Crunch Hype

With new money from Kleiner Perkins, Cameo plots a global expansion.

Fueled by its $300 million Series D round led by Softbank last August, Getaround is making its second-ever acquisition this year with a $12 million purchase of Norwegian car rental startup Nabobil. This acquisition brings Getaround into seven European countries. In April, Getaround made its first acquisition when it bought European car rental startup Drivy […]

Tundra, a new zero-commission wholesale marketplace, has today announced the close of $12 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Redpoint’s Annie Kadavy, with participation from investors such as Initialized Capital, Peterson Ventures, FJ Labs, Switch Ventures, and Background Capital. Tundra was founded by married couple Arnold and Katie Engel, who previously […]

Kopi Kenangan, a startup that wants to make quality, fresh coffee affordable to Indonesian consumers, has raised $20 million as it begins to consider overseas expansion in Southeast Asia. The round comes courtesy of Sequoia India and Southeast Asia, via the $695 million investment fund it closed last year. Kopi Kenangan previously raised $8 million […]

SpaceX has managed to do another thing that seemed audacious and highly unlikely after a few early botched attempts. It used a ship at sea to catch the falling nosecone that shielded the cargo aboard its Falcon Heavy rocket during launch. The maneuver saw a SpaceX -owned barge called Ms. Tree rigged with a giant […]

Messaging platform Telegram has added a new bunch of location-based features via an update. Users of the latest version of the app will find an ‘Add People Nearby’ setting which they can use to quickly exchange contact details without the need to type in digits. Coupled with a prior update, which lets Telegram users control […]

Sales teams have long turned to tech solutions to help improve how they source leads, develop relationships and close deals. Now, one of the startups that helps out at a key point in that trajectory is announcing a round of growth funding to help fuel its own rapid growth. Showpad, a sales enablement platform that […]

Open, a Bangalore-based startup that operates a “neo-bank” to help businesses automate and run their finances, has bagged $30 million in a new funding round as investors look to replicate a globally tried and tested business idea in emerging markets. The Series B financing round for the two-year-old startup was led by Tiger Global with […]

KoinWorks, an Indonesian startup that helps small and medium-sized businesses secure financial services through its online peer-to-peer platform, has raised $16.5 million SGD ($12 million USD) in a new funding round as money continues to flow in what has become a hot space for investors. The Series B round for the three-year-old startup was led […]

At its NEXTGen event in Munich, BMW today announced that it is running ahead of schedule in its efforts to offer at least 25 electrified vehicles. Previously, the German luxury car manufacturer was shooting for 2025, but it now says that it will offer these 25 vehicles by 2023. As BMW’s Klaus Fröhlich stressed at […]

BMW has a long history of building motorcycles, but it hasn’t done all that well in the electric motorcycle department. Clearly, though, this is something the company is thinking hard about and today, at its inaugural NextGen event, the company showed its newest electric concept bike, the BMW Motorrad Vision DC Roadster. As usual, there’s […]

Motorway, the U.K. used car marketplace, has raised £11 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Marchmont Ventures, the fund managed by Hugo Burge and Alan Martin (the former CEO and CFO of Momondo Group, respectively), along with participation from existing backer LocalGlobe. Founded by the team behind Top10 — the mobile and […]

Technology never stops evolving and neither do we. That’s why we’re excited to tell you about the new Extra Crunch Stage at Disrupt Berlin 2019. Our premiere tech conference dedicated to early-stage startups takes place 11-12 December. Now’s the time to book your super early-bird ticket, because the earlier you buy, the more you save. Okay, […]

SpaceX has succeeded in launching its third mission with the Falcon Heavy high-capacity rocket it first launched successfully last year. The rocket’s STP-2 mission took off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida towards the end of a four-hour launch window that opened at 11:30 PM EDT on Monday, with liftoff taking place at 2:30 AM […]

FedEx is suing the United States Department of Commerce, claiming that it has been “essentially deputize[d]” to enforce its trade blacklist. The lawsuit comes a month after Huawei said it is reassessing its relationship with the delivery giant after several packages meant for shipment within Asia were instead diverted, or erroneously marked for delivery, to […]

SpaceX is going to launch a Falcon Heavy rocket for only the third time ever tonight, should all go according to the current mission plan. The launch, set to take place during a four-hour launch window that opens at 11:30 PM EDT (8:30 PM PDT) [UPDATE: The launch is now targeting 2:30 AM EDT (11:30 […]

The logistics division of JD.com, Alibaba’s closest e-commerce competitor in China, has raised 1.5 billion yuan (about $218 million) to invest in logistics-related companies and technology. Limited partners in the new fund include JD Logistics and JD.com, as well as undisclosed listed companies and government-led funds, reported Reuters. JD Logistics, which became a standalone subsidiary […]

Amazon is preparing for its longest Prime Day ever. The company announced today it will host a 48-hour Prime Day sales event this year, starting at midnight on Monday, July 15 and extending for two full days. The Amazon sales holiday — its own version of a Black Friday-type sale — will feature over a […]

Security researchers say they have uncovered a massive espionage campaign involving the theft of call records from hacked cell network providers to conduct targeted surveillance on individuals of interest. The hackers have systematically broken in to more than 10 cell networks around the world to date over the past seven years to obtain massive amounts […]

Microsoft drew a line in the sand with Windows 10, presenting an operating system designed for both PCs and tablets alike. The move fostered hardware designers to go all in on convertibles — devices that performed double duty as laptops or slates, with adjustable keyboards to match. For most of its history, the iPad has […]

Monzo, the fast-growing U.K.-based challenger bank with more than two million account holders, has raised £113 million (~$144m) in additional funding. Confirming TechCrunch’s scoop in April, the Series F round is led by Y Combinator’s “Continuity” growth fund, and gives the company a new £2 billion (~$2.5b) post-money valuation. That’s double the £1 billion valuation […]

As a misanthrope living in a vibrant city, I'm never short of things to complain about. And in particular the problem of people crowding into my photos, whatever I happen to shoot, is a persistent one. That won't be an issue any more with Bye Bye Camera, an app that simply removes any humans from photos you take. Finally!

The enterprise drone space has been heating up over the past couple years, but a startup in the entertainment drone space is raising the big cash now. The Drone Racing League is in the process of raising up to $50 million from investors in a Series C round according to SEC docs published today. The […]

In March, Spotify filed a complaint against Apple with the European Commission over the so-called “Apple tax” and claims of restrictive rules regarding the App Store. In the time since, Apple has responded with the launch of a website that takes aim at the anti-trust, anti-competitive claims against it, and most recently, a deep dive […]

Wind turbines are a great source of clean power, but their apparent simplicity — just a big thing that spins — belie complex systems that wear down like any other, and can fail with disastrous consequences. Sandia National Labs researchers have created a robot that can inspect the enormous blades of turbines autonomously, helping keep our green power infrastructure in good kit.

WordPress now accounts for 34 percent of all websites globally, and today one of the key companies that helps handle the creation and management of some of those WP-hosted sites is getting a little bigger through some consolidation in the wider ecosystem. WP Engine, which works with businesses to build and manage their WordPress-hosted sites, […]

And we’re back! TechCrunch is returning to NYC for a Meet and Greet tomorrow at The Yard in Herald Square. It’s been a couple years since we’ve held an event in NYC and we’ve missed it. Join Managing Editor Jordan Crook, Battlefield Host and Senior Writer Anthony Ha, Head of Startup Battlefield Neesha Tambe, and […]

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. The Raspberry Pi Foundation unveils the Raspberry Pi 4 While the Raspberry Pi first started as a simple computer designed to […]

In developer lingo, quality-of-life updates are all about refining things that already work. Thanks to these incremental improvements, it should make the end-user experience much more enjoyable. And with iOS 13, it feels like Apple’s main focus is on this concept. Dark Mode is basically the only new flashy feature of iOS this year. But […]

This is your opportunity to get a glimpse of the future of iOS — and iPadOS. Apple just released the first public beta of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, the next major version of the operating systems for the iPhone and iPad. Unlike developer betas, everyone can download those betas without a $99 developer account. But […]

Entrepreneurs take a long journey when naming their brainchild, comparable to a parent naming their own flesh and blood. There are many reasons behind naming...

Early-stage startup founders it’s now or never, it’s do-or-die, it’s [insert your preferred time-crunch cliché here]. The application deadline for the Startup Battlefield at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 expires in just 24 hours. If you’re ready to go up against a cadre of approximately 15-30 outstanding startups on the Disrupt Main stage, then apply to compete in […]

Argo AI will invest $15 million over five years to create a center for autonomous vehicle research at Carnegie Mellon University, one of the latest efforts by the Ford-backed company to accelerate the development of self-driving cars. The center, Carnegie Mellon University Argo AI Center for Autonomous Vehicle Research, will focus on advanced perception and […]

Google bought Kaggle in 2017 to provide a data science community for its big data processing tools on Google Cloud. Today, the company announced a new direct integration between Kaggle and BigQuery, Google’s cloud data warehouse. More specifically, data scientists can build a model in a Kaggle Jupyter Notebook, known as Kaggle Kernels in the […]

There might be no better microcosm of 2019 Apple than Catalina. The latest version of macOS arrives during a transitional time for the company. The desktop is a showcase for increased focus on content, a continued push toward cross-platform compatibility and a renewed push to court creative professionals. For a few years now, the desktop […]

It’s stunning how fast emerging new technologies can coalesce around a simple human need and suddenly change everything, not to mention spur billions in investment. That’s what has happened in the past five years to the basics of humans getting around town, or “mobility” in the shorthand of Silicon Valley. And that’s the first of […]

Ivan Smolnikov Contributor Ivan Smolnikov is the CEO and founder of Smartcat, the market network platform for the translation industry. The last few decades have produced many successful marketplaces. We went from goods marketplace pioneers such as eBay and Amazon to simple service marketplaces such as Uber, Lyft, Doordash, Upwork, Thumbtack, TaskRabbit, and Fiverr. But […]

Trash is a new startup promising to make it easier for anyone to create well-edited videos. Social video is an area that CEO Hannah Donovan knows well, having previously served as general manager at Vine (the video app that Twitter acquired and eventually shut down). She said that in user research, even though people had […]

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have discovered a new method for delivering key nutrients to plant roots – without having to ensure they’re present in the soil where the plants are growing. The landmark study greatly increases the efficiency of surface delivery of nutrients and pesticides to plants. Currently, when crops are sprayed with stuff […]

Comscore’s name is usually in the news because of its widely-cited research and stats around media traffic and other analysis charting digital consumer behavior. More recently, it’s been coming up for another reason: ongoing corporate upheaval and its tumbling stock price. Today comes the latest development in that story: the company announced that it has […]

With increased pressure on Chinese manufacturers like Huawei and ZTE, Shenzhen-based drone giant DJI has no doubt had cause for concern of late. In late-2017, the U.S. government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement office raised concern that the company’s camera-equipped flying machines could be sending data back to China. A few weeks back, the Department of […]

Life can be tough for a small satellite operator – it may be relatively cheap and easy to build small sats (or CubeSats, as they’re sometimes called), but arranging transportation for those satellites to get to orbit is still a big challenge. That’s why SpaceRyde is pursuing a novel way of launching light payloads, that […]

Walmart -owned Sam’s Club is expanding into same-day alcohol delivery, the retailer announced this morning. The delivery service is being powered by Sam’s Club partner Instacart and is currently live in 215 stores across 12 U.S. states, with plans to reach other cities and markets in the months ahead. At launch, the list of states […]

“I just want to be proud of the company that I work for,” Maren Costa told me recently. Costa is a Principal UX Design Lead at Amazon, for which she has worked since 2002. I was referred to her because of her leadership in the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group I covered earlier this […]

Google announced this morning it’s expanding its two-year-old digital safety and citizenship curriculum for children, “Be Internet Awesome,” to now include media literacy — specifically, the ability to identify so-called “fake news” and other false content. The company is launching six new media literacy activities for the curriculum that will help teach kids things like […]

A legal challenge to a data transfer mechanism that’s used by thousands of companies to authorize taking European citizens’ personal data to the US for processing has been delayed. As we reported last month, the General Court of the EU had set a date of July 1 and 2 to hear the complaint brought by […]

If you asked the average person on the street what Robotic Process Automation is, most probably wouldn’t have a clue. Yet new data from Gartner finds the RPA market grew over 63% last year, making it the fastest growing enterprise software category. It is worth noting, however, that the overall market value of $846.2 million […]

Samsung’s approach to the smart home has been — “uneven” seems like a nice way of putting it. None of this has really been helped along by the fact that Bixby and the company’s long-promised smart speaker, the Galaxy Home, are still lost in the woods. SmartThings, the home automation startup the company acquired in […]

Osmo, a Palo Alto-based education startup acquired by Indian unicorn Byju’s for $120 million this year, is expanding its product lineup to serve a new and largely untapped market: pre-schoolers. Osmo today announced Osmo Little Genius Starter Kit, a set of tools that aims to help children that have yet to enter schools to understand […]

The Echo team must have started sweating when the Lenovo Smart Clock was announced during CES. Deep inside Seattle’s Day One building, Amazon was reading the release of the Echo Show 5, a pint-sized version of the company’s smart screen that bore more than a passing resemblance to Lenovo’s Google Assistant device. Amazon, of course, […]