Crunch Hype

Vreal, an ambitious game-streaming platform that aimed to let VR users explore the worlds that live-streamers were playing in, is shutting down and laying off its staff after raising $15 million in venture capital. The startup announced the shutdown on its website’s homepage. The Seattle startup raised cash from investors including Axioma Ventures, Upfront Ventures […]

What tech gets right about healthcare This week, our long-time healthtech correspondent Sarah Buhr talked to leading health VCs Phin Barnes of First Round Capital, Matt Ocko of DCVC, and Nick Naclerio of Illumina Ventures about what they are seeing in the healthtech ecosystem, how they are thinking about investments in the space, as well […]

Nike’s market cap has swollen past $100 billion, but the shoe company still sees potential to learn more about what customers want and how to source and stock products to meet those needs. The company announced that it has acquired the Boston area startup Celect to help Nike beef up its predictive analytics strengths. Like […]

Getting even the most well-organized team to agree on anything can be hard. Tel Aviv’s Ment.io, formerly known as Epistema, wants to make this process easier by applying smart design and a dose of machine learning to streamline the decision-making process. Like with so many Israeli startups, Ment.io’s co-founders Joab Rosenberg and Tzvika Katzenelson got […]

August is often considered the black hole of venture capital fundraising. Everyone is on vacation (well, everyone who’s not a founder anyway), while half of Silicon Valley is slogging down to Black Rock City for Burning Man. It understandably can just seem like an exercise in futility to try to raise any funding at all. […]

PodcastOne, the celebrity podcasting network from the founder of radio powerhouse WestwoodOne, is launching a free hosting platform for podcasters. The Los Angeles-based syndicated podcasting platform, which counts athletes, politicians, talk radio, and reality television stars like Adam Carolla, Shaquille O’Neal, Steve Austin, Kaitlyn Bristowe, Dan Patrick, Spencer and Heidi Pratt, Jim Harbaugh, Ladygang, Dr. Drew, […]

Rookout, a startup that provides debugging across a variety of environments including serverless and containers, announced an $8 million Series A investment today. It plans to use the money to expand beyond its debugging roots. The round was led by Cisco Investments along with existing investors TLV Partners and Emerge. Nat Friedman, CEO of GitHub; […]

For the past decade, Brian Faux has been fighting on the front lines of housing finance. In between pursuing a career in mortgage lending and holding stints at Freddie Mac and Wells Fargo, Faux spent more than two years in the detritus of the 2008 financial crisis advising the Department of Housing and Urban Development […]

Testing, testing. Is this emergency warning system on? We’re about to find out. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, will later today buzz every television and radio in the U.S. with a test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS). If you’re watching television or listening to radio at 2:20pm ET (11:20am PT), you’ll see […]

FedEx is ending a partnership with Amazon to supply the ecommerce company with ground delivery shipping after its current contract ends this month, the company confirmed to Bloomberg. This is the second contract FedEx has allowed to end without renewal with Amazon, following a similar decision in June that covered only Express air shipments. The […]

CircleCI has been supporting continuous integration for Linux and Mac programmers for some time, but up until today, Microsoft developers have been left on the outside looking in. Today, the company changed that announcing new support for Microsoft programmers using Windows Server 2019. CircleCI, which announced a $56 million Series D investment last month, is […]

Toyota is enlisting the help of startup Preferred Networks, a Japanese company founded in 2014 with a focus on artificial intelligence and deep learning, to help move forward its goal of developing useful service robots that can assist people in everyday life. The two companies announced a partnership today to collaborate on research and development […]

Zendesk has always been all about customer service. Last spring it purchased Smooch to move more deeply into messaging app integration. Today, the company announced it was integrating WhatsApp, the popular messaging tool, into the Zendesk customer service toolkit. Smooch was an early participant in the WhatsApp Business API program. What that does in practice […]

For many years there’s been an accepted way to raise capital as a venture capital fund. Essentially, GPs (General Partners who set up and run venture capital firms) go ‘cap in hand’ to LPs (Limited Partners who invest into their VC firms) in pension funds, privately run ‘family offices’, ‘ultra-high net worths’ and other such […]

Twitter has disclosed more bugs related to how it uses personal data for ad targeting that means it may have shared users data with advertising partners even when a user had expressly told it not to. Back in May the social network disclosed a bug that in certain conditions resulted in an account’s location data […]

Brolly, the U.K. insurance app that lets you keep track of your various policies so that you are correctly and competitively covered, is launching a new product to plug what it sees as a gap in home contents insurance. Dubbed “Brolly Contents,” the new offering promises “flexible” monthly cover for all or a subset of […]

We’re still in the hunt for innovative early-stage hardware startup founders. And by that, we mean boundary-pushers, exceptional disrupters and all-around game-changers. If that sounds like you, you still have time to apply to compete in Hardware Battlefield at TC Shenzhen on November 11-12. Don’t miss your chance to compete in our epic, hardware-focused pitch competition. […]

For nearly fifteen years LanzaTech has been developing a carbon capture technology that can turn waste streams into ethanol that can be used for chemicals and fuel. Now, with $72 million in fresh funding at a nearly $1 billion valuation and a newly inked partnership with biotechnology giant, Novo Holdings, the company is looking to […]

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric vehicle company, has announced its first manufacturing partners. Yamaha, Aeon Motor and PGO will all launch new scooters this summer that run on Gogoro’s swappable batteries and charging infrastructure. This means consumers who like Gogoro’s battery system will have a choice between buying Gogoro’s own scooters or scooters from its three […]

Why break into a company’s network when you can just walk right in — literally? Gone could be the days of having to find a zero-day vulnerability in a target’s website, or having to scramble for breached usernames and passwords to break through a company’s login pages. And certainly there will be no need to […]

Kik Interactive has hit back at the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit that claims a $100 million token sale was illegal. The company, which owns Kik Messenger, filed a 130-page response today in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleging that the SEC is “twisting” the facts about its token, called […]

SpaceX successfully launched a Falcon 9 first-stage that had previously served two missions in July and November of 2018, today carrying its final payload, the AMOS-17 satellite for Spacecomm. SpaceX had configured the Falcon 9 in its ‘expendable mode’ for this mission, which means it made use of all available fuel on board to carry […]

How birth control delivery startups can better support women in today's political climate.

Low-income families face the same issues the luckier among us do when it comes to getting broadband: few options and fewer still that are affordable. Comcast, though simultaneously the source of many of these issues, has a good program for anyone facing financial hardship, and several new groups now qualify for $10 connectivity.

Private rocket launch startup and SpaceX competitor Rocket Lab made a big announcement today: It’ll be looking to re-use the first stage of its Electron rockets, returning them to Earth with a controlled landing after they make their initial trip to orbit with the payload on board. The landing sequence will be different from SpaceX’s […]

The two developers of an indie game called Ooblets have been subjected to "tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands" of abusive messages following their decision to put their game on the Epic Games Store. It's a worrying yet entirely unsurprising example of the toxic elements of the gaming community and their strangely unlimited hatred for Epic.

Disney’s upcoming streaming service Disney+ will be available as a $12.99 monthly bundle with ESPN+ and ad-supported Hulu. That means the full Disney bundle (it owns ESPN and — thanks to the Fox acquisition — has a controlling stake in Hulu) will cost the same amount as Netflix’s standard U.S. plan. That’s also about $5 less […]

A year after coming out of stealth mode with $40 million, self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics will begin making its first commercial deliveries in Texas. Kodiak will open a new facility in North Texas to support its freight operations along with increased testing in the state. There are some caveats to the milestone. Kodiak’s self-driving […]

Facebook has filed lawsuits against two app developers accused of generating fraudulent revenue using the social media giant’s advertising platform. The company announced the legal action in a blog post Tuesday. “The developers made apps available on the Google Play store to infect their users’ phones with malware,” said Jessica Romero, director of platform enforcement […]

Last year, we told you about a New York-based startup that had begun lending cold, hard, cash to cryptocurrency holders who don’t want to offload their holdings but also don’t necessarily want so much of their assets tied up in cryptocurrencies. Today, that two-year-old company, BlockFi, is announcing $18.3 million in Series A funding led […]

Here at TechCrunch, we like to think about what’s next, and there are few technologies quite as exotic and futuristic as quantum computing. After what felt like decades of being “almost there,” we now have working quantum computers that are able to run basic algorithms, even if only for a very short time. As those […]

Israel, and its tech business community, must carefully consider the negative ramifications of excelling in technology while disregarding moral and ethical questions.

Why is tech still aiming for the healthcare industry? It seems full of endless regulatory hurdles or stories of misguided founders with no knowledge of the space, running headlong into it, only to fall on their faces. Theranos is a prime example of a founder with zero health background or understanding of the industry — […]

Shouting out to all the fierce female founders. Have you applied to participate in the All Raise “ask me anything” (AMA) sessions at Disrupt SF 2019? No? Women, it’s time to act. Apply for an AMA session by the August 30 deadline and you could win a free Expo Only Pass. You heard that right. We have 30 […]

The yet-to-launch tech journalism site The Markup has had a bumpy 2019 — co-founder and editor-in-chief Julia Angwin was fired, prompting the departure of the majority of the editorial staff. Soon after, The Markup’s other founders (whose disputes with Angwin apparently led to her ouster) left the company themselves. Now things may be back on […]

If you’re browsing Google Image search results today, you might notice a new interface element: A sticky side panel that displays any images you click on, providing a closer look at the specific image you want to see, including related images, additional info like ratings, price and in-stock status, ingredients and cooking times, depending on […]

Synchronize your Fitbits, people. You have 72 hours left to get your fiscal fitness on. Three days to save $100 on tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019 in San Francisco on September 5. Buy your early-bird ticket by August 9 at 11:59 p.m. (PT) and then go back to counting your steps. We say with […]

At its annual Signal developer conference, Twilio today announced a couple of new features for developers on its core messaging platform and users of its recently acquired SendGrid email service. The new Twilio tools now allow developers to create multi-channel messaging tools and to get real-time streams of conversations in order to run them through […]

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 rolls out Apple Card Preview to select users Matthew Panzarino has been using Apple’s new credit card for a few […]

Nissan and EVgo said Tuesday they will install another 200 DC fast chargers in the United States to support the growing number of consumers who are buying electric vehicles, including the new Nissan Leaf e+ that came to market earlier this year. The 100 kilowatt DC fast-charging stations will have both CHAdeMO and CCS connectors, […]

Waterloo, Canada-based hardware startup North is a rare bird when it comes to the tech sector: It began life as an entirely different kind of hardware startup as Thalmic Labs in 2012, and launched a major pivot and re-brand in 2018. The shift included a new name, and an entirely new product focus. It launched […]

Speaking of businesses that operate co-working spaces in India, New Delhi-based startup Awfis announced today that it has raised $30 million in a new financing round to expand its footprint in the country. The Series D round for the four-year-old startup was led by ChrysCapital. Existing investors Sequoia Capital India and The Three Sisters Institutional […]

As Slack makes its way deeper into the enterprise, it needs to layer on more sophisticated security measures like the encryption key management feature it released last year. Today, the company published a blog post outlining its latest security strategy, and while it still doesn’t include end-to-end encryption of Slack messaging, it is a big […]

When you think of dog daycare, Wag Hotels and Rover likely come to mind. Now, there’s a new entrant in the space. Dogdrop, launching this September in Los Angeles, aims to be a daycare service for dog parents who need more flexible care and pricing. Through a monthly membership, dog parents can drop off their […]

Amazon’s Scout six-wheeled, sidewalk-driving delivery robots have begun making deliveries to customers in the Irvine, Calif. area. Amazon announced this first California deployment of Scout bots in a blog post, noting that in its experience to date, the company has had plenty of opportunity to experience a range of weather conditions in its first deployments […]

The president of the United States of America kicked off the morning with a series of tweets criticizing one of the country’s largest corporations for alleged ties to election tampering and China’s military. In a thread that would have been regarded as a remarkable occurrence under any other administration, Donald J. Trump called out Google […]

Both Verizon and Sprint have been promising 5G coverage in the nation’s largest city for some time now. AT&T this morning, however, said it’s starting to do just that. The U.S.’s largest carrier by subscribers announced limited availability of 5G coverage in New York City. The typical not-so-fine print applies to the news this morning. […]

Remember Claris, the 1987 Apple spin-off that made applications like MacWrite, MacPaint and FileMaker? In 1998, Apple brought all of those products in-house again, with the exception of the low-code application platform FileMaker . With that move, Claris changed its name to FileMaker Inc. Today, however, the Claris name rises from the dead, as FileMaker […]

A political campaign group working to elect Democratic senators left a spreadsheet containing the email addresses of 6.2 million Americans’ on an exposed server. Data breach researchers at security firm UpGuard found the data in late July, and traced the storage bucket back to a former staffer at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, an organization […]

Swedish payments provider Klarna has announced a new round of equity funding, adding $60 million at a post-money valuation of $5.5 billion, which makes it one of the most highly-valued private fintech companies in the world. The new funding will be used to help Klarna continue to grow its presence in the U.S. payments market, […]