Crunch Hype

Facebook is buying CTRL-labs, a NY-based startup building an armband that translates movement and the wearer’s neural impulses into digital input signals, a company spokesperson tells TechCrunch. CTRL-labs raised $67 million according to Crunchbase. The startup’s investors include GV, Lux Capital, Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Spark Capital and Founders Fund, among others. Facebook didn’t disclose how […]

Engage:BDR announced today that it has raised $23.25 million in new funding. CEO Ted Dhanik told me that this includes both debt and equity funding, and will be used to grow the company’s NetZero payments program. NetZero is designed to address the ongoing issue of long delays faced by publishers before they get paid by advertisers. […]

Stationhead, the mobile app that turns its users into streaming radio DJs, got a big upgrade today. Where Stationhead DJs were previously limited to broadcasting live, they can now record their shows, making them available on-demand for anyone to listen later. The idea behind Stationhead is to democratize and recapture the personality of traditional radio […]

We’ve aggregated the world’s best growth marketers into one community. Twice a month, we ask them to share their most effective growth tactics, and we compile them into this Growth Report.

For the past several years, Unity’s valuation has ballooned alongside their public ambitions to become essential to customers beyond game developers. One of the more interesting use cases of the real-time rendering game engine had been helping companies train their systems inside a virtual environment. This has become a key part of the workflows for […]

Disrupt SF will light up San Francisco on October 2-4, and as usual we’ve designed the show to be unmissable for founders, investors and just about anyone in the global startup scene. In a post two weeks ago, we spelled out five of the best reasons to attend, including the amazing speaker agenda, the perennial […]

Amazon is building wireless earbuds that offer Alexa voice assistant access, and fitness tracking for use during activities, according to a new report from CNBC. These earbuds, combined with a new, larger Echo designed to provide more premium sound, could feature into Amazon’s hardware event taking place this Wednesday in Seattle, though the outlet is […]

Twitter today says it’s expanding its policies to prohibit financial scams on its platform — something you’d think would have already been banned, but apparently was never directly addressed through Twitter’s policy documentation. Instead, financial scams until now have been handled through Twitter’s spam reporting tool, which was expanded last year to specifically identify what […]

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. As Adam Neumann reportedly faces pressure to step down; it’s looking like a fight for life between WeWork and SoftBank Members […]

Amazon is introducing a new feature to its Alexa Show device designed to help blind and other low-vision customers identify common household pantry items by holding them in front of Alexa’s camera and asking what it is. The feature uses a combination of computer vision and machine learning techniques in order to recognize the objects […]

Running an ethical tech company is underrated. From fostering a diverse and inclusive company to examining your technology’s impact on society, it all comes down to ethics. Ellen Pao, who previously served as CEO at Reddit and sued her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers for gender discrimination, has made it her life’s work […]

After several months of speculation, Apple today confirmed that it will be manufacturing the latest version of the Mac Pro in the United States. The move is in keeping with earlier versions of the high-end, pro-focused desktop. In June, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple would move production of the long-awaited desktop to a […]

After stating clearly on Friday that he would honor a $95,000 contract with ICE, CEO Barry Crist must have had a change of heart over the weekend. In a blog post, this morning he wrote that the company would not be renewing the contract with ICE after all. “After deep introspection and dialog within Chef, […]

Following the well-received launch of Apple Arcade, Google today is officially introducing its own take on subscription-based access to premium mobile games — or, in Google’s case, premium mobile apps, too. The new Google Play Pass subscription, arriving this week, will offer over 350 apps and games that are completely unlocked, with no upfront fees, […]

Apple and Oprah will be working together to bring Oprah’s Book Club to the Apple TV+ streaming service. In a new series, the talk show host and producer will interview the authors of her book club picks, starting with Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author of “The Water Dancer.” A new episode will then be available every […]

There’s fashionably late and then there’s the Galaxy Fold. Initially scheduled for an April 22 launch, the device was delayed after multiple reviews returned broken devices. Samsung was quick to blame users, only to ultimately go back to the drawing board. A few months later, the company offered a broad September time frame. Samsung hit […]

Back in 2017 Ometria, an “AI-powered” customer marketing platform, raised $6 million in Series A funding to add to the $11 million it had already raised. Its platform is all about allowing retailers to send individually personalized marketing messages across several brand touchpoints. Today it announced that it has raised $21 million in a Series […]

GoPro’s successor to the Hero 7 is likely coming on October 1, as the action camera maker has posted a teaser with the date to its official website. The tagline “This is Action” appears over a fast cut mash-up of variety of shots, including off-road racing, underwater diving and what looks like close-up footage of […]

On Friday afternoon Chef CEO Barry Crist and CTO Corey Scobie sat down with TechCrunch to defend their contract with ICE after a firestorm on social media called for them to cut ties with the controversial agency. On Sunday, programmer Seth Vargo, the man who removed his open source components, which contributed to a partial […]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was in Boca Chica, Texas over the weekend to oversee key construction activities in the assembly of the company’s newest Starship prototype. Musk will deliver an update on Starship, which will likely recap progress to date and provide a more detailed roadmap of SpaceX’s plans for the future of its next-generation […]

Cloudflare is ratcheting up its fight against bots with a new “fight mode,” which it says will frustrate and disincentivize bot operators from their malicious activity. Bots are notorious for scraping websites and abusing developer access to download gobs of user data. All too often bots try to game the system by scraping concert or […]

Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-headquartered “talent investor” that recruits and backs individuals pre-team and pre-idea to enable them to found startups, has announced its plans to expand to Canada. It marks the first time EF has entered North America. Along with London, EF currently operates in Berlin, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong and Bangalore. The new […]

Yahoo Mail is getting a mobile update, with new versions of the iOS and Android app launching today. Many of you probably haven’t tried out Yahoo Mail in years, but Senior Director of Product Management Josh Jacobson noted that it’s one of the top productivity apps in the Apple App Store, where it has been […]

It’s often said that smaller businesses get the short end of the stick when it comes to technology solutions: they are more high-maintenance than consumers, but not as lucrative as larger enterprises, leaving them caught somewhere in an unsatisfying middle. But today, two serial entrepreneurs who have already built one big startup catering to SMBs […]

Automaker Hyundai is forming a new joint venture with autonomous driving technology company Aptiv, with both parties taking a 50 percent ownership stake in the new company. The goal of the new venture will be to develop Level 4 and Level 5 production-ready self-driving systems intended for commercialization, with the goal of making those available […]

Amazon must be pretty happy after tonight’s primetime Emmy Awards, where its shows “Fleabag” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” dominated the comedy categories. “Fleabag” (which originally aired on the BBC but was co-produced and streamed internationally by Amazon) did particularly well, winning the big award for Comedy Series, as well as additional awards for Lead […]

It makes lazy people like me work out. That’s the genius of the Peloton bicycle. All you have to do is velcro on the shoes and you’re trapped. You’ve eliminated choice and you will exercise. Through a succession of savvy product design choice I’ll break down here, Peloton removes the friction to getting fit. It’s the […]

If you’re at all familiar with esports, chances are you’ve heard of 100 Thieves. The esports org, founded by Matthew “Nadeshot” Haag, has grown over the past couple years into an absolute powerhouse of esports and a household name for those who follow gaming. Which is why we’re thrilled to have Nadeshot and 100 Thieves […]

“Terrace House” (a co-production between Netflix and Fuji Television) is back, and it hasn’t changed much since we reviewed it last year. As with previous seasons, “Terrace House: Tokyo 2019-2020” features six cast members (three men and three women, mostly in their twenties) who all live in a house together. Rather than manufacturing competition or […]

According to a new WSJ report, certain members of WeWork’s seven-person board, which includes cofounder and CEO Adam Neumann, are planning to pressure Neumann to step down and instead become We’s non-executive chairman. The move, says the outlet, “would allow him to stay stay at the company he built into one of the country’s most […]

We might have just completed a full-day program devoted completely to enterprise at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise last week, but it doesn’t mean we plan to sell that subject short at TechCrunch Disrupt next month in San Francisco. In fact, we have something for everyone from startups to established public companies and everything in between along […]

iFixit has disassembled Apple’s new iPhone models, which tells us more about the differences with last year’s phones. iFixit shot a live-stream video of the iPhone 11 Pro teardown and wrote a guide for the iPhone 11 Pro Max. The first major difference is that the batteries in the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 11 […]

Last week someone knocked out 5% of world oil production with a small swarm of drones and cruise missiles, and in doing so, inaugurated “a change in the nature of warfare globally,” to quote The Independent. These were relatively crude drones, too. Let’s pause a moment to imagine what happens if and when sophisticated autonomous […]

Hey all. This is Week-in-Review, where I give a heavy amount of analysis and/or rambling thoughts on one story while scouring the rest of the hundreds of stories that emerged on TechCrunch this week to surface my favorites for your reading pleasure. Last week, I talked about Apple’s aggressive moves to change the gaming market. […]

As Facebook prepares to launch its new cryptocurrency Libra in 2020, it’s putting the pieces in place to help it run. In one of the latest developments, it has acquired Servicefriend, a startup that built bots — chat clients for messaging apps based on artificial intelligence — to help customer service teams, TechCrunch has confirmed. […]

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, a 35-year-old billionaire who keeps refusing to sit in front of international parliamentarians to answer questions about his ad business’ impact on democracy and human rights around the world, has a new piece of accountability theatre to sell you: An “Oversight Board“. Not of Facebook’s business itself. Though you’d be forgiven […]

Alchemist Accelerator, a startup incubator which focuses on enterprise companies, held a demo day yesterday for its 22nd batch. Each company got 5 minutes to tell a theater full of investors who they are, what they’re building, and why they might be the best to build it. We saw companies working on everything from industrial […]

Aicha Evans, CEO of self-driving startup Zoox, is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco in just two short weeks. Evans came on board to Zoox earlier this year following the unexpected firing of co-founder and former CEO Tim Kentley-Klay in August. At the time of the announcement, Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson told […]

In this week's newsletter: Airbnb, WeWork and Postmates prep IPOs.

Back in January, Blackstone — the investment firm whose assets under management surpassed a jaw-dropping half a trillion dollars earlier this year — quietly began piecing together a new, growth equity platform called Blackstone Growth, or BXG. Step one was hiring away Jon Korngold from General Atlantic, where he’d spent the previous 18 years, including […]

Yesterday, software development tool maker Chef found itself in the middle of a firestorm after a Tweet called them out for doing business with DHS/ICE. Eventually it led to an influential open-source developer removing a couple of key pieces of software from the project, bringing down some parts of Chef’s commercial business. Chef intends to […]

We’re going to try something new at Disrupt this year, based on the great response we’ve been getting to our startup how-to coverage. We’re going to put service provider experts on our Q&A stage, where you can talk to them directly in-person about key topics like growth, fundraising and recruiting. To help kick off this […]

Matchstick Ventures, a seed-stage firm that says it invests in “rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems,” announced this week that it has raised $30 million for its second fund. That’s a lot more money than the firm’s $5 million seed round. This time, Matchstick says it will write initial checks of around $500,000, and in […]

The FAA has warned against equipping your drone with weapons such as flamethrowers and handguns. But can a nail gun really be considered a weapon — that is, outside of Quake? Let's hope not, because roboticists at the University of Michigan have made a roofing drone that uses that tool to autonomously nail shingles into place.

John Maeda has been a professor at the MIT Media Lab, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, designer partner at venture firm Kleiner Perkins and most recently served as the head of computational design and inclusion at Automattic. So perhaps it’s no surprise that he made another big leap with his latest job, […]

Less than 24 hours after YouTube announced that it would be changing its creator verification process, CEO Susan Wojcicki admitted that the news hasn’t gone over very well. “To our creators & users – I’m sorry for the frustration & hurt that we caused with our new approach to verification,” Wojcicki tweeted. “While trying to […]

Security is in everything, it’s everywhere and it’s everyone’s responsibility. What part are you playing? At TechCrunch Disrupt SF on October 2-4, we’re proud to have onstage some of the smartest security executives and highest-ranking officials ready to talk shop. Security will be front and center of Disrupt SF, with our panels and experts ready […]

It’s been another hard week at MIT. Our campus has been divided by revelations of inappropriate fundraising, coverups, and the harboring of far too many tech geniuses who seemingly put their own interests and careers over the safety of women, among other marginalized groups. As a chaplain to students and faculty at the Institute, but […]

On Sundays in October, Tinder is launching in its dating app an “interactive adventure” called “Swipe Night” that will present a narrative where users make a series of choices in order to proceed. This sort of choose-your-own-adventure format has been more recently popularized by Netflix and others as a new way to engage with digital […]

In November 2020, America will go to the polls to vote in perhaps the most consequential election in a generation. The winner will lead the country amid great social, economic and ecological unrest. The 2020 election will be a referendum on both the current White House and the direction of the country at large. Nearly […]