Crunch Hype

Electric-bike maker Cowboy recently let me spend a couple of weeks with one of their e-bikes. It’s a well-designed e-bike that makes biking effortless, even if you’re going uphill. Cowboy is a Brussels-based startup. The company raised a $3 million seed round a couple of years ago and an $11.1 million (€10 million) Series A […]

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s mobile-only streaming service Quibi hasn’t even launched, but it’s already sold out of its $150 million first-year advertising inventory, the company announced this morning. The service, which officially debuts in April 2020, added new advertisers Discover, General Mills, T-Mobile, and Taco Bell, who join Quibi’s existing lineup of ad partners, Procter & Gamble, […]

Congress grilled Facebook’s CEO today, unleashing critiques of his approach to cryptocurrency, privacy, encryption, and running a giant corporation. Mark Zuckerberg tried to assuage their fears while stoking concerns that if Facebook doesn’t build Libra, then the world will end up using China’s version. Yet Facebook won’t stop shaking up society, with Zuckerberg saying its […]

There's no shortage of lidar solutions available for autonomous vehicles, drones, and robots — theoretically, anyway. But getting a lidar unit from theory to mass production might be harder than coming up with the theory in the first place. Sense Photonics appears to have made it past that part of the journey, and is now offering its advanced flash lidar for pre-order.

TikTok today released a new set of safety videos designed to playfully inform users about the app’s privacy controls and other features — like how to filter comments or report inappropriate behavior, among other things. One video also addresses TikTok’s goal of creating a “positive” social media environment, where creativity is celebrated and harassment is […]

Demodesk, an early stage startup that wants to change how sales meetings are conducted online, announced a $2.3 million seed investment today. Investors included GFC, FundersClub, Y Combinator, Kleiner Perkins and an unnamed group of angel investors. The company was a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2019 cohort. CEO and co-founder Veronika Riederle says […]

The Plug and Play network of accelerator programs is partnering with the non-profit organization The Alliance to End Plastic Waste to create an accelerator focused on developing technologies to reduce, remove or replace plastics in the industrial ecosystem. Like Techstars, Plug and Play operates a number of industry-focused accelerator programs around the world and for […]

Huawei was understandably cautious in the lead to the Mate X. Watching Samsung’s Galaxy problems unfolding in what seemed like slow motion caused the company to rethink its strategy. Shortly after the Fold went back to the drawing board, Huawei announced it would be doing the same in order to dot all of its Is […]

There are a lot of scientific papers out there, and finding the right ones, or the right connections between them, can be extremely difficult. Semantic Scholar uses AI to understand and index journal articles, but until recently has been limited to a handful of topics. It has now expanded to cover practically every branch of […]

Nooruldeen Agha, has been thinking about what’s next for fashion retail for years. The serial entrepreneur behind the Dubai-based online fashion retailer, Elabelz and marketing studio Elephant Nation had always wanted to redesign the shopping experience for how customers actually shopped in stores and online. “If it was 1994 and we knew what technology is […]

Paid memberships and subscriptions have become the popular business model these days in the media industry, with publishers believing quite rightly that a closer connection to readers leads to a deeper customer relationship and ultimately more sustainable revenue. That’s certainly true at big media companies (hello Extra Crunch) and there are also a spate of […]

Raydiant, a startup promising to turn TVs into interactive digital signs, is making several announcements today — a new company name, a new CEO, new partners and $7 million in new funding. Until today, the company was known as Mira, and it was founded by Tuan Ho (who previously founded internet TV company Philo), along […]

With two months of 2019 still to go, Indian tech startups are already having their best year as a record amount of capital flows into the local ecosystem in a major rebound since the darkened funding environment of 2016. The unlisted tech startups in India have raised $11.3 billion this year, a substantial jump from […]

The third annual review of the EU-US Privacy Shield data transfer mechanism has once again been nodded through by Europe’s executive. This despite the EU parliament calling last year for the mechanism to be suspended. The European Commission also issued US counterparts with a compliance deadline last December — saying the US must appoint a […]

Thinking about sending a cold pitch? Curious how to connect with investors? Looking for fundraising tips for your first venture? Startup funding experts including Forward Partners managing partner Nic Brisbourne, Target Global partner Malin Holmberg and DocSend co-founder and chief executive officer Russ Heddleston will sit down together and dish out all their best pieces […]

Starling Bank, the U.K.-based challenger bank founded by banking veteran Anne Boden, has raised an additional £30 million in funding. In what was likely already agreed follow-on funding, perhaps contingent on milestones being met, previous backer Merian Chrysalis led the round with an investment of £20 million. JTC, another of Starling’s existing investors, also participated, […]

Platform power is a helluva a drug. Do a search on Google’s Play store in Europe and you’ll find the company’s own Gboard app has an age rating of PEGI 3 — aka the pan-European game information labelling system which signifies content is suitable for all age groups. PEGI 3 means it may still contain […]

Law enforcement tech outfitter Axon has announced that it will include automated license plate recognition in its next generation of dash cams. But its independent ethics board has simultaneously released a report warning of the dire consequences should this technology be deployed irresponsibly. Axon makes body and dash cams for law enforcement, the platform on […]

Fabric, the startup that wants to make automated logistics available to retailers of all sizes, announced today it has raised $110 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek. This brings the total […]

On 11-12 December, thousands of savvy startuppers will flock to Germany for Disrupt Berlin 2019. Disrupt events, the premiere technology conferences hosted by TechCrunch, are known the world over as the place to launch, network, invest in and collaborate with the international early-stage startup community. Disrupt offers plenty of startup action — world-class speakers, Startup […]

Amazon Counter’s, the online retailer’s in-store pickup option that launched this summer at 100 Rite Aid locations in the U.S., is now expanding. The company announced today the service will reach thousands more locations with the additions of new partners GNC, Health Mart, and Stage Stores. GNC is the well-known health and nutrition chain. Health Mart […]

Limited partners or LPs — the pension funds, the university endowments, the family offices that largely provide venture firms with their spending money — are receiving a lot of attention from venture capitalists, some of it unwanted. VCs have begun knocking down their doors with requests for fresh capital commitments so they’ll have money to […]

Confirming earlier reports, The We Company and SoftBank Group agreed to a new capital infusion which will see SoftBank committing $5 billion in new financing and issuing a tender offer for another $3 billion in buybacks for shareholders. The company also said it would accelerate an existing commitment to put $1.5 billion into the short-term […]

North Carolina has been rising as an entrepreneurial hub. It’s now home to massive deals, like IBM buying Red Hat for $34 billion and Fortnite maker Epic Games raising a landmark $1.25 billion, both which helped to put the state — and the Triangle region, in particular — on the map. And now it’s just […]

On November 12 Verizon will begin offering 12 months of Disney+ to all of its new and existing 4gLTE and 5G unlimited wireless customers, the companies said today in a joint statement. It’s a great way for Disney to juice its early subscriber numbers and for Verizon to add a tantalizing perk as competition heats […]

The release of a new Terminator sequel has become a familiar ritual: The latest filmmakers acknowledge the greatness of the first two movies, then mumble awkwardly about the other sequels — which are inevitably ignored, because they assure us that this time, they’ve created the sequel we’ve been waiting for. I can’t tell you whether […]

Why do serial entrepreneurs keep jumping back in? What things might you learn the third, fourth, or fifth time around? To find out, Extra Crunch Managing Editor Eric Eldon spoke to Drift CEO and founder David Cancel at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco. Cancel has spent more than 20 years founding SaaS companies, with exits including […]

LabGenius, a London-based startup applying AI and “robotic automation” to protein drug discovery, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Lux Capital and Obvious Ventures, with participation from Felicis Ventures, Inovia Capital, Air Street Capital and existing investors. Also investing is Recursion Pharmaceuticals’ founder and CEO Chris Gibson, as […]

EV Connect, the Los Angeles-based company that sells software to manage electric vehicle charging, has raised $12 million in a Series B round led by investors Mitsui & Co. and Ecosystem Integrity Fund. The company has raised $25 million to date. EV Connect’s cloud-based platform has an open standard architecture that is designed to be […]

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut […]

The JEDI drama never stops. The $10 billion, decade-long cloud contract has produced a series of twists and turns since the project was announced in 2018. These include everything from court challenges to the president getting involved to accusations of bias and conflict of interest. It has had all this and more. Today, in the […]

"The founder is the center of the solar system,” says Redpoint's new hire Travis Bryant.

When Bill McDermott announced he was stepping down as CEO at SAP a couple of weeks ago, it certainly felt like a curious move — but he landed on his feet pretty quickly. ServiceNow announced he would be taking over as CEO there. The transition will take place at year-end. If you’re wondering what happened to […]

After erasing more than $30 billion in projected shareholder value, Adam Neumann could walk away from the We Company with a windfall of as much as $1.7 billion, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. This is how the company will end, not with the pop of a successful public offering, but with […]

In a working environment obsessed with metrics dashboards, key performance indicators, and objectives and key results, the legal function presents an elusive target. Compared to sales, marketing and product, “legal” in a growing tech company can seem an inaccessible alchemy of risk, contracting and policy.

The Snap-back continues. Snapchat blew past earnings expectations for a big beat in Q3, as it added 7 million daily active users this quarter to hit 210 million, up 13% year-over-year. Snap also beat on revenue, notching $446 million, which is up a whopping 50% year-over-year, at a loss of $0.04 EPS. That flew past […]

There is no bigger industry on our planet than food and agriculture. But despite a stalwart customer base, the food industry is facing unprecedented challenges in production, demands and regulation.

Databricks is a SaaS business built on top of a bunch of open-source tools, and apparently it’s been going pretty well on the business side of things. In fact, the company claims to be one of the fastest growing enterprise cloud companies ever. Today the company announced a massive $400 million Series F funding round […]

California is in the midst of a serious housing crisis with ramifications that stretch across the state. In the Bay Area, the crisis is often at its most visible due to the presence of tech mega-corps and the influx of highly paid tech workers that have exacerbated the problem. It hasn’t been uncommon for some […]

Transportation services giant Penske Corp. is backing a new car-sharing service called Penske Dash that launched Tuesday in Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Va. The service is debuting at an awkward time for the industry. While some car-sharing operations, particularly peer-to-peer services, have expanded, others have struggled in the past year. GM’s Maven, BMW’s ReachNow, Car2Go and […]

Beginning today, Amazon will be rolling out a news aggregation app for Fire TV users in the U.S. The app serves up a customizable news experience from a number of different outlets. The list includes nearly 20 names (a number of which are Yahoo sub-sites), including bigger partners like Reuters, CBS, Sports Illustrated and HuffPo. […]

New Scientist has obtained a legal agreement between Google’s health division and the UK National Health Service (NHS) that includes provision to pass five years’ worth of patient data in bulk as part of a contract novation process. If you’re feeling a sense of deja vu that’s quite right: Back in 2016 it emerged — […]

Athletes looking to take a break from all their worries over prescription painkillers and anyone who’s hankering to try out the new cannabinoid-based treatments for their conditions (without worrying about potentially getting dosed with some THC) can now turn to beam. The Boston-based company founded by two former athletes (who were friends at Boston College) […]

As Slack has grown in popularity, one of the company’s key differentiators has been the ability to integrate with other enterprise tools, but as customers use Slack as a central work hub, it has created its own set of problems. In particular, users have trouble understanding what apps they have access to and how to […]

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. New Facebook features fight election lies everywhere but ads Facebook made a slew of announcements designed to stop 2020 election interference […]

Someone is finally putting the Echo Show to good use. Today, Discovery announced the U.S. launch of its Food Network Kitchen subscription service which will bring daily live and on-demand cooking classes as well as on-demand classes, step-by-step instructional cooking videos, and more to Amazon Echo devices, including the smart screen Echo Show, as well […]

Scoot, owned by Bird, has just unveiled what it’s calling the Scoot Moped. At first glance, it appears to be Bird’s two-seater vehicle. In June, Bird unveiled the Cruiser, which can seat up to two people and be pedal-assist or just have a peg, depending on the market. While the Scoot Moped is meant for […]

Over the past year or two, Squarespace has been expanding beyond website-building with new products like email marketing and its first acquisition (of an online scheduling tool) . Today, it’s announcing a move into social media content creation with the acquisition of Unfold, which offers templates for creating stories on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat — you […]

New York Attorney General Letitia James is turning up the heat on the state’s antitrust investigation into Facebook, which i seeking “to determine whether Facebook’s actions may have endangered consumer data, reduced the quality of consumers’ choices, or increased the price of advertising.” Her coalition previously consisted of attorneys general from a total of 8 […]

Startup founders have a million things to worry about every day. Finding product-market fit, great talent and and a sustainable plan for constant growth are top of mind, but perhaps most importantly, they need to keep the lights on, whether it’s by raising venture capital or managing cash flows while bootstrapping. The flip side to […]