Crunch Hype

Continental AG, a global auto-parts supplier, will no longer invest in parts used in internal combustion engines, the latest sign that the automotive industry is being forced to respond to increasingly strict emissions laws. Instead, the company said it will put more focus and capital on the electric powertrain, which it believes is the “future […]

Many companies and municipalities are saddled with hundreds or thousands of hours of video and limited ways to turn it into usable data. Voxel51 offers a machine learning-based option that chews through video and labels it, not just with simple image recognition but with an understanding of motions and objects over time.

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. This is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ The landscape has changed dramatically since the Galaxy Note was first unveiled in […]

Airbnb's Global Product Director of Customer and Community Support, and Carta's Head of Enterprise Relationship Management share how companies should be thinking about customer service.

Microsoft’s GitHub today launched the beta of a new version of GitHub Actions with full continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) capabilities built right into the service. General availability is planned for November 13. The company also today announced that it now has more than 40 million developers on its platform. Ten months ago, GitHub launched […]

Apple Music launched its data dashboard for musicians more than a year ago. Today, the company is taking that product — Apple Music for Artists — out of beta, and adding some new features in the process. For one thing, it’s no longer a web-only product, because Apple is releasing an iPhone app. On both web […]

Heads up all you enterprising enterprise software startuppers. You have only 24 hours before the price goes up on tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019. Save $100 and join us in San Francisco on September 5 — along with some of the industry’s top founders, CEOs, investors and technologists. Buy your early-bird ticket before 11:59 […]

The space race is back on, but this time it’s closer to home: A number of U.S. companies are vying to become the first to return Americans to crewed launches, after an eight-year hiatus marked by the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. Lockheed Martin is one of that very small group, through […]

Ramp Financial, led by Capital One-acquired Paribus founders Eric Glyman and Karim Atiyeh, has raised $7 million.

Make way for another antitrust investigation into big tech. Step forward Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), which has opened an official probe of Apple — following a complaint lodged in March by security company Kaspersky Labs. Kaspersky’s complaint to FAS followed a change in Apple’s policy towards a parental control app it offers, called Kaspersky […]

The US Navy is turning to YouTube creators for help in finding technical recruits. Captain Matt Boren, the chief marketing officer at US Navy Recruiting Command, told me that while past recruiting efforts have focused on TV and other traditional media, that’s no longer the best route to reach the post-millennial generation. “For our audience […]

Gaming continues to grow in popularity, with esports revenue growing 23 percent from last year to top $1 billion in 2019. But the metrics by which talent is evaluated in gaming, and the methods by which gamers can train to better hone their craft, are varied and at times non-existent. That’s where StateSpace, and specifically […]

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators and showrunners of HBO’s adaptation of “Game of Thrones,” have found a new home. Netflix has signed a multi-year film and TV pact with the writer-producers; according to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal is worth $200 million. This follows expensive Netflix deals with other high-profile showrunners, including Ryan Murphy ($300 […]

Opsani, a Redwood City, California startup, wants to go beyond performance monitoring to continually optimizing cloud applications, using artificial intelligence to help the software learn what is the optimal state. “We have come up with a machine learning technique centered around reinforcement learning to tune the performance of applications in the cloud,” company co-founder and […]

Google is making it easier to find and listen to audio content specific to your search interests, with playable episodes surfaced in results that start rolling out today. Playable podcasts will show up in results when you use “podcasts” as a keyword in your search, in combination with other terms. It’s intended to deliver you […]

You probably don’t think too much about your humble office printer. But they’re a prime target for hackers, if any of the dozens of vulnerabilities found by security researchers are anything to go by. The latest research by the NCC Group just revealed at the Def Con security conference shows just how easy of a […]

Customer experience is a term that gets bandied about quite a bit these days. If you can improve the customer experience, you can win more customers. Beynd, a Utah startup, wants to help by providing a better, more automated onboarding workflow. Today, it announced a $2 million seed round. The round was led by Peak […]

The UK government has announced it’s rerouting £250M (~$300M) in public funds for the country’s National Health Service (NHS) to set up an artificial intelligence lab that will work to expand the use of AI technologies within the service. The Lab, which will sit within a new NHS unit tasked with overseeing the digitisation of […]

Google is building out its travel product with more features to convince you to use it to book flights and plan trips directly, instead of having to go anywhere else. The company is adding more sophisticated pricing features, including historical price comparison for specific itineraries – and notifications about when a price is likely to […]

Google is launching a beta of its augmented reality walking directions feature for Google Maps, with a broader launch that will be available to all iOS and Android devices that have system-level support for AR. On iOS, that means ARKit-compatible devices, and on Android, that means any smartphones that support Google’s ARcore, so long as […]

Back in July it emerged that FlixMobility — the company behind the network of ubiquitous green FlixBus coaches that crisscross Europe and parts of the US — had raised about €500 million in the largest-ever round of funding for a German tech company. That turned out not to be the full story. Today, the company […]

Men's fertility solutions capture the attention of venture capitalists.

Paytm, India’s biggest mobile payments firm, now has 10 million customers in Japan, the company said as it pushes to expand its reach in international markets. Paytm entered Japan last October after forming a joint venture with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan called PayPay. In addition to 10 million users, PayPay is now supported by 1 million […]

More than 1.5 million users of a group dating service had their personal data exposed — including their real-time location — because of a vulnerability in the app. The app, 3fun, bills itself as a “private space” where you can meet “local kinky, open-minded people.” But the data wasn’t private at all. Ken Munro, founder […]

Most entrepreneurs who have tried to compete with Netflix have failed. But Efe Cakarel isn’t one of them. As the founder and CEO of Mubi, he has created a beloved movie streaming service. That’s why I’m excited to announce that Mubi founder Efe Cakarel is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. Mubi has been around […]

Robinhood, the Silicon Valley-based stock trading app that was recently valued by investors at $7.6 billion, has received regulatory approval in the U.K., breaking cover on its plans to set up shop in London (as reported exclusively by TechCrunch 7 months ago). Specifically, Robinhood International Ltd., a Robinhood subsidiary, has been authorised to operate as […]

AMD announced that Google and Twitter are among the companies now using EPYC Rome processors during a launch event for the 7nm chips today. The release of EPYC Rome marks a major step in AMD’s processor war with Intel, which said last month that its own 7nm chips, Ice Lake, won’t be available until 2021 […]

Chinese mobile-phone and device maker Transsion will list in an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, Transsion confirmed to TechCrunch. The company—which has a robust Africa sales network—could raise up to 3 billion yuan (or $426 million). “The company’s listing-related work is running smoothly. The registration application and issuance process is still underway, with the specific […]

Earbuds, a new startup from Austin founded by former Detroit Lions lineman Jason Fox, wants to bring the power of social media to your eardrums. The company is one of a growing number of startups trying to rejuvenate the music streaming market by combining it with social networking so that audiences can listen to the […]

On-demand delivery business Postmates says it’s been granted the first-ever permit for sidewalk robotics operations in the city of San Francisco. According to San Francisco Public Works, the permits are active for 180 days and authorize the testing of up to three autonomous delivery devices. We’ve reached out to the Public Works department for comment. […]

As part of her bid for the presidency, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has made some bold proposals to improve access to broadband in underserved areas, and has made it clear that restoring net neutrality is also among her priorities. She proposes $85 billion to cover the enormous costs of making sure "every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford."

Hyp3r, an apparently trusted marketing partner of Facebook and Instagram, has been secretly collecting and storing location and other data on millions of users, against the policies of the social networks. It's hard to see how it could do this for years without intervention by the platforms except if the latter were either ignorant or complicit.

Another day, another Salesforce acquisition. Just days after closing the hefty $15.7 billion Tableau deal, the company opened its wallet again, this time announcing it has bought field service software company ClickSoftware for a tidy $1.35 billion. This one could help beef up the company’s field service offering, which falls under the Service Cloud umbrella. […]

Big companies today may want to look and feel like startups, but when it comes to the way they approach buying new enterprise solutions, especially from new entrants, they still often act like traditional enterprise behemoths. But from the standpoint of a true startup, closing deals with just a few big customers is critical to success. […]

We were hoping for at least one surprise during today’s big event. At the end of Unpacked, Samsung debuted the Galaxy Book S, a thin and light system created in tandem with Microsoft and Qualcomm. The laptop runs Windows 10 on a Qualcomm mobile chip. Among other things, the chip gives the device some crazy […]

The new Note’s 3D scanning feature got what may well have been the loudest applause line of today’s big Samsung event. It’s an impressive feature for sure, but it’s the kind with little real-world value at the moment — and it’s only available on the pricier Note 10+. Understandable on the latter, at least. After […]

In its second quarterly earnings release as a public company, Lyft showed it still isn’t afraid to lose money as long as that means surging revenues. Update: The company’s stock price jumped as high as 12% after-hours following the Q2 earnings release, but by 1:30pm PT the stock had sunk below the day’s close (following […]

Security is empty, meaningless theater — or, at least, that’s the lesson taught to most employees of most large companies. Security is your password expiring every few months, your inability to access crucial services if you’re new or a contractor, a salty message from a team you’ve never met explaining that your new initiative is […]

The first Note was a spectacle. It wasn’t just the reintroduction of the stylus. In 2011, the idea of a 5.3-inch phone was laughable. Around the same time, Steve Jobs famously mocked a push toward 4-inch-plus phones, telling a press conference, “no one’s going to buy that.” With the average phone size hovering about 5.5 […]

Next month marks three years since Apple unceremoniously murdered the headphone jack. Courage. The company was roundly mocked for its own hype, and the intervening product cycles have been marked by several companies proudly showcasing their staunch refusal to cave. None were more vocal about clinging to the 3.5mm jack than Samsung. And the company […]

Eight years later, the Galaxy Note is undeniable. The original device, unveiled at IFA 2011, seemed unfathomably massive for a handset — all 5.3 inches of it. Nearly a decade and hundreds of millions of handsets later, the line has transformed the way we think about mobile devices. Sure the stylus hasn’t become a mainstream […]

The 5G iPhone isn’t expected until roughly this time next year. But when it comes to the next-gen cellular technology, Samsung has already been there and done that. Back in the February, the company announced an everything and the kitchen sink version of the Galaxy S10, sporting 5G — its first device to do so. […]

Tesla’s claims about the safety of its Model 3 electric vehicle prompted U.S. regulators to send a cease-and-desist letter and escalate the matter by asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate, according to documents released by the nonprofit legal transparency website PlainSite. The documents show correspondence between the lawyers at National Highway Traffic Safety Administration […]

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 takes place on October 2-4. More than 10,000 people — tech founders, investors, hackers, leaders, makers and shakers — will gather for three days focused on early-stage startups. And if you work for a government agency or a nonprofit, we have great news in the form of a deep discount on […]

The Trump administration has banned U.S. federal agencies from buying equipment and obtaining services from Huawei and two other companies as part of the government’s latest crackdown on Chinese technology amid national security fears. Jacob Wood, a spokesperson for the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, was quoted as saying that the administration will […]

If you go back about a decade, Hadoop was hot and getting hotter. It was a platform for processing big data, just as big data was emerging from the domain of a few web-scale companies to one where every company was suddenly concerned about processing huge amounts of data. The future was bright, an open […]

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. Disney will bundle Hulu, ESPN+ and Disney+ for a monthly price of $12.99 Disney’s streaming services just became even more appealing, […]

ANGI Homeservices — which operates HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List and other brands — is naming Handy CEO Oisin Hanrahan as its new chief product officer. Handy offers on-demand access to workers who can clean, assemble furniture, mount TVs and perform other tasks around the home. It was acquired last year by ANGI (a publicly traded subsidiary […]

If enterprise software makes your entrepreneurial heart beat faster, you do not want to miss TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 on September 5 in San Francisco. And if you really want to make your heart sing, buy an early-bird ticket and save $100. But act quickly, because that deal disappears in just 48 hours on August […]

Over the past couple decades, retail has fundamentally changed. Amazon has swept in and devoured mom and pop stores, while incumbent brands face increased competition from a new crop of digital-first companies. But not everything changes. People still want to see and feel the goods they’ll purchase, and most brands still see huge benefits from […]