Crunch Hype

The competition for control of the burgeoning market for burger replacements (and other alternatives to animal proteins) continues to heat up. Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods the two leading contenders for top purveyor of plant-based patties (and other formulations) have spent most of the typically sleepy summer months jockeying for the position as top supplier […]

New successes in printing vascular tissue from living cells point to the accelerating pace of development of 3D printing tissue — and eventually the ability to manufacture organs from small samples of cells. Late last month Prellis Biologics announced a $8.7 million round of funding and some significant advancements that point the way forward for […]

Robert Ackerman Jr. Contributor Robert Ackerman Jr. is the founder and a managing director of AllegisCyber, an early-stage cybersecurity venture firm, and a founder of DataTribe, a cybersecurity startup “studio” in metropolitan Washington, D.C. More posts by this contributor Too few cybersecurity professionals is a gigantic problem for 2019 Cyber breaches abound in 2019 With […]

A collision at sea that claimed the lives of 10 sailors has led to the Navy deciding to replace an unpopular touchscreen interface in some ships with more traditional mechanical controls. "Just because you can doesn’t mean you should," a Navy official said of the outgoing technology.

Small satellite launch startup Vector has indefinitely shut down operations "in response a major change in financing," the company confirmed. Co-founder and CEO Jim Cantrell has also been pushed out as part of the upset.

A Tesla vehicle involved in a collision burst into flames and exploded on a highway near Moscow last night, local media reported. The occupants were slightly injured, but the car is toast.

Most critics haven’t found much to like in “Another Life,” a new space opera on Netflix, but look: We had a good time with it. The show stars Katee Sackhoff (best known as Starbuck on “Battlestar Galactica”), who plays Niko Breckinridge, the leader of an expedition across the galaxy to make contact with aliens who […]

One of the scarier notions in the world today is the prospect of American voting machines being compromised at scale: voters thrown off rolls, votes disregarded, vote tallies edited, entire elections hacked. That’s why the nation’s lawmakers and civil servants flocked (relatively speaking) to Def Con in Las Vegas this week, where hackers at its […]

Hey. 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 the Capital One breach and how Equifax taught us […]

Forget the keycard or phone app, one software engineer is trying out a new way to unlock and start her Tesla Model 3. Amie DD, who has a background in game simulation and programming, recently released a video showing how she “biohacked” her body. The software engineer removed the RFID chip from the Tesla Model […]

Y Combinator has become one of the key ways that startups from emerging markets get the attention of American investors. And arguably no clutch of companies has benefitted more from Y Combinator’s attention than startups from emerging markets tackling the the logistics market. On the heels of the success the accelerator had seen with Flexport, […]

Shay Hershkovitz Contributor Share on Twitter Shay Hershkovitz is a Senior Research Fellow at The Intelligence Methodology Research Center (IMRC). At a conference on the future challenges of intelligence organizations held in 2018, former Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats argued that he transformation of the American intelligence community must be a revolution rather than […]

Telegram, a popular instant messaging app, has introduced a new feature to give group admins on the app better control over how members engage, the latest in a series of interesting features it has rolled out in recent months to expand its appeal. The feature, dubbed Slow Mode, allows a group administrator to dictate how […]

The Kobalt EC-1: How a Swedish saxophonist built Kobalt, the world’s next music unicorn My favorite pieces we host on Extra Crunch are our EC-1 series of in-depth profiles and analyses of high-flying, fascinating startups. We launched Extra Crunch with a multi-part series on Patreon, and then we covered augmented reality and Pokémon Go creator […]

Every year the great and good (and bad) of the hacker/information-security world descend on Las Vegas for a week of conferences, in which many present their latest discoveries, and every year I try to itemize the most interesting (according to me) Black Hat talks for TechCrunch. Do not assume I attended all or even most […]

New research into how European consumers interact with the cookie consent mechanisms which have proliferated since a major update to the bloc’s online privacy rules last year casts an unflattering light on widespread manipulation of a system that’s supposed to protect consumer rights. As Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in May […]

In this week's newsletter: A WeWork IPO update, the investment opportunity in healthcare and an electric bus unicorn.

If you can’t trust your bank, government or your medical provider to protect your data, what makes you think students are any safer? Turns out, according to one student security researcher, they’re not. Eighteen-year-old Bill Demirkapi, a recent high school graduate in Boston, Massachusetts, spent much of his latter school years with an eye on […]

You may not have heard of Kobalt before, but you probably engage with the music it oversees every day, if not almost every hour. Combining a technology platform to better track ownership rights and royalties of songs with a new approach to representing musicians in their careers, Kobalt has risen from the ashes of the […]

As companies collect increasingly large amounts of data about customers, the end game is about improving the customer experience. It’s a term we’re hearing a lot of these days, and we are going to be discussing that very topic with Amit Ahuja, Adobe’s vice president of ecosystem development, next month at TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in […]

Much of Silicon Valley mythology is centered on the founder-as-hero narrative. But historically, scientific founders leading the charge for bio companies have been far less common.

By-the-minute car rental service Car2go is raising its rates for short trips under the guise of variable pricing, the company announced to its users today. As we've seen with other variably priced services like delivery and ride hailing, in practice this means you never really know what it will cost but will have little choice but to pay.

There’s no shortage of AirPower knockoffs on the market. Many have been in the works since Apple took the wraps off its in-house version, positioned as more affordable alternatives. Since the company unceremoniously pulled the plug on the project, however, they’re the only game in town. We reviewed a $99 one a while ago. It […]

The White House is contemplating issuing an executive order that would widen its attack on the operations of social media companies. The White House has prepared an executive order called “Protecting Americans from Online Censorship” that would give the Federal Communications Commission oversight of how Facebook, Twitter and other tech companies monitor and manage their […]

How safe are your secrets? If you used Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage snapshots, you might want to check your settings. New research just presented at the Def Con security conference reveals how companies, startups and governments are inadvertently leaking their own files from the cloud. You may have heard of exposed S3 buckets — those […]

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. Uber lost more than $5B last quarter Uber reported earnings for the second time as a public company, posting its largest-ever […]

Sometimes it does seem the entire tech industry could use someone to talk to, like a good therapist or social worker. That might sound like an insult, but I mean it mostly earnestly: I am a chaplain who has spent 15 years talking with students, faculty, and other leaders at Harvard (and more recently MIT […]

Proterra has authorized shares to raise $75 million, a new round of funding that would push the electric bus maker’s valuation past $1 billion, TechCrunch has learned. The company authorized the sale of 10,857,762 shares at a price of $6.91 in a Series 8 round, according to a securities filing that was obtained by the […]

It’s down to the wire folks. Today’s the last day you can save $100 on your ticket to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019, which takes place on September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. The deadline expires in mere hours — at 11:59 p.m. (PT). Get the best possible price and buy your early-bird ticket […]

As privacy regulations like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act proliferate, more startups are looking to help companies comply. Enter Preclusio, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 class, which has developed a machine learning-fueled solution to help companies adhere to these privacy regulations. “We have a platform that is deployed on-prem in […]

Robocall-blocking apps promise to rid your life of spoofed and spam phone calls. But are they as trustworthy as they claim to be? One security researcher said many of these apps can violate your privacy as soon as they are opened. Dan Hastings, a senior security consultant at cybersecurity firm NCC Group, analyzed some of […]

Following battery issues and a single-alarm fire caused by improperly disposed of batteries in Washington, D.C., Skip has been given the green light to resume operations in Washington, D.C. and the surrounding areas of Alexandria and Arlington. The plan is to redeploy the scooters in the coming weeks. In June, a battery on one of […]

Amazon’s lead data regulator in Europe, Luxembourg’s National Commission for Data Protection, has raised privacy concerns about its use of manual human reviews of Alexa AI voice assistant recordings. A spokesman for the regulator confirmed in an email to TechCrunch it is discussing the matter with Amazon, adding: “At this stage, we cannot comment further […]

Last week Samsung and Fossil kicked off the week by announcing new smartwatches. On the same day. At the same time. For a brief moment, it felt like 2015 all over again, when the world of smartwatches felt exciting and new. Mid-way through 2019, the good news for smartwatches is that the category continues to […]

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

China’s EHang, a company focused on developing and deploying autonomous passenger and freight low-altitude vehicles, will build out its first operational network of air taxis and transports in Guangzhou. The company announced that the Chinese city would play host to its pilot location for a citywide deployment. The pilot will focus on not only showing […]

As India continues its race to adopt digital payments at a pace and scale seen rarely worldwide, the country’s startups are quickly building solutions to bring financial services to businesses. And they are attracting significant capital from local investors and global giants to scale their ambitions. Lendingkart, one of the many startups in the country […]

After months of conflicting statements from Huawei executives, the Chinese networking giant on Friday officially unveiled HarmonyOS, the much-anticipated microkernel-based, distributed operating system that it has developed to power smartphones, laptops, and smart home devices as the company attempts to reduce its reliance on American firms. HarmonyOS will be made available for deployment in smart […]

Zindi is convening Africa’s data scientists to create AI solutions for complex problems. Founded in 2018, the Cape Town-based startup allows companies, NGOs or government institutions to host online competitions around data-oriented challenges. Zindi’s platform also coordinates a group of more than 4,000 data scientists based in Africa who can enroll to join a competition, […]

Silicon Valley investor Ronny Conway is raising his third early-stage venture fund, shows a new SEC filing that states the fund’s target is $140 million and that the first sale has yet to occur. The now six-year-old firm, A.Capital, focuses on both consumer and enterprise tech, and has offices in Menlo Park and San Francisco. […]

Did you know that Russia’s security services, particularly those related to hacking / information security, have been in the throes of vicious high-stakes infighting for years? Did you know that the perceived Russian doctrine which informed much Western analysis of Russian strategies never actually existed? Did you know that the Kremlin’s secrecy has built an […]

Facebook is facing exposure to billions of dollars in potential damages as a federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Facebook’s arguments to halt a class action lawsuit claiming it illegally collected and stored the biometric data of millions of users. The class action lawsuit has been working its way through the courts since 2015, when […]

Glow is a new startup that says it wants to help podcasters build media business. That’s something co-founder and CEO Amira Valliani said she tried to do herself. After a career that included working in the Obama White House and getting an MBA from Wharton, she launched a podcast covering local elections in Cambridge, Mass., […]

The Hyundai Nexo, a hydrogen fuel cell SUV first unveiled at CES 2018, has earned a top safety award from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. The award, announced Thursday, marks two firsts. The Nexo is the first fuel cell vehicle to earn IIHS’s top safety award. Then again, it’s also the first fuel cell […]

Uber's second quarter earnings report is here.

Data and analytics is finally being valued and becoming mission critical: It is no longer "just another tool” to have in the toolbox, but is key to a company’s success.

Apple is finally giving security researchers something they’ve wanted for years: a macOS bug bounty. The technology giant said Thursday it will roll out the bug bounty program to include Macs and MacBooks, as well as Apple TV and Apple Watch, almost exactly three years after it debuted its bug bounty program for iOS. The […]

I'm a big instant camera fan, but the film is expensive and the digital printers just aren't very good. So I was delighted to see this alternative seeking funds on Kickstarter: the Alulu camera, which prints photos in black and white on receipt paper. Why did no one do this before?

One of the more interesting news tidbits from yesterday’s Unpacked event got a bit drowned out in all of the noise. Understandably so — Samsung jammed a lot into an event that ran just over an hour, virtually sprinting through a handful of gaming announcements. The below video is the best demonstration we have of […]

Following many months of pressure, DoorDash, one of the most frequently used food delivery apps in the U.S., said late last month that it was finally changing its tipping policy to pass along to workers 100% of tips, rather than employ some of that money toward defraying its own costs. The move was a step […]