Crunch Hype

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where each week we discuss other people’s copious dollars and lacking sense. This week was special! Kate and Alex were at Disrupt where they recorded live in front of an audience. Equity has recorded at Disrupt before. Equity has taped before an audience before. But this […]

AI Medical Service, a Tokyo-based company developing AI-based software to help detect gastric cancer, announced today that it has raised a $42.9 million Series B. Investors include Globis Capital Partners, World Innovation Lab and Sony Innovation Fund by IGV. The funding will be used for clinical trials of its software, which looks for signs of […]

Back in May, Tourlane raised $47 million in its ongoing mission to address the complex problems that still exist today around booking group travel. Tourlane has become a major player in this sector. We’re excited to announce that co-founder/co-CEO Julian Stiefel will be speaking at Disrupt Berlin in December! Tourlane works directly with service providers […]

An Indian startup that is increasingly posing a threat to established food and grocery delivery businesses and e-commerce giants just closed a new financing round to expand its business in the nation. Bangalore-based Dunzo said today it has raised $45 million from Google, Lightbox Ventures, STIC Investment and STIC Ventures, and 3L Capital in a […]

Over the past two days, 20 startups have taken the stage at Disrupt SF, laying out their visions, demonstrating their technology and answering questions from our expert judges. The startups came from all across the world, and they’re tackling industries ranging from cholera detection to orbital refueling. Now we’ve taken the judges’ feedback and chosen […]

Meet Greyparrot, a London-based startup that wants to improve waste management. The company uses computer vision to make sorting more efficient at different stages of the waste chain. And Greyparrot has been selected as a wildcard for the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. The company has been using machine learning with images of different […]

StrattyX is a trading interface that lets you set up sophisticated “if-this-then-that” rules and execute orders on the stock market. The startup is participating in the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. There are plenty of brokers that let you buy and sell shares using a mobile app and a web interface. But if you […]

“What public markets do is indeed the great reckoning. But it cleanses [a] company of all of the bad stuff that they have.” That’s Salesforce founder and chief executive officer Marc Benioff talking about the benefits of public markets. It’s something that private companies seem to be ignoring in the go-go days of the current […]

Good relationships require ongoing commitment and work. LifeCouple, launching today in public beta at TechCrunch Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield, wants to help make that work a bit easier for you and your partner. Through its app, LifeCouple enables couples to address and monitor any challenges in their relationship. The startup does this by serving up […]

Today at TC’s Disrupt show in San Francisco, we took the stage with David Krane, a longtime veteran of Google who took the reins as the CEO of its venture arm, GV, three years ago but hasn’t spoken publicly since. We asked him why he’s been in hiding before diving into some questions about Uber […]

NASA will fly a crewed X-plane, one of the experimental aircraft it creates to test various technologies, for the first time in two decades in the near future. This X-plane, the X-57 Maxwell to be exact, is significant for another reason, too: It’s the first fully electric experimental plane that NASA will fly. The delivery […]

What’s the opposite of a green thumb? Whatever it is, I have that. My house and yard are full of succulents not because they’re trendy, but because anything else I try to plant dies within a month. When I turn to Google to figure out why my zucchini plant randomly turned white and fell over […]

Facebook plans to challenge Europe’s top court, which today ruled that EU countries can order Facebook to globally remove content that violates local laws. Facebook currently complies with proper legal requests to remove content that breaks a nation’s laws, but can leave it up for global viewers if the post doesn’t violate its Community Standards. […]

One of the most senior officials tasked with protecting U.S. critical infrastructure says that the lack of security professionals in the U.S. is one of the leading threats to national cybersecurity. Speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, Jeanette Manfra, the assistant director for cybersecurity for the Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said that […]

Naspers, a South African internet company that has become a major investor in a wide range of digital commerce companies, has in recent years drawn comparisons to the Japanese conglomerate SoftBank. For one thing, Naspers, like SoftBank, is very global in nature, with investments in more than 90 countries. Naspers, like SoftBank, doesn’t shy from […]

The wedding industry is estimated to be worth some $100 billion in the U.S. alone, and now one of the fastest-growing companies in that space — the wedding planning site Zola — is making a move to augment its position with a sidestep into travel. Today at Disrupt (our conference in San Francisco), the company […]

Here we go again. Western governments are once again dialing up their attack on end-to-end encryption — calling for either no e2e encryption or backdoored e2e encryption so platforms can be commanded to serve state agents with messaging data in “a readable and usable format.” U.S. Attorney General William Barr, acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary […]

Two weeks after WeWork CEO Adam Neumann resigned, layoffs are expected.

Once you get up high enough, you don’t have to worry about a lot of the obstacles like pedestrians and traffic jams that plague autonomous cars. That’s why Sebastian Thrun, Google’s self-driving team founder turned CEO of flying vehicle startup Kitty Hawk, said onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF today that we should expect true autonomy […]

Orbit Fab, one of the companies competing in this year’s TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco this week, has closed a seed round of $3 million. The funding comes from Type 1 Ventures, TechStars and others, and will help Orbit Fab continue to build on the great momentum it has already bootstrapped with its space-based […]

CES parent the Consumer Technology Association created a public relations disaster in January when it unceremoniously revoked an award from sex tech startup, Lora DiCarlo and its product Osé. “Vela [now Osé] does not fit into any of our existing product categories and should not have been accepted for the Innovation Awards Program,” the organization […]

When T4 co-founder and CEO Maks Khurgin was working at Bain and Company, he ran into a common problem for analysts looking for market data. He spent way too much time searching for it and felt there had to be a better way. He decided to build a centralized market data platform himself, and T4 […]

Nonprofits employ 10% of the U.S. workforce and generate some $2 trillion in revenue each year and yet, many charitable organizations are still using pen and paper to track their volunteers. Civic Champs, a startup that presented onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt SF, has developed a platform that aims to give non-profits the tech tools they […]

This TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield startup wants to upend Wall Street's antiquated wealth management system.

Zoox, the autonomous vehicle startup, is expanding to Las Vegas, CTO Jesse Levinson said at TechCrunch Disrupt SF. The startup, which has raised $800 million and has been testing on public roads in San Francisco, said Las Vegas is a target market for its autonomous driving fleet and service. Las Vegas will serve as an […]

A new startup is clearing the way for other companies to better monitor and manage their risk and compliance with privacy laws. Osano, an Austin, Texas-based startup, bills itself as a privacy platform startup, which uses a software-as-a-service solution to give businesses real-time visibility into their current privacy and compliance posture. On one hand, that […]

Maisie Williams, best known as ‘Arya’ on Game of Thrones, is preparing to take her startup Daisie to the next stage. Right now, the app works to connect creators with one another to work on each others’ projects, but now Williams wants to help those projects find an audience. On the app, creators establish a […]

The global cybersecurity market is booming. But it’s not all unicorns and rainbows -- and some industry watchers have claimed that the cybersecurity market is a bubble about to burst.

A lot of talk has been made about verifying valuable items on an immutable blockchain, but the main pioneer in this space has been Verisart, which appeared a few years ago to use a blockchain to create certification for the fine art and collectibles market. But despite the blockchain hype of the last few years, […]

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. Publisher adtech startups Taboola and Outbrain merge in $850M deal to take on Google and Facebook The content recommendation rivals — […]

Notarize, a startup that enables people to get documents notarized online, announced today that it has partnered with Guaranteed Rate, one of the largest retail mortgage lenders in the U.S. Guaranteed Rate’s new product, called FlashClose, integrates Notarize’s real estate API and allows customers to close real estate transactions and execute mortgages online. The service […]

Already under fire for advancing Chinese foreign policy by censoring topics like Hong Kong’s protests and pro-LGBT content, the Beijing-based video app TikTok is now further distancing itself from U.S. social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with a ban on political ads on its app. The company today says it will not allow […]

Bird has closed a $275 million Series D round led by CDPQ and Sequoia Capital, Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden announced at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco today. The round values Bird at a $2.5 billion pre-money valuation, according to sources familiar with the round. This round comes a few months after TechCrunch reported Bird was looking […]

Sebastian Thrun is waving a device in his hand with an excited, almost gleeful expression on his face as he trots from a makeshift aircraft hangar toward the secret project that Kitty Hawk Corp. has been working on for nearly two years. The serial entrepreneur and co-founder of X, the Alphabet moonshot factory, isn’t trying […]

Volvo group’s Polestar electric performance car sub-brand has announced pricing for the Polestar 2, the company’s second production car, a four-door mid-sized fastback that will begin production in 2020 and start shipping as early as next June. Starting prices are set at between 58,800€ (around $63,720 U.S.). Those prices include three years of service and […]

We know the world of startup funding is competitive. I’ve analyzed how founders can optimize their pitch decks and the best times of year for fundraising to get the most attention from investors.

The market was receptive to meat replacement products, as the Beyond Meat public offering recently indicated. But rival meat alternative maker Impossible Foods doesn’t see an IPO on its near-term roadmap, according to its founder and CEO, Patrick Brown. Speaking to the audience at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2019 on Wednesday, Brown said the company has […]

Sony today announced a successor to its popular A9 mirrorless interchangeable lens full-frame camera. The A9 II carries over some of the specs and stats of its predecessor, like the 24.2 megapixel stacked imaging sensor, but adds an upgraded BIONZ X image processor, which powers the much more powerful autofocus capabilities in the new camera. […]

On the same day that two Israeli-founded adtech startups, Taboola and Outbrain, announced a merger to create a $2 billion company, another Israel-founded company focusing on advertising and marketing for mobile has also closed a huge funding round. IronSource, which has built a video ad network and user acquisition technology for mobile app publishers, has […]

Europe’s top court has set a new line for the policing of illegal speech online. The ruling has implications for how speech is regulated on online platforms — and is likely to feed into wider planned reform of regional rules governing platforms’ liabilities. Per the CJEU decision, platforms such as Facebook can be instructed to […]

What if Instagram could automatically tell your Close Friends you’re 🏠 (home), 🤓 (working), 🚗 (on the move), or 🛋️ (chilling and might want to hang out)? That’s the idea behind Instagram’s new companion app Threads, a Close Friends-only messaging experience that opens to the camera with shortcuts for instantly sending specific people photos and […]

SpaceX’s facility at Cape Canaveral just received a crucial new delivery: A Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule that it will be using for an upcoming in-flight abort test. This test, which will demonstrate the spacecraft and launch system’s ability to abort the launch mid-flight in case of any emergencies, is an important and […]

Jyoti Bansal, CEO and co-founder at Harness, has always been frustrated by the lack of tools to measure software development team performance. Harness is a tool that provides Continuous Delivery as a Service, and its latest offering, Continuous Insights, lets managers know exactly how their teams are performing. Bansal says a traditional management maxim says […]

Lyft is rolling out rewards for its drivers to give them access to things like cash bonuses, ride credits, and free or discounted tax services. Initially, the rewards program will be available to drivers in Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Nashville, New Orleans, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Drivers earn points for […]

Robinhood may be best known its free stock trading, but today it’s rolling out a new version of the newsfeed, adding content from Reuters, Barron’s and market coverage from The Wall Street Journal, with no paywall or additional charge. In addition, Robinhood is introducing video into the newsfeed, with ad-free videos from CNN Business, Cheddar and […]

Some consolidation is afoot in the world of advertising. Taboola and Outbrain, rivals that both operate advertising-based content recommendation engines for publishers — which typically appear in the form of boxes at the bottom of articles online that feature a mix of stories from the publications themselves, plus ads and sponsored content from other sites […]

Fyle, a Bangalore-headquartered startup that operates an expense management platform, has extended its previous financing round to add $4.5 million of new investment as it looks to court more clients in overseas markets. The additional $4.5 million tranche of investment was led by U.S.-based hedge fund Steadview Capital, the startup said. Tiger Global, Freshworks, and […]

What do you do when your current business model is so staggeringly loss-making you’re having to warn investors it may never turn a profit, at the same time as it’s under increasing legal and regulatory attack? One answer might be to pivot. Uber isn’t doing that, exactly. Not yet anyway. But it has just officially […]

Google Shopping is getting a redesign with several new features, including options to shop local stores, track prices and even find style inspiration through Google Lens. Already, Google Lens’ smart image recognition technology can help identify objects, translate text, and find similar items. Now, using a photo of an outfit you like — for instance, […]

Here’s a solid shout-out to early-stage startup founders who love the word “free.” You have just two weeks left to apply to be a TC Top Pick and exhibit in Startup Alley at Disrupt Berlin 2019 for — you guessed it — free. Attending Disrupt Berlin as a TC Top Pick is a VIP experience and an […]