Crunch Hype

Weeks after Instagram rolled out increased protections for minors using its app, Google is now doing the same for its suite of services, including Google search, YouTube, YouTube Kids, Google Assistant, and others. The company this morning announced a series of product and policy changes that will allow younger people to stay more private and […]

Every woman will go through menopause some time during her life, but like many other femtech topics, this is still not talked about as much as it should.

The co-founders reached out to local home chefs and gathered them together in a marketplace where they could share their culture and passion of food with others.

Niantic continues to push forward in its quest to build a 3D map of the world. This morning the company announced that it has acquired Scaniverse, an iPhone/iPad app for scanning objects and environments in high-resolution 3D. A rep for Niantic tells me that Scaniverse will remain on the App Store, with plans to continue […]

Leafly is turning to a SPAC with Merdia Merger Corp. I to go public. The deal, valued at about $532 million and expected to generate proceeds of up to $161.5 million, includes Leafly’s recent capital raise of $31.5 million from investors, including Merida Capital Holdings.te The company is expected to list on Nasdaq under the […]

This morning, Wix announced a new product for business owners called Branded App by Wix, which allows users to develop native apps without writing code. The publicly-traded company provides tools for people and businesses to manage their online presence, but it’s most well-known for its drag-and-drop website builder. Now, the platform is expanding its user-friendly […]

Working in the world of disability insurance, Colin Nability felt not everyone could access this type of insurance due to its nature being difficult to understand and underwrite.

No matter how carefully you set up your systems, sooner or later something fundamental breaks. How you react during those times and how quickly you respond to the crisis is what people remember after it’s over. FireHydrant, a startup that helps companies prepare for and manage such crises, announced a $23 million Series B investment […]

Butternut Box, a London-based fresh dog food business with a tech-driven platform that delivers HelloFresh-style, catered dogfood, has raised $55.4 million (€47.2 million) in a funding round led by L Catterton, the consumer-focused private equity firm, and included participation from White Star Capital, Five Seasons Ventures and Passion Capital. We covered their early funding round […]

Twitter is now complying with India’s new IT rules, New Delhi told a court Tuesday, in a move that is expected to ease months-long tension between the American social media network and the government of the key overseas market. A lawyer representing the Indian government told the Delhi High Court that Twitter’s recent steps — appointment […]

Despite the prevalence of shopping malls and the emergence of VC-backed e-commerce companies like Jumia, informal retail in Africa is still king. A 2016 study by PwC states that 90% of sales in Africa’s major economies come through informal channels — markets and kiosks. This presents a large market ripe for digitization, and over the […]

Robosoft Technologies, an India-headquartered maker of digital solutions, said on Tuesday it has reached a definitive agreement to sell the business to Japan’s IT services firm TechnoPro for $108 million. Founded in 1996, Robosoft Technologies started its journey as a software services firm specialising on the Mac platform and then offered app development as a […]

FreshBooks, a Toronto-based cloud accounting software company focused on SMBs, announced today it has secured $80.75 million in a Series E round of funding, as well as $50 million in debt financing. Existing backer Accomplice led the equity financing, which the company described as “an inside round” that propelled FreshBooks to unicorn status with a […]

Roughly a year ago, Latent AI, a now three-year-old, Menlo Park, Ca.-based startup, pitched a handful of investors during TechCrunch’s Battlefield competition. It didn’t win that contest, but that hasn’t kept it from winning the interest of investors elsewhere. It just closed on $19 million in Series A funding in a round co-led by Future […]

AI is not a magic wand that will right all the world’s wrongs. But it can help businesses plan for problems in advance and respond to them appropriately if they happen.

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Ariana Grande strutted and soared around a candy-colored series of Fortnite sets in Epic’s latest major in-game live music event. The multi-day “tour” offered gamers and Grande fans alike plenty to enjoy while showcasing Epic’s impressively smooth and visually inventive vision for live events that millions of people can enjoy simultaneously. Fortnite players have known […]

Match today is introducing new features that aim to address some of users’ complaints with modern-day dating apps — like how much time it takes to find a relevant match and how frustrating it is when users ghost one another after the initial conversation fades. As part of a new strategy to better position Match […]

Let’s demystify influencer marketing, learn how to couple it with a little-known paid marketing hack and uncover the numerous mediums to leverage influencer assets

A major UN scientific report has concluded that human activity is changing the climate at an unprecedented rate. The report has been describe as a “code red for humanity” by its authors. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is stern and blunt in its conclusions: “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed […]

When George Floyd was murdered in May 2020, it set off a firestorm of protests and shed a bright hot spotlight on the issues of racism in America and elsewhere. As a response, many companies gave messages of support to people of color, yet have failed to make substantive change since that time. One company […]

Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing startup, has initiated the confidential process of filing for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission. The number of shares to be offered in the IPO and the price range have not yet been determined, the company said in a statement. Turo declined to provide additional information to […]

Today’s workplace demands that leaders acknowledge gray areas and engage with uncomfortable topics; it’s how companies grow in new and healthy directions.

Instagram is further investing in its e-commerce business, Instagram Shops, with the launch of a new advertising product, Ads in Instagram Shop. The company says it’s currently testing the new format, which includes both single images and the option for an image carousel, with select U.S.-based advertisers ahead of an expansion to other markets in […]

SpaceX will be acquiring satellite connectivity startup Swarm Technologies, the first such deal for the 19-year-old space company headed by Elon Musk. Swarm operates a constellation of 120 sandwich-sized satellites as well as a ground station network. The deal would transfer control of Swarm’s ground and space licenses to SpaceX, in addition to any licenses […]

Facebook’s decision to close accounts connected to a misinformation research project last week prompted a broad outcry from the company’s critics — and now Congress is getting involved. A handful of lawmakers criticized the decision at the time, slamming Facebook for being hostile toward efforts to make the platform’s opaque algorithms and ad targeting methods […]

Trendyol, an e-commerce platform based in Turkey, has raised $1.5 billion in a massive funding round that values the company at $16.5 billion. General Atlantic, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Princeville Capital and sovereign wealth funds, ADQ (UAE) and Qatar Investment Authority co-led the round. The deal marks SoftBank’s first in the country. The new financing […]

We’ve all been there. (Or at least I have.) You’re getting ready to vacate a property you’ve rented, only to be told by the landlord that you won’t be getting your security deposit back. This happened to me the first time I ever rented a place in the late 90s. I was shocked, but more […]

Roku this morning announced an expansion of its original content lineup, with the addition of 23 new Roku Original programs that will debut on August 13 on The Roku Channel free streaming hub. The new programing — which also hails from Roku’s acquisition of failed streamer Quibi’s catalog — will supplement the initial slate of […]

Back in December 2020 we covered the launch of a new kind of smartphone app-based search engine, Xayn. “A search engine?!” I hear you say? Well, yes, because despite the convenience of modern search engines’ ability to tailor their search results to the individual, this user-tracking comes at the expense of privacy. This mass surveillance […]

We should expect more of the same from the Chinese government: More complaints about the impact of "excessive" capital in its industries, more tumbling share prices and more held IPOs.

Extra Crunch Live gives you the chance to hear live from entrepreneurs who have successfully raised significant rounds of venture capital -- and from the investors who believed in them.

When Oleg Stavitsky and his co-founders started Endel, they didn’t necessarily expect for it to become a venture-backed business with the likes of Amazon’s Alexa Fund as investors. Stavitsky and his founding team describe themselves as a “collective of imaginative creatives and artists,” and the group had previously developed a unique set of apps for […]

Amazon and parent of its top Indian seller Cloudtail have decided to not continue their joint venture after May 2022, the two firms said in a statement Monday, hours after India’s top court ruled that the American e-commerce firm and Walmart’s Flipkart must face antitrust investigations in the South Asian market. Billionaire N.R. Narayana Murthy’s […]

Facebook announced that it has added two new destinations for when you want to move your data from the social network, including shifting images to Photobucket and event listings to Google Calendar.

Canopy's leaders expect focused fintech products to win out over large bundles of services.

James Evans and his co-founders at CommandBar were working on a different software product when they hit a wall while trying to find certain functionalities within the software.

Friends Alvaro Silberstein and Camilo Navarro came up with the idea for the Wheel the World travel booking site following a 2016 trip to Torres del Paine National Park in Chile.

Launched in February 2018, Kroo, the London-based consumer-facing fintech raised some seed funding last year for its prepaid card service which claims to offer more ‘social features’ in its drive towards offering full-blown banking services. Kroo’s pitch is that it removes friction from financial interactions with friends and family, and throws in some environmental initiatives […]

In-house legal teams play a critical role in companies, but a lot of them don’t have the same kind of technology as their counterparts in sales or finance. Instead, they often rely on email, shared inboxes and spreadsheets. LawVu gives them a cloud-based platform to share legal advice, documents, communicate with each other or external […]

Siga OT Solutions, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that helps organizations secure their operations by monitoring the raw electric signals of critical industrial assets, has raised $8.1 million in Series B funding. Siga’s SigaGuard says its technology, used by Israel’s critical water facilities and the New York Power Authority, is unique in that rather than monitoring […]

Africa is home to more than a billion people where a majority have limited or no access to vehicle financing. In fact, the continent has the lowest per capita vehicle ownership in the world. In 2019, Africa had fewer than 900,000 new vehicle sales. The U.S. sold more than 17 million new cars that same […]

UpGrad, a Bangalore-based startup that specializes in higher education and upskilling courses, hit a valuation of $1.2 billion with a $185 million funding round Monday as global investors plow record capital into firms in the world’s second largest internet market. Singapore’s Temasek led the financing round while the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation and IIFL participated. […]

Just two months after its last funding announcement, Indonesian crypto assets platform Pintu has closed a $35 million Series A+. The new round was led by Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from returning investors like Alameda Ventures, Blockchain.com Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Intudo Ventures and Pantera Capital. Pintu’s previous funding, a $6 million Series […]

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Hello friends! That’s what Lucas always starts off with, right? Lucas is out for a few weeks, so I’ll be handling Week In Review until he’s back. TL;DR on me: I’m Greg, and I’ve been with TechCrunch for a long, long time. I joined around the time Twitter found the vowels in its name and […]

We have an opportunity to apply AI and machine learning to propel the future and do good. That begins with diverse teams that reflect the full diversity and rich perspectives of our world.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone. […]

I spoke to my editor this week about the usual: upcoming stories, the future of the podcast and the existential dread of imposter syndrome amid a year-and-a-half of extreme change.