Crunch Hype

An unspecified number of smart TVs manufactured by Samsung will lose native support for Netflix next month, the companies said in an announcement this week. Netflix app installed — or available for — Samsung smart TVs manufactured in 2010 and 2011 (C and D lineups) — and likely sold for many years after that — […]

A new autonomous vehicle company is on the streets — and unbeknownst to most, has been since 2017. Unlike the majority in this burgeoning industry, this new entrant isn’t trying to launch a robotaxi service or sell a self-driving system to suppliers and automakers. It’s not aiming for autonomous delivery, either. Ghost Locomotion, which emerged […]

MIT has developed a new kind of robot that can essentially extend itself – ‘growing’ in a way that’s surprisingly similar to how a young plant grows upwards. The way researchers accomplished this uses a robot that is crucially not a soft robot, which means that it can both extend itself to reach up to a […]

Capital One has replaced its cybersecurity chief, four months after the company disclosed a massive data breach involving the theft of sensitive data on more than 100 million customers. A spokesperson for Capital One confirmed the news in an email to TechCrunch. “Michael Johnson is moving from his role as chief information security officer to […]

Spotify’s simple podcasting suite, Anchor, is today introducing a new feature designed to help creators promote their podcast: trailers. On the Anchor app for iOS and Android, podcasters will now be able to create a dedicated trailer for their podcast that combines an introduction and some background music, then turns it into an animated video […]

YouTube’s homepage is getting a makeover. The company announced today an updated, cleaner design that does away with information density to instead give more room to the videos and their titles, plus other new features like an “Add to Queue” option on the desktop, a desktop version of YouTube’s stop suggesting feature, and more. The […]

WhatsApp is expanding the capabilities of its dedicated app for business owners who want to reach their customers on smartphones. The Facebook-owned company is today introducing to the WhatsApp Business app a new “catalogs” feature that will allow the businesses to showcase and share their products and services to potential customers, who can browse photos, […]

Reserved instances (RIs) have provided a mechanism for companies, who expect to use a certain level of AWS infrastructure resources, to get some cost certainty, but as AWS’s Jeff Barr points out they are on the complex side. To fix that, the company announced a new method called Savings Plans. “Today we are launching Savings […]

Plant-based replacements are so hot right now, they’re even hitting the coolest thing in food — ice cream. The new plant-based dairy replacement maker, Eclipse Foods, has just signed a deal with hipster ice cream brands Humphry Slocombe and Oddfellows to put its dairy replacements into their mixes. Unlike other plant-based products which provide an […]

Security researchers have discovered a vulnerability in Ring doorbells that exposed the password for the Wi-Fi network it was connected to. Bitdefender said the Amazon-owned doorbell was sending its owner’s Wi-Fi password in cleartext as the doorbell joins the local network, allowing for nearby hackers to intercept the Wi-Fi password and gain access to the […]

The property industry — covering people and businesses that invest in, build, purchase or rent, and maintain property — is hugely fragmented when it comes both to data sources, and the companies that work within it. Today, a New York-based startup that is building a database that helps bring all of that together is raising […]

Aircam is a new startup that allows anyone to get instant access to pictures taken by professional photographers at weddings, parties and other events. The company was founded by brothers Evan and Ryan Rifkin, who previously co-founded Burstly, the company behind mobile app-testing service TestFlight (which was acquired by Apple). In addition to officially launching […]

LogRocket is a startup on a mission to help companies root out and fix website app errors quickly and efficiently, and it seems to be going well. Today, the company announced a $15 million Series B investment led by Battery Ventures. The company also announced a new tool called LogRocket Metrics to help developers understand […]

Autonomous drone-based transportation startup Volocopter has revealed its first partner for its new VoloDrone industrial and commercial electric vertical take-off and landing craft: John Deere . The agricultural and industrial heavy equipment company is working with Volocopter on a VoloDrone-based aerial crop-dusting system. VoloDrone, which Voloctoper unveiled at the end of last month, has 18 […]

Sensitive data leakage is one of the biggest negative side-effects of cloud-based apps and services. Today, a startup that has built an AI-based platform that can detect and take action on that data is coming out of stealth with funding to tackle the issue head-on. Nightfall — which integrates with and then automatically scans structured […]

Add another one to the list of companies piloting small wheeled autonomous robots for small package and food delivery: Yandex . Russia’s search and services giant has expanded its ambitions in the world of autonomous transportation, building on its work with self-driving cars to deploy a six-wheeled robot that adopts the popular cooler on wheels […]

Salesforce has its fingers in a lot of parts of the customer experience, so why not content management? Today, the company announced a brand new tool called Salesforce Content Management System, which it says is designed from the ground up to deliver a quality customer experience across multiple channels. The idea is to provide a […]

Earlier this year, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft announced the second generation of its HoloLens augmented reality visor. Today, the $3,500 HoloLens 2 is going on sale in the United States, Japan, China, Germany, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and New Zealand, the same countries where it was previously available for pre-order. […]

Small satellite startup Kepler has done something never before accomplished with satellite-based broadband connectivity: providing a high-bandwidth the Arctic. Kepler’s nanosatellites have successfully demonstrated achieving over 100Mbps of network speed to a German icebreaker sea vessel that acts as a mobile lab for the MOSAiC research expedition. This is the first time ever that there’s […]

Wrench, the Seattle-based on demand vehicle maintenance and repair service for consumers and fleets, has raised $20 million in its latest round of financing. The company’s round was led by Vulcan Capital with additional participation from Madrona Venture Group, Tenaya Capital and Marubeni Corp. Wrench is one of a growing number of companies that are […]

Opportunity’s still knocking, but it’s on a very short leash. We’re T-minus 48 hours remaining on early bird prices to Disrupt Berlin 2019. And if you want to talk opportunity, you won’t find a better one than attending this two-day international conference focused on early-stage startups. Right now, savvy startuppers can reap significant savings — […]

South African internet company Naspers isn’t a particularly well-known name in the startup community. And yet, the company made an early investment in a small Chinese company called… Tencent. Naspers still retains a 31% stake in Tencent that is valued at around $100 billion (with a B). That’s why I’m excited to announce that Naspers […]

Immo Investment Technologies, a London-based fintech startup that purchase homes on behalf of buy-to-let investors, has closed €11M in Series A funding. Backing the round is Talis Capital and HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, with participation from Tom Stafford and Rahul Mehta of DST Global, and Mato Peric, among others. In addition, the company is disclosing that […]

Hot on the heels of adding support for Samsung Pay, Curve, the London-based “over-the-top” banking platform that lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single card, has added support for Google Pay. The new integration — which we reported earlier this week was imminent, means that Android users can pay with Curve […]

Nigerian internet service provider Tizeti has launched its first 4G LTE network. The Y-Combinator backed startup — that uses solar powered towers to deliver net connectivity — has built its premier 4G capable tower in the city of Port Harcourt, where Tizeti will offer its first 4G and ISP services. The company operates primarily in […]

European startup studio eFounders recently reached a portfolio valuation of $1 billion across 23 companies. And the company doesn’t want to stop there as it is currently launching three new companies and products. While software-as-a-service companies are trendy, eFounders has been exploring this space for a few years now. The company regularly comes up with […]

Alphabet’s board of directors has opened an investigation into how executives at the company have handled misconduct claims, CNBC reported earlier today after viewing materials that it says show an independent subcommittee has been formed — and a law firm hired — to look into the issues. One of the subjects of those claims is […]

Saudi Arabian officials allegedly paid at least two employees of Twitter to access personal information on users the government there was interested in, according to recently unsealed court documents. Those users were warned of the attempt in 2015, but the full picture is only now emerging. According to an AP report citing the federal complaint, […]

You can’t put performance feedback on hold until you have everything ironed out. The pace of business today is too quick to wait for the perfect time, because the “perfect time” may be too late or worse, it may never come at all.

Rumors have been flying today about Xerox possibly buying HP Inc., the printer and computer company. The company issued a public statement this afternoon confirming that there are talks ongoing, and that it will do whatever is in the best interest of shareholders. The Wall Street Journal got things rolling earlier today when it published […]

The Apple TV app is so bad, someone had to create a shortcut just to make it easier to navigate to the new Apple TV+ content. Apple may have invested billions in its Apple TV+ streaming service and hosted star-studded events to tout its new shows, but what it apparently didn’t do is give much […]

Money is usually too tight to pay competitive salaries, there’s no recognizable brand or reputation yet and most people would prefer to work at a company their friends and family have heard of before. Who wants to take a job that might not be around in a year?

California’s attorney general Xavier Becerra has accused Facebook of “continuing to drag its feet” by failing to provide documents to the state’s investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. The attorney general said in a court filing Wednesday that Facebook had provided a “patently deficient” response to two sets of subpoenas for the previously undisclosed investigation […]

Airbnb says it will rebook guests if a property fails to meets its new "accuracy standards" beginning next month.

As history tells us, the break-up of “Big Oil” and “Big Telco” in the past led to more competition and innovation. What to do in the era of “Big Tech?” Living in 2019, we know more than ever before about how Big Tech, particularly in the shape of Facebook, Twitter and Google — as the […]

Microsoft is setting itself some high goals for its new Chromium-based Edge browser. As Chuck Friedman, the corporate vice president for Edge told me, he wants Edge to hit one billion users — a number that would start to rival Chrome’s numbers. First, though, Friedman’s team has to get version 1.0 of Edge out to […]

Tinder’s big experiment with interactive content — the recently launched in-app series called “Swipe Night” — was a success. According to Tinder parent company Match during its Q3 earnings this week, “millions” of Tinder users tuned in to watch the show’s episodes during its run in October, and this drove double-digit increases in both matches and […]

Google has partnered with mobile security firms ESET, Lookout and Zimperium to combat the scourge of malicious Android apps that sneak into the Google Play app store. The announcement came Wednesday, with each company confirming their part in the newly created App Defense Alliance. Google said it’s working with the companies to “stop bad apps […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that the company will unveil its all-electric “cybertruck” November 21 in Los Angeles near the serial entrepreneur’s other company, SpaceX. The date just so happens to coincide with the LA Auto Show. However, this is a Tesla event and not associated with the auto show in downtown Los Angeles. […]

Securing a green card can feel overwhelming for people in Silicon Valley who were born in India and China. But with the right help and guidance from a skilled immigration attorney, the process can be simpler, smoother and more successful.

In a new deal tying Uber Eats closer to the Los Angeles-based delivery management service, Ordermark, the companies are offering special discounts to restaurants that use the service. Uber Eats is giving all Ordermark restaurants a preferred fee rate, waiving the upfront set-up fee, and fully eliminating the need for the Uber eats tablet in […]

Amazon announced a plan today to build a $40 million, 350,000 square foot robotics innovation hub in Westborough, MA. The new facility will bring 200 technology and advanced manufacturing jobs when it opens in 2021. The new facilities will include corporate offices, research and development labs and a robotics manufacturing space. The company said that […]

Stealth fintech startup Digits, from the same team that built Crashlytics to scale then sold to Twitter for over $100 million, has raised a $10.5 million round of Series A funding, the company is announcing today. The round was led by Benchmark and has the backing of 72 angels, including founders and CEOs from companies […]

Pokémon GO and games like it can’t exist without waypoints — the in-game locations that correlate to real world points of interest, acting as the Pokéstops, gyms, etc. The more waypoints they have around the world, the better the game becomes. But building up these databases of waypoints is tough. A company can’t do […]

Wardrobe, a new peer-to-peer fashion rental marketplace, has today announced the close of a $1.5 million seed round and its public launch out of beta. The funding was led by angel investor Cyan Banister and Ludlow Ventures, with participation from GroundUp Ventures, Airbnb cofounder Nate Blecharczyk and HQ Trivia founder Rus Yusupov, among others. Wardrobe […]

Sponsored locations aren’t new to Niantic games. Companies like Sprint, McDonalds, and AT&T have had sponsored locations in games like Pokémon GO and Harry Potter: Wizards Unite for a long while now. The idea: by turning your business into a big in-game beacon and giving players some reason to stop by, you increase foot […]

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app owned by Facebook, has faced a lot of controversy over the role that Groups plays on the platform — both for Groups’ role in spreading spam, misinformation or worse; and for the fact that it can be very hard (actually impossible) to control when you are added except by blocking […]

Neural Magic, a startup founded by an MIT professor, who figured out a way to run machine learning models on commodity CPUs, announced a $15 million seed investment today. Comcast Ventures led the round with participation from NEA, Andreessen Horowitz, Pillar VC and Amdocs. The company had previously received a $5 million pre-seed, making the […]

eToro, the multi-asset investment platform that spans “social” stock trading to cryptocurrency, has acquired Delta, the crypto portfolio tracker app. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although one source tells me the deal was worth $5 million. It is not clear if it is stock only or cash (or a mixture of both) and if […]

Amazon’s kickstarted the smart speaker market with the original Echo, way back in late-2014. Like many of the company’s hardware offerings, it was very much a utilitarian device. The first Echo was smart first and speaker a distant second. Echo’s how slowly gotten better in the sound department over time, but the arrival Apple’s HomePod […]