Crunch Hype

TechCrunch has learned of a safety issue and a number of product reliability questions being raised about a modular computer made by a London edtech startup that’s intended for children to learn coding and electronics. The product, called the pi-top 3, is a Raspberry Pi-powered laptop with a keyboard that slides out to access a […]

Twelve cell carriers, including the four largest — AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon — have promised to make efforts to prevent spoofed and automated robocalls. Announced Thursday, the pledge comes after 51 U.S. attorneys general brokered a deal that would see the telecom giants roll out anti-robocalling technologies, including a way of cryptographically signing callers […]

Seed funds beware, today's fight for equity in Bay Area startups requires muscle and a whole lot of cash.

Overstock .com announced today that CEO Patrick Byrne has resigned from his role as chief executive and board member. Another board member, Jonathan Johnson, will be taking over as Overstock’s interim CEO. This follows the company’s eyebrow-raising press release earlier this month titled “Overstock.com CEO Comments on Deep State, Withholds Further Comment,” in which Byrne […]

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 reportedly launching new iPhone Pro and iPads with better cameras, 16-inch MacBook Pro and new AirPods Here come the leaks […]

With 12 offices and 350 employees around the world, 3Q Digital is a giant among growth marketing agencies. They’ve worked with companies like Brandless, Opendoor, and Warby Parker, but they also have an internal business unit called 3Q Incubate to work with startups in their pre-launch phase. 3Q Digital gets tech and that’s a testament […]

The Justice Department have indicted dozens of individuals accused of their involvement in a massive business email scam and money laundering scheme. Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California, confirmed more than a dozen individuals had been arrested during raids on Thursday — mostly in the Los […]

I liked the Lenovo Smart Clock when I reviewed it back in June. It’s a pretty minimalist take on the smart screen designed for the very specific purpose of living next to your bed. The streamlined features are very much by design — rather than the kitchen sink approach, the clock is built around a […]

Security is everything — more so than ever in startup land. But with the constant pressures to launch and scale, how do you build a secure startup from the ground up without slowing growth? Whether you’re starting out small or you’re a multinational unicorn, your customers and their data will be your greatest asset. We’re […]

AmazonFresh, one of two main grocery delivery services Amazon today operates, is expanding to new markets, the retailer announced this morning. The service will now be available to Prime members in Houston, Minneapolis, and Phoenix. Notably, this list includes a test market for Walmart’s new grocery subscription service, Delivery Unlimited; Target’s corporate headquarters; and an […]

Once considered the most boring of topics, enterprise software is now getting infused with such energy that it is arguably the hottest space in tech.

We’ve long known that 5G rollout wouldn’t happen overnight. But now that carriers have gotten things started, they’ve been confronted with pushback against the next-gen wireless technology’s limitations. Among the bigger issues is spotty coverage indoors — you know that place where most of us spend most of our time? Verizon’s looking to address the […]

Densify has been a company that helps engineers buy cloud resources in a cost-effective way, but the company wanted to show this this cloud spending data to finance as well. This week it announced a new product called Cloud Cost Intelligence (CCI), which has been designed to give finance teams greater visibility into a company’s […]

SpotHero, the Chicago-based company that has developed an on-demand parking app, has raised $50 million in a Series D round led by Macquarie Capital. Union Grove Venture Partners participated in the round, along with existing investors including Insight Venture Partners, Global Founders Capital, OCA Ventures, AutoTech Ventures and others, according to the company. SpotHero has […]

Bose’s portable speaker offerings have tended toward the cheaper end of the spectrum — bringing colorful competition for companies like JBL. With the dryly named Portable Home Speaker, however, the company looks to split the difference between portable and premium. And it’s certainly priced for the latter. The $349 speaker looks to something of a […]

Spotify’s battle with Apple Music is continuing to heat up. On Monday, the company introduced upgrades to its Premium Family plan which now offers parental controls and other exclusive features, like a family playlist. Today, Spotify is going head-to-head with Apple on its free trial offer. Previously, new users to the Spotify Premium subscription could […]

Making the VR experience simple and portable was the main goal of the Oculus Quest, and it definitely accomplishes that. But going from things in the room tracking your headset to your headset tracking things in the room was a complex process. I talked with Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer ("Schrep") about the journey from "outside-in" to "inside-out."

The dessert naming scheme was one of the best-loved legacies from Google past (though some were notably better than others). Every time the company got ready to release a new version of the mobile operating system, speculation would mount about which sweet foodstuff on which the company would ultimately settle. But while P offered confections […]

The CareVoice, a Shanghai-based health insurance software startup with ambitions to expand throughout Asia, announced today that it has raised about $10 million in Series A funding. The investment was led by LUN Partners Group and an undisclosed global investment manager that specializes in financial services, with participation from DNA Capital and returning investors SOSV […]

Remediant, a startup that helps companies secure privileged access in a modern context, announced a $15 million Series A today led by Dell Technologies Capital and ForgePoint Capital. Remediant’s co-founders, Paul Lanzi and Tim Keeler, worked in biotech for years and saw a problem first-hand with the way companies secured privileged access. It was granted […]

NASA and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have teamed up to build a new supercomputer, which will serve NASA’s Ames Research Center in California and develop models and simulations of the landing process for Artemis Moon missions. The new supercomputer is called ‘Aitken,’ named after American astronomer Robert Grant Aitken, and it can run simulations at […]

If you’re like me, chances are good you just distractedly clicked on this article while scrolling through your feed in, or while waiting for, a Lyft. Maybe, like me, you need that app to get to back-to-back meetings in different locations today, as you’re well on your way to at least a 60-hour workweek between […]

Google today announced a new long-term initiative that, if fully realized, will make it harder for online marketers and advertisers to track you across the web. This new proposal follows the company’s plans to change how cookies in Chrome work and to make it easier for users to block tracking cookies. Today’s proposal for a […]

Earlier this year, the world turned very sour on a group of rich and famous parents who were exposed for having paid big money to get their not-so-academic offspring into competitive universities, using tactics like cheating on tests and more to get those offers. But even if you put illegal manoeuvres to one side, money […]

Apple is getting ready for its usual fall iPhone launch event, which is rumored to be happening September 10, though the event hasn’t been officially confirmed this year. A new report from Bloomberg offers a preview of the lineup of hardware products it’s looking to debut this year. There are new iPhones, of course, including […]

Challenger bank N26 is announcing two things this week. First, the company lets you share sub-accounts with other N26 users in just a few taps. Second, after a limited beta test, the company is officially launching in the U.S. with open registration. Shared Spaces could be seen as an alternative to joint accounts. The feature […]

Zomato, one of India’s biggest food delivery startups, has major ambitions. Now it is also facing some major challenges. Zomato is increasingly expanding its reach in the country to serve dozens of new cities and towns every month. It is investing heavily in building cloud kitchens to quickly meet customers’ demand for certain food items. And it […]

Commerce and marketing are radically changing these days. Consumers are increasingly looking for brands they identify with, while at the same time, the cost of acquiring users is increasing year-over-year for marketers. For brands, that math makes marketing complicated: they want to reach the right customers with the most efficient acquisition channels in order to […]

Lasst die Spiele beginnen, startup founders — let the games begin! In case you haven’t heard, the application window for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin 2019 is wide open and waiting for you. Don’t miss the chance to launch your early-stage startup on an international stage in front of some of tech’s most influential […]

ThredUp, the 10-year-old fashion resale marketplace, has a lot of big news to boast about lately. For starters, the company just closed on $100 million in fresh funding from an investor syndicate that includes Park West Asset Management, Irving Investors and earlier backers Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, Upfront Ventures, Highland Capital Partners and Redpoint Ventures. […]

Eminem’s music publisher Eight Mile Style has filed a lawsuit against Spotify, accusing the service of “blatant copyright infringement” in streaming “Lose Yourself” and other Eminem songs. As explained by The Hollywood Reporter, the suit is tied Spotify’s implementation of the Music Modernization Act, which was signed into law last year. Under the MMA, Spotify […]

T-Mobile customers across the U.S. said they couldn’t make calls or send text messages following an outage. We tested with a T-Mobile phone in the office. Both calls to and from the T-Mobile phone failed. When we tried to send a text message, it said the message could not be sent. Access to mobile data […]

First of all, keep it out of the light. It hates bright light, especially sunlight, it’ll kill it. Second, don’t give it any water, not even to drink. But the most important rule, the rule you can never forget, no matter how much it cries, no matter how much it begs, never feed it after […]

Most founders who are raising capital look first to traditional equity VCs. But should they? Or should they look to one of the new wave of revenue-based investors?

2019 has been a breakout year for podcasting. According to Edison Research’s Infinite Dial report, more than half of Americans have now listened to a podcast, and an estimated 32% listen monthly.

Splunk, the publicly traded data processing and analytics company, today announced that it has acquired SignalFx for a total price of about $1.05 billion. Approximately 60% of this will be in cash and 40% in Splunk common stock. The companies expect the acquisition to close in the second half of 2020. SignalFx, which emerged from […]

Porsche’s venture arm has acquired a minority stake in TriEye, an Israeli startup that’s working on a sensor technology to help vehicle driver-assistance and self-driving systems see better in poor weather conditions like dust, fog and rain. The strategic investment is part of a Series A financing round that has been expanded to $19 million. […]

A good, solid duffel bag is a mainstay for many travelers — especially those who like packing up a car for a weekend away, or frequent flyers who disdain the thought of checking a bag. Peak Design introduced its own take on the duffel bag this year, with a couple of different twists on the […]

Changes at YC, trends in the startup universe and a breakdown of the accelerator's latest batch.

The International Space Station is now more than ready for crew-carrying spacecraft flown by commercial companies to pay it a visit: The second planned International Dock Adapter (IDA) was installed on the Space Station during a spacewalk by NASA astronauts Nick Hague and Andrew Morgan earlier today. The dock adapter is actually IDA-3, as the […]

[Update: the Music tab has been relocated] Google’s Play Store has gotten a big visual makeover, the company announced today, with changes that include a cleaner look-and-feel, new navigation, an easier way to to see app information and more. Most notably, however, is that Google has taken a page from Apple’s playbook with the priority […]

After two days of founders tirelessly pitching, we’ve reached the end of YC’s Summer 2019 Demo Days. TechCrunch witnessed more than 160 on-the-record startup pitches coming out of Y Combinator, spanning healthcare, B2B services, augmented reality and life-extending. The full list is worth a gander, you can read about the 84 startups from Day 1 […]

Twitter’s ongoing, long-term efforts to make conversations easier to follow and engage with on its platform is getting a boost with the company’s latest acquihire. The company has picked up the team behind Lightwell, a startup that had built a set of developer tools to build interactive, narrative apps, for an undisclosed sum. Lightwell’s founder and […]

Earlier this year, Google said it would transition all Hangouts users on G Suite to Hangouts Chat and Meet by October 2019 and then retire the classic version of Hangouts. But a lot of G Suite users love their classic Hangouts, so Google has now revised Hangouts’ retirement date to “no sooner than June 2020.” […]

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. DoorDash acquires autonomous driving startup Scotty Labs DoorDash seems to be very interested in self-driving technology — not only did it […]

Multiple reports this week claimed Google had quietly rolled out a more in-depth app review process to all developers — changes designed to keep the Play Store safer from spam, malware and copycat apps. Those reports are inaccurate, Google tells TechCrunch. Instead, the company is giving itself more time to review apps from new, unestablished […]

Disrupt San Francisco 2019, our flagship event on October 2-4, features three full days of programming, more than 10,000 attendees, over 1,200 exhibiting startups and sponsors — and that’s just for starters. That’s a lot of ground to cover. Here’s a hot tip: take advantage of group discounts, saddle up and bring your whole posse […]

The first day of work at a new job can be very stressful. Different companies have their own traditions to help make this period of transition more comfortable and memorable for new hires...

Susan Prescott, Apple’s vice president of markets, apps and services, has been at Apple since 2003. She worked with the company’s co-founder Steve Jobs, and has witnessed such milestones as the launch of the iPhone and the iPad. Susan will be coming to TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco on September 5 to discuss Apple’s […]

BuzzFeed is offering readers a new approach to finding content that fits the way they’re feeling right now. It’s not the boring old approach of following a link on social media or search, or of typing BuzzFeed.com into your browser. Instead, on MoodFeed, readers can identify their mood, then they’ll get a list of articles […]