Crunch Hype

While brands and retailers are sitting on enormous amounts of data, only a handful are actually leveraging it to its full potential.

Time to reset your “days since last major chip vulnerability” counter back to zero. Security researchers have found another flaw in Intel processors — this time it’s a new variant of the Zombieload attack they discovered earlier this year, but targeting Intel’s latest family of chips, Cascade Lake. Intel calls the vulnerability Transactional Asynchronous Abort, […]

Square. Venmo. PayPal. Apple Pay. Google Pay. There’s really no shortage of ways to give people money via your phone, but that — nor growing calls that the company is already getting too damned big — isn’t stopping Facebook. Facebook has just announced Facebook Pay, a single payment system that ties into all of […]

Facebook has faced a barrage of concern over an apparent bug that resulted in the social media giant’s iPhone app exposing the camera as users scroll through their feed. A tweet over the weekend blew up after Joshua Maddux tweeted a screen recording of the Facebook app on his iPhone. He noticed that the camera […]

Earlier this year, Google’s in-house incubator launched CallJoy, a virtual customer service phone agent for small businesses that could block spammers, answer calls, provide callers with basic business information, and redirect other requests like appointment booking or to-go orders to SMS. Today, CallJoy is rolling out its first major update, which now enables the computer […]

Are we breaking down barriers, or simply congratulating ourselves for reaching the upper echelons of women who have vaulted them? Are we pushing to change toxic systems, or asking women to change themselves to navigate them?

From a geographical perspective, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles startup ecosystems are no longer separated by a few hundred miles. Top-tier VCs from SF visit LA regularly, and entrepreneurs raise from investors upstate and downstate in one process. Anecdotally, as an LA resident of 4 years, there’s been a palpable uptick of […]

Pan-African e-commerce startup Jumia released its third-quarter financial results today. The numbers and presentation reflected some of the same past trends, with a dash of new, and nary a mention of a declining share-price. The results Jumia — with online goods and service verticals in 14 countries — posted third-quarter revenue growth of 19% (€40 […]

Disney+ has officially launched in the U.S.…and it’s struggling under the load. As is often the case with new streaming services, launch days bugs and crashes are today plaguing Disney+. This morning, users are reporting error messages when they try to stream content along with other connection issues, crashes, bugs, and more on the service’s […]

According to former Chappy Managing Director Adam Cohen Aslatei, “something more” is one of the most common pieces of feedback that dating apps get from their users. That’s where S’More comes in. S’More was founded by Aslatei to provide a dating app to users that goes beyond superficial looks. Here’s how it works: Rather than […]

Depending on which study you believe, the wearable and digital health market could be worth anywhere from $30 billion to nearly $90 billion in the next six years. If the numbers around the size of the market are a moving target, just think about how to gauge the validity and efficacy of the products that […]

On the heels of Google buying Fitbit for $2.1 billion, another player in wearables and health technology has picked up a big round of growth funding to continue expanding its business. Whoop, which makes a sensor-equipped (and screen-free) strap that continuously tracks your activities 24/7 and then provides a multitude of performance metrics and other […]

Exactly 10 years ago, on stage at a TechCrunch event, Alexa von Tobel launched her startup, LearnVest, an online financial planning company that aimed to give people access to more affordable financial planning services. Much has happened in subsequent years. LearnVest went on to raise roughly $70 million from investors, then to sell for a […]

Uploadcare, a startup that aims to make using CDN platforms cheaper and easier for businesses, today announced that it has raised a $1.7 million seed round led by Runa Capital and Vendep Capital, with existing investors Vaizra Capital and LVL1 Group participating as well. Uploadcare promises to offer an end-to-end solution for businesses that automatically […]

Loop Returns, the startup that helps brands handle returns from online purchases, has today announced the close of a $10 million Series A funding round led by FirstMark Capital. Lerer Hippeau and Ridge Ventures also participated in the round. Loop started when Jonathan Poma, a cofounder and COO and President, was working at an agency […]

Counting billable time in six minute increments is the most annoying part of being a lawyer. It’s a distracting waste. It leads law firms to conservatively under-bill. And it leaves lawyers stuck manually filling out timesheets after a long day when they want to go home to their families. Life is already short, as Ping […]

A Dutch court has ruled that Facebook can be required to use filter technologies to identify and pre-emptively take down fake ads linked to crypto currency scams that carry the image of a media personality, John de Mol, and other well known celebrities. The Dutch celerity filed a lawsuit against Facebook in April over the […]

Instagram is launching a video-music remix feature to finally fight back against Chinese social rival TikTok. Instagram Reels lets you make 15-second video clips set to music and share them as Stories, with the potential to go viral on a new Top Reels section of Explore. Just like TikTok, users can soundtrack their Reels with […]

Last week, we extended the early-bird pricing on passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 until 15 November at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Consider it distinctly non-divine intervention from Expeditus, the patron saint of procrastinators (and speedy causes). The countdown continues, and you have just four days left to save serious dough — we’re talking up to €500 depending on […]

We started the competition with ten hardware startups vying to take home the Disrupt Hardware Battlefield cup at TechCrunch Shenzhen 2019. They all pitched their hearts out to our team of judges who deliberated at length and chose their 4 favorites who came back on day 2 of the event to pitch to a brand […]

No one’s going to pay $380 for decent point-of-view video glasses and some trippy filters. But that’s kind of the point of Snapchat Spectacles 3. They’re merely a stepping stone towards true augmented reality eyewear — a public hardware beta for the Snap Lab R&D team that Apple and Facebook aren’t getting as they tinker […]

Meet PacketAI, a French startup that wants to alert you when there’s something wrong with your app or service. The company uses machine learning to parse raw event data and find out if there’s anything wrong. PacketAI can intercept incidents at many different levels. For instance, the service can tell you if your users can’t […]

Can we get a fanfare of trumpets, please? The time has come to introduce you to our TC Top Picks for Disrupt Berlin 2019. The ingenuity and creativity reflected in the international startup community can’t be overstated, and narrowing the field from the hundreds of applications we received was no easy task. The program showcases […]

Angular Ventures, the early-stage enterprise and “deep tech”-focused VC firm founded by former DFJ Esprit partner Gil Dibner, is announcing the closing of its debut fund at $41 million. Targeting startups in Europe and Israel, Angular Ventures has been operating in so-called “stealth mode” for almost two years, seeing its portfolio grow to 12 companies. […]

The centerpiece of Disney’s streaming strategy is here. After an initial test in the Netherlands, Disney+ is officially launching in the United States and Canada today, with a lineup of original content that includes the first episode of the very first live action Star Wars series, “The Mandalorian,” along with a deep library of Disney, […]

Nigerian digital payments firm Interswitch confirmed today it has reached unicorn status after Visa acquired a minority equity stake in the firm. “The investment makes Interswitch one of the most valuable African fintech businesses with a valuation of $1 billion,” Interswitch said in a release to TechCrunch. The Visa investment could create the first of […]

Balderton Capital, one of the so-called “big four” early-stage VC firms in London (the others being Accel, Atomico and Index), has raised a new $400 million fund to continue backing European tech startups at Series A. Dealroom recently released a report that pegged Balderton as the most active Series A investor in Europe (between 2014-2018), […]

While across much of Asia, November 11th is either “singles day” (a $38 billion Alibaba extravaganza this year) or Pepero Day (named because 11/11 looks like a bunch of chocolate dessert sticks), here in the United States and parts of Europe, November 11th also marks the end of World War I and the commemoration of […]

As Xiaomi widens its smartphone lead over Samsung in India, a new competitor is increasingly posing a challenge. Realme, a one-and-half-year-old smartphone vendor that spun out of Oppo, commanded 14.3% of the world’s second largest smartphone market in the quarter that ended in September, research firm IDC said on Monday. While Xiaomi, with 27.1% of […]

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi’s comments during an interview with Axios — and his subsequent apology — have done more than hand the company’s critics more ammunition in the renewed #boycottUber campaign. (Although, mission accomplished on that front.) They also exposed a weakness that if left uncorrected threatens to bring back the toxic culture Khosrowshahi promised […]

An expensive experiment in global distribution has been abandoned by Adidas, which has announced that will close its robotic "Speedfactories" in Atlanta and Ansbach, Germany, within 6 months. The company sugar-coated the news with a promise to repurpose the technology used at its existing human-powered factories in Asia.

D2C brands personalize the buying experience, optimize customer delight, educate users at the right cadence and ultimately, help consumers successfully harvest the emotions they were seeking.

Game launches these days are frequently the very worst time to play them. Plagued by bugs, server issues, balance problems, and a lack of content, many "games as a service" titles are best consumed after a month or two. Not so with Hideo Kojima's long-awaited Death Stranding, which if you're going to play at all... you should probably play now.

The latest research out of Facebook sets machine learning models to tasks that, to us, seem rather ordinary — but for a computer are still monstrously difficult. These projects aim to anonymize faces, improvise hand movements and — perhaps hardest of all — give credible fashion advice. The research here was presented recently at the […]

Are those red notification dots on your Facebook home screen driving you crazy? Sick of Facebook Marketplace wasting your screen space? Now you can control what appears in the Facebook app’s navigation bar thanks to a new option called Shortcuts Bar Settings. Over the weekend TechCrunch spotted the option to remove certain tabs like Marketplace, […]

Is it the web page that’s slow or is it your network connection? In the future, Google’s Chrome web browser may have an answer for you. Google announced today a plan to identify and label websites that typically load slowly by way of clear badging. The company says it may later choose to identify sites […]

Amazon is opening its first non-Whole Foods grocery store in the LA neighborhood of Woodland Hills, the retailer today confirmed. The news of the new store was first reported by CNET, which spotted several job postings referencing the location, including those for a zone leader, grocery associates and a food service associate. Unlike Amazon’s growing […]

In September, Salesforce Ventures, the venture of arm of Salesforce, announced a hefty $300 million investment in Automattic, the company behind WordPress, the ubiquitous content management system (CMS). At the same time, the company was putting the finishing touches on Salesforce CMS, an in-house project it released last week. The question is, why did it […]

Following the merger of CBS and Viacom announced earlier this year, the combined company today confirmed its plans to restructure its content and digital leadership teams in order to streamline operations. Among the changes, which were first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, are the departures of Comedy Central head Kent Alterman and […]

NASA’s next Venus probe could be an atmosphere-skimming robotic stingray designed by the University of Buffalo. UB’s CRASH Lab, which is the institution’s Crashworthinesss for Aerospace Structures and Hybrids laboratory, has been selected by NASA to get early-stage funding as part of a program the agency devised to come up with new and innovative concept […]

After 24 hours of frenzied buying and selling, and weeks of aggressive advertising and promotions before it, the Alibaba Group said today its sales hit another record high on Singles’ Day, the biggest shopping day on the planet. The Chinese e-commerce giant said its platforms sold goods worth 268 billion yuan, or $38.4 billion today, […]

Twitter last month said it was introducing a new policy to help fight deepfakes and other “manipulated media” that involve photos, videos or audio that’s been significantly altered to change its original meaning or purpose, or those that make it seem like something happened that actually did not. Today, Twitter is sharing a draft of […]

SpaceX successfully launched its first batch of production Starlink satellites today, sending 60 of the small satellites to their target orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket. These 60 satellites follow 60 launched in May, but whereas those, and two launched last year, were for testing purposes, this new batch is the first in a series […]

Carbonite has agreed to a $1.42 billion purchase by OpenText, an enterprise information management giant, ending weeks of speculation about the anticipated buyout. The deal marks a 78% premium on Carbonite’s share price on September 5, when it was first rumored the company was preparing to buy the backup and data recovery company. Carbonite said […]

SpaceX has a big launch coming up this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida – a Falcon 9 will carry a payload of 60 of its Starlink orbital communications satellites to space at 9:56 AM ET (6:56 AM PT). The Starlink satellites are the first non-test group of SpaceX’s new constellation heading up en masse, […]

Frontier Car Group, the Berlin-based startup building used-car marketplaces targeting high-growth, emerging markets, has picked up another significant round of funding from a strategic backer also focusing on the same geographical opportunity. Today, OLX, the online classifieds division Prosus (the digital division of Naspers that listed earlier this year in Europe) announced that it would […]

As Amazon-backed Deliveroo expands into click-and-collect and procurement services to grow its footprint with restaurants in Europe, a food fight among three other takeout and delivery players continues apace in an ongoing consolidation march to compete better against the likes not just of Deliveroo but also Uber Eats and more. Today, Prosus — the recently-listed […]

Don’t Deliveroo . The UK-based on-demand food delivery service has expanded into not actually delivering orders by offering users a pick-up option, called ‘Pickup’, as an alternative to paying a delivery fee and waiting in for lunch to arrive. The new ‘click & collection’ service is live for 700+ eateries in 13 UK cities at […]

Over the past few years, Andela has built a simple yet powerful answer to the talent shortage in Silicon Valley and other overheating tech ecosystems. The company helps you hire some of the most talented software developers in a handful of African cities. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Andela co-founder and CEO Jeremy […]

New research commissioned by UK VC firm Octopus Ventures has put a spotlight on which of the country’s higher education institutions are doing the most to support spin outs. The report compiles a ranking of universities, foregrounding those with a record of producing what partner Simon King dubs “quality spin outs”. The research combines and […]