Crunch Hype

A new report could ultimately prove another bombshell in Huawei’s on-going conflicts with the U.S. government. New documents obtained by The Washington Post tie the Chinese hardware giant to North Korea’s commercial 3G wireless network. If proven, the ties would be yet more fodder for the U.S., which has already dinged the company over charges […]

Serverless development has largely been a lonely pursuit until recently, but Serverless, Inc has been offering a free framework for intrepid programmers since 2015. At first, that involved development, deployment and testing, but today the company announced it is expanding into monitoring and security to make it an end-to-end tool — and it’s available for […]

Another hopeful among Europe’s so-called challenger banks — startups taking on the big names in consumer banking by targeting niche groups of users with a more modern set of tools to manage users’ money — has raised a sizeable round of funding to expand its business. Atom Bank — which targets mainly millennial-aged consumers (current […]

Tokyo’s 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games are fast-approaching, and Toyota is playing a key role in on-site mobility and transportation. The Japanese automaker has unveiled five robots it’s also going to be bringing to the games, which will each help in some way to support athletes and attendees at avenues get around, get information, […]

Amazon this morning announced its intentions to open a pair of robotic-powered fulfillment centers in Ohio. The two warehouses — both larger than 700,000 square feet — will be located in the north of the state, in Akron and Rossford, respectively. They’ll function much like Amazon’s other shipping centers, providing a collaborative workspace between human […]

Just Eat, the publicly-listed takeout marketplace that has faced fierce competition from UberEats and Deliveroo in recent years, has made a round of layoffs in the U.K. and Ireland, TechCrunch has learned. The redundancies, of which a U.K. portion were announced internally on Friday, are part of a reorganisation over the last few months that […]

Luckin continues to expand at jaw-dropping speed as it announced plans to open shop overseas for the first time. On Monday, the Starbucks challenger from China said it has signed a memorandum of understanding to set up a joint venture with Americana Group, a major international food group. The deal will see Luckin launch a […]

Microsoft is making a $1 billion bet on OpenAI, the company formed by notable founders including Elon Musk and Sam Altman three years ago with the aim of doing research and development work to steer the growth of artificial intelligence towards the ‘friendlier’ end of the spectrum, in order to help mitigate what Musk sees […]

Credit agency Equifax will pay up to $700 million in fines as part of a settlement with federal authorities over a data breach in 2017. The Federal Trade Commission said in a statement Monday that Equifax has agreed to initially pay at least $575 million in fines as part of the settlement with the federal […]

The home-sharing giant is making things easier for business travelers with a new work trip toggle

Adobe XD, the company’s increasingly popular prototyping and design tool, is getting support for testing Amazon Alexa voice experiences on devices like the Echo Dot and the Echo Show. This work builds upon XD’s existing voice prototyping tools, which the company announced last October, and also includes Adobe’s first Alexa skill, which is unsurprisingly the […]

For many years, the argument went that it would be hard to get large enterprises to move to the cloud, then that it would be impossible to get regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. Yet in recent years, Box and other cloud companies have shown that’s just not true, crafting solutions for even the […]

Joe Cheravitch Contributor Joe Cheravitch is a defense analyst with the Rand Corporation. Cyber-confrontation between the U.S. and Russia is increasingly turning to critical civilian infrastructure, particularly power grids, judging from recent press reports. The typically furtive conflict went public last month, when The New York Times reported U.S. Cyber Command’s shift to a more offensive […]

India took a giant leap in its space program on Monday after its space agency launched a spacecraft that is scheduled to touch down on the Moon in September. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), which is India’s equivalent of NASA, confirmed the successful launch of the spacecraft as the nation inches closer to become […]

Logistics and the movement of freight from point A to B (and C and beyond) is one of the more antiquated, and less-understood aspects of the world of commerce. But one look at Amazon and how it has grown its empire on the strength of its logistics prowess (and another glance or two at the […]

PayMate, a Mumbai-based startup that helps businesses automate and digitize their payments, is raising $25 million in a new round, its founder said, as it looks to expand its presence within India and in international markets. In an interview with TechCrunch, Ajay Adiseshann, founder and CEO of PayMate, said the startup has already raised a substantial […]

The race is on for the car of the future, equipped with self-driving capabilities, on-board personalised information and entertainment, and an ever-smaller carbon footprint. Today, however, comes news of a startup that’s improving car performance from the outside. UVeye, a Tel Aviv-based company that has built a set of drive-through external scanners that can take […]

Iflix, the streaming video service that competes with Netflix in Southeast Asia and other emerging markets, announced today that it has raised a new round of funding led by Fidelity International, with participation from returning investors Catcha Group, Hearst, Sky and EMC. The Malaysia-based company did not disclose the amount of the round, but said […]

Trading on China’s new Nasdaq-style stock market began today, with 25 tech companies listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, operated by the Shanghai Stock Market. Called the STAR Market, the board is an initiative by the government to encourage more Chinese tech companies to list domestically by addressing concerns about governance. Traders cautioned […]

For western startups looking to enter Asia and Asian startups expanding globally, more funding has become available as investors are increasingly looking to export local tech solutions to overseas markets. Globally based venture capital firm White Star Capital has set up a new office in Hong Kong this month to capture entrepreneurs in the budding […]

Elon Musk planning to change up the Hyperloop student engineering competition that his company SpaceX has run for the past four years. Next year’s competition will be done in a tunnel that’s over six miles long, the SpaceX CEO said on Twitter on Sunday, with a curve instead of being in a straight line like […]

SpaceX hosted its fourth annual SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition finals on Sunday at the test tube it built outside its Hawthorne HQ. We were on site for the competition, and watched as Team TUM, from the Technical University of Munich, took home the win thanks to achieving the top speed overall of any team to […]

Yung Wu Contributor Yung Wu is the CEO of MaRS Discovery District, a Toronto-based innovation hub. More posts by this contributor In big tech’s future expansion plans, public good should be the corporate incentive To actually change the world, Big Tech needs to grow up From Toronto to Tokyo, the challenges faced by cities today […]

When tech companies sue cities, it’s rare to see a resolution — albeit a temporary one — in favor of the tech company happen so quickly, if at all. Lyft sued San Francisco in early June, claiming the city was in violation of a 10-year contract that would give Lyft exclusive rights to operate bike-share […]

Sarah Lisker Contributor Share on Twitter Sarah Lisker is a Program Manager at the UCSF Center for Vulnerable Populations and a collaborator in The OpEd Project. She manages SOLVE Health Tech, which bridges private sector innovation with public health expertise to make digital health accessible. When a digital health company announces a new app, everyone seems to think it’s going […]

In the house in which I grew up, a single framed newspaper front page loomed over us. “MAN ON MOON“, it declared jubilantly, in an enormous, suitably momentous typeface. Subheadings included “‘It’s very pretty up here … a fine, soft surface’” and, of course, “A giant leap for mankind.” One leap forward, three steps back. […]

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 offered up some mildly interesting takes on how Waymo was […]

Yes, Captain Jean-Luc Picard is indeed coming back. We knew this from previous announcements, but CBS All Access turned heads at this year’s San Diego Comic Con with an actual trailer of Sir Patrick Stewart Picarding his heart out. He says “engage!” for god’s sake. From what I can grasp from this trailer, the plot […]

NASA’s 50th anniversary celebrations weren’t limited to just remembrances of past achievements – the space agency also marked the day by confirming that the Orion crew capsule that will bring astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program is ready for its first trip to lunar orbit, […]

Reminder: Extra Crunch Event Discounts for Summer Party TechCrunch’s annual Summer Party is just around the corner next week — come meet all the staff at the Park Chalet beer garden on the Pacific Coast in San Francisco this Thursday evening. We handed out 50 free tickets to EC subscribers this past week by email, […]

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk believes that both the Texas and Florida Starship prototype rockets being developed by the private space company will fly “in 2 to three months,” which is an aggressive timeline considering the planned untethered flight of its Starhopper demonstration prototype missed its target of running this past week. SpaceX is developing two […]

NASA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in a variety of ways today, but here’s one you can experience no matter where you are, provided you have a modern smartphone. NASA’s Astromaterials Research & Exploration Science (ARES) department has released a fully detailed model of the first ever sample of […]

Just to get this out of the way: “Frankenstein’s Monster’s Monster, Frankenstein” is a great title. In fact, it’s probably the best thing about the new comedy special on Netflix . That’s not a complaint about the special itself, which stars David Harbour (a.k.a. Chief Hopper on “Stranger Things”), as both David Harbour Jr — […]

In this week's newsletter: Roblox's origin story, the opportunity for Oyo and WeWork's Adam Neumann's antics.

Tesla has withdrawn its request for a court-ordered restraining order against Randeep Hothi, documents submitted to the court where the complaint was filed revealed Friday. Hothi, an individual who is very vocal on social media about his short position in Tesla, had gone to extreme and potentially dangerous lengths in his avid attempts to collect […]

Introduced a few I/Os back, Fast Pair is Google’s attempt to make its own mark on the post-AirPod headphone landscape. Many of the features are similar to Apple’s offerings, but Google’s got a leg up in one key way: third-party hardware. Like Android, the company’s focused on bringing Fast Pair to as many manufacturers as […]

There may be no "dark side" of the Moon, but when and where it is dark, it's dark — and stays that way for two weeks. If we're going to have colonists up there, they'll need to stay warm and keep the lights (among other things) on for the long lunar night. Turns out bricks made of Moon dust could be part of the solution.

Sequoia's Medallia stake was worth upwards of $1.8 billion on Friday.

Short-form video app TikTok, the fourth most downloaded app in the world as of last quarter, is working on several new seemingly Instagram-inspired features — including a Discover page, a grid-style layout similar to Instagram Explore, an Account Switcher and more. The features were uncovered this week by reverse-engineering specialist Jane Manchun Wong, who published […]

We’ve got great news for all the time-strapped female founders out there. Yeah, we’re looking at you, sister. We’re extending the application deadline to apply for the All Raise “ask me anything” (AMA) sessions at Disrupt SF 2019. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to meet with a leading female VC and, well, ask her anything. […]

Spotting and diagnosing cancer is a complex and difficult process even for the dedicated medical professionals who do it for a living. A new tool from Google researchers could improve the process by providing what amounts to reverse image search for suspicious or known cancerous cells. But it's more than a simple matching algorithm.

Ritesh Agarwal has reportedly purchased back $2 billion in shares from VC firms Sequoia and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

AutoX, the Hong Kong and San Jose, Calif.-based autonomous vehicle technology company, is pushing past its grocery delivery roots and into the AV supplier and robotaxi business. And now, it’s taking its business to Europe. AutoX has partnered with NEVS — the Swedish holding company and electric vehicle manufacturer that bought Saab’s assets out of […]

There comes a time for many startup companies where they either realize they need to do a nationwide roll-out, or they need to actively target buyers in the middle of the country...

Lyft has announced an expansion of its new program designed to make airport pickups less confusing for riders and drivers alike, by directing riders to a designated pickup spot where they’ll show the driver a PIN code. The program is launching this weekend at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, the company says, and the plan to […]

Sense and compute are the electronic eyes and ears that will be the ultimate power behind automating menial work and encouraging humans to cultivate their creativity.

Parrot announced the AR.Drone back at CES 2010, three years before DJI’s Phantom 1. It was a seemingly odd move by a company best known for making Bluetooth speakers and headsets, but over the years it’s continued to release fairly novel takes on the growing category. Two years back, the French company announced its intentions […]

Gaurav Maken, the chief executive officer of the online vegan grocery store Mylk Guys, doesn’t think of his company as a place to just buy food. For him, it’s a testing ground and platform for all of the new food products he expects to be developed as startup entrepreneurs and established food companies start tackling […]

Twitter is testing a new way to make conversation threads easier to follow, with the launch of a new test that labels notable replies with special icons. If the original poster replies somewhere in the thread, their tweet will have a small microphone icon next to their profile picture. Other tweets may be labeled, as […]