Crunch Hype

On-demand parking app SpotHero wants to be ready for the day when autonomous vehicles are ubiquitous. Its strategy: target the human-driven car-sharing fleets today. The Chicago-based company, which has operations in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C. and Seattle, has launched a new service dubbed SpotHero for Fleets that targets shared mobility and on-demand services. […]

Thinking about what to do this weekend? Think no more. Doom, Doom II, and Doom 3 have all just appeared on the Switch, Xbox One, and PS4, giving you no excuse not to play these classics. All the time. Over and over. Rip and tear!

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 acquiring most of Intel’s smartphone modem business in $1B deal Apple has entered into a deal to acquire a majority […]

Tesla is making a new game available to its vehicle owners, with a roll-out starting today. The company started pushing out a new “Arcade” app for its in-car infotainment system back in June at the annual E3 gaming conference, and now it’s adding to the mix the most thrilling game around: Chess. This isn’t the […]

How does a startup get from zero to execution when negotiating contracts with potential customers that are large enterprises?

Picking winners from the herd of early-stage enterprise startups is challenging — so much competition, so many disruptive technologies, including mobile, cloud and AI. One investor who has consistently identified winners is Jason Green, founder and general partner at Emergence, and TechCrunch is very pleased to announce that he will join the investor panel at […]

After a hearing this week, members of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform said that Juul, the ultra-popular e-cigarette brand, may have intentionally targeted teens in schools and online. Based on 55,000 non-public documents out of Juul Labs, the subcommittee said that Juul’s Youth Prevention Plan recruited schools into a program that put […]

MILWAUKEE, WI. — Marcus Hutchins, the malware researcher who became known as an “accidental hero” for stopping the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, has been sentenced to supervised release for one year on charges of making and selling the Kronos banking malware. Presiding Judge J. P. Stadmueller described Hutchins, 25, as a “talented” but “youthful […]

The U.S. Department of Justice this morning gave the green light to T-Mobile US and Sprint for their proposed $26 billion merger. The deal, which would combine the nation’s third and fourth largest carriers (by subscriber number) has been green lit on the condition that Sprint sell its prepaid assets (including Boost Mobile) to Dish […]

The president of the United States called out two of the nation’s largest tech firms in a pair of tweets this morning. Google was the first target. The statement follows weeks of suggested investigations of the tech giant over a supposed relationship with China. There may or may not be National Security concerns with regard […]

FeaturePeek, a member of the Y Combinator Summer 2019 cohort, wants to change the way companies review front-end interfaces. Instead of kludging together reviews with screenshots or involving product managers and marketing people at the last minute, they want to make it easy to carry out reviews throughout the development cycle. “FeaturePeek allows product teams […]

Google announced this morning via blog post that it has partnered with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to give away 100,000 Home Mini units to people living with paralysis. The news is designed to mark the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which was signed into law on this day in […]

According to a new report from Bloomberg, the launch of the Apple Card is imminent. Customers based in the U.S. should be able to order the new credit card at some point during the first half of August. Rumor has it that the most recent update of iOS contains everything needed for the Apple Card. […]

Muzmatch, a matchmaking app for Muslims, has just swiped a $7 million Series A on the back of continued momentum for its community sensitive approach to soulmate searching for people of the Islamic faith. It now has more than 1.5M users of its apps, across 210 countries, swiping, matching and chatting online as they try […]

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

Hey, the internet can be a heavy place — especially these past few years. But sometimes, it still delivers the goods: Poolside.fm is the goods. This website is a time machine to a simpler time in computing, recreating a late ’80s desktop in your browser window, complete with the perfect soundtrack and non-stop low-fi period-appropriate […]

WhatsApp has amassed more than 400 million users in India, the instant messaging app confirmed today, reaffirming its gigantic reach in its biggest market. Amitabh Kant, CEO of highly-influential local think-tank Niti Aayog, revealed the new stat at a press conference held by WhatsApp in New Delhi on Thursday. A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed that the […]

A new chapter is opening up for Monotype, the font and imaging technology specialist that is associated with some of the more iconic evolutions in typefaces in the digital age (if you know Times New Roman or Arial, you know Monotype) . Today, the company announced that private equity house HGGC is acquiring it for […]

The world’s largest video game publisher is looking outside its home country for growth. Tencent, the Chinese internet behemoth that operates WeChat and a few blockbuster games, announced on Friday that its cloud service has entered Japan as part of the firm’s international push in 2019. Tencent Cloud was already serving clients in Japan prior […]

SpaceX is racking up wins this week, after a successful second launch attempt for its CRS-18 mission earlier this evening, and now with a first short-hop free flight for its StarHopper prototype spacecraft on Thursday night, again on its second try after a scrub earlier this week. This test involved flying StarHopper to the relatively modest […]

Two days after Facebook reporting growing numbers (even amid its regulatory turmoil), its social media counterpart Twitter today announced its Q2 results. The company made $841 million in overall revenues, up 18% on a year ago; with EPS and net income respectively at $1.43 and $1.1 billion, a huge bump due to a “significant income tax benefit” […]

SoftBank Group announced today that it will launch its second Vision Fund with participation from Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and other tech companies and investors. Called the Vision Fund 2, the fund will focus on AI-based technology. SoftBank said the fund’s capital has reached about $108 billion, based on memoranda of understandings. SoftBank Group’s own investment […]

Unity’s private valuation is climbing but it’s growing unclear whether the company’s leadership is planning to take the 15-year-old gaming powerhouse public anytime soon. The company announced today that is has received signed agreements from D1 Capital Partners, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Light Street Capital, Sequoia Capital, and Silver Lake Partners to fund a […]

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today released the first volume of its bipartisan investigation into Russia’s attempts to interfere with the 2016 U.S. elections. Helmed by Select Committee Chairman Richard Burr, the Republican from North Carolina, and Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner, who serves as vice chairman, the committee’s report, “Russian Efforts Against Election […]

SpaceX has launched CRS-18, the 18th commercial resupply mission it has flown for NASA to deliver experiment, research and supply materials to the International Space Station. This mission’s cargo included IDA-3, the second automated docking ring set to be installed on the ISS, which will enable autonomous docking capabilities for future commercial spacecraft visiting the […]

Like Azure last week, AWS reported some slippage in its cloud earnings growth numbers today, dropping from 49% growth last year at this time to 37% this year. Total revenue increased from Q2 last year, from $6.105 billion to $8.381 billion this year. Today’s report puts the company on an astonishing run rate of more […]

Elon Musk’s SpaceX managed to pull off something very few people thought it could — by disrupting one of the most fixed markets in the world with some of the most entrenched and protected players ever to benefit from government contract arrangements: rocket launches. The success of SpaceX, and promising progress from other new launch […]

Elon Musk’s tunneling and transportation startup The Boring Company has raised its first outside investment through the sale of $120 million in stock, according to a securities filing. The details of authorized sale of stock were first reported by Bloomberg News, which reviewed the filing obtained by Prime Unicorn Index. The main investors in the stock […]

It’s been a while since Google last shared any fundamental financial data about its cloud business. In today’s earnings call, though, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who recently installed former Oracle exec Thomas Kurian as the new head of Google Cloud, announced that this business unit now has an $8 billion annual revenue run rate. That’s […]

When it comes to VC, vehicles, and startups, Africa’s ride-hail markets are becoming a multi-wheeled and global affair. The big players such as Uber and Bolt are competing in Kampala and Nairobi—where in addition to car-service—they offer rickshaw taxis. On-demand motorcycle startups are multiplying and piloting EVs with funds from international partners. And many ride-hail companies in Africa […]

Tackling bias in AI requires individuals, organizations and government bodies to take a serious look at the roots of the problem.

It looks like the mid-range Pixel 3a is the hit Google surely hoped it would be. Alphabet reported some pretty good earnings today, but the company’s report tends to be pretty generic, given that it doesn’t provide details for its different business units inside of Google and its other segments. That’s not to say there […]

Guy Oseary's latest undertaking, Community, nurtures celebrity-fan relationships through text.

Earlier this month, TechCrunch held its annual 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 key panels and conversations from the event, including our panel on micromobility where […]

Apple has entered into a deal to acquire a majority of Intel’s modem business, TechCrunch has learned. The deal, valued at around $1 billion, includes Intel IP, equipment, leases and employees, with Apple bringing over 2,200 new roles and bringing its portfolio up 17,000 wireless technology patents. “We’ve worked with Intel for many years and […]

Get ready to experience world-class networking TechCrunch-style at TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019. On September 5, more than 1,000 of the top enterprise software minds and makers, movers and shakers will descend on San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. It’s a day-long conference featuring distinguished speakers, panel discussions, demos and workshops. It’s also a […]

Reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TF International Securities has released a new report, as Apple Insider spotted. I’ve read the report and it focuses specifically on keyboard suppliers that would potentially work with Apple . And the company should potentially replace the unreliable butterfly mechanism with a new scissor mechanism. The first laptop that should receive […]

It looks like the return of Softbank’s Vision Fund may be less reliant on murder money and more reliant on Microsoft’s money-making machine for its backing. The rumored involvement of Microsoft in financing Softbank Vision Fund II (electric boogaloo?) is interesting for what it may indicate about how the relationship between venture investors, startups, and […]

Spin, the electric scooter company acquired by a Ford subsidiary for around $100 million, is launching a new electric scooter with a sturdier frame, improved braking system, bigger tires and longer-range battery. In short, this third-generation product is built to handle the kind of abuse that a shared dockless scooter is subjected to on a […]

Let’s try this again: SpaceX is looking to launch its 18th International Space Station (ISS) resupply mission on Thursday at 6:01 PM ET (3:01 PM PT), a day after it tried to do so a first time. The initial attempt was scrubbed at the last minute due to weather conditions on the launch range in […]

Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Tulsi Gabbard, filed a lawsuit this week accusing Google of infringing her free speech. The 2020 Democratic presidential candidate took the online giant to task over the suspension of a campaign advertising account for a total of six hours following the first presidential debate. “Google’s discriminatory actions against […]

If you’re on Discord, you’re probably not a member of just one chat server. They tend to collect. You install it to chat with your Fortnite friends… then a few of them split off and start an Apex server. And each of your favorite streamers has a server, so maybe join those. Oh! And now […]

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. Toyota invests $600 million in Didi, with the two setting up a new joint venture for driver services Toyota has made […]

NBCUniversal is getting a little more specific about its streaming plans. Variety reports that NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke was on this morning’s earnings call for parent company Comcast, announcing that the NBCUniversal streaming service will launch in April 2020. The company had previously said the service would launch in “early 2020”, and would be ad-supported […]

AWS, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, today announced the beta launch of the AWS Chatbot, a chatty little chap who slides into your Slack and Amazon Chime channels and can inform you of any issues with your AWS resources. It’s hard to imagine DevOps teams that don’t use Slack or similar tools, so it’s actually a […]

European venture capital fund EQT Ventures leads the round for Standard Cognition.

Over the past several years, many have suggested that broadband internet should be regarded as a public utility, like water or gas. Staying connected has become an essential part of nearly every facet of life, but according to a new report, high-speed connections may not be as prevalent here in the States as you may […]

Serverless developers have always faced a steep challenge when it comes to writing code on their laptops, and debugging said code on cloud services. It’s sort of a chicken and egg thing. You can’t deploy until you’re ready, but you can’t know if you’re ready without testing. That requires access to your cloud services on […]

Netflix has canceled the animated series “Tuca and Bertie” after a single season. The show, which starred Tiffany Haddish and Ali Wong as the titular friends (a toucan named Tuca and a songbird named Bertie), debuted in May. It shared some creative DNA with Netflix’s “BoJack Horseman — creator Lisa Hanawalt designed the characters on […]

Alphabet’s autonomous driving and robotaxi company Waymo does a lot of training in order to refine and improve the artificial intelligence that powers its self-driving software. Recently, it teamed up with fellow Alphabet company and AI specialist DeepMind to develop new training methods that would help make its training better and more efficient. The two […]