Crunch Hype

As LinkedIn announces the next stage of its own ambitions in the world of recruitment by bringing in more big data insights, another one of the startups indirectly chipping away at its position among knowledge workers by providing a way of hiring and building entire teams in remote locations is announcing another round of funding. […]

Amazon Alexa is already capable of identifying different voices to give personalized responses to different users in the household, thanks to the added support for voice profiles two years ago. Now, those same personalization capabilities will be offered to Alexa Skill developers, Amazon has announced. Alongside Amazon’s big rollout of new consumer devices on Wednesday, […]

For the past few years, OnePlus has happily pushed into a six-month product refresh cycle. It’s a model that’s worked well for the plucky smartphone maker, and another way it’s managed to buck some of the prevailing industry trends as competitors struggle to maintain sales amid a global slowdown. As tends to be the case, […]

Alongside all the new Alexa-powered consumer devices Amazon introduced yesterday, the company also unveiled a new set of tools for the makers of smart home device skills that will allow them to tap into Alexa to re-order their supplies. Think — things like printer ink, air filters for smart thermostats, detergent for washing machines, or […]

StrongSalt, then known as OverNest, appeared at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC Battlefield in 2016, and announced product for searching encrypted code, which remains unusual to this day. Today, the company announced a $3 million seed round led by Valley Capital Partners. StrongSalt founder and CEO Ed Yu, says encryption remains a difficult proposition, and that […]

What do you wish you’d known about building a company beforehand? It’s a question that haunts many a startup founder their first time around. Serial SaaS-focused entrepreneur David Cancel has found some answers for himself, having founded a good half-dozen companies over the last two and a half decades. He’ll be discussing his lessons with […]

The Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, based in New York, is ready to once again unveil its latest class of startups. Thus far, ERA has produced 190 startup which have raised more than $450 imllion in capital and exceed $2 billion in valuation collectively, according to the accelerator. So without any further ado, let’s take a look […]

As companies continue to expand the number of cloud-based tools and apps that are used to run their businesses, DevOps continues to grow as a field of IT to help developers meet those demands. In one of the more recent moves, Honeycomb.io, which developers use to observe code on live apps, microservices and other processes […]

The climate crisis continues to be just that… a crisis. And it’s spurring people across the country (and globe) to take action, particularly when it comes to their own lifestyle. Lauren Singer is one such person. After studying Environmental Science and Politics at NYU, she started a blog called Trash Is For Tossers to make […]

Voom, the helicopter service with ride-sharing and one-hour advance booking that Airbus developed and launch first in Latin America, is getting its U.S. debut starting in San Francisco. The service will be available for travel between five Bay Area airpots, including SFO, San Jose, Napa, Oakland and Palo Alto. Travellers wanting to make use of […]

Online-only banks have become a viable option for many people who would have traditionally used a brick-and-mortar bank but are now looking for more flexible, potentially cheaper ways to handle their monthly incoming and outgoing finances, their savings and loans, and their payment cards. That maxim has also extended to the world of business, and […]

Apple’s iOS 13 update (and the newly-renamed iPadOS for iPad hardware) both support multiple simultaneous Bluetooth game controller connections. Apple added Xbox One and PlayStation 4 controller support in the updates, and after doing some digging, I can confirm that you can use multiple of either type of controller on one iOS device running the […]

Verizon this week announced that it’s finally begun to flip the switch on its 5G network in parts of New York City, along with Panama City and Boise. That brings the wireless carrier’s (disclosure: also TechCrunch’s parent) totally number up to 13 cities with a taste of the next ten network. Here in NYC, 5G […]

The modern office worker is heavily engaged with expenses. From buying SaaS products and purchasing team lunches to securing freelancers for outsourced work, employees need access to purchasing power on behalf of their companies on a regular basis. Unfortunately, offering that purchasing power is fraught with difficulty. Companies want to manage their cash carefully to […]

Two of Africa’s powerhouse tech incubators will join forces. Nigerian innovation center and seed-fund CcHub has acquired Nairobi based iHub — CcHub CEO Bosun Tijani confirmed to TechCrunch. The purchase amount is undisclosed, but Tijani said CcHub will finance the deal out of its real-estate project to build a new 10 story innovation center to […]

New research by the Oxford Internet Institute has found that social media manipulation is getting worse, with rising numbers of governments and political parties making cynical use of social media algorithms, automation and big data to manipulate public opinion at scale — with hugely worrying implications for democracy. The report found that computational propaganda and […]

As any CFO can attest, corporate finance is extraordinarily complicated. From tax preparation, to financial controls, to cash flow estimation and more, the finance department of any major company often has to turnaround sophisticated analyses with extreme attention to detail — and quick. Most of the time, businesses outsource at least part of those financial […]

Calling all code poets. It’s time to strut your stuff at the TC Hackathon at Disrupt Berlin 2019. Are you ready to test your physical, mental and technical limits in this intense, high-pressure code-a-thon for cash, prizes and bragging rights? Then apply to compete right here. How does the Hackathon work? First of all, it’s free. […]

Despite the inexorable rise of social media influencers, several problems remain when it comes to brands trying to use these stars to push their products. The marketing tools and processes are fragmented (read: chaotic). Attaining some level of authenticity, quality and creativity in influencer-driven campaigns is tough, to say the least. And the whole thing […]

$1.5 trillion. That’s the amount of outstanding student loan debt held by American citizens according to the New York Fed. It is an astronomical sum, and has led to much hand-wringing about whether there is a coming bubble in U.S. higher education. What’s even worse than the scale of the debt load though is the […]

If you’re a cricket fan, you will be visiting Facebook way more often in the coming months and years. The social juggernaut announced on Thursday it has partnered with the International Cricket Council (ICC), the global governing body of cricket, to secure exclusive digital content rights until 2023 for global ICC events in the Indian […]

Law firms have to parse thousands of pages a week to figure out if everything makes sense and there’s no anomaly. And Luminance wants to make that work much less tedious by using artificial intelligence to review documents and minutes instead of hours. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Luminance CEO Emily Foges will […]

On-demand video streaming giant Netflix, which is increasingly expanding its footprint in developing markets, now has a new competitor in Indonesia: Gojek. The Indonesian ride-hailing giant on Thursday launched a video streaming service called GoPlay that features exclusive access to “hundreds of movies and TV shows” as well as snackable short clips. The streaming service […]

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, revealed its newest vehicle today, a lightweight scooter designed for people who want something smaller than one of the company’s Smartscooter mopeds, but more powerful than an electric bike. Called the Viva, the scooter can run for 85 kilometers on one of Gogoro’s swappable batteries, which are charged at […]

Research when to sell shares in a privately held company, and the results may have you laughing — not because they’re funny but they’re because there’s an almost comical amount of information available out there. From blog posts to advertisements to advertorials to calculators, the data is overwhelming to the point of being useless. It’s […]

As is now typical just ahead of the holidays, Amazon just inundated us with a whole new lineup of hardware devices, including new Echo smart speakers and screens, at its Alexa event today, plus other smart home and connected devices from its brands Ring and Eero. There were also a slew of surprises, like Alexa […]

An Indian SaaS startup, which is increasingly courting clients from outside of the country, just raised a significant amount of capital to expand its business. Hyderabad-based Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, said on Thursday it has raised $15 million in a new financing round. The Series B round — which moves […]

Exercise bike and treadmill company Peloton priced its initial public offering this evening at $29 per share. As part of the IPO, Peloton is offering 40 million Class A common stock to the public. Peloton was expected to price its IPO between $26 to $29 per share, so this falls on the higher end. With […]

Amazon is making its Echo line of devices more family-friendly. The company had already launched an Echo aimed at parents and kids by bundling in FreeTime and giving the device a colorful look-and-feel. Today, it launched more devices ideal for kids’ rooms, while shipping them with features and accessories that make them not just toys, […]

Four months after its release, the Rift S is looking pretty irrelevant. My colleague Josh and I went hands-on with an early demo of Oculus Link, a feature launching in beta in November that lets Quest users connect their headset to a PC and play games that require a bit more horsepower than the Quest’s […]

Florian Hillen, the chief executive officer of a new startup called VideaHealth, first started researching the problems with dentistry about three years ago. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard educated researcher had been doing research in machine learning and image recognition for years and wanted to apply that research in a field that desperately […]

Insurtech startup Elma has closed a €3 million (~$3.2M) Series A funding round led by Mangrove Capital partners to build out a digital-first health insurance business starting with Spain, its domestic market. Also investing in the Series A are a number of unnamed local investors focused on the healthcare space, along with Barcelona-based investor and […]

Amazon announced more than a few devices today during an event at its headquarters in Seattle, and it was the smallest gadgets that made the biggest impression. The company built Alexa into earbuds, glasses and a ring with the Echo Buds, Echo Frames and Echo Loop, respectively. I’ve tried them all out. The ones people […]

The startup — now Stockwell — is backed by GV, NEA and DCM Ventures.

Electric scooter providers JUMP, Lime, Scoot and Spin have just been granted permits to operate their respective services in San Francisco beginning October 15, 2019 *. This is part of the city’s longer-term permitting program for electric scooters. Each scooter provider will initially be able to deploy 1,000 scooters, with the potential to deploy up […]

Amazon’s device event today played host to a dizzying number of product announcements, of all stripes — but notably, there are three brand new ways to wear Alexa on your body. Amazon clearly wants to give you plenty of options to take Alexa with you when you leave the house, the only place it’s really […]

The meal replacement company Soylent Nutrition, Inc. has added a mint chocolate flavor to its line of drinks and snacks. “Our new Mint Chocolate Drink requested by our fans was engineered by Soylent’s hard-working team, with the complex tastes of humanity in mind,” said Andrew Thomas, Soylent’s VP of Brand Marketing, in a statement. In […]

Newly-public Slack taps cybersecurity expertise for growing board.

Project A, the Berlin-based VC that backs startups in Europe at seed and Series A stage, has raised a new $200 million fund (€180 million). This brings total assets under management to $486 million (€440 million) and is the third fund Project A has raised. The venture capital firm, whose investments include the likes of […]

Congratulations to all the motivated hackers, coders, devs and designers who took action and secured their spot in the TechCrunch Hackathon at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. We limited participation to 800 people, and we’re thrilled that the event is completely full. We can’t wait to see what 800 of the world’s best code warriors create […]

At its developer conference Wednesday, Oculus showed off a pair of prototype designs for its next high-end headsets. Two years ago, Oculus showed off its Half Dome prototype which utilized a technology called varifocal lenses to allow users to adjust where the points of focus were in an image, this is technology similar to what […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

At the end of its hardware event today, Amazon announced a new program for testing and selling its own experimental, limited-volume hardware: Day 1 Editions. The first of these new products is Echo Frames. These are Alexa-enabled glasses, though unlike Google Glass, there’s no camera and no display, just microphones and a speaker. The second […]

Two years ago, Oculus announced a radical departure in how they were funding virtual reality developers. Instead of partnering with a ton of upstart teams looking to explore the medium and help fund their low-budget pursuits, the company would be pursuing fewer, more expensive projects with established studios. Their crown jewel would be a made-for-VR […]

At its annual hardware event in Seattle, Amazon today announced Sidewalk, a new low-bandwidth, long-distance wireless protocol the company is developing to connect all of the IoT devices in and around your house. Amazon argues that Bluetooth and WiFi don’t have enough range, while 5F takes too much power and is too complex. “We came […]

Amazon had a lot of surprises at this morning’s big event in Seattle. This one, however, we saw coming from a mile away. Echo Buds are the company’s attempt to compete with the likes of AirPods by bringing its smart assistant directly to wearers’ ears. Priced at $129, the wireless earbuds are relatively inexpensive as […]

We’ve come a long way with voice-based interfaces in the last several years: They can find and play the music you like, tell you jokes, set timers, control your lights and help you shop, among many other things. But the battle lines were drawn from the start when it came to territory. The biggest hardware […]

Back in June, Dropbox debuted a preview version of the “new Dropbox”. Built around a standalone app interface and focused on integrating all of your work tools (your Slack, G Suite, Zoom calls, etc) into one place, it’s a pretty dramatic overhaul from the simple shared folders that Dropbox has always been known for. Not […]

The Alexa microwave admittedly seemed a bit goofy when Amazon introduced it at an event this time last year. But low cost coupled with the company’s built-in promotional machine have made it the best selling microwave on the site — that’s no small feat. Now it’s returning with the Amazon Smart Oven. From the look […]

Facebook spent a large amount of time at its Oculus Connect 6 keynote detailing the new links between its VR headset and the company’s core Facebook app. “Starting late this year, we will begin to roll out a completely new social layer across the Oculus platform powered by Facebook,” Oculus exec Megan Fitzgerald said onstage. […]