Crunch Hype

TookiTaki, a startup that develops machine learning-based financial compliance software, announced today it has raised a $11.7 million in additional Series A funding, led by Viola Fintech and SIG Asia Investment, with participation from Normura Holdings. Existing investors Illuminate Financial, Jungle Ventures and SEEDs Capital also returned for the extension, which brings TookiTaki’s total Series […]

Two months after being given a two-month reprieve on its licence to operate in London, Uber has once again been denied a full renewal by the city’s transport regulator — which said today that it had found a “pattern of failures” which put “passenger safety and security at risk”. Uber has confirmed it will appeal […]

Detectify, the Sweden born cybersecurity startup that offers a website vulnerability scanner powered by the crowd, has raised €21 million in further funding. Leading the round is London-based VC firm Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Paua Ventures, Inventure and Insight Partners. Detectify says the new funding will be used to continue to hire […]

In less than two weeks, two major reports have been published that contain leaked Chinese government documents about the persecution of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities in China. Details include the extent to which technology enables mass surveillance, making it possible to track the daily lives of people at unprecedented scale. The first was a […]

Sign up here to receive Max Q weekly in your inbox, starting December 15. There were lot of highlights in the space industry this past week (even though a rocket launch that was supposed to happened is now pushed to Monday). The biggest news for commercial space might just be that NASA signed on five […]

Paytm said on Monday it has raised $1 billion in a new financing round as the Noida-headquartered firm, which once dominated the local mobile payments market, attempts to fight back giants Google, Walmart’s PhonePe, and Facebook. The company said the new financing round, dubbed Series G, was led by U.S. asset manager T. Rowe Price. […]

Hulu is currently down. We’re not sure why, and neither does Hulu. A stream of tweets complaining about the outage surfaced Sunday morning on the U.S. east coast, but it seems like a global outage. In response, Hulu’s Twitter support didn’t seem to know either, instead telling frustrated users that it’s looking into it. Fantastic. […]

“Rhythm + Flow” is Netflix’s take on a reality TV staple — the music competition show. With Cardi B, Chance the Rapper and Tip “T.I.” Harris on-board as judges, the series searches for the next big hip-hop star. In some ways, “Rhythm + Flow” sticks to the formula popularized by “American Idol,” “The Voice” and […]

The International Energy Agency published its annual World Energy Outlook ten days ago. In this era of climate crisis, that outlook includes, as you would expect, stern warnings of catastrophic warming. But it also includes interesting nuggets of hope and optimism — and they aren’t alone. Global warming is a slow-motion in-progress planetary train-wreck, true; […]

Tesla has received 146,000 reservations to order the Tesla Cybertruck, pulling in some $14.6 million in deposits just two days after the company’s CEO Elon Musk unveiled the futuristic and angled vehicle. UPDATE: On Sunday, Musk tweeted reservations have hit 187,000. Later that evening he tweeted that it had hit 200,000 reservations, putting the total […]

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. Last week, we looked at how Alibaba and Tencent fared in the last quarter; the talk in Silicon Valley and Beijing this week is on […]

We’re in the home stretch to the TC Hackathon going down at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December. If you have what it takes to compete against some of the best hackers, developers, engineers and code poets, apply to the TechCrunch Hackathon now. We have fewer than 50 seats left, and they’ll be gone before you can […]

T-Mobile has confirmed a data breach affecting more than a million of its customers, whose personal data (but no financial or password data) was exposed to a malicious actor. The company alerted the affected customers but did not provide many details in its official account of the hack. The company said in its disclosure to […]

Last week, at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, we sat down with Maryanna Saenko and Steve Jurvetson, investors who came together to create the investment outfit Future Ventures roughly one year ago. It was their first public appearance together since announcing their $200 million fund, and we started by asking Jurvetson about his high-profile […]

Prosus Ventures last week filed a hostile offer for British food delivery startup Just Eat, an attempt to defeat a unanimous rejection from its board and simultaneously fend off a bid from rival Takeaway. The giant Naspers spinoff said it was willing to pay as much as $6.3 billion in cash to lure Just Eat, […]

A purported agent of the Chinese intelligence service is seeking asylum in Australia, bringing with him explosive allegations of widespread interference in political affairs in that country, Taiwan, and elsewhere. He claims also to have run a cyberterrorism campaign against supporters of Hong Kong independence.

Facebook is building its own version of Instagram Close Friends, the company confirms to TechCrunch. There are a lot people that don’t share on Facebook because it can feel risky or awkward as its definition of “friends” has swelled to include family, work colleagues and distant acquaintances. No one wants their boss or grandma seeing […]

More than 12,000 attendees gathered this week in San Diego to discuss all things containers, Kubernetes and cloud-native at KubeCon. Kubernetes, the container orchestration tool, turned five this year, and the technology appears to be reaching a maturity phase where it accelerates beyond early adopters to reach a more mainstream group of larger business users. […]

The benefits of machine translation are easy to see and experience for ourselves, but those practical applications are only one part of what makes the technology valuable. Microsoft and the government of New Zealand are demonstrating the potential of translation tech to help preserve and hopefully breathe new life into the Māori language. Te reo […]

We’ve aggregated many of the world’s best growth marketers into one community. Twice a month, we ask them to share their most effective growth tactics, and we compile them into this Growth Report.

The FCC has finally put the seal of approval on its plan to cut funding to hardware from companies it deems a "national security threat," currently an exclusive club of two: Huawei and ZTE.

Tesla revealed its Cybertruck pickup last night, a SciFi-tastic wedge built from the same steel alloy that SpaceX is using for its Starship spaceship. Elon Musk spent about 20 minutes showing off the truck, with demos ranging from a game of tug-of-war against an F-150, to racing a Porsche, to a window strength test that […]

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. Behold, the Tesla Cybertruck is here Elon Musk has unveiled a vehicle that looks like it was ripped straight out of […]

This week, we reported on TechCrunch how thousands of remote employees with health and workplace benefits through human resources giant TriNet received emails that looked like a near-perfect phishing attempt. One recipient was so skeptical, they shared the email with TechCrunch so we could verify its authenticity. The message checked every suspicious box. In fact, […]

E-commerce now accounts for 14% of all retail sales, and its growth has led to a rise in the fortunes of startups that build tools to enable businesses to sell online. In the latest development, a company called VTEX — which originally got its start in Latin America helping companies like Walmart expand their business […]

Airbnb COO Belinda Johnson notified employees of her impending departure next March, CNBC first reported. Airbnb has since confirmed the news, saying Johnson will remain involved with the company on its board of directors. Her last day as COO will be March 1, 2020. News of Johnson stepping down comes as Airbnb gears up to […]

Elon Musk revealed the Cybertruck last night, saying it looks like nothing else on the market. That’s true, but the Cybertruck shares several key features with an unlikely pickup — the first-generation Honda Ridgeline. Both the Cybertruck and Honda Ridgeline are built differently from standard pickups. They employ a unibody design, much like what’s used […]

Hyundai has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the city of Seoul to begin testing six autonomous vehicles on roads in the Gangnam district beginning next month, BusinessKorea reports. The arrangement specifies that six vehicles will begin testing on 23 roads in December. Looking ahead to 2021, there will be as many as 15 […]

Cloud Foundry, the open-source platform-as-a-service that, with the help of lots of commercial backers, is currently in use by the majority of Fortune 500 companies, launched well before containers, and especially the Kubernetes orchestrator, were a thing. Instead, the project built its own container service, but the rise of Kubernetes obviously created a lot of […]

Tesla just unveiled its first pickup truck, and the Cybertruck gets a lot of things right. The look is polarizing, but from a truck perspective, it’s capable, practical and relatively affordable compared to other pickups. Of course, all those qualifiers come with an asterisk. Tesla didn’t say when it will hit the market and past […]

Heiliger Strohsack — holy smokes! In just a few weeks, thousands of attendees will arrive in Germany for Disrupt Berlin 2019, the premiere international tech conference focused on early-stage startups. Talk about an opportunity to expose your fledgling startup to savvy investors, hungry media and a host of successful tech entrepreneurs and potential customers — […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk definitely didn’t have the most issue-free presentation during last night’s Cybertruck unveil, but he did pull off a pretty impressive ‘one more thing moment’ – revealing a surprise all-electric all-terrain vehicle (ATV) that Tesla created to pair with its futuristic pickup. The Tesla electric ATV didn’t get a lot of time […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the much-anticipated Cybertruck electric pickup in LA on Thursday, and the vehicle is obviously getting a lot of attention for its eye-catching and unique design. It looks more like a rover designed for space exploration than a truck – and analogy in this case is particularly fitting, because the Cybertruck […]

Prince Andrew, The Duke of York, is to completely step down from his role as head of the Pitch@Palace initiative he set up at Buckingham Palace to showcase entrepreneurs, and the operation will be relaunched as ‘Pitch’ without any royal involvement, according to a well-placed source close. Despite indications on Thursday that the Duke had […]

Comedian Sacha Baron Cohen has waded into the debate about social media regulation. In an award-acceptance speech to the Anti Defamation League yesterday the creator of Ali G and Borat delivered a precision takedown of what he called Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s “bullshit” arguments against regulating his platform. The speech is well worth watching in […]

Meet Bellman, a new French startup that wants to improve residential building management using technology and a fair amount of human interactions. The startup has been co-founded by Antonio Pinto, who previously co-founded TV Time. “I know this space quite well because I’m the son of a caretaker so I grew up in the caretaker’s […]

After Elon Musk had left the stage Thursday evening, the crowd — still excited and a little stunned from the Tesla Cybertrunk reveal — converged to the back doors that led outside where a gigantic queue quickly formed. Media got their own area, the VIPs another, and finally, the other invited guests were in the […]

India’s RazorPay, one of the largest payments processing firms in the country, today announced a range of new services aimed at startups, businesses, merchants and freelancers as the Bangalore-based firm expands the reach of its financial platform in the nation. The startup, which raised $75 million from Ribbit Capital and others in June this year, […]

Well, I don’t think that was supposed to happen. In what was one of the more surreal product launches I’ve seen, Tesla debuted its $39,900 Cybertruck pickup tonight. After running through some specs and hitting the truck’s door with a sledge hammer, Elon asked an on-stage companion (Tesla’s lead designer, Franz von Holzhausen) to demonstrate […]

Elon Musk revealed Thursday evening the Tesla Cybertruck, a futuristic vehicle that seemed stripped straight out of a post-apocalyptic era movie. The Tesla Cybertruck, which Musk unveiled in dramatic fashion and to the hoots and hollers of invited guests at the Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne, California, is made of cold-rolled steel, armored glass that […]

It’s November. We’re eleven years into a bull run. And a protracted trade war with China — not to mention the impeachment proceedings — is causing some nervousness about what next year will hold. Little wonder that venture firms, which have been writing checks faster than ever in recent years, are also stocking up on […]

The highest court in Pennsylvania has ruled that the state’s law enforcement cannot force suspects to turn over their passwords that would unlock their devices. The state’s Supreme Court said compelling a password from a suspect is a violation of the Fifth Amendment, a constitutional protection that protects suspects from self-incrimination. It’s not an surprising […]

Two-factor authentication is good! SMS-based two-factor authentication? Not the best option. After countless tales of people having their phone numbers and inbound SMS hijacked by way of SIM swapping, it’s clear that SMS just isn’t the right solution for sending people secondary login codes. And yet, for many years, it’s been the mandatory go-to on […]

Prolific startup accelerator Y Combinator has abandoned plans to establish a branch of the program in China. The company cites a general change in strategy, but a deafening silence on the complexity and controversy of working with China right now suggests there's more at play.

OutVoice, a startup that allows editors to pay freelancers with the click of a button, has officially left beta testing and is open to any publication. The company is also announcing that it has raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from content monetization startup Coil. OutVoice was founded by Matt Saincome and Issa Diao […]

Alphabet subsidiary X, which is the former Google X, focuses exclusively on ambitious “moonshots,” or applications of tech you might expect are science fiction, not a real product in development. Like a robot that can sort through office trash. X does a lot of its work more quietly than other Alphabet companies — until it’s […]

Google is under fire again for its treatment of employees. Tomorrow, a group of Google employees is holding a rally and press conference to speak out against the company’s decision to place two employees on indefinite administrative leave. Earlier this month, Google fired one employee and put two, Laurence Berland and Rebecca Rivers, on leave […]

Netgear has released the first updated Canvas digital art from from Meural since acquiring the company last September, and the next-generation connected frame comes with some decent quality-of-life improvements as well as a new, additional size. It’s not a dramatic change from the original Meural Canvas, but it means that a product that was already […]