Crunch Hype

Add another one to the Google Cemetery. Google has disclosed that it will shut down Google Hire, the job application tracking system it launched just two years ago. Google built Hire in an effort to simplify the hiring process, with a workflow that integrated things like searching for applicants, scheduling interviews, and providing feedback […]

SpaceX has completed a second low-altitude test flight of its “Starhopper” demonstration prototype, which is being used to test technologies that will be used to build the full-scale next-generation SpaceX “Starship” spacecraft. This test involved “hopping” the Starhopper (hence the name, get it?) to a height of around 150 meters (or a little less than […]

“One app to rule them all” is a compelling idea if you’re a healthcare giant. But it's flawed. Not only does it ignore the way people use technology, it puts the patient experience second.

“The Irishman,” the much-anticipated Martin Scorsese film produced by Netflix, will get a theatrical release on November 1, starting in Los Angeles and New York. It will then debut on the streaming service about four weeks later, on November 27. This follows a similar pattern to the release of Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” last year, which […]

Ready, Set, Raise is a startup accelerator for women and non-binary founders.

Airship announced today that it has acquired Apptimize, an A/B testing company whose customers include Glassdoor, HotelTonight and The Wall Street Journal. Formerly known as Urban Airship, the more concisely named Airship has built a platform for companies to manage their customer communication across SMS, push notifications, email, mobile wallets and more. It says that by […]

The maker of internet-connected stationary bikes approaches $1 billion in annual revenue.

World-mapping computer vision startup 6D.ai is expanding support to new devices as its augmented reality platform exits beta. The SF startup launched its beta in October and is now ready to let developers ship apps as it launches pricing for its services. The pay-as-you-go subscription rates for 6D move from a free tier to $20-$50 […]

Travelers are increasingly being denied entry to the United States as border officials hold them accountable for messages, images and video on their devices sent by other people. It’s a bizarre set of circumstances that has seen countless number of foreign nationals rejected from the U.S. after friends, family or even strangers send messages, images […]

A number of Uber and Lyft drivers are protesting outside Uber’s San Francisco headquarters today to demand the passage of Assembly Bill 5 and the right to unionize. “What do we want? AB-5! When do we want it? Now!” That was one of the phrases drivers chanted outside Uber’s HQ this afternoon. This was part […]

Sebastian Thrun can’t be described easily. He’s a serial entrepreneur and educator, a computer scientist and inventor. He helped bring self-driving cars out of academia through X, the Google moonshot factory he founded. (That little project is now known as Waymo.) Thrun went on to co-found Udacity, the $1 billion online education startup where he is […]

It wasn’t so long ago that sales meant just showing up with a deck and a smile. These days, it seems that sales leaders almost need a PhD in statistics just to get through the typical day managing a sales funnel. From SQLs and MQLs to NDRR and managing overall retention, the roles of VP […]

Surprise, Apple didn’t release yet another beta version of iOS 13. The company released the first developer beta of iOS and iPadOS 13.1 instead. This is a curious move, as Apple doesn’t usually share beta versions of .1 updates before the release of major updates. What’s even more surprising is that Apple released new beta […]

Building exteriors tend to get gross. Dirt clings to the walls. Windows get filmy. Spiderwebs amass. If you live in a particularly humid area, mold and mildew can start to make exterior walls look like a science experiment. On taller buildings, scrubbing it all off generally means bringing a bucket truck, scaffolding or suspension gear […]

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. Smartphone sales declined again in Q2, surprising no one After years of growth, the smartphone market’s recent slide has continued in […]

Sami Khan began his work in the startup world by marketing mobile-based investment services like Acorns. Now the marketer who helped grow that business to a nearly $1 billion valuation is turning his attention to location based gaming in the hopes that he can take on leading contender, Niantic, with a faster, more flexible, and […]

Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has been indicted by a federal grand jury on theft of trade secrets. The indictment, which is posted below, charges Levandowski with 33 counts of theft and attempted theft of trade secrets […]

At this year’s CES event, Hulu announced plans to trial an updated version of its user interface that would do away with the confusing landing page called “Lineup.” At the time, the company said it was considering both “Hulu Picks” option or an “Unwatched in My Stuff” screen as a replacement for “Lineup.” Today, Hulu’s […]

You can’t talk enterprise software without talking SAP, one of the giants in a $500 billion industry. And not only will SAP’s CEO Bill McDermott share insights at TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5, but the company will also sponsor two breakout sessions. The editors will sit down with McDermott and talk about SAP’s […]

Calling all budget-conscious, bargain-loving members of the early-stage startup community. Here’s a real quick way for you to save up to $1,300 on your pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 (October 2-4). Buy your passes before early-bird pricing flies the coop. You have until 11:59 p.m. (PST) on August 30. That just four days left […]

Your iPhone is capable of some impressive feats of computational photography, and a new app created by developer Gabriel O’Flaherty-Chan shows one way all that power can be put to creative use. Emojivision lets you see the world as if it were made up entirely of emojis. The free app (which induces an in-app purchase […]

Microsoft just sent out invites for its next big event. Set for October 2 in New York, the unveiling comes exactly a year after the company’s last major Surface hardware launch. The timing is certainly right for one last major product push ahead of the holidays, as well. Last year’s big event featured the launch […]

TechCrunch will partner with General Catalyst for Include Office Hours on September 4th from 1:30pm – 3:30pm. Partners Niko Bonatsos and Kyle Doherty will meet with underrepresented and underserved entrepreneurs to provide key feedback and advice. Founders, apply here! Founded in 2014, TechCrunch launched the Include Program in an effort to leverage the extensive TechCrunch […]

Customer Success needs to be structured to scale. And it needs to be top-of-mind from day one. Here is a look at the data and strategic rationale for launching CS early in a startup’s growth to...

Google is introducing combo navigation directions that pair ridesharing and biking options with transit guidance. Starting today, when you search from directions using Google Maps and select the ‘transit’ tap, you’ll see ridesharing options included when the nearest station is a bit further than most people might expect to go on foot. Similarly, you’ll also […]

While Slack is trying to kill email, a new email startup backed by Kleiner Perkins is trying to make corporate email more like Slack. Consider is an email service for startups that balances some premium individual features with collaboration tools that it hopes will help them bring startups onboard. The founders of Consider both met […]

WeWork, now known as The We Company, announced this morning the acquisition of a rival co-working business, Spacious. The three-year-old, New York-based startup turns restaurants that sit empty during the day into co-working spaces, and is one of several niche co-working startups — like Convene, Knotel, Industrious, The Yard, The Wing, and Alley, for example. Spacious […]

The Dutch data protection agency has asked Microsoft’s lead privacy regulator in Europe to investigate ongoing concerns it has attached to how Windows 10 gathers user data. Back in 2017 the privacy watchdog found Microsoft’s platform to be in breach of local privacy laws on account of how it collects telemetry metadata. After some back […]

PlaceIQ is announcing a strategic investment from credit reporting company Experian. CEO Duncan McCall said the investment is part of a growth round that PlaceIQ raised after divesting itself of its advertising business (which is being taken over by Zeta Global). He declined to disclose the size of the round, or of the Experian investment. […]

Nest’s transition into the broader Google brand portfolio could honestly be going a bit better. For its part, Google has promised that it will keep adding compelling software features into the ecosystem, and this morning’s announcement is a pretty good start. The company just announced the addition of a package-detecting feature for Nest Hello users […]

This post goes out to a special group of early-stage hardware startup founders — the procrastinators, the vacillators and the last-minute decision-makers. You have just 24 hours left to submit your application to compete in the Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen on November 11-12. The application window closes at precisely 11:59 p.m. (PT) on August 28. […]

It’s the plight of the early adopter. A few years from now, there will be a new version of the console — one that works out the biggest flaws of the original, most likely at a lower price point. Having used Nintendo’s latest console a fair bit since its launch three years back, I can […]

Tesorio, a startup that helps businesses aggregate and analyze their cash flow data, today announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A round led by Seattle’s Madrona Venture Group. Existing investors First Round Capital, Floodgate, Y Combinator, Fathom Capital and Fuel Capital. This brings Tesorio’s total funding to $17 million. Madrona’s Hope Cochran […]

Serverless technology offers developers a way to develop without thinking about the infrastructure resources required to run a program, but up until now it has mostly been limited to function-driven programming. CloudState, a new open source project from Lightbend, wants to change that by moving beyond functions. Lightbend CTO Jonas Bonér believes this ability to […]

Enjoy, the e-commerce startup led by former Apple VP of retail operations, Ron Johnson, has raised an additional $150 million in Series C funding from L Catterton’s new consumer technology platform, LCH Partners. The funds will be used to fuel Enjoy’s U.K. expansion and other international growth. The startup is also today launching a partnership […]

At a time when the industry appears to bet that AI will replace most human jobs, starting with the tens of millions currently residing in call centers, one startup is working to use the same technology to empower the jobs it is pegged to displace. VoiceOps, a San Francisco-based startup, today announced it has raised […]

The BBC — aka, the British Broadcasting Corporation, aka the Beeb, aka Auntie — is getting into the voice assistant game. The Guardian reports the plan to launch an Alexa rival, which has been given the working title ‘Beeb’, and will apparently be light on features given the Corp’s relatively slender developer resources vs major […]

Yelp announced this morning that it will start allowing users to tailor their search results and homepage based on their personal preferences. In other words, if you’re vegetarian, or if you’re parent who’s usually looking for kid-friendly restaurants, you won’t have to reenter that information every time you do a search. Instead, you can enter […]

Carbon has been a kind of shining beacon in the world of 3D printing. In June, the company raised $260 million, bringing its valuation just shy of $2.4 billion. The company’s rapid growth is thanks in no small part to some high-profile partnerships, led by big names like Adidas and Riddell. This morning, Carbon announced […]

Everybody wants to hire data scientists — or at least that’s what it feels like these days. Problem is, data science isn’t just a basic set of skills, but an interdisciplinary skill set that attracts engineers with a wide variety of backgrounds that are often unrelated to computer science. That makes it hard to apply […]

Facebook and its partners are moving ahead with its Libra cryptocurrency project and announced that it is working with HackerOne on a bug bounty program for applications built on its blockchain. The move comes even as government regulators have called for the company to suspend the project, while they assess its legality and the potential […]

The hype around blockchain seems to have cooled a bit, but companies like Kadena have been working on enterprise-grade solutions for some time, and continue to push the technology forward. Today, the startup announced that Kadena Scalable Permissioned Blockchain on Azure is available for free in the Azure Marketplace. Kadena co-founder and CEO Will Martino […]

Platform9, the startup best known for its SaaS-based, fully managed hybrid cloud platform, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series D round led by NGP Capital. Mubadala Ventures and existing investors Redpoint Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Canvas Ventures and HPE Pathfinder also participated in the round. The company’s managed services sit on top […]

Nintendo’s next mobile game, Mario Kart Tour, will be available on iOS and Android devices starting on September 25. The official Twitter account for the game revealed the launch date, and shared the pre-registration link where users of both platforms can sign up to get the game when it launches. The mobile instalment of Nintendo’s […]

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked with the International Space Station successfully late on Tuesday evening, after an initial attempt to do so didn’t end up working as planned on Saturday night. This second attempt went off without a hitch, however, and the capsule is now parked at a port on the Russian Zvezda module of […]

Cybersecurity asset management startup Axonius has raised $20 million in its second round of funding this year. Venture capital firm OpenView led the Series B, joining existing investors in bringing $37 million to date following the startup’s $13 million Series A in February. The security startup, founded in 2017, helps companies keep track of their […]

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle and mobility platform company, announced today that it has partnered with motorcycle company TIC Corporation to bring its B2B-focused electric scooters to South Korea. Gogoro 2 Utility, a version of the company’s Smartscooters created for logistics and delivery fleets, will be available for purchase through TIC, starting in Seoul. Today’s […]

French startup Alan announced new products, international expansion plans and a brand refresh at a press conference this morning. The company also announced plans to overhaul some of its tech stack to improve the overall user experience. Alan is a software-as-a-service startup that offers health insurance in France. The company wants to create a well-designed […]

Fairphone, the Dutch social enterprise that’s on a mission to rethink the waste and exploitation that underpins the business of consumer electronics, has unboxed its third smartphone. The handset, which is sold with the promise of longevity rather than cutting edge obsolescence, goes on pre-sale from today in Europe via Fairphone’s website with a suggested […]

Hedvig, a Swedish startup, is following in the footsteps of Lemonade building a new generation of insurance platforms that use AI to help evaluate customers and operate on a policy of using surplus for social good, and today the company announced the next stage of its growth. The startup has closed a SEK100 million ($10.4 […]