Crunch Hype

How long have you been using your current smartphone? The answer for an increasing number of consumers is years, plural. After all, why upgrade every year when next year’s model is almost exactly the same as the device you’re holding in your hand? Dutch social enterprise Fairphone sees this as an opportunity to sell sustainability. […]

Joichi Ito, the embattled director of the M.I.T. Media Lab, has stepped down according to a statement by MIT’s president, L. Rafael Reif. The news was first reported by The New York Times, which had received a copy of an email sent by Ito to university provost Martin A. Schmidt. “After giving the matter a great […]

Is capital moral or amoral? In the predominant view held in Silicon Valley today, capital is amoral — cash is cash, and regardless of where it comes from, once it leaves the hand of its investor or donor, it no longer has that individual’s taint. That money might have previously been spent on acquiring access […]

“Carnival Row” offers an unlikely mix of genres, laying out a murder mystery in a world of fairies and other mythical creatures, while also delivering a healthy dose of allegorical politics. And as we explain in the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, the show (recently released on Amazon Prime Video) does take some […]

Wikipedia was forced offline in several countries Friday after a cyber attack hit the global encyclopedia. Users across Europe and parts of the Middle East experienced outages shortly before 7pm, BST, according to downdetector.com. Wikimedia’s German Twitter account posted: “The Wikimedia server…is currently being paralysed by a massive and very broad DDOS [distributed denial of […]

Top VCs on the changing landscape for enterprise startups TechCrunch had our debut confab for enterprise types this week at Yerba Buena Center in SF, where we heard from Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, Apple VP Susan Prescott of Apple, and Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich. We were sold out, which perhaps isn’t all that […]

Back in June Uber went on a hiring spree in New York, hiring at least 100 fintech-oriented tech workers to ostensibly look at creating products to increase loyalty and engagement among users and drivers, including things like banking. Cue a flurry of speculation. It now looks like Uber is taking baby-steps towards building such a […]

In this week's newsletter: A new car-sharing unicorn, WeWork's IPO expectations and an introduction to Stripe Capital.

PrimaryBid, a UK-regulated platform connecting publicly listed companies with everyday investors for discounted share issuances has previously raised $3M. It’s now upped those stakes with an $8.6M funding round, led by UK VCs Pentech and Outward VC with participation from new and existing investors. Craig Anderson, a partner at Pentech, will join the PrimaryBidBoard of […]

Roku TV today represents more than 1 in 3 smart TVs sold in the U.S. Now, the company is bringing its TV licensing program to European markets. At the consumer tech show IFA in Berlin, Roku announced it will now allow manufacturers to license its TV reference designs and use its Roku OS to build […]

India’s attempt to become the first nation to soft land a robotic spacecraft at the moon’s South Pole, an unexplored region, has ended in failure, the space agency said Saturday. Less than two miles above the lunar surface, the Vikram lander (named after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India’s space program) lost communications with the […]

Vape lung is spreading and the CDC is warning people not to use vaping products while they are investigating the cause. In a media briefing, the public health agency said that some 450 people are now thought to be affected, and as many as five have died.

Streaming music subscriptions continue to drive the U.S. music industry’s growth and revenues, according to a new report from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) released this week. The organization said total music revenue grew 18% to $5.4 billion in the first half of 2019, with streaming music accounting for 80% of industry revenues. […]

It’s a big day for India’s highly audacious Chandrayaan-2 mission. The nation will attempt to land on the moon’s surface shortly as it inches closer to becoming the fourth in the world to complete a successful lunar landing. ISRO, India’s equivalent of NASA, is live streaming the landing on its website, and YouTube channel (embedded […]

Porsche AG is increasing its stake in Croatian electric vehicle components and hypercar company Rimac Automobili . The increased stake is the latest effort by Porsche to invest more into electric mobility, particularly in battery technology. It was just 14 months ago that Porsche took a 10% stake in Rimac. Now, the German automaker is […]

Pagerduty‘s CEO Jennifer Tejada and Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie both guided their companies to successful IPOs, with Box going public in 2015 and Pagerduty listing its stocks only a few months ago. Both of them will join us on the first day of TechCrunch Disrupt SF (October 2) to talk about their experiences […]

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. Apple Music launches a public beta on the web While this is the first time Apple has made its music service […]

With the scheduled 2020 shutdown of Google Hire, the tech giant’s applicant tracking system, there’s more room for startups to emerge as the go-to tool for hiring managers. Agave, which has $1 million in funding from SV Angel, Box Group and others, is aiming to serve that need. Agave is a free hiring platform that […]

Apple has issued a tart response to an extensive report by Google of a serious security flaw in iOS. The flaw, which let an attacker gain root access to a device visiting a malicious website, was reported last week. Apple wants to "make sure all of our customers have the facts," which is funny, because it's likely we wouldn't have any of the facts if Google had not so rigorously documented this issue.

While the software revolution started out slowly, over the past few years it’s exploded and the fastest-growing segment to-date has been the shift towards software as a service or SaaS...

Monotype recently introduced a new typeface called Ambiguity, created by its chief type designer, Charles Nix. Its unusual proportions deliberately challenge typographical conventions, going wide where a letter was once narrow and vice versa. I had a chance to talk to Nix about the genesis of Ambiguity and the state of type design; The conversation was interesting enough that I felt I should publish it more or less intact.

When Medal.tv first launched on the scene, the company was an upstart trying to be the social network for the gaming generation. Since its debut in February, the clipping and messaging service for gamers has amassed 5 million total users with hundreds of thousands of daily active users. And now it has a $9 million […]

Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) is looking for answers from Amazon about its doorbell camera Ring and the company’s relationships with law enforcement agencies around the U.S. In a letter published on Thursday, he writes to the technology giant how partnerships like Ring’s raise “serious privacy and civil liberties concerns,” and asks Amazon to further […]

Yesterday at TechCrunch’s Enterprise event in San Francisco, we sat down with three venture capitalists who spend a lot of their time thinking about enterprise startups. We wanted to ask what trends they are seeing, what concerns they might have about the state of the market and, of course, how startups might persuade them to […]

We’re in a price-hike homestretch, startup fans. Early-bird savings head south, and ticket prices head north in just a few short hours. Want to save up to $1,300 on passes to Disrupt San Francisco 2019? Buy your passes by 11:59 p.m. (PST) tonight, September 6 — avoid the costly stroke of midnight. Wring even more savings […]

As rumors swirl about Apple’s plans to launch a Tile competitor, Tile today announced it’s teaming up with Google to make it easier for users to locate their lost items using their Android devices and others using Google Assistant. For the uninitiated, Tile is a small hardware accessory that you can attach to items like […]

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced this morning that she’s leading an investigation into Facebook over antitrust issues — in other words, whether Facebook used its social media dominance to engage in anti-competitive behavior. In a statement, James said: Even the largest social media platform in the world must follow the law and respect […]

Huboo, a U.K. startup that operates a multi-channel fulfillment service for e-commerce businesses of varying sizes, has raised £1 million in seed funding. Backing the majority of the round is London venture capital firm Episode 1, alongside a number of unnamed private individual investors. Launched in November 2017 by Martin Bysh and Paul Dodd after […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, we recorded on location at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco, a show that saw talks from Box’s Aaron Levie, Atlassian CEO Scott Farquhar and venture capitalists Maha Ibrahim, Rebecca Lynn and Jason Green. The latter, […]

UCWeb, a subsidiary of Chinese giant Alibaba Group, plans to launch an e-commerce service in India in the coming months. In a statement to TechCrunch, a UCWeb spokesperson said the firm plans to build an e-commerce service around content platforms in India. It has no intention to compete with existing e-commerce businesses in the country, […]

The last few hours of serious euro-savings are upon us, startuppers. In the States, we’d say it’s time to fish or cut bait. What we’re trying to tell you is that super early-bird pricing for Disrupt Berlin 2019 ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. (CEST). Buy your passes now and save up to €600 or pay […]

Xiaomi said on Friday it has shipped more than 100 million smartphones in India, its most important market, since beginning operations in the nation five years ago. The company cited figures from research firm IDC in its claim. The Chinese giant, which has held the top smartphone vendor position in India for eight straight quarters, […]

Alibaba Group has acquired NetEase Kaola for $2 billion, the two companies said today, and will integrate it into Tmall, creating the largest cross-border e-commerce platform in China. The announcement follows weeks of media reports about a potential deal, which was said to have stalled in the middle of August after the companies reportedly disagreed […]

Medium seems to be building a tool to save and reformat online articles for future reading. That’s according to Jane Manchun Wong, a reliable source of scoops on unreleased features. Wong said she spotted this one by reverse engineering Medium’s Android app and monitoring network traffic. The “Save to Medium” feature appears to scrape web […]

An exposed web server storing résumés of job seekers — including from recruitment site Monster — has been found online. The server contained résumés and CVs for job applicants spanning 2014 and 2017, many of which included private information like phone numbers and home addresses, but also email addresses and a person’s prior work experience. […]

And the next car-sharing unicorn is...

Flat has raised one of Mexico’s largest pre-seed rounds to take the Opendoor real estate marketplace model across the Rio Grande. The company snagged a $4.5 million pre-seed round to expand its business helping homeowners quickly sell their properties in Mexico. The round was led by ALLVP, an active early-stage fund in Mexico. California-based Liquid 2 […]

Novameat, a Spanish startup looking to accelerate the development of alternative proteins across the meat aisle, has gotten a boost in the form of new investment capital from the leading foodtech investment firm, New Crop Capital. Founded by biomedical engineering expert Giuseppe Scionti, Novameat builds on Scionti’s decade of research as an assistant professor in […]

Superside, a startup aiming to create a premium alternative to the existing crowdsourced design platforms, is announcing that it has raised $3.5 million in new funding. It’s also adding new features like the ability to work on user interfaces, interaction design and motion graphics. Co-founder and CEO Fredrik Thomassen said this allows the company to […]

Evidence continues to roll in that American workers are out of position for the high-value jobs of today and tomorrow. What are America’s colleges and universities doing to solve the problem?

Here at Extra Crunch, our mission is to help founders and builders create compelling products, learn best practices from Silicon Valley, and ultimately grow their creations into global-scale companies. Day-to-day, we do that through the member-exclusive articles we post on Extra Crunch, from using Amazon to build a DTC brand to raising revenue-based venture capital, to learning how the […]

It's a common belief that startups can measure their way to success. Yet early-stage startups often can’t leverage data easily. This piece discusses what to (not) focus on and how to get real results.

Apple Music is coming to the web. Apple today is launching a public beta of its popular music streaming service on the web, which will be available to all Apple Music subscribers worldwide. This is the first time that Apple Music has been officially offered on the web, though an unofficial app over the past […]

Last year at this time, Forethought won the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield competition. A $9 million Series A investment followed last December. Today at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco, the company introduced the latest addition to its platform, called Agatha Predictions. Forethought CEO and co-founder Deon Nicholas said that after launching its original product, Agatha […]

Google Search can now help you find your next binge. The company this morning announced a new feature that will make personalized recommendations of what to watch, including both TV shows and movies, and point you to services where the content is available. The feature is an expansion of Google’s existing efforts in pointing web […]

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. Facebook Dating launches in the US, adds Instagram integration The integration means users will be able to add their Instagram accounts […]

Adam Draper, the son of that Draper, is changing things up a bit at his accelerator. Boost VC has been living life on the fringe of Bay Area accelerators, chasing trends like VR and crypto (and sometimes a combo of the two) hard while courting outliers, including a “robot fish platform” and a “cold metal […]

Before there was the Nest Home — heck, before there was even the Google Home Hub — there was the Lenovo Smart Display. The smart screen was far and away the nicest of the original Google Assistant screens, and the partnership between the two companies continues to be a fruitful, including the recent Smart Clock, […]

Front, the company that lets you manage your inboxes as a team, is adding one more channel, WhatsApp. Starting today, you can read and reply to people contacting you through WhatsApp. This feature is specifically targeted at users of WhatsApp Business. You can get a business phone number through Twilio and then hand out that […]

The Porsche Taycan is here — actually two flavors, the Turbo S and the Turbo — in case you haven’t seen the deluge of media coverage. The upshot: the “lower” priced Turbo starts at $150,900 while the Turbo S begins at $185,000. While Porsche is promising cheaper variants of the Taycan next year, well-heeled drivers […]