Crunch Hype

The official Sega Genesis Mini is coming in September and hopes to capitalize on some of the retro gaming hype that turned the Super Nintendo and NES Mini Classic editions into best-sellers. But there’s already a modern piece of hardware out there capable of playing Sega Genesis games on your HDTV — plus Mega Drive, […]

Uber is laying off about one third of its 1,200-person strong marketing department in an effort to slash costs and make operations more efficient following its public debut and first quarter losses of $1 billion. The layoffs were first reported by The New York Times. About 400 people in Uber’s marketing department were laid off […]

I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot about sidelined Huawei projects in the coming weeks and months. Add this one to the list: The Chinese hardware giant was reportedly teaming with Google on a smart speaker before all hell broke loose with the Trump administration ban. In fact, the device was supposed to make its […]

Money from big tech companies and top VC firms is flowing into the nascent “virtual beings” space. Mixing the opportunities presented by conversational AI, generative adversarial networks, photorealistic graphics, and creative development of fictional characters, “virtual beings” envisions a near-future where characters (with personalities) that look and/or sound exactly like humans are part of our […]

Los Angeles-based Ordermark, the online delivery management service for restaurants founded by the scion of the famous, family-owned Canter’s Deli, said it has raised $18 million in a new round of funding. The round was led by Boulder-based Foundry Group. All of Ordermark’s previous investors came back to provide additional capital for the company’s new […]

Porsche has secured 30,000 deposits for the Taycan more than a month before the German automaker will unveil the all-electric sports cars, numbers that suggest there’s enough demand to support the company’s plans to produce 40,000 units in its first year. The latest reservation numbers were cited by Bloomberg and Porsche HR head Andreas Haffner […]

Launch vehicles and their enormous rocket engines tend to receive the lion's share of attention when it comes to space-related propulsion, but launch only takes you to the edge of space — and space is a big place. Tesseract has engineered a new rocket for spacecraft that's not only smaller and more efficient, but uses fuel that's safer for us down here on the surface.

Shortly after going public, Lyft is losing one of its top executives.

Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter have failed their task of monitoring and moderating the content that appears on their sites; what’s more, they failed to do so well before they knew it was a problem. But their incidental cultivation of fringe views is an opportunity to recast their role as the services they should be rather […]

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. GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea U.S. trade restrictions are trickling down to the developer community: […]

YouTube TV has landed another network partner: PBS. The public broadcaster’s member stations will be able to stream live and on-demand to YouTube TV subscribers beginning later this year, PBS and YouTube announced today. This is the first digital TV provider partnership for PBS, and the broadcaster is intent upon providing local live streams to […]

San Francisco and Lagos-based fintech startup Flutterwave has partnered with Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba to offer digital payments between Alipay and African merchants. Flutterwave is a Nigerian-founded B2B payments service (primarily) for companies in Africa to pay other companies on the continent and abroad. Alipay is Alibaba’s digital wallet and payments platform. In 2013, Alipay […]

Dark has been keeping its startup in the dark for the last couple of years while it has built a unique kind of platform it calls “deployless” software development. If you build your application in Dark’s language inside of Dark’s editor, the reward is you can deploy it automatically on Dark’s infrastructure on Google Cloud […]

Google’s Pixel 4 is coming out later this year, and it’s getting the long-reveal treatment thanks to a decision this year from Google to go ahead and spill some of the beans early, rather than saving everything for one big, final unveiling closer to availability. A new video posted by Google today about the forthcoming […]

Microsoft today announced that it has acquired BlueTalon, a data privacy and governance service that helps enterprises set policies for how their employees can access their data. The service then enforces those policies across most popular data environments and provides tools for auditing policies and access, too. Neither Microsoft nor BlueTalon disclosed the financial details […]

Before Tableau was the $15.7 billion key to Salesforce’s problems, it was a couple of founders arguing with a couple of venture capitalists over lunch about why its Series A valuation should be higher than $12 million pre-money. Salesforce has generally been one to signify corporate strategy shifts through their acquisitions, so you can understand […]

Adobe’s Customer Experience Platform provides a place to process all of the data that will eventually drive customer experience applications in the Adobe Experience Cloud. This involves bringing in vast amounts of transactional and interactional data being created across commerce platforms. This process is complex and involves IT, applications developers and data scientists. Last Fall, […]

There is surely no shortage of data in the modern enterprise, and data is the fuel for AI. Yet packaging that data in machine learning models remains a huge challenge for large companies. Without that capability, automating processes with AI underpinnings remains elusive for many companies. RealityEngines wants to change that by creating research-driven cloud […]

The emergence of online hyperlocal services and e-commerce firms in India has led to the creation of about 200,000 jobs for blue-collar workers who deliver items to customers, according to industry estimates. But it is also the kind of job that continues to see a high attrition rate. This means that companies like Zomato, Swiggy, […]

Update: It’s baaaaaack. Back to work, erm, slackers. Official word, per Slack, We’re pleased to report that we have the all clear, and all functionality is now restored. Thanks so much for bearing with us in the meantime. Are your co-workers ignoring you? Welcome to my world! In your case, however, that is probably because Slack […]

Huawei on Friday announced the upcoming release of its first 5G handset in its home market. Following on the heels of its U.K. debut, the Mate 20 X is currently up for pre-order, with an expected China arrival of August 16. The handset beats the foldable Mate X to market, in spite of that handset […]

Tesla is getting ready to “soon” deliver the in-car video streaming services that CEO Elon Musk suggested would eventually come to the automaker’s cars. Musk shared this (somewhat vague) updated timeline on Twitter over the weekend, after noting earlier in June at E3 that Tesla’s infotainment displays would eventually be getting YouTube and streaming video […]

Europe’s top court has made a ruling that could affect scores of websites that embed the Facebook ‘Like’ button and receive visitors from the region. The ruling by the Court of Justice of the EU states such sites are jointly responsible for the initial data processing — and must either obtain informed consent from site […]

The food delivery wars in Europe remain hotter than a vindaloo, and that’s leading to some major consolidation: today Just Eat and Takeaway.com, two of the bigger take-out and delivery businesses in the region, announced that they are in the “advanced stages” of a merger. The deal would help them combine forces and take on […]

Minut, a Swedish startup that has developed a camera-less home security device that it claims protects privacy better than competitors, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by KPN Ventures, with participation from international energy and services company Centrica. Existing backers Karma Ventures, SOSV, and Nordic Makers also followed on, […]

The impact of U.S. trade restrictions is trickling down to the developer community. GitHub, the world’s largest host of source code, is preventing users in Iran, Syria, Crimea and potentially other sanctioned nations from accessing portions of the service, chief executive of the Microsoft-owned firm said. Over the weekend, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote on […]

Grab — the on-demand transportation app worth $14 billion that is the Uber of Southeast Asia — today announced how it would be using some of the $7 billion or so that it has raised to date: $2 billion provided by SoftBank is being earmarked Grab’s operations in Indonesia — the biggest economy in Southeast […]

Genetics testing startup Prenetics today announced a major new deal for its brand in Asia. The company is partnering with A.S. Watson Group, the personal care giant whose stores are ubiquitous in many East and Southeast Asian countries. That means Watsons’ Hong Kong stores and website will be the first retailer in Asia to sell […]

Listen up founders — TechCrunch is on the lookout for game-changing, early-stage startups to feature at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin‘s Startup Battlefield. This is your chance to launch on the famous TechCrunch stage and compete for the a $50,000 equity-free prize and the attention of top global investors and hundreds of media outlets from around the […]

Joy Capital, the venture capital firm that’s backed Luckin, NIO, Mobike and other investor darlings in China, just raised $700 million for a new fund focusing on early-to-growth stage startups. Launched in 2015 by a team of former investors at Legend Capital, the investment arm of PC maker Lenovo’s parent company, Joy Capital made the […]

The Fortnite phenomenon — the wildly popular battle royale game from Epic Games — has manifested itself in concerned articles, cultural shoutouts and now has sealed its place in the cultural firmament by wrapping up its first “World Cup” which saw the company give away $30 million in prizes. Congrats to all of our winners […]

Ryan Craig Contributor Ryan Craig is managing director of University Ventures. More posts by this contributor Existential education error: Failing to train students on software Facebook is going back to college The future of work is so uncertain that perhaps the only possible job security exists for the person who can credibly claim to be […]

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo — sometimes described as “the most accurate Apple analyst in the world” — has written a new note to investors saying that the three iPhones expected to launch in 2020 will feature support for 5G. In previous Kuo reports, it’s said the 2020 iPhones could be available in new sizes: a […]

It’s been barely more than a year since the “Queer Eye” revival premiered on Netflix, but the series is already back for its fourth season. This time around, the Fab Five finds new makeover subjects in Kansas City (with a detour to Quincy, Illinois, where hairstylist Jonathan Van Ness grew up), offering their custom mix […]

Here in America we are now in the longest economic expansion in history. That doesn’t mean it’s about to end. But it does raise the question: what happens when it does? When the economic cycle finally inverts into recession, perhaps unexpectedly and with no obvious cause, perhaps because of some geopolitical crisis? We know what […]

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 how services like Instagram had moved beyond letting […]

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is looking for pitches on how to enhance and augment traditional creative arts through immersive technologies. Through a partnership with Microsoft the foundation is offering a share of a $750,00 pool of cash and the option of technical support from Microsoft, including mentoring in mixed-reality technologies and […]

A hacker gained access to internal files and documents owned by security company and SSL certificate issuer Comodo by using an email address and password mistakenly exposed on the internet. The credentials were found in a public GitHub repository owned by a Comodo software developer. With the email address and password in hand, the hacker […]

Is space truly within reach for startups and VC? With the 50th anniversary of the moon landing taking place this past week, Darrell Etherington takes a temperature check of the current state of spacetech, chatting with startups like Wyvern and NSLComm. What he finds is actually a fairly positive picture — not only are there […]

This week professor David Carroll, whose dogged search for answers to how his personal data was misused plays a focal role in The Great Hack: Netflix’s documentary tackling the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, quipped that perhaps a follow up would be more punitive for the company than the $5BN FTC fine released the same day. […]

Tesla’s games library is getting bigger, and the latest announced title is probably a familiar one to gaming fans: Cuphead. This indie game was released in 2017 for Xbox One and Windows after making a big debut in 2013, attracting a lot of attention thanks to its hand-drawn, retro Disney-esque animation style. Tesla CEO Elon […]

Gatik AI, the autonomous vehicle startup that’s aiming for the sweet middle spot in the world of logistics, is officially on the road through a partnership with Walmart . The company received approval from the Arkansas Highway Commissioner’s office to launch a commercial service with Walmart . Gatik’s autonomous vehicles (with a human safety driver […]

The chemist who helped create the magic sauce behind Juul, Xing Chenyue, unveiled the product of her new startup Myst Labs this week after two years of development: electronic cigarette alternatives designed for China’s 350 million smokers, the world’s biggest smoking population. This new contender makes for a potentially heated battlefield given that Juul will […]

Investigative news site Bellingcat has confirmed several of its staff were targeted by an attempted phishing attack on their ProtonMail accounts, which the journalists and the email provider say failed. “Yet again, Bellingcat finds itself targeted by cyber attacks, almost certainly linked to our work on Russia,” wrote Eliot Higgins, founder of the investigative news […]

In this week's newsletter: Everything you need to know about the Vision Fund II.

Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its inaugural Mobility Sessions event, where leading mobility-focused auto companies, startups, executives and thought leaders joined us to discuss all things autonomous vehicle technology, micromobility and electric vehicles. Extra Crunch is offering members access to full transcripts of key panels and conversations from the event, such as Megan Rose Dickey‘s […]

Apple has joined the dubious company of Google and Amazon in secretly sharing audio recordings of its users with contractors, confirming the practice to The Guardian after a whistleblower brought it to the outlet. The person said that Siri queries are routinely sent to human listeners for closer analysis, something not disclosed in Apple's privacy policy.

A week is obviously not enough time to truly understand a market as massive and fascinating as China. Hell, it’s not really even enough time to adjust to the 12-hour time difference from New York. That said, each of the three visits I’ve taken to the country in the past two years has yielded some […]

Another day, another mega round for a fintech startup. And this one is mega-mega. Brazil-based Nubank, which offers a suite of banking and financial services for Brazilian consumers, announced today that it has raised a $400 million Series F round of venture capital led by Woody Marshall of TCV. The growth-stage fund is best known […]

Nestled among the many indistinguishable buildings of Microsoft's Redmond campus, a multi-disciplinary team sharing an attention to detail that borders on fanatical is designing a keyboard... again and again and again. And one more time for good measure. Their dogged and ever-evolving dedication to "human factors" shows the amount of work that goes into making any piece of hardware truly ergonomic.