Crunch Hype

As more businesses around the U.S. are choosing to implement vaccine requirements for patrons or staff, business discovery and review site Yelp is introducing new tools that allow businesses to communicate those changes to their customers. On Thursday, Yelp will begin rolling out two profile attributes, “Proof of vaccination required” and “Staff fully vaccinated,” to […]

When should a startup decide to cease its efforts to challenge leading players in a specific market?

This morning Allocations, a fintech startup building software to help smaller private equity funds form and operate, announced that it has raised a $4 million round at a $100 million valuation. The startup also shared a host of performance metrics, including that it reached a $4.6 million revenue run rate in June, and a $6 […]

President Joe Biden is expected to set an ambitious new target for half of all new auto sales in the U.S. to be low- or zero-emission by 2030, a plan that has received tentative support from the Big Three automakers pending what they say will require hefty government support. General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly […]

In my journey to the U.S., I became good at three things: accepting uncertainty, building resilience and maintaining a positive mental attitude. I needed them all to get my startup off the ground.

Drones are neat and fun and all that good stuff (I should probably add the caveat here that I’m obviously not referring to the big, terrible military variety), but when it comes to quadcopters, there’s always been the looming question of general usefulness. The consumer-facing variety are pretty much the exclusive realm of hobbyists and […]

Great news for budget-conscious startuppers of every stripe. The early-bird price extension on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 remains in play for just about two more days. Buy an early-bird pass — Innovator, Founder or Investor — and you’ll revel in three full days of Disruption for less than $100. This is what you call […]

Many founders are blessed with brilliance. But that doesn’t mean that they inherently understand the complex finances and metrics needed to run a company effectively.

During the thick of the pandemic last year, online food delivery company DoorDash expanded its offerings to include convenience store delivery. Now, DoorDash customers in the U.S. and Canada can shop across multiple stores and categories in a single order. With DoubleDash, as the program is called, customers can now tack onto your order of a […]

Refurbed, a European marketplace for refurbished electronics which raised a $17 million Series A round of funding last year, has now raised a $54 million Series B funding led by Evli Growth Partners and Almaz Capital. They are joined by existing investors such as Speedinvest, Bonsai Partners and All Iron Ventures, as well as a […]

Astra’s last test launch went better than expected, nearly achieving orbit — kind of a stretch goal for that specific mission. The company at the time said that it would only need to tweak software to reach an orbital destination, and now we know when it’s going to get the chance to prove it: Astra […]

Cent was founded in 2017 as an ad-free creator network that allows users to offer each other crypto rewards for good posts and comments — it’s like gifting awards on Reddit, but with Ethereum. But in late 2020, Cent’s small, San Fransisco-based team created Valuables, an NFT market for tweets, and by March, the small […]

During the pandemic, especially when we were in lock down, just about every retailer had to build its online presence and do it quickly. As people move to shop online in larger numbers, being able to personalize that experience has become more crucial. That made the pandemic a pivotal moment for Bluecore, an e-commerce personalization […]

As more people dust off their luggage and passports after stowing them away during the global pandemic, Elude aims to show travelers a new way to take spontaneous trips.

Yesterday’s leak didn’t leave much to the imagination. And today’s big Nest reveal confirms pretty much everything we saw — which is precisely what happens when Google’s the one doing the leaking. Still, this morning’s announcement marks one of the biggest refreshes to Google’s home security line in recent memory, with updates to various configurations […]

Statsig is taking the A/B testing applications that drive Facebook’s growth and putting similar functionalities into the hands of any product team.

For Emily Elyse Miller, founder and CEO of OffLimits, launching during a global pandemic was “interesting to navigate,” but in the end, worked out.

The indoor growing industry is starting to scale. Farms that utilize hydroponics and traditional greenhouses have started to become integral parts of our food supply chain.

Checkmarx, an Israeli provider of static application security testing (AST), has acquired open-source supply chain security startup Dustico for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2020, Dustico provides a dynamic source-code analysis platform that employs machine learning to detect malicious attacks and backdoors in software supply chains. The acquisition will see Checkmarx combine its AST capabilities […]

The company's platform enables real-time intervention for people with medication dependence and substance-use disorders.

As Latin America attracts record-breaking venture capital totals, education technology startups in the region are given new opportunities to grow. In the past week, Coderhouse, a live cohort-based learning platform, and Crehana, an on-demand skills development service for the enterprise, both announced financing rounds. The back-to-back raises are a reminder that edtech’s relevance in LatAm isn’t […]

Most of the time when people get loans, it’s for big life purchases such as a house or a car. But not every big purchase is a necessity. Some are more for fun, and the financing options for those types of buys — such as motorcycles and ATVs — are more limited. Today, Octane Lending, […]

SentiLink, an identity verification technology startup, has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by Craft Ventures. Felicis Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NYCA also participated in the financing, which brings the company’s total raised to $85 million since its 2017 inception. The company declined to reveal at what valuation the money […]

In Africa, chartering vessels and processing ocean freight can be challenging. The sector is largely inefficient and fragmented. Merchants also struggle to access finance to perform cross-border trade in the continent. A couple of digital freight companies are tackling this problem, like Nigerian-based MVX. The company today is announcing its $1.3 million seed round to […]

Data science platform Dataiku announced today it has raised a $400 million Series E, bringing its valuation to $4.6 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from returning investors like ICONIQ Growth, CapitalG, FirstMark Capital, Battery Ventures, Snowflake Ventures and Dawn Capital. New investors included Insight Partners, Eurazeo, Lightrock and Olivier Pomel, […]

Industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s neobank for consumers in India — Jupiter — has raised $45 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore and Mumbai-based startup gears up for its platform’s public launch in about a month. The new financing round, a Series B, was co-led by Brazil-based Nubank, Global Founders Capital, Sequoia Capital and Matrix […]

Ever considerate of its users, Facebook has determined that its privacy settings needed a bit of a shuffle to keep things clear and easy to find. To that end they’ve taken the “privacy settings” settings and scattered them mischievously among the other categories. “We’ve redesigned our entire settings menu on mobile devices from top to […]

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi expressed his support Wednesday for a ballot initiative in Massachusetts that would keep gig economy workers classified as independent contractors, fulfilling a promise he made nearly a year ago to push for laws that preserve its business model. “In the state of Massachusetts, we think the right answer is our IC+ […]

At a time when we are witnessing record VC activity, founders would be well served to go back to the basics and focus on the principles of fundraising when determining who sits on their cap table.

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

Investors often ask founders about their board: It says a lot about their character, their judgment and their willingness to be challenged.

Boston-based CRM company HubSpot announced today that co-founder and CEO Brian Halligan would be stepping into the executive chairman role and CMO Yamini Rangan would be taking over as CEO next month (on September 7). Rangan joined the company in January 2020 after stints at Dropbox, Workday and SAP. Her strong background in engineering, sales […]

Twitter may have shut down its Stories features known as Fleets, but the Stories format will continue to invade other social platforms. TikTok today confirmed it’s piloting a new feature, TikTok Stories, which will allow it to explore additional ways for its community to bring their creative ideas to life. The company notes the new […]

Today after the bell U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber reported its second-quarter financial results. The company’s numbers come a day after its domestic rival, Lyft, shared its own Q2 earnings. Notably while Lyft managed to generate positive adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter, Uber did not. However, Uber did generate positive net income of $1.14 billion […]

VC firms' failure to carry out adequate due diligence means that a vast majority of them are failing in their responsibility to respect human rights.

Japanese startup ispace has raised $46 million in a fresh round of Series C funding as it looks to complete three lunar lander missions in three years. The funding will go toward the second and third of the planned missions, scheduled for 2023 and 2024. The first mission, which ispace aims to conduct in the […]

Two decades after businesses started deploying AI solutions, one can argue they’ve made little progress in achieving significant gains in efficiency relative to the hype that drove expectations.

Facebook shut down accounts belonging to two academic researchers late Tuesday, cutting off their ability to study political ads and misinformation on the world’s biggest social network. The company accused the academics of engaging in “unauthorized scraping” and compromising user privacy on the platform, claims that Facebook’s many critics are slamming as a thin pretense […]

I’m appreciative that I made it through the H-1B lottery, but I’m stuck in a rut. I really want to start something of my own. Are there any immigration options that would allow me to do that?

Dating app maker and Tinder parent Match Group said during its Q2 earnings it will bring audio and video chat, including group live video, and other livestreaming technologies to several of the company’s brands over the next 12 to 24 months. The developments will be powered by innovations from Hyperconnect, the social networking company that […]

The Cameo app, where celebrities send video messages to paying fans, has taken off globally. But now the concept is set to come to the Middle East and South Asia. Tech startup YELA has secured $2 million in investment to support its launch, and will — similar to Cameo — offer users the opportunity to […]

COVID Tech Connect, a nonprofit created during the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States, is launching a free app aimed at helping hospital patients call home. As the delta variant drives a new upward surge in critical COVID-19 cases, the new offering is, sadly, well timed. COVID Tech Connect originated as […]

Boeing’s Starliner capsule is leaving the launchpad after a series of delays that prevented takeoff over the last few days. NASA and the beleaguered aerospace giant will take “whatever time is necessary” to find and fix the issue, but it’s beginning to feel like this long-in-development spacecraft may never make it to the ISS. This […]

Florida-based HackerU, which creates cybersecurity and other digital skills programs, is acquiring Cybint, a SaaS-based cyber education company. TechCrunch sources understand this to be a $50M acquisition, though both companies declined to comment on the price. HackerU provided digital workforce training to students, post-graduate professionals, and the community in the U.S., Europe and Asia through […]

Less than six months after raising $55 million in a Series C round of funding, SMB 401(k) provider Human Interest today announced it has raised $200 million in a round that propels it to unicorn status. The Rise Fund, TPG’s global impact investing platform, led the round and was joined by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. […]

Heatworks has at long last opened pre-orders for the Tetra, a countertop dishwasher that debuted at CES 2018. The Tetra doesn't require any plumbing, just an electrical outlet.

It’s a little known fact that the carbon footprint of the technology sector is great than the entire aviation industry (Aalto University and LUT University). At the same time, tech companies (like many others) are generally attracted to carbon offsetting schemes which don’t actually remove carbon from the environment and are often riddled with flaws. Only […]

General Motors said Wednesday it is adding to two new zero-emissions vehicles to its commercial portfolio as it looks to expand its first-to-last-mile business arm, BrightDrop. The first vehicle will be a battery electric cargo van under the Chevrolet brand that will likely be similar to the popular Chevy Express van. The second will be […]

In spite of the pandemic, New York City remains the center of commerce and business, and over the last decade a robust startup community has developed there. Work-Bench, the NYC VC firm that concentrates on early stage enterprise seed investments, announced its $100 million Fund 3 this morning. The company started back in 2013 when […]

When Sankaet Pathak co-founded Synapse in 2014, he had a vision of doing more than just building a platform that enables banks and fintech companies to easily develop financial services. He wanted to build a company that helped provide greater access to financial services to a larger pool of people — regardless of their net […]