Crunch Hype

Netflix has acquired the rights from Paramount to make “Beverly Hills Cop 4.” Deadline, which broke the news, said the studio has been trying to restart the franchise in several forms, including a TV show. Even with producer Jerry Bruckheimer and star Eddie Murphy attached to the sequel, Paramount might have been a little nervous […]

Lyft is making 200 new long-range EVs available to rideshare drivers as part of its Express Drive program, the company revealed today. Express Drive is a program that Lyft offers to provide rental cars to drivers on its platform as an alternative to options like long-term leasing. Express Drive members get unlimited miles, as well […]

Google today announced that it has finished the install and test of its private Curie cable. When it was announced, Curie, which connects the U.S. to Chile, was the company’s third private cable. Since then, it has announced two more, Dunant and Equiano, which will connect the U.S. to Europe and Portugal to South Africa. […]

In part two of our survey that asked top VCs about the most exciting investment areas in real estate, we dig into responses from 10 leading real estate-focused investors at firms that span early to growth stages across real estate specific firms, corporate venture arms, and prominent generalist firms to share where they see opportunity […]

The multi-trillion dollar global real estate market is getting flipped on its head. Business model innovation, data accessibility and the proliferation of mobile, SaaS and other cloud-native software have already given rise to a cohort of tech unicorns that sit amongst the world’s most influential real estate companies. Emerging technologies and growing capabilities across machine […]

More than 50% of residential apartments and other real estate properties in Jakarta are currently vacant, according to official estimates. A startup that is attempting to make it easier for tenants to rent these properties in Jakarta and other places in Indonesia said on Thursday that it has closed a new financing round. Travelio has […]

Legendary coder John Carmack is leaving Facebook's Oculus to focus on a personal project — no less than the creation of Artificial General Intelligence, or "Strong AI." He'll remain attached to the company in a "Consulting CTO" position, but will be spending all his time working on, perhaps, the AI that finally surpasses and destroys humanity.

Big changes are afoot for Wire, an enterprise-focused end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service that advertises itself as “the most secure collaboration platform”. In February, Wire quietly raised $8.2 million from Morpheus Ventures and others, we’ve confirmed — the first funding amount it has ever disclosed — and alongside that external financing, it moved its […]

SpaceX has confirmed that it ran a static fire test of its Crew Dragon astronaut capsule launch escape system. That’s a key step that it needed to run, and one that is under especially high scrutiny because a static fire of its thrusters back in April resulted in an explosion that destroyed that spacecraft. After […]

Last year, Adobe, SAP and Microsoft came together and formed the Open Data Initiative. Not to be outdone, this week, AWS, Salesforce and Genesys, in partnership with The Linux Foundation, announced the Cloud Information Model. The two competing data models have a lot in common. They are both about bringing together data and applying a […]

Freshworks, a company that makes a variety of business software tools, from CRM to help-desk software, announced a $150 million Series H investment today from Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Accel on a hefty $3.5 billion valuation. The late-stage startup has raised almost $400 million, according to Crunchbase data. The company has been […]

We’re excited to announce a new Extra Crunch community perk from Zendesk. Starting today, annual and two-year Extra Crunch members that are new to Zendesk and located within the U.S. or Canada can receive a credit for six months of unlimited licenses for any combination of Zendesk Support, Talk, Chat, Guide and Sell products, for […]

NASA has a new app (or web-based game, if you’re on desktop) that provides a simplified simulation of what it’s like to plan and run a commercial crew mission — meaning one of the planned varieties of mission that will actually take place aboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner once they begin flying […]

"There is but one truly serious question in philosophy, and that is suicide," wrote Albert Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus. This is equally true for a human navigating an absurd existence, and an artificial intelligence navigating a morally insoluble situation.

Launching and operating shared bikes and scooters has lost its novelty. Worldwide, numerous companies are operating shared micromobility services — so many that the industry is well into a consolidation phase. In Latin America, Grow Mobility formed as part of a merger between micromobility providers Grin and Yellow. In the U.S., Bird acquired Scoot. And, […]

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. MacBook Pro 16” first impressions: Return of the Mack Over the past few years, Apple’s MacBook game had begun to suffer […]

Apple Music is taking on Spotify with the launch of a new feature, Apple Music Replay, that will allow subscribers to take a look back at their favorite music from 2019. The feature is similar in some ways to Spotify’s popular year-end review, known as Wrapped, but Apple’s version is more than just an annual summary […]

Atlassian today announced a set of new templates and workflows for Jira Service Desk that were purpose-built for HR, legal and facilities teams. Service Desk started six years ago as a version of Jira that was mostly meant for IT departments. Atlassian, however, found that other teams inside the companies that adopted it started to […]

For AI entrepreneurs, there are additional factors that must be addressed. Why? It is fairly clear that we’re in the early stages of this burgeoning industry which stands to revolutionize sectors from healthcare to fintech, logistics to transportation and beyond.

Rocket launch startup Rocket Lab is all about building out rapid-response space-launch capabilities, and founder/CEO Peter Beck is showing off its latest advancement in service of that goal: A room-sized manufacturing robot named “Rosie.” Rosie is tasked with processing the carbon composite components of Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle. That translates to basically getting the […]

At its annual Universe conference today, Microsoft -owned GitHub announced a couple of new products, as well as the general availability of a number of tools that developers have been able to test for the last few months. The two announcements that developers will likely be most interested in are the launch of GitHub’s first […]

Volkswagen said Wednesday it will build a battery pack assembly facility as part of an $800 million expansion project that will turn the Chattanooga, Tenn. factory into its North American base for manufacturing electric vehicles. The Chattanooga factory expansion, which is includes a 564,000-square-foot addition to the body shop and is expected to create 1,000 […]

Disney’s launch of its premium subscription streaming service Disney+ was not without issues – high demand resulted int content not being accessible for hours on its first day of availability. The company cited higher-than-expected demand as a factor, and now we have a rough estimate of the size of that demand – Disney has revealed […]

Google Maps is adding a feature that will make it easier for people traveling in foreign countries where they don’t speak the local language: built-in translation with text-to-speech support. The feature will allow users to tap on a new speaker button next to a place name or address, to have Google Maps say the name […]

In what’s proving to be an interesting day for Docker, it announced it has received a $35 million investment from existing investors Benchmark Capital and Insight Partners. It also announced the company has named long-time Chief Product Officer, Scott Johnston as CEO. Johnston is the third CEO at Docker this year, replacing Rob Bearden, who […]

Facebook’s latest transparency report is out. The social media giant said the number of government demands for user data increased by 16% to 128,617 demands during the first half of this year compared to the second half of last year. That’s the highest number of government demands it has received in any reporting period since […]

Netflix is taking on the Disney+ threat by partnering up with kids entertainment giant Nickelodeon, which will produce original content, including films and TV shows, for Netflix’s streaming service. The company announced this morning it has entered into a new, multi-year output deal that will produce animated feature films and shows that will include both […]

Brave, the company co-founded by ex-Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich after his ouster from the organization in 2014, today launched version 1.0 of its browser for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. In a browser market where users are spoiled for choice, Brave is positioning itself as a fast option that preserves users’ privacy with strong […]

Home furnishing retailer Wayfair was among the first to adopt AR technology as a means of helping people better visual furniture and accessories in their own home, ahead of purchase. Today, the company is expanding its feature set to allow for more visualization capabilities — even when you’re shopping out in the real world and […]

Flying cars are fine – but why use a car when you can have a motorcycle instead? YC-backed startup JetPack Aviation wants to answer that question with the world’s first flying motorcycle, a personal aircraft dubbed ‘The Speeder,’ a name that Star Wars fans will surely appreciate. Now, JetPack has raised a seed round of […]

Apple is making its Mac Pro and Apple Pro Display available in December, it announced today. The machine was announced earlier this year but no availability window had been set. In addition to the previously announced specs, Apple also noted that it would be able to be ordered with up to an 8TB SSD. Apple’s […]

In poker, complacency is a quiet killer. It can steal your forward momentum bit by bit, using the warm glow of a winning hand or two to cover the bets you’re not making until it’s too late and you’re out of leverage. Over the past few years, Apple’s MacBook game had begun to suffer from […]

Sometimes it seems like you can hear a song all the way in your toes. With these new sneakers, you actually can. Meet the new EP 01 sneakers out of DropLabs. Yes, you read that right. We’re talking about sneakers. Invented by a man named Brock Seiler, and led by former Beats by Dre CEO […]

Google is the latest big tech company to make a move into banking and personal financial services: The company is gearing up to offer checking accounts to consumers, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal, starting as early as next year. Google is calling the projected “Cache,” and it’ll partner with banks and credit […]

Pull your heads out of the trenches, startup fans. You have just 72 hours to save up to €500 with early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019. When the clock strikes 11:59 p.m. (CEST) on Friday, 15 November, the early bird is no more. Three days will fly by in a flash, so don’t wait. […]

Convoy, the digital freight network that connects truckers with shippers, has raised $400 million in a Series D funding round as it aims to scale its business amid an increasingly competitive market. The funding round brings Convoy’s post-money valuation to $2.75 billion. The round was co-led by Generation Investment Management and previous Convoy investor T. […]

Meet The Garage, a new incubator in Paris that is all about blockchain projects. Co-founded by Cyril Paglino from Starchain Capital, Fabrice Le Fessant from Dune Network and Oussama Ammar from The Family, the company will support blockchain startups, help big companies launch blockchain projects and educate engineers about blockchain development. The Garage is a […]

Plum, the U.K.-based “AI assistant” to help you manage your money and save more, has raised $3 million in additional funding — money it plans to use for further growth, including European expansion. The London company has also quietly launched its app for Android phones, adding to an existing iOS app and Facebook Messenger chatbot. […]

We’re just about one month away from opening the doors to infinite early-stage startup opportunity. We’re talking about Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December. But today we’d like to highlight a specific opportunity you might not be familiar with — the Wild Card. Why is this opportunity a big deal? The startup […]

Africa focused payment startup PalmPay has launched in Nigeria after raising a $40 million seed-round led by Chinese mobile-phone maker Transsion. The investment came via Transsion’s Tecno subsidiary, with participation from China’s NetEase and Taiwanese wireless comms hardware firm Mediatek — a Transsion spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. PalmPay had piloted its mobile fintech offering in […]

Fintech startup Chaka aims to open up online investingd to Africa’s most populous nation, Nigeria. The seed-stage company recently went live with its mobile-based platform that offers Nigerians stock trading in over 40 countries. Chaka positions itself as a passport to local and global investing. The startup has created an API and interface that allows […]

Xpeng Motors, the Chinese electric vehicle startup backed by Alibaba and Foxconn, has raised a fresh injection of $400 million in capital and has taken on Xiaomi as a strategic investor, the company announced. The Series C includes an unidentified group of strategic and institutional investors. XPeng Motors Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng, who also […]

Microsoft’s big experiment in real-world augmented reality gaming, Minecraft Earth, is live now for players in North America, the U.K. and a number of other areas. The pocket-size AR game lets you collect blocks and critters wherever you go, undertake little adventures with friends and, of course, build sweet castles. I played an early version […]

Twitch today publicly launched Twitch Studio, its new software designed to help new streamers get started broadcasting. The idea behind the app is to make it simple for someone new to the space to get started, by offering a quick setup process and other tools to make the stream both look and sound more professional […]

The man who oversaw the creation of some of HBO’s most highly praised “prestige TV” could soon be making shows for Apple TV+, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Richard Plepler, who was HBO’s chairman and CEO up until he parted ways with the company last February following its acquisition by […]

A federal court in Boston has ruled that the government is not allowed to search travelers’ phones or other electronic devices at the U.S. border without first having reasonable suspicion of a crime. That’s a significant victory for civil liberties advocates, who say the government’s own rules allowing its border agents to search electronic devices […]

Elon Musk said Tuesday during an awards ceremony in Germany that Tesla’s European gigafactory will be built in the Berlin area. Musk was on stage to receive a Golden Steering Wheel Award given by BILD. “There’s not enough time tonight to tell all the details,” Musk said during an on stage interview with Volkswagen Group […]

Who shot first? Han? Greedo? Who cares. MACLUNKEY! Disney+ launched this morning, and with it comes a mostly inexplicable change to one of cinema’s most debated scenes — the encounter between Han and Greedo at the Mos Eisley cantina. For reasons unknown to anyone but George Lucas right now, a super brief but newly inserted […]

When Samsung announced the Space Monitor, I knew in an instant that it was going to be something I had to try out in person. Now that I've had time to do so, I'm happy to say it's much as advertised, a streamlined and solid monitor with a smart new design — but not necessarily one for everybody.

Electrification in the automotive industry isn’t just about consumer cars: There are plenty of commercial and specialist vehicles that are prime candidates for EVs, including in the healthcare industry. Take the new UCLA mobile surgical lab developed by Winnebago, for instance — it’s a zero-emission, all-electric vehicle that will move back and forth between two […]