches Melee, a gaming meme app Melee, the company’s first app beyond its flagship product, lets users subscribe to […]

At its Snapdragon Boondoggle Summit in sunny Maui, Hawaii, Qualcomm today announced the launch of its XR2 platform, which it describes as the “world’s first 5G-supported extended reality (XR) platform.” The company’s older XR1 platform, which already powers a number of VR and AR devices, will remain in the market and is now branded as […]

Autonomous robotic road-riding cargo pod startup Einride has signed a new partner for a commercial pilot on Sweden’s roads, which should be a great test of the company’s electric driverless transportation pods. Einride will be providing service for Coca-Cola European Partners, which is the official authorized bottler, distributor, sales and marketing company for Coca-Cola branded […]

One month after Airbnb confirmed plans to verify all of its listings, the home-sharing giant has announced additional efforts to protect its hosts and guests.

Hailing one of Waymo’s self-driving minivans is about to get a little easier. One year after launching its Waymo One self-driving car service in the Phoenix area, the company is launching an app on iOS, the latest signal that the company is inching towards large-scale commercial service. Now, Phoenix residents can download the Waymo app to […]

SpaceX has launched its nineteenth resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) on behalf of NASA. The launch took place at 12:29 PM EST (9:29 AM PST) from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with a Falcon 9 blasting off with a Dragon cargo capsule on top carrying around 5,200 lbs of payload destined for the […]

This week, security reporter Brian Krebs asked why the newest iPhone 11 Pro appeared to be sending out a user’s location even when the user disabled Location Services in their phone’s settings, in conflict with Apple’s privacy policy and the express wishes of the user. Apple told Krebs it was “expected behavior” and that there […]

Uniform Teeth, the teeth straightening startup that helped me figure out I needed a root canal, has just raised a $10 million round of funding led by Canaan Partners. This brings Uniform Teeth’s total funding to $14 million. With the new funding, Uniform Teeth plans to open up two more locations, one in Seattle and […]

Figma, the design tool maker that has raised nearly $83 million from investors such as Index Ventures, Sequoia, Greylock and Kleiner Perkins, has today announced a new feature called Auto Layout that takes some of the tedious reformatting out of the design process. Designers are all too familiar with the problem of manually sizing content […]

Spotify’s annual “Wrapped” feature, which allows listeners to look back on their favorite music from the year, is expanding in 2019 to include a whole decade’s worth of favorite tunes, the company announced today. In addition, the feature is for the first time being made available to podcasters, in addition to Spotify users and Spotify […]

With the shift in the way designers fit into organizations and the way design fits into business overall, the design ecosystem is following the same path blazed by enterprise SaaS companies in recent years.

U.S. prosecutors have brought computer hacking and fraud charges against a Russian citizen, Maksim Yakubets, who is accused of developing and distributing Dridex, a notorious banking malware used to allegedly steal more than $100 million from hundreds of banks over a multi-year operation. Per the unsealed 10-count indictment, Yakubets is accused of leading and overseeing […]

Volvo is making an investment in Palo Alto-based Apex.AI, a startup working on developing a robotic operating system qualified for use in production automobiles. Apex.AI, founded by automated systems engineers Jan Becker and Dejan Pangercic, raised $15.5 million in a Series A last November, and revealed that its focus is on developing an enterprise-focused version […]

Ben Holber and Ryan Hambley grew up together. Hambley, the son of a dermatologist, always had clear skin. But Holber struggled with acne from the time he was a teenager. The two saw first-hand the difference it makes to have a dermatologist on demand. Apostrophe was born. Apostrophe, a new startup that makes it easier […]

10 years after debut, 300 million monthly user Imgur is one of the last massively popular yet unpersonalized home pages on the internet. Since everyone sees the same upvoted posts when they open Imgur, it creates a shared experience full of inside jokes and running gags. But while you can switch to a feed of […]