Crunch Hype

For the fourth year in a row, Apple has updated its privacy pages. Every year the tech giant’s refreshes the privacy portion of its website — usually a month or so after its product launches — to keep customers up to date with its latest features and technologies. Since its fight with the FBI, which […]

Apple has teamed up with Veteran Affairs (VA) to allow those who’ve served our country to now access their health records via iPhone. Health records access via Apple’s Health app has been available to iPhone users since the beginning of 2018. However, the ability to access that data has been limited to those hospitals and […]

Immersive Labs, a cybersecurity skills platform, has raised $40 million in its Series B, the company’s second round of funding this year following an $8 million Series A in January. Summit Partners led the fundraise with Goldman Sachs participating, the Bristol, U.K.-based company confirmed. Immersive, led by former GCHQ cybersecurity instructor James Hadley, helps corporate […]

Richard Branson’s small satellite launch company Virgin Orbit announced today that it has secured final approval on a £7.35 million ($9.5 million) grant from the UK Space Agency (UKSA), funds which will be used by Virgin Orbit to help set up its Cornwall-based launch facility. Virgin Orbit has been putting together funding and securing regulatory […]

Five years ago, when the Los Angeles-based enterprise software startup Replicated first launched, it was one of a number of contenders looking to bring containerized software development tools to businesses. The company initially hitched its star to containerized software development toolkit, Docker, but over time developers began to migrate to another containerized software development platform […]

Voters in San Francisco have resoundingly rejected an attempt to overturn a citywide ban on e-cigarettes by a margin of around 80:20. Reporting on the count in the Bay Area, CBS SF says at least 78 per cent of voters rejected the ballot measure, known as Proposition C. The measure had been heavily back by e-cigarette […]

Neo4j, a popular graph database, is available as an open source product for anyone to download and use. Its enterprise product aimed at larger organizations is growing fast, but the company recognized there was a big market in between those two extremes, and today it introduced a new managed cloud service called Aura. They wanted […]

Chinese ride-hailing firm Didi Chuxing said today it will conduct a trial relaunch of its Hitch carpooling service in seven major Chinese cities with additional safety features by end of the month, more than a year after suspending the service following the murder of a female passenger by her Didi driver. The relaunch of popular […]

GoCardless, the London fintech that makes it easy for businesses to offer recurring bank payments, has partnered with TransferWise for its currency exchange. The move sees GoCardless utilise the TransferWise API and the money transfer company’s “TransferWise for Business” product and in turn provide TransferWise’s FX rates to its own customers. More broadly, the partnership […]

Did you know that the cuckoo clock originated in Germany? It’s a fact. And while the origins of early-bird pricing remain shrouded in mystery, one thing remains clear. Early bird passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 disappear in just 72 hours. Depending on which pass you buy, the early bird can save you up to €500. […]

Search and personalization services continue to be a major area of investment among enterprises, both to make their products and services more discoverable (and used) by customers, and to help their own workers get their jobs done, with the market estimated to be worth some $100 billion annually. Today, one of the big startups building […]

Senegalese startup NIMA Codes — a digital mapping service for locations without formal addresses — has upgraded its app and plans to go live in 15 African countries in 2020. The pre-seed stage startup launched in 2018 around an API that uses mobile-phone numbers to catalog coordinates for unregistered homes and businesses in Senegal. NIMA […]

In the summer of 2017, we wrote about a battle between Cloudflare, the San Francisco-based internet security and content delivery network, and two attorneys who’d previously litigated intellectual property cases on behalf of numerous tech giants. The attorneys had come together to form Blackbird Technologies, a Boston- and Chicago-based firm that quickly amassed dozens of […]

Chargify, the payment management service owned by Scaleworks, has added revenue forecasting tools to its software as a service offering. The company’s new revenue forecasting tools uses historical data and month-over-month performance pulled from a company’s billing platform. The company says its new tool can cut forecasting down from two months to as little as two […]

Amperity announced today that it’s acquiring another company in the customer data business, Custora. Amperity co-founder and CEO Kabir Shahani told me that Custora’s technology complements what Amperity is already offering. To illustrate this point, he said that customer data tools fall into three big buckets: “The first is know your customer, the second is […]

Shopify continues to expand beyond its core e-commerce platform with a new product called Shopify Email. Shopify’s chief product officer Craig Miller and director of product for marketing technology Michael Perry gave me a quick demo of the product yesterday; Miller argued that they’ve created “the first email product designed for e-commerce.” That means it’s […]

Companies continue to refine digital diagnostic tools for in-home healthcare at a rapid clip. The latest to launch is an at-home test for urinary tract infections from the Los Angeles-based startup Scanwell Health. The company was founded by Stephen Chen, who literally grew up in the diagnostics testing business. His family had built one of […]

One of the most interesting sessions at Adobe MAX is traditionally the Sneaks keynote, where engineers from the company’s various units show off their most cutting-edge work. Sometimes, those turn into products. Sometimes they don’t. These days, a lot of the work focuses on AI, often based on the Adobe Sensei platform. This year, the […]

Ford wants the world to take notice of its plans for electric vehicles. And what better way than to build an all-electric Mustang fastback with a six-speed manual transmission? And that has us angry over here because it’s a gigantic tease of a prototype that will never make it into production. Or least that’s what Ford […]

Google announced today the launch of Shopping ads on YouTube, which lets brands advertise their products and services right in the YouTube home feed and search results.

The motorcycle industry is shifting to electric. Harley-Davidson signaled the trend this year, becoming the first big gas manufacturer to release a street-legal e-motorcycle in the U.S., the LiveWire. But before Harley’s EV pivot, California-based startup Zero Motorcycles had been selling e-motos for years. “We’re an electric motorcycle and power-train manufacturer founded in 2006 in […]

A glitch in the stock trading app Robinhood is allowing users to trade stocks with excess borrowed funds, and the company doesn’t appear to have found a fix as of this writing. According to Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum, and first reported on by Bloomberg, one trader bragged about a $1 million position funded by a $4,000 […]

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. Google launches OpenTitan, an open-source secure chip design project The aim of the new coalition is to build trustworthy chip designs […]

The FCC has given its stamp of approval to T-Mobile and Sprint's proposed merger, saying the deal will "enhance competition" and hasten 5G deployment. Those opposed say the merger defies common sense, creating a triumvirate of mobile giants that will "divide up the market, increase prices, and compete only for the most lucrative customers."

Over the past several years, ‘fintech’ has quietly become the unsung darling of venture. A rapidly swelling pool of new startups is taking aim at the large incumbent institutions, complex processes and outdated unfriendly interfaces that mar billion dollar financial services verticals, such as insurtech, consumer lending, personal finance, or otherwise. In just the past […]

Setapp, the Spotify of Mac apps, is launching a new subscription plan specifically designed for teams. It is currently available as a public beta. As a reminder, Setapp lets you download and use 160 apps for a flat subscription fee. You don’t need to pay for major updates and there’s no in-app purchase. Anybody can […]

Cord-cutting basketball fans now have a new option for their non-stop hoops coverage. NBA TV is officially launching a direct-to-consumer subscription service today, making it the first linear TV sports league network to go over the top. The service, which will be available both on the web at NBA.com and through the NBA app, will […]

AT&T is being punished at last for its shady claims of plans with "unlimited data" but were in reality nothing of the kind: The company has agreed to a $60 million settlement with the FTC, which has pursued the case for years. Some 3.5 affected customers can expect partial refunds — little more than pocket money, but it's something.

Walmart has dropped a lawsuit that accused Tesla of breach of contract and gross negligence after rooftop solar panel systems on seven of the retailer’s stores allegedly caught fire. A settlement has been reached and stipulation of dismissal has been filed with the court, a Walmart spokesperson said in an email. It is unclear what […]

Seismic is announcing that it’s acquiring Percolate in a deal that it says is combining “two essential pillars of the marketing technology stack.” It sounds like the two companies aren’t direct competitors, but they offer related tools: Seismic helps companies create and manage the content they use in sales and marketing, while Percolate expanded from […]

Opioid addiction is easily one of the top widespread healthcare issues facing the U.S., and research indicates we’re nowhere near achieving any kind of significant mitigating solution. But a team of medical researchers working at the West Virginia University Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute (RNI) and West Virginia University Medicine (WVU) are beginning a new clinical trial […]

Chinese tech giant Huawei has asked some of the world’s best phone hackers to a secret meeting in Munich later this month as the company tries to curry favor with global governments, TechCrunch has learned. Sources with knowledge of the November 16 meeting said Huawei will privately present its new bug bounty program, which would […]

YouTube today is expanding the ways creators can make money with the global launch of a new feature, Super Stickers. The stickers are aimed at fans who want to show their support and connect with favorite creators, similar to Super Chat, which highlights a fan’s messages within a live chat. To be eligible for either, […]

Microsoft’s original Xbox Elite controller was a major step-up for gamers, with customizable buttons, changeable physical controls and adjustable sensitivity for serious personalization. The new Xbox Elite Controller Series 2 has just landed, and it offers similar features, but with new and improved features that add even more customization options, along with key hardware improvements […]

Mobileye, the Israeli-based automotive sensor company acquired by Intel in 2017 for $15.3 billion, is partnering with Chinese electric car startup Nio to develop autonomous vehicles that consumers can buy. The companies, which describe this as a “strategic collaboration” aims to bring highly automated and autonomous vehicles to consumer markets in China and “other major […]

ZenHub, the popular project management tool that integrates right into GitHub, today announced the launch of Roadmaps. As you can guess from the name, this is a roadmapping feature that allows teams to better plan their projects ahead of time and visualize their status — all from within GitHub. “We’re diving into a brand new […]

Chronoshpere, a startup from two ex-Uber engineers, who helped create the open source M3 monitoring project to handle Uber-level scale, officially launched today with the goal of building a commercial company on top of the open source project. It also announced an $11 million investment led by Greylock with participation from venture capitalist, Lee Fixel. […]

These days it’s not enough to have meetings. Now tech companies need to have meetings about meetings — and to ensure that this can happen efficiently(?), a Los Angeles company called Parabol has just raised $4 million. Founded in Brooklyn with a workforce that’s mostly virtual, the new-ish company managed to raise cash from three […]

A UK drone registration scheme has opened ahead of the deadline for owners to register their devices coming into force at the end of this month. The UK government announced its intention to introduce a drone registration scheme two years ago. The rules apply to drones or model aircraft weighting between 250g and 20kg. Owners […]

Xiaomi, which competes with Apple for the top position in the wearable market, today made the competition a little more interesting. The Chinese electronics giant has launched its first smartwatch called the Mi Watch that looks strikingly similar to the Apple Watch in its home market. The Mi Watch, like the Apple Watch, has a […]

The countdown to serious savings continues here at TechCrunch, and this is a timely reminder that you that you have only four days left to save on early bird passes to Disrupt Berlin 2019 (11-12 December). Kommst du nun, oder was — you are coming, aren’t you? Pricing starts at €445 + VAT and, depending […]

Medopad, the UK startup that has been working with Tencent to develop AI-based methods for building and tracking “digital” biomarkers — measurable indicators of the progression of illnesses and diseases that are picked up not with blood samples or in-doctor visits but using apps and wearables — has announced another round of funding to expand […]

Twitter suspended several accounts affiliated with Hamas and Hezbollah over the weekend after being repeatedly asked to do so by a bipartisan group of U.S. Representatives. The lawmakers—Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), Tom Reed (R-NY), Max Rose (D-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA)—criticized the company for allowing the accounts to stay up even though Hamas and Hezbollah are […]

A rise in social media surveillance, warrantless searches of travelers’ devices at the border, and the continued spread of disinformation are among the reasons why the U.S. has declined in internet freedom rankings, according to a leading non-profit watchdog. Although Freedom House said that the U.S. enjoys some of the greatest internet freedoms in the […]

Gradeup, an edtech startup in India that operates an exam preparation platform for undergraduate and postgraduate level courses, has raised $7 million from Times Internet as it looks to expand its business in the country. Times Internet, a conglomerate in India, invested $7 million in Series A and $3 million in Seed financing rounds of […]

Better than expected revenues couldn’t divert investor attention from the fact that Uber still managed to lose more than $1 billion in the most recent quarter as the company’s stock fell in after-hours trading. There are bright spots in the latest earnings report, not least that the company managed to stanch the bleeding that had […]

Workday announced this afternoon that it has entered into an agreement to acquire online procurement platform Scout RFP for $540 million. The company raised more than $60 million on a post valuation of $184.5 million, according to PitchBook data. The acquisition builds on top of Workday’s existing procurement solutions, Workday Procurement and Workday Inventory, but […]

Meetup announced "organizational changes" in a staff meeting this morning.

It’s Microsoft Ignite this week, the company’s premier event for IT professionals and decision-makers. But it’s not just about new tools for role-based access. Ignite is also very much a forward-looking conference that keeps the changing role of IT in mind. And while there isn’t a lot of consumer news at the event, the company […]

BMW has been equipping its cars with in-air gesture control for several years and I never paid attention to it. It seemed redundant. Why wave your hand in the air when there are dials, buttons and touchscreens to do the same thing? Until this week, that is, when I took delivery of a BMW 850i […]