Crunch Hype

The growing popularity of 3D printing machines and companies like Thingiverse and Shapeways have given previously unimaginable powers to makers, enabling them to create everything from cosplay accessories to replacement parts. But even though 3D printing has launched a new world of customized objects, most of us are still buying clothes off the rack. Now […]

Didi Chuxing’s autonomous driving unit is now an independent company, the Chinese ride-sharing and transportation giant said today. Didi’s autonomous driving team was created in 2016 and now has more than 200 employees in China and the United States. Didi’s announcement comes about a month after The Information reported that Didi was in talks with […]

Website infrastructure and security services provider Cloudflare will stop providing service to 8chan, wrote Matthew Prince in a blog post, describing the site as a “cesspool of hate.” Service will be terminated as of midnight Pacific Time. “The rationale is simple: they have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic […]

SmartNews, an AI-powered news aggregation app, is the latest company to enter the unicorn club.

Users reported issues with Instagram and Facebook Sunday morning. [Update as of 12:45 p.m. pacific] Facebook says the outage affecting its apps has been resolved. “Earlier today some people may have had trouble accessing the Facebook family of apps due to a networking issue. We have resolved the issue and are fully back up, we apologize […]

We spend a lot of time around here covering the latest startup fundraises, and for good reason. While capital is certainly an input and not an output, there is nothing quite like the closing of a round of several million in venture capital to prove that yes, the startup I’m working on is at least […]

Following a failed attempt in July, French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crossed the Channel on top of a hoverboard this weekend. Starting his trek in Sangatte in northern France, the journey took 20 minutes, before landing in St. Margarets Bay, England. “For the last five to six kilometers I just really enjoyed it,” Zapata told […]

Roblox is big. Bigger than Minecraft big. The massively multiple online title has been around since 2006, but the game has been achieving a crazy amount of momentum of late. On Friday, it announced via blog post that it’s grown past 100 million monthly active users, pushing past Minecraft, which is currently in the (still […]

Last year, “Amazon employees met with ICE officials … to market the company’s facial recognition technology,” the ACLU informs us. Amazon VP Brad Huseman later said “We believe the government should have the best available technology.” Then, last month, Motherboard revealed Amazon has partnered with police departments around the country to create “a self-perpetuating surveillance […]

Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries is acquiring 87.6% stake in Fynd, a seven-year-old Mumbai-based startup that connects brick and mortar retailers with online stores and consumers, for 2.95 billion Indian rupees ($42.33 million), the two said in a brief statement late Saturday. Fynd, which was founded in 2012, helps offline retailers sell their products to consumers […]

Hello, weekenders. 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 Facebook FTC fine, the Sprint/T-Mobile deal getting […]

“Years and Years” is an unusual show. It’s a co-production of HBO and the BBC, and in the course of six hourlong episodes, it covers a span of more than 10 years in our near future. During that time, we see the rise of a terrifying Trump-style politician in the United Kingdom named Vivian Rook […]

What founders need to know about pro rata rights Pro rata used to be reasonably simple. Venture investors who bought preferred shares in startups had the right to lock in a certain percentage of equity provided they continued funding the company in the future rounds of financing. But as VCs have raised ever larger funds […]

Tesla is resurrecting a popular benefit that CEO Elon Musk once called “unsustainable” as it attempts to boost sales of its more expensive electric vehicles. Tesla announced Saturday that all new Model S sedans and Model X SUVs will come with free unlimited access to its network of electric vehicle chargers known as superchargers. The […]

Brian Kateman Contributor Share on Twitter Brian Kateman is President and Cofounder of the Reducetarian Foundation. More posts by this contributor Fish replacement may be the next big wave in alternative protein development The fashion industry has historically relied on exploitative, unsustainable and unethical labor practices in order to sell clothes — but if recent trends […]

Cryptocurrency fans who were hoping to use Apple’s forthcoming credit card to splash on coin are out of luck. You also won’t be able to use the Apple Card to buy lottery tickets, casino gambling chips in any form, physical or virtual, or foreign currency or travelers checks. Reuters spotted the detail in a customer […]

It wasn’t “system updates” as it claimed. StockX was mopping up after a data breach, TechCrunch can confirm. The fashion and sneaker trading platform pushed out a password reset email to its users on Thursday citing “system updates,” but left users confused and scrambling for answers. StockX told users that the email was legitimate and […]

The Entertainment Software Association issued an apology of sorts after making available the contact information for more than 2,000 journalists and analysts who attended this year’s E3. “ESA was made aware of a website vulnerability that led to the contact list of registered journalists attending E3 being made public,” the organization said via statement. “Once […]

Amazon has tweaked the settings for its Alexa voice AI to allow users to opt out of their voice recordings being manually reviewed by the company’s human workers. The policy shift took effect Friday, according to Bloomberg, which reports that Alexa users will now find an option in the settings menu of the Alexa smartphone […]

In this week's newsletter: Lux Capital raises $1 billion, Compass is worth a whole lot of money and Vacasa goes shopping.

Elon Musk wants to drill holes in China. The Tesla founder has tweeted to reveal that his tunnelling and transportation startup, The Boring Company, will be launch in China later this month. Musk is due to speak at an AI conference, called the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, taking place in Shanghai on August 29-31. Replying […]

For the first time in more than half a decade, Facebook wants to inform you that it owns Instagram, the hyper-popular rival social networking app it acquired for a $1BN steal back in 2012. Ditto messaging platform WhatsApp — which Mark Zuckerberg splurged $19BN on a couple of years later to keep feeding eyeballs into […]

MaC Ventures, the new Los Angeles-based investment firm formed from the merger of Cross Culture Ventures and M Ventures, has quietly started deploying capital from its fund. One of the firm’s first disclosed investments is Edge Delta, which announced a $3 million seed round earlier this week. The Seattle-based company, which has a tool to […]

Nearly three years ago, TechCrunch reported on suspected fraud committed by Mike Rothenberg, a self-described “millennial venture capitalist” who’d made a name for himself not only by eponymously branding his venture firm but for spending lavishly to woo startup founders, including on Napa Valley wine tours, at luxury boxes at Golden State Warriors games and, […]

In an era of massive data breaches, most recently the Capital One fiasco, the risk of a cyberattack and the costly consequences are the top existential threat to corporations big and small. At TechCrunch’s first-ever enterprise-focused event (p.s. early-bird sales end August 9), that topic will be front and center throughout the day. That’s why […]

VCs double down on fintech.

Northrop Grumman is going to be working on the U.S. Army’s long-planned drone-killing lasers. The Army wants to mount 50 kilowatt laser systems on top of its General Dynamics-designed Stryker vehicle as part of its U.S. Army Maneuver Short Range Air Defense (M-SHORAD) directed energy prototyping initiative. Basically, the army wants to use these lasers […]

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 suspends Siri response grading after privacy concerns After The Guardian ran a story last week about how Siri recordings are […]

Here are five words you’ll never hear spring from the mouth of an early-stage startupper. “I don’t mind paying more.” We feel you, and that’s why we’re letting you know that the price of admission to TC Sessions Enterprise 2019, which takes place on September 5, goes up next week. Our $249 early-bird ticket price […]

Grab popcorn. As internet fights go, this one deserves your full attention — because the fight is over your attention. Your eyeballs and the creepy ads that trade data on you to try to swivel ’em. In the blue corner, the Internet Advertising Association’s CEO, Randall Rothenberg, who has been taking to Twitter increasingly loudly […]

Potential drone applications are limited only by our imaginations... and our ability to operate them safely.

Samsung’s never been particularly good at keeping things under wraps. That’s no doubt, at least in part, by design. The company loves priming the rumor pump ahead of product announcements, and like clockwork, we’ve already seen plenty of what we expect is planned for next Wednesday’s Unpacked event in Brooklyn. Samsung targets iPad Pro with […]

There have been millions of words written about the story of how Cambridge Analytica (CA) was employed by the Trump campaign to affect the 2016 U.S. election and the U.K.’s Brexit referendum via the use of millions of Facebook profiles it had illegally bought, not least our recent review and analysis of the recent Netflix […]

In February 2013, China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest smartphone market. More than half a decade on, it still proves an elusive target for international sellers. A glance at reports from the past several quarters reveals the top spots dominated by homegrown names: Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi. Combined, the big four […]

Approximately 20% of construction costs are wrapped up in fixing errors. Barcelona-based Scaled Robotics wants to minimize the rework by automating progress monitoring with autonomous mobile robots. Leveraging lidar and autonomous vehicle technology (similar to what’s used by Google cars to map the world), Scaled Robotics built a WALL-E doppelgänger to navigate and build maps […]

Starting early next year Google will present Android users in Europe with a search engine choice screen when handsets bundle its own search service by default. In a blog post announcing the latest change to flow from the European Union’s record-breaking $5 billion antitrust enforcement against Android last year, when the Commission found Google had […]

Yesterday, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced that he’s leaving Twitch, moving his streaming career over to Microsoft’s Mixer platform. This morning, Mixer has shot to the top of the App Store’s free app charts. Microsoft acquired Mixer in 2016, back when it was called Beam, and has been trying to grow the platform since. However, Mixer […]

Late last week, the DOJ greenlit T-Mobile and Sprint’s $26 billion deal to become the nation’s No. 3 carrier. The deal isn’t officially official just yet, with some prominent opposition facing the merger. A growing list of attorneys general have sued to block the merger, and another big name just came on board. With the […]

SpaceX has prepared a draft environmental assessment around its plans for the new Starship and Super Heavy spacecraft launches it intends to begin, in a test capacity, very soon. Preparing and finalizing this environmental assessment is a key ingredient in actually launching both Super Heavy, the first stage for SpaceX’s forthcoming fully reusable, high-capacity launch […]

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

Plans to open a new spaceport in Sutherland in Scotland have moved closer to final approval: The real estate companies working on the deal have signed a 75-year lease for the land to be used for Space Hub Sutherland, which will look to launch small satellites via private launch services from companies including startup Orbex, […]

A German privacy watchdog has ordered Google to cease manual reviews of audio snippets generated by its voice AI. This follows a leak last month of scores of audio snippets from the Google Assistant service. A contractor working as a Dutch language reviewer handed more than 1,000 recordings to the Belgian news site VRT which […]

The agriculture industry faces huge problems of sustainability. The world’s population is increasing, leading to higher food demand, but this then threatens increasing deforestation, pesticide use, and some fertilizers that are responsible for greenhouse emissions. Farming can also be a source of carbon sequestration, but how to preserve that? Plus, land quality is being decreased […]

Early-stage startuppers around the world are getting ready for Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December. Our premier tech conference attracts an international startup community from more than 50 countries. It’s the intersection of current and future tech and an incomparable networking opportunity. You reap big savings with our super early-bird pricing (up […]

Babylon Health, the UK-based startup that has developed a number of AI-based health services, including a chatbot used by the UK’s National Health Service to help diagnose ailments, has confirmed a massive investment that it plans to use to expand its business to the US and Asia, and expand its R&D to diagnose more serious, […]

Yoti, the London startup offering a digital identity platform and app that lets you prove who you say you are when accessing services or making age verified purchases, has raised £8 million in additional funding. Backing the round is unnamed private investors, Yoti employees, and Robin Tombs, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, who previously founded […]

in July, French television company Canal+ acquired the ROK film studio from VOD company IROKOtv. Canal+ would not disclose the acquisition price, but confirmed there was a cash component of the deal. Founded by Jason Njoku in 2010 — and backed by $45 million in VC — IROKOtv boasts the world’s largest online catalog of Nollywood: a Nigerian movie […]

UrbanClap, a marketplace for freelance labor in India and the UAE, has raised $75 million in a new financing round to expand its business. The Series E round for the four-and-a-half-year old India-based startup was led Tiger Global. Existing investors Steadview Capital, which led the startup’s Series D in December last year, and Vy Capital also […]

In response to concerns raised by a Guardian story last week over how recordings of Siri queries are used for quality control, Apple is suspending the program world wide. Apple says it will review the process that it uses, called grading, to determine whether Siri is hearing queries correctly, or being invoked by mistake. In […]

While you’d be hard pressed to find any startup not brimming with confidence over the disruptive idea they’re chasing, it’s not often you come across a young company as calmly convinced it’s engineering the future as Dasha AI. The team is building a platform for designing human-like voice interactions to automate business processes. Put simply, […]