Crunch Hype

Instead of switching between apps to secure a ride during rush hour, people in China can now hail from different companies using a single app. Some of the country’s largest internet companies — including ride-hailing giant Didi itself — are placing bets on this type of aggregation service. The nascent model is reminiscent of a […]

A small fire broke out Monday at SpaceX’s Florida facility focused on development of Starship, the company’s next-generation rocket. The facility is one of two SpaceX development centres for Starship, which is intended to be a new, entirely reusable spacecraft that will help the company move closer to its goal of reaching Mars. “This afternoon, […]

May Mobility might be operating low-speed self-driving shuttles in three U.S. cities, but its founders don’t view this as just another startup racing to deploy autonomous vehicle technology. They describe the Ann Arbor-based company as a transportation service provider. As May Mobility’s co-founder and COO Alisyn Malek told TechCrunch, they’re in the “business of moving […]

This time last month, Google took the surprise (and anticlimactic) move of tweeting out images of the Pixel 4 well ahead of its October launch. Of course, that glimpse just focused on the rear of the device. Not only was the company looking to nip leaks in the bud, they were almost certainly attempting to […]

Box co-founder, chairman and CEO Aaron Levie took his company from a consumer-oriented online storage service to a publicly-traded enterprise powerhouse. Launched in 2005, Box today has over 41 million users and the vast majority of Fortune 500 companies use its service. Levie will join us at TC Sessions: Enterprise for a fireside chat about […]

In the years following the financial crisis, de novo bank activity in the US slowed to a trickle. But as memories fade, the economy expands and the potential of tech-powered financial services marches forward, entrepreneurs have once again been asking the question, “Should I start a bank?” And by bank, I’m not referring to a […]

To promote the free-to-play game Warframe, director Michael Krivicka brought a little taste of video game mayhem to New York City. In the video above, you can see bystanders asked to pose for photos with a model of the Opticor, an elaborate gun from the game. They’re warned not to pull the trigger — but what […]

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are using facial recognition software to trawl through millions of driver’s license photos provided by 21 states to search and find suspects. News broke over the weekend that the FBI and immigration officials access images — often without obtaining a search warrant or court order — in order to identify […]

Lyft and Aptiv are already running autonomous driving trials in Las Vegas, and now they’re expanding that limited pilot to include low-vision and blind riders in a new partnership with the National Federation of the Blind. In a blog post detailing the news, Lyft notes that this is a key part of their overall strategy […]

Technology has been used to improve many of the processes that we use to get work done. But today, a startup has raised funding to build tech to improve us, the workers. 15Five, which builds software and services to help organisations and their employees evaluate their performance, as well as set and meet goals, has closed […]

Google is offering a new coding resource for educators via Code with Google, which collects Google’s own free course curriculum on teaching computer science and a variety of programs to help students learn to code or build on their existing skills, with stuff for people at all levels of ability. The Code with Google resources extend […]

Technology has been used to manage regulatory risk since the advent of the ledger book (or the Bloomberg terminal, depending on your reference point). However, the cost-consciousness internalized...

Rivian doesn’t want to build just another electric vehicle. It’s not aiming to be a Tesla killer either. No, this 10-year-old company that kept a low profile until November when it unveiled an electric pickup truck and SUV, is aiming to be an adventure brand. Or, as Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scrainge told TechCrunch […]

On Thursday, the White House’s social media will reportedly host a who’s who of conservative media pundits. PragerU and Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk have apparently received invites to the event. There will, however, be some key names missing from the invite list — including, notably, the social media companies themselves. Trump’s White House is hosting […]

NASA is in final preparation stages for its Artemis 1 moon mission, which will be the first in its Artemis series of missions which intend to return an American man to the Moon, and bring an American woman to the surface of Earth’s natural satellite for the first time. The 335-ft tall mobile launch tower […]

Elon Musk was fielding a number of questions from fans on Twitter on Sunday, and revealed that the current target for a full presentation of Starship, SpaceX’s next-generation reusable rocket and a key piece of the company’s plan to reach Mars, could come as soon as “late July.” The SpaceX CEO also noted that the […]

Uber and Lyft going public may have put closer public scrutiny on the economics of ridesharing, but it hasn’t had a chilling effect on the level of competition in the space. In the latest development, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Bolt, the Estonian ride-sharing, scooter and food delivery company that operates across Europe — […]

The UK’s Information Commissioner is starting off the week with a GDPR bang: this morning, it announced that it has fined British Airways and its parent International Airlines Group (IAG) £183.39 million ($230 million) in connection with a data breach that took place last year that affected a whopping 500,000 customers browsing and booking tickets online. In an […]

DigitalBridge, the Manchester, U.K.-based startup using technology to help solve the “imagination gap” when planning home renovations, has picked up £3 million in new backing. The round is led by Maven Capital Partners via two funds it manages: £1.5 million from Maven’s Venture Capital Trusts (VCTs) and £1.5 million from the NPIF Maven Equity Finance, […]

Wind Mobility, the Berlin and Barcelona-based micro-mobility startup that operates e-scooter rentals in Europe, Israel and Asia, is disclosing $50 million in Series A funding. The new round is backed by existing investors. The company last raised $22 million in funding eight months ago from Chinese Source Code Capital and Europe’s HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, after […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company will “most likely” begin upgrading older electric vehicles with its new custom chip later this year — a lofty task that will involve retrofitting hundreds of thousands of Model S, X and 3s. Musk tweeted Sunday night that the upgrades will begin most likely at the end of […]

Soldo, the U.K. fintech that offers a multi-user spending account for businesses, has closed $61 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Battery Ventures and Dawn Capital, with participation from previous backers Accel and Connect Ventures. In addition, a small portion is debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank. It brings total raised by […]

Brian Kateman Contributor Share on Twitter Brian Kateman is President and Cofounder of the Reducetarian Foundation. Fish make up 16% of animal protein consumed globally, and demand is set to rise, according to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, largely thanks to rising disposable incomes. But overfishing is hugely problematic – and it’s not sustainable to […]

It took 20 years to break the Goodwood Festival of Speed hill climb record. And it happened twice in the same weekend. The new record holder is Volkswagen’s ID R electric race car. The vehicle, driven by driver Romain Dumas, broke the record by completing the 1.86-kilometer track (1.15 miles) at Goodwood in the south […]

When Landon Brand and Benjamin Stanfield graduated from the University of Southern California this year, they already had the plans for Project Wren, their service for selling carbon offsets to a new generation of conscious consumers. Along with fellow co-founder Mimi Tran Zambetti (who’s still attending USC), Brand and Stanfield aim to make carbon offsets […]

You wake up, and check your phone, and see a new condemnation. Some awful person has said something outrageously insulting. Something actually evil, if you think about it. Something that belittles, dehumanizes, and/or argues against the freedom and agency of a whole category of people. You add your voice to the furious chorus in response. […]

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 cult of Ive and the degradation of […]

Welcome back to the transcribed edition of the popular podcast Equity. Kate Clark had the hosting reins this week and welcomed Revolution’s Clara Sieg to the studio. They discussed the trend of investors backing companies from “second-tier” markets like Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, etc. Just how do cities become tech hubs? It’s a special […]

While “Stranger Things” is one of Netflix’s biggest hits, we’ve remained immune to some of its charms. On the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, we review the third season of the series — a.k.a. “Stranger Things 3” — giving us an opportunity to hash out our general feelings about the show. Darrell, in […]

In this week's newsletter: When to seek VC backing, Lance Armstrong's VC career and Calm's big raise.

Away from the limelight of the press and the frenzy of fundraising, a tech startup in India has achieved a feat that few of its peers have managed: going public. IndiaMART, the country’s largest online platform for selling products directly to businesses, raised nearly $70 million in a rare tech IPO for India this week. […]

Cloud gaming — however a company chooses to define that — is shaping up to be a big part of the next generation of consoles and other platforms. But Mario creator and Nintendo veteran Shigeru Miyamoto says his company won't be so quick to jump on the bandwagon.

It's Friday, so why not watch some good old-fashioned drone-powered graffiti? A design firm in Italy has put together a lovely little show that collected sketches from the art community and put them all together in a giant mural, painted over 12 hours by a team of drones.

Next Ventures' portfolio includes sleep and activity tracker Oura, smart muscle stimulation device PowerDot and others.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, National Geographic has plans for an entire Space Week of programming, kicking off Sunday night with the premiere of a new documentary called “Apollo: Missions to the Moon.” It’s a story that’s been told many times, including in last year’s Neil Armstrong biopic “First Man.” And of […]

From Alaska to Europe, the world has spent the past few weeks roasting under temperatures never before seen in recorded history. In Alaska, all-time-high record temperatures were set across the state on July 4th, according to the National Weather Service. In Anchorage, the mercury soared to highs of 90 degrees, the highest temperature since recording […]

Let’s explore a new form of connectivity for rural communities.

A team of German researchers have created an automatic landing system for small aircraft that lets them touch down not only without a pilot, but without any of the tech on the ground that lets other planes do it. It could open up a new era of autonomous flight — and make ordinary landings safer to boot.

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. HQ Trivia lays off ~20% as it preps subscriptions The cuts hit HQ’s HR, marketing and product engineering teams, according to […]

Way back in February, Mozilla announced an upcoming collaboration with Scroll aimed at finding a way to help fund news outlets. The organization appears ready to finally launch to the service, sending users a survey, along with invites to an upcoming beta launch of what it calls “Firefox Ad-free Internet.” The service is one of […]

If these past few weeks felt like the sky was falling, you weren’t alone. In the past month there were several major internet outages affecting millions of users across the world. Sites buckled, services broke, images wouldn’t load, direct messages ground to a halt and calendars and email were unavailable for hours at a time. […]

Programming robots to walk on flat, even ground is difficult enough, but Florida’s Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) is tackling the grander challenge of making sure bipedal robots can successfully navigate rough terrain. The research organization has been demonstrating its work in this area since 2016, but its latest video (via Engadget) shows […]

Drone delivery service Project Wing (or just Wing as it’s now called) graduated from Google X last year to become an independent Alphabet business, and recently won governmental approval to operate in the suburbs outside the Australian capital, Canberra. There, its service delivers food, coffee, pet supplies and more to area residents. Related to these […]

The Planetary Society has launched a new mission control dashboard for LightSail 2, a crowdfunded spacecraft currently in orbit that’s going to test the performance of a true solar sail that’s moved only by the force of photons from the sun bouncing off its fabric. The dashboard provides the most up-to-date information available for anyone […]

French startup Karamel wants to help you find things to do for your kids. The company is launching a mobile app that lets you find and book kid-friendly activities around you. The startup also just raised a $560,000 round (€500,000) from Kima Ventures, Roxanne Varza, Thibaud Elzière and Oleg Tscheltzoff. Varza participates in the Atomico […]

Toyota is testing a new and improved version of the solar power cells it previously launched on the Japan-exclusive Prius PHV, in a pilot along with partners Sharp and Japanese national research organization NEDO. This demo car’s prototype cells can convert solar energy at 34% and up, which is much better than the existing commercial […]

An industry group of internet service providers has branded Firefox browser maker Mozilla an “internet villain” for supporting a DNS security standard. The U.K.’s Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA), the trade group for U.K. internet service providers, nominated the browser maker for its proposed effort to roll out the security feature, which they say will […]

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

I’ve got a 16-hour flight coming up in about a week, so I’m hoping our review units come through before then. For now, my time with the WF-1000XM3 has been limited to a few minutes in a conference room, but so far I like what I’ve heard. The sound on Sony’s new fully wireless earbuds […]

China’s war on garbage is as digitally savvy as the country itself. Think QR codes attached to trash bags that allow a municipal government to trace exactly where its trash comes from. On July 1, the world’s most populated city (Shanghai) began a compulsory garbage-sorting program. Under the new regulations (in Chinese), households and companies […]