Crunch Hype

When Shomik Dutta and Betsy Hoover first met in 2007, he was coordinating fundraising and get-out-the-vote efforts for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and she was a deputy field director for the campaign. Over the next two election cycles the two would become parts of an organizing and fundraising team that transformed the business of […]

Six months ago Korean games giant Nexon seemed headed for a management change, but now it seems very much back to business as usual. Days after founder Kim Jung-ju was reported to have called off selling his near-50 percent share in the firm, Nexon has snapped up a controlling stake in seven-month-old game developer Embark […]

The Europas Awards for European Tech Startups came around again last week (Thursday 27th June), and once again proved that Europe’s enormous diversity in startups continues to shine through on the world stage. Once again TechCrunch was the exclusive media sponsor of the awards, alongside new “tech, culture & society” event creator The Pathfounder. Attendees, […]

Artificial intelligence has become an increasingly important component of how a lot of technology works; now it’s also being applied to how technologists themselves work. Today, one of the startups building such a tool has raised some capital, Tara.ai, a platform that uses machine learning to help an organization get engineering projects done — from […]

Audio apps are flying high in China. In 2018, online listeners in the country grew 22.1% to surpass 400 million, at a rate far exceeding that of the mobile video and e-reading populations, according to market researcher iiMedia. But the fledgling sector is taking a hit. On Friday, a total of 26 audio-focused apps were […]

Flux, the London fintech that offers a platform for banks and merchants to power digital receipts and rewards, has unveiled its first partnership with an online-only merchant. The London-based company has managed to sign up Just Eat, the online marketplace for takeout food and delivery. As of today, Just Eat’s U.K. customers will be able […]

The rise of streamed video has seen the market for licensing streamed music boom in the last few years, with not only consumers using video as a medium to listen to tracks but video creators also extensively using music as part of their own productions. Today, a startup that has built a platform to capitalise […]

Thirty-three-year-old founder of personalized medicine company DotLab, Heather Bowerman, wants to shake up the women’s health industry with what she believes to be a better, cheaper, less painful test for endometriosis. Her company has just completed a Yale University -led validation study and raised $10 million in Series A funding from CooperSurgical, TigerGlobal Management, Luxor […]

Japan’s trade ministry said today that it will restrict the export of some tech materials to South Korea, including polyimides used in flexible displays made by companies like Samsung Electronics. The new rules come as the two countries argue over compensation for South Koreans forced to work in Japanese factories during World War II. The […]

Facebook’s second progress report pertaining to the civil rights audit conducted by former ACLU Washington Director Laura Murphy is here. Over the last six months, Facebook has made changes around enforcing against hate, fighting discrimination in ads and protecting against misinformation and suppression in the upcoming U.S. presidential election and 2020 Census, according to the […]

Gail Ann Hurd Contributor Share on Twitter Gale Anne Hurd is a producer of films and television shows, including the "Terminator" trilogy, "Aliens", "Armageddon", and "The Walking Dead”. Ruth Vitale Contributor Share on Twitter Ruth Vitale, who has held top executive posts at indie film outfits including Paramount Classics, Fine Line Features, and New Line […]

“How Will The Movies Survive The Next Ten Years?” demands the New York Times, in a series of interviews with 24 major Hollywood figures. Good question! I’ve been asking it myself, here, for six years now. Very unlike music, television, books, and home video, the theatrical movie experience has proved remarkably resistant to online disruption… […]

French startup Cozycozy.com wants to make it easier to search for accommodation across a wide range of services. This isn’t the first aggregator in the space and probably not the last one. But this time, it isn’t just about hotels. When you plan a trip with multiple stops, chances are you end up with a […]

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 YouTube was letting its commenting system […]

Welcome back to the transcribed edition of the popular podcast Equity. This week, TechCrunch writers Kate Clark and Connie Loizos were joined in the studio by Canvas Ventures’ general partner Rebecca Lynn. This week, the crew talked about the big rounds raised by shoe resale marketplace StockX, which raised $110 million at a $1 billion […]

Researchers have come up with a mobile-sensing system that can track and rate the performance of workers by combining a smartphone, fitness bracelets and a custom app. The mobile-sensing system, as the researchers call it, is able to classify high and low performers. The team used the system to track 750 U.S. workers for one […]

Startups depend on the angel lifecycle. A few flush post-exit individuals put the first cash into a fresh venture. With some skill and plenty of luck, the early team grows the company into a big success. It sells or goes public and those team members earn a fortune. They then pay it forward by investing […]

Reminder: Extra Crunch discount on Sessions: Enterprise tickets Come and watch TechCrunch interview enterprise titans and rising founders at the premier of TechCrunch Sessions: Enterprise in San Francisco on September 5th. Join 1000+ enterprise enthusiasts for a day of talks, demos, startups, and networking. Book your $249 Early Bird tickets today and save an extra […]

MONET Technologies, a joint venture launched by Softbank and Toyota to provide on-demand mobility services eventually with an autonomous module bus, has five new partners. Five Japanese automakers including Isuzu Motors, Suzuki Motor Corp., Subaru, Daihatsu and Mazda will each invest 2% in the venture. Softbank and Toyota each own 35% of the company. Honda […]

Ken Kao Contributor Share on Twitter Ken is an engineering manager at Airbnb building products that enable entrepreneurs to provide hospitality on the platform. Outside of work he enjoys Muay Thai, Pekiti Tirsia Kali (Filipino sticks & knives fighting), cooking, and writing. A wave of unease immediately swept through my body. Constant puffing and growling […]

A sketch on Netflix’s “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” doesn’t just settle for one funny idea. As soon as you start to get comfortable and assume that you know where things are going, there’s usually a wild left turn, and sometimes a third and fourth for good measure. We review the new […]

As autonomous cars and robots loom over the landscapes of cities and jobs alike, the technologies that empower them are forming sub-industries of their own. One of those is lidar, which has become an indispensable tool to autonomy and spawned dozens of companies, which have in turn attracted hundreds of millions in venture funding.

For four months in 2018, authorities in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show. The wiretap, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, was granted as part of a narcotics investigation and became the federal wiretap with the most intercepts in […]

BMW Vision M NEXT, the electric vehicle concept that had its world debut June 25, won’t be in showrooms anytime soon, if ever. But let’s hope the sound of the vehicle, which was created by famous film score composer Hans Zimmer and Renzo Vitale, an acoustic engineer and sound designer at the BMW Group, makes […]

Carlos Gutierrez Contributor Share on Twitter Carlos Gutierrez is deputy director and general counsel at LGBT Tech. It seems consumers today are granted ever-dwindling opportunities to consider the safety and civil liberties implications of a new technology before it becomes widely adopted. Facial recognition technology is no exception. The well-documented potential for abuse and misuse of these tools […]

Private rocket launch startup Rocket Lab has succeeded in launching its ‘Make It Rain’ mission, which took off yesterday from the company’s private Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand. On board Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket (its seventh to launch so far) were multiple satellites flow for various clients in a rideshare arrangement brokered by Rocket […]

In this week's newsletter: Postmates preps its IPO, Cameo gets $50M and Elizabeth Holmes gets a court date.

U.S. President Donald Trump has handed Huawei a lifeline after he said that U.S. companies are permitted to sell goods to the embattled Chinese tech firm following more than a month of uncertainty. It’s been a pretty dismal past month for Huawei since the American government added it and 70 of its affiliates to an […]

Such is the conclusion of a growing chorus of observers who’ve been closely watching a new and powerful trend gain strength: that of cloud kitchens, or fully equipped shared spaces for restaurant owners, most of them quick-serve operations. While viewed peripherally as an interesting and, for some companies, lucrative development, the movement may well transform […]

Google’s vice president of finance, has joined Postmates’ board of directors, the latest sign that the on-demand food delivery startup is prepping to take the company public. Postmates announced Friday that Kristin Reinke, vice president of Finance at Google, will join the San Francisco startup as an independent director. Reinke has been with Google since […]

SpaceX is only getting started launching Falcon Heavy commercial missions, but it already has its eyes on the next prize – launching Starship. Now, we know that it’s hoping to start commercial service for this next-generation, fully reusable rocket by 2021, according to SpaceX Vice President of Commercial Sales Jonathan Hofeller. Hofeller was speaking at […]

Holmes, facing 11 criminal charges, was indicted by a grand jury last June.

TC Sessions: Mobility on July 10 in San Jose is fast approaching. Get ready for a superb lineup of speakers like Dmitri Dolgov (Waymo), Eric Allison (Uber) and Summer Craze Fowler (Argo AI). See the full agenda here. In addition to the outstanding main stage content, TechCrunch is proud to partner with today’s leading mobility […]

A malfunction in Facebook’s Software Development Kit that lets apps add Login With Facebook, sharing, and other features caused apps that integrate it like Timehop to repeatedly crash for about three hours. TechCrunch received a tip that developers were getting tons of user complaints and crash reports starting around noon pacific today due to a […]

It’s not just you. After a minor hiccup this morning, Slack is down again — and this time it’s really for real. This morning, the popular workplace chat service experienced issues resulting in double posting. This time out, however, this appear to be more severe, with the company’s Status page moving from 9/10 to 10/10 […]

Tesla owners will be better able to express themselves artistically using their in-vehicle infotainment touchscreen with the next update of their vehicle’s in-car software. Tesla revealed via Twitter today that the forthcoming software update will bring improved Sketchpad features, providing essential upgrades to an Easter Egg it first debuted over two years ago that lets […]

It looks like choose-your-own-adventure Twitter games won’t be a one-hit wonder, now that Apple’s social team has adopted the format. A new tweet from the @AppleTV Twitter account today helps users find a movie to watch by having them click through a series of Twitter threads. However, their effort (so far at least) pales compared […]

Back in 2013, Apple announced that it would it would be assembling its high-end desktop in the U.S. After manufacturing had mostly moved out the country, the company made a point of touting its use of its Texas plant to help produce the Mac Pro. When the long-awaited followup was announced earlier this month at […]

Influencer Marketing has ballooned into a $25 billion industry, yet many marketing managers are left confused by this, because for them, it’s really not delivering the results to justify the hype...

Miles away from the fancy parts of Gurgaon, where a cohort of Uber and Ola cars race all day to dot the surrounding, hundreds of people are working on a different solution to contribute to India’s push for improved mobility. When Uber entered India six years ago, and its local rival Ola began to expand […]

The Tesla Model S vehicle fire that occurred in Shanghai this past April, prompting international media attention, was caused by a single battery module and is not a system defect, the company said Friday. Tesla provided the update on the cause of the fire in a post Friday on its Weibo social media account. A […]

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. Jony Ive is leaving Apple to launch a new firm The man who won over decades of Apple fans with iconic […]

Amazon -owned game streaming site Twitch will be participating in Amazon Prime Day this year, with giveaways of free content from Apex Legends and EA Sports games, live-streamed events, and even a live-streamed shopping show. The latter was reported this morning by AdWeek, which accidentally detailed the streaming site’s plans for a 2-day live shopping […]

Bumble is giving users some new options to get to know each other inside its dating app. Today the company announced that it’s adding voice and video calls to the app. The feature is double opt-in, meaning you won’t get a video call from some rando the second that you match with them. Instead, users […]

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Moon landing, which is coming up on July 20, NASA has restored and re-opened the original Apollo Mission Control Center at Johnson Space Center in Houston. The restoration is a painstakingly detailed recreation, which involved years of research of archival footage and photography, and seven months of restoration […]

In its most recent report, Synergy Research, a company that monitors cloud marketshare, found that enterprise SaaS revenue passed the $100 billion run rate this quarter. The market was led by Microsoft and Salesforce. It shouldn’t be a surprise at this point that these two enterprise powerhouses come in at the top. Microsoft reported $10.1 […]

Streaming media startup Quibi, co-founded by entertainment industry heavyweight Jeffrey Katzenberg and former HP CEO Meg Whitman, is adding more star power to its launch slate. The short-form video content startup will have an action-thriller series starring Liam Hemsworth, one of the many Hemsworths (the one who was in The Hunger Games, specifically). This series […]

A new study out of NPD confirms what we already know about the state of the smartphone in 2019. People just aren’t upgrading as frequently. You can see the ramifications of this as companies like Apple and Google scramble to right the ship. Still, it’s nice to put some numbers to the abstract trend. The […]

Music streaming services have already delivered a new high of half a trillion (507.7 billion) on-demand streams in the first half of 2019, according to Nielsen’s mid-year Music Report released this week. This record number — an increase of 31.6% over the first half of last year — was attributed to the success of singles […]

Sneakers have been a pretty effective means for helping 3D printing make the transition from prototype to manufacturing. Carbon in particular has found success with its Adidas partnership, printing out Futurecraft 4D shoes in limited quantities and scaling up considerably in the last few years. Announced back in 2017, the New Balance x Formlabs collab […]