Crunch Hype

In a pitch during a recent meeting at Brinc’s Hong Kong headquarters, the Barcelona-based team behind Kibus Petcare was quick to point out that most millennials consider pets “a member of the family.” That sort of statement manifests itself in various ways, of course, but for many, that means preparing home cooked meals for their […]

The techlash is well underway. Blame Facebook! Blame Google! Blame Amazon! (Apple and Microsoft still seem relatively immune, for now.) And, I mean, there’s a lot of objectively blameworthy behavior there, especially in that first case. But I find myself wondering: why does the ire go beyond that, into irrational territory? What is it about […]

Hello, weekend readers. 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 Alexa wasn’t forgetting what you requested […]

We met with a handful of Brinc’s top startups earlier this week, during a visit to the accelerator’s Hong Kong headquarters. The lion’s share of the demos involved hardware products, which has long been the organization’s core offering. Increasingly, however, food focused startups like Phuture Foods have become an important focus. Whereas stateside companies like […]

The Roblox EC-1 Following in the wake of our deep profiles of Patreon and Niantic, we have our next EC-1 package, this time on children’s gaming platform Roblox . Extra Crunch writer Sherwood Morrison has covered gaming and startups for years, and he got an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the incredibly popular startup with interviews […]

Tiffine Wang Contributor Share on Twitter Tiffine Wang is a senior investment manager at Singtel Innov8, the corporate venture capital arm of Singtel Group. Freddy Dopfel Contributor Share on Twitter Freddy Dopfel is a senior associate at Grishin Robotics. Humans are starting to get better acquainted with personal assistants such as Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, […]

Silicon Valley has many dreams. One dream — the Hollywood version anyway — is for a down-and-out founder to begin tinkering and coding in their proverbial garage, eventually building a product that is loved by humans the world over and becoming a startup billionaire in the process. The more prosaic and common version of that […]

Another week, another trade war. And unlike most trade wars these days, this one didn’t originate from the confines of the Rose Garden with the Marine One whirlybird in the background. No, like any Ice Bucket Challenge-worthy meme, others are getting in on the trade war bandwagon and making it their own. Cue Japan and […]

In this week's newsletter: An inside look at TechCrunch's Mobility Conference, Credita's big fundraise and Bumble's bad week.

Valkyrie Industries off-handedly refers to the current iteration of its VR suit as “Iron Man v. 1.” It’s a fitting reference. There’s a very “first half of the superhero film” vibe to the prototype. There are exposed wires everywhere and large, clunky 3D printed pieces that clip onto various body parts. In a more finalized […]

$5 billion. That’s the apparent size of Facebook’s latest fine for violating data privacy. While many believe the sum is a slap on the wrist, it’s still the largest amount the FTC has ever levied on a tech company.

A project to 3-D print bulky components in space rather than bring them up there has collected a $73.7 million contract from NASA to demonstrate the technique in space. Archinaut, a mission now several years in development from Made In Space, could launch as soon as 2022.

While the agility of a Spot or Atlas robot is something to behold, there's a special merit reserved for tiny, simple robots that work not as a versatile individual but as an adaptable group. These "tribots" are built on the model of ants, and like them can work together to overcome obstacles with teamwork.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has reportedly agreed to end its latest probe into Facebook‘s privacy problems with a $5 billion payout. According to The Wall Street Journal, the 3-2, party-line vote by FTC commissioners was carried by the Republican majority and will be moved to the Justice Department’s civil division to be finalized. A $5 […]

While not a startup visa, the EB-5 investor green card offers many entrepreneurs a path to a green card by investing money and creating jobs in the U.S. Under the EB-5 program, an entrepreneur’s family is also eligible for green cards. Imminent regulatory changes to the EB-5 program are expected to make obtaining an EB-5 […]

What’s best for one company isn’t necessarily what’s best for another. Going public -- or not -- is a choice that lies squarely where it should: in the hands of founders.

Bird has positive unit economics, CEO Travis VanderZanden said Friday in a fiery response to a report from The Information that the scooter startup was seeking $300 million in new funding, had lost nearly $100 million and saw its revenue shrink to about $15 million. VanderZanden did not disclose Bird’s revenue. However, in a series […]

The new 2020 C8 Corvette won’t be revealed for six more days. But to hold us over, Chevrolet is showing off the steering wheel of the eighth-generation vehicle. The photo, which Chevy teased Friday, is just the steering wheel. But there are hints and insights that even this single photo provides. For one, this new […]

Netflix has a new sci-fi series coming in hot on July 25, and it’s got Battlestar Galactica’s Katee Sackhoff in the lead role, with Selma Blair and Justin Chatwin supporting. The show focuses on Sackhoff’s Captain Niko Breckenridge and her crew of space explorers as they track down the origins of a mysterious alien artifact […]

Twitch continues to lead rivals including, YouTube Live, Facebook Gaming and Microsoft’s Mixer, when it comes to live-streaming video. Despite experiencing its first decline in hours watched in Q2 2019, the Amazon-owned game-streaming site still had its second-biggest quarter to date, with more than 70% of the hours watched during the quarter. According to a […]

Could Roblox create a new entertainment and communication category, something it calls “social co-experience”? When it was a small startup, few observers would have believed in that future. But after 15 years — as told in the origin story of our Roblox EC-1 — the company has accumulated 90 million users and a new $150 […]

Old bot, new tricks. TrickBot, a financially motivated malware in wide circulation, has been observed infecting victims’ computers to steal email passwords and address books to spread malicious emails from their compromised email accounts. The TrickBot malware was first spotted in 2016 but has since developed new capabilities and techniques to spread and invade computers […]

Another state — this time North Carolina — has been enticed by the idea of hyperloop, the futuristic and still theoretical transit platform that will shuttle people and packages at speeds of up to 670 miles per hour between cities. Virgin Hyperloop One and North Carolina’s Regional Transportation Alliance announced Friday the beginning of “an […]

Oracle has been complaining about the procurement process around the Pentagon’s $10 billion, decade-long JEDI cloud contract, even before the DoD opened requests for proposals last year. It went so far as to file a lawsuit in December, claiming a potential conflict of interest on the part of a procurement team member. Today, that case […]

It’s hard to feel seen, heard and represented as a person of color in today’s current media landscape. Ravneet Vohra (pictured above), founder and CEO of Wear Your Voice, is changing that. Wear Your Voice is an intersectional feminist multimedia platform that aims to center marginalized communities, including those who are queer, trans, non-binary, female, […]

In a summer surprise this week, IBM announced it had closed its $34 billion blockbuster deal to acquire Red Hat. The deal, which was announced in October, was expected to take a year to clear all of the regulatory hurdles, but U.S. and EU regulators moved surprisingly quickly. For IBM, the future starts now, and […]

Hulu has again launched 4K content on its service, as first noticed by a report on The Streamable today and confirmed to us by a company spokesperson. The streamer had been late to add support 4K, having finally rolled out support in December 2016 — a couple of years after rivals Netflix and Amazon Prime Video […]

The journey for Trevor Jackson started, as many things do in tech, with research. He’d become fascinated by the experiments done, not with lithium batteries, which had come to dominate the battery industry, but with so-called ‘Aluminum-air’ batteries. Technically described at “(Al)/air” batteries, these are the – almost – untold story from the battery world. […]

T-Mobile has reported a small decline in the number of government data requests it receives, according to its latest transparency report, quietly published this week. The third-largest cell giant in the U.S. reported 459,989 requests during 2018, down by a little over 1% on the year earlier. That includes an overall drop in subpoenas, court […]

Birthday cakes, gift cards, free lunches, snacks, movie tickets, and other perks are generously bestowed on employees to celebrate life’s happy moments. This is an improvement from the industrial...

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. Twitter will start testing its ‘hide replies’ feature next week, in Canada Before you start complaining about censorship, keep in mind […]

Ritik Dholakia worked as a startup product manager before he co-founded Studio Rodrigo, a branding and product design agency based in NYC. Unlike traditional branding firms, Studio Rodrigo is proud of its product design chops, especially when it comes to helping early-stage startups build version one of their product. It’s not an easy balancing act […]

Facebook provided TechCrunch with new information on how its cryptocurrency will stay legal amidst allegations from President Trump that Libra could facilitate “unlawful behavior.” Facebook and Libra Association executives tell me they expect Libra will incur sales tax and capital gains taxes. They confirmed that Facebook is also in talks with local convenience stores and […]

The Google News tab is getting a makeover. Google announced this week, by way of a tweet, a significant redesign of the Google.com News tab on the desktop, which will organize articles in a card-style layout, while also better emphasizing publisher names. The end result makes Google News more aesthetically pleasing, but it comes at […]

Sage is giving reviewers, chefs and other experts and publishers a central place to share all their content. To do this, the startup has created a new product called Sage Plus for Experts, which isn’t open to the public yet, but is accepting signups from those aforementioned travel experts — the kinds of experts who […]

MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) has a robot that can mirror the actions of a human just by watching their bicep. This has a number of practical applications, including potentially assisting a person to lift large or awkward objects, but it can also be applied to… more topical pursuits. The robot, which […]

Amazon’s list of Prime Day deals has finally dropped. The retailer’s Black Friday-style sale for its Prime members is one of the biggest online shopping days of the year, as other retailers now take part with their own competitive sales. But some of the best deals to be found on Prime Day are those on […]

Meet Dejbox, a French food delivery startup that tries to avoid busy cities in order to accommodate people who really need a new lunch option. The company is a food delivery startup that designs its own meals, works with other companies to cook them, sell them and deliver them. “Corporate headquarters are more and more […]

Elon Musk’s brain computer interface (BCI) venture Neuralink will provide some more insight into what they’ve been working on for the past two years, during which time we’ve heard very little in the way of updates on their progress. In 2017, we learned that Neuralink’s overall driving mission was to help humans keep pace with […]

In a long awaited decision, the Federal Elections Commission will now allow political campaigns to appoint cybersecurity helpers to protect political campaigns from cyberthreats and malicious attackers. The FEC, which regulates political campaigns and contributions, was initially poised to block the effort under existing rules that disallow campaigns to receive discounted services for federal candidates […]

Bloomberg reported last April that Amazon was working on a home robot codenamed ‘Vesta’ (after the Roman goddess of the hearth and home) last year, and now the publication says that development on the project continues. Plus, the report includes new details about the specifics of the robot, including that it will indeed support Alexa […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a bit of a turn-about. Kate was off this week and Alex was back, so we brought back a few favorites to tide us over until our regular leader returns. For this IPO-themed episode, we […]

Amazon is reportedly looking to offer an Echo that more directly competes with high-end speakers like the Sonos line of device of Apple’s HomePod, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The speaker should be released sometime next year, according to the sources cited in the report, and will be somewhat wider than the existing […]

SpaceX is preparing for a key test in development of its next-generation Starship spacecraft, with a target of performing a ‘hover’ demo of its ‘Starhopper’ prototype rocket on Tuesday next week. The test will be the first time the rocket attempts liftoff with the new Raptor engine SpaceX is designing to succeed the Merlins used […]

Some M&A is afoot in the world of market research and analysis, underscoring just how much of our media consumption and consumer habits revolve around digital platforms. WPP today announced that it would sell 60% of Kantar — the firm that provides stats and insights on how consumers buy and think of products in services […]

VW Group is investing $2.6 billion in capital and assets into Argo AI, the Pittsburgh-based autonomous vehicle startup that burst onto the scene two years ago with $1 billion in backing from Ford. The deal, which has been rumored for months, is part of a broader alliance between VW Group and Ford that covers autonomous and […]

Automakers Ford and Volkswagen have announced a partnership today that covers a number of areas, including autonomy (via a new investment by VW in Argo AI) and collaboration on development of electric vehicles. This EV tie-up will see Ford use Volkswagen’s MEB platform, which it’s using as the core of its forthcoming line of consumer […]

City Pantry, the office catering marketplace that lets you order in food for staff, company events and meetings, has been acquired by takeout marketplace and delivery giant Just Eat. The price is described as an initial cash offering of £16 million, with a possible further payout due if City Pantry achieves agreed operational and financial […]

Kencko, a company that wants to help people eat more fruit and vegetables in their daily life, is entering feast mode after it announced a $3.4 million seed round for growth and product development. We profiled the company last year, but — for those who missed it — Kencko develops plant-based products that help people […]

The machines have proven their superiority in one-on-one games like chess and go, and even poker — but in complex multiplayer versions of the card game humans have retained their edge... until now. An evolution of the last AI agent to flummox poker pros individually is now decisively beating them in championship-style 6-person game.