Crunch Hype

Tesla might not engage in traditional advertising. That doesn’t mean the automaker isn’t keen on getting new customers and retaining the ones it already has. Most of Tesla’s methods have focused on leveraging its existing customer base to attract new buyers. And that strategy has continued. This time, the company is turning its showrooms into […]

The VidAngel story seemingly ended in late 2017 when it declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy. But the bad news wasn’t over for the streaming service, which promised to edit all of the dirty bits out of other people’s films. This week a federal jury in California ordered the Provo, Utah-based startup to pay $62.4 million to […]

Makeup tutorials and reviews are some of the most popular content on YouTube, as they help people learn about new products as well as how to apply them. YouTube is now kicking that experience up a notch with the introduction of a new AR feature for virtual makeup try-on right from the YouTube app. Called […]

"This conclusion was neither a rash nor a recent decision," Hockey explains.

Cruise is sharing a software platform with roboticists that was initially created to give its own engineers a better understanding of the petabytes of data generated every month from its fleet of autonomous vehicles. The platform is a data visualization tool called Webviz, a web-based application aimed at anyone working in robotics, a field that […]

Startup SafeAI, powered by a founding talent team with experience across Apple, Ford and Caterpillar, is emerging from stealth today with a $5 million funding announcement. The company’s focus is on autonomous vehicle technology, designed and built specifically for heavy equipment used in the mining and construction industries. Out the gate, SafeAI is working with […]

Two House lawmakers are pushing an amendment that would effectively defund a massive data collection program run by the National Security Agency unless the government promises to not intentionally collect data of Americans. The bipartisan amendment — just 15 lines in length — would compel the government to not knowingly collect communications — like emails, […]

Google today launched a new Chrome extension that allows you to flag suspicious sites for inclusion in the company’s Safe Browsing index, which is used by Chrome and a number of third-party browsers. In addition, Google is also launching a new warning in Chrome that puts up a roadblock before you visit a site that […]

The housing crisis in the Bay Area, particularly in San Francisco, is a complex and controversial topic with no one-size-fits-all solution — but a check for a billion dollars is about as close as you're going to get, and Google has just announced it's writing one.

There has been a longstanding gulf between the consumption music and the creation of it: not everyone has the time or money to spend on lessons and instruments, and for those in school, many music education programs have been cut back over the years, making the option of learning to play instruments for free less […]

When a company hires talent away from a competitor, onboarding the new employee can pose significant legal risks for both the company and the new employee. A fundamental aspect of Silicon Valley is...

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. Facebook announces Libra cryptocurrency: All you need to know Facebook has finally revealed the details of its cryptocurrency Libra, which will […]

Apple is launching a new beta program for Beddit, the sleep tracking company it acquired just over two years ago after selling Beddit products in Apple Stores for years. According to the beta program’s website, users who enroll will get early access to new versions of the Bedit app ahead of the general public. They’ll […]

Making pourover coffee is a cherished ritual of mine on most mornings. But there are times I wish I could have a single cup of pourover without fussing about the kitchen — and the Geesaa, a new gadget seeking funds on Kickstarter, lets me do that. But it's definitely still a ways from being a must-have.

Many of the major players in online advertising have come together to create an organization called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, which is supposed to focus on “digital safety.” In this context, that means safety for brand marketers, who want to ensure that their ads aren’t running alongside hateful, misleading or otherwise controversial content. […]

YouTuber Simone Giertz, celebrated DIY inventor, roboticist and general maker of cool stuff, decided not to wait for Tesla’s forthcoming pickup truck. Instead, she bought a Tesla Model 3 direct from the company new and then used elbow grease, ingenuity, some help from friends and power tools to turn it into a two-seater with a […]

NoGood CEO Mostafa Elbermawy describes how they evaluate a client’s growth challenges by quoting Zen teacher Hunryu Suzuki: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind there are only a few.” Rather than deferring to in-house playbooks, NoGood adopts an open mind combined with a methodical, data-driven approach to find untapped […]

Love it or hate it, Microsoft’s PowerPoint is a ubiquitous tool in the corporate world. Over the course of the last few years, Microsoft started to bring some of its AI smarts to PowerPoint to help you design good-looking slides. Today, it’s launching a number of updates and new features that make this even easier. […]

Facebook unveiled its Libra cryptocurrency initiative today, which is part of an alternative financial system (including new subsidiary and wallet ‘Calibra‘) it aims to build alongside industry and academic partners including MasterCard, PayPal, Visa, Uber, Andreessen Horowitz and Creative Destruction Lab. Facebook’s plans for Libra sound ambitious, risky and novel – but a predecessor exists […]

The concept of an IRL heads-up display has been a part of science fiction since basically the beginning. Big players have tried their hand at it with less than stellar results — most notably Google with Glass, and more recently Intel’s Vaunt. But North may have cracked the nut on smart glasses with Focals. They […]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming to bring you an important message: You have just four days left to buy your pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2019 before the super early-bird price expires on June 21 at 11:59 p.m. (PT). There’s a pass priced for every budget (even yours), and you can spread your payments […]

Snow day. All meetings are canceled until further notice. Google Calendar has been hit with what appear to be some pretty widespread issues. The company has confirmed service interruptions via its G Suite Status Dashboard, noting, “We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Calendar. We will provide more information shortly. The affected users are […]

Not even two years into its existence, orbital fuel supply startup Orbit Fab has chalked up a big win – successfully supplying the International Space Station with water, a first for any private company. It’s a big deal because providing water to the ISS involved a multi-day refueling process, done in microgravity, using processes and […]

Following news from earlier this month that FedEx was dumping Amazon from its air cargo service, Amazon this morning announced the expansion of its own air delivery network, Amazon Air. The retailer says it’s leasing an additional fifteen Boeing 737-800 cargo aircraft from partner GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS). These will join the five Boeing […]

After years of heel dragging, Nintendo finally opened itself up to the smartphone world in late-2016. The gaming giant hasn’t exactly opened the floodgates in the intervening years, but Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Dragalia Lost have filled the void in some form or other. There’s something to be said for the […]

NASA has taking a breathtaking new image of near-earth asteroid Bennu, captured by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft from its new, second orbit of the extraterrestrial object. The new picture, snapped on June 13, provides a pretty much full-length view of Bennu, with half of its surface lit by the sun and the other half in near-complete […]

GoTenna is best known for its outdoors-oriented consumer products that let you text and share locations between smartphones off the grid. But the company has found that government work — military, fire, rescue — is the real market, and is pursuing it with a vengeance on the strength of a $24 million funding round.

Youper, a mental health app with a chatbot it calls an “emotional health assistant,” has raised $3 million in seed funding from Goodwater Capital. The funds will be used to accelerate development of Youper’s artificial intelligence-based capabilities and grow its user base. Based in San Francisco, Youper was co-founded in 2016 by Dr. Jose Hamilton. […]

While Facebook makes a bold move into cryptocurrency to capitalise on its multi-billion user base, a social network that was once a credible competitor to it has quietly been snapped up by a subsidiary of Amazon. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Bebo, one of the earlier platforms to let people share thoughts and media […]

There are operating system updates that feel tacked on or otherwise not particularly useful. Then there are those that genuinely alter the way you interact with a device. This new addition by way of iOS 13’s second beta falls firmly into the latter, prompting users to cancel a subscription upon uninstalling from an app. Spotted […]

Truecaller, an app best known for helping users screen calls from strangers and spammers, is adding yet another feature to its service as it bolsters its super app status. The Stockholm-based firm said today that its app can now be used to place free VoIP-powered voice calls. The company told TechCrunch on Tuesday that it […]

MongoDB is hosting its developer conference today and unsurprisingly, the company has quite a few announcements to make. Some are straightforward, like the launch of MongoDB 4.2 with some important new security features, while others, like the launch of the company’s Atlas Data Lake, point the company beyond its core database product. “Our new offerings […]

Bay Area-based robotics startup Dishcraft has unveiled a massive robotics and AI-powered dishwashing system. Like much of the rest of the industrial robotics industry, the company’s looking to automate a dull task with a high turnover rate, which amounts to about a month of employment on average. It’s a beast of a system from the […]

Google Earth first made use of its rich global 3D visualization as a backdrop for a Carmen Sandiego tie-in back in March, but today there’s a new adventure to explore. After solving The Crown Jewels Caper, amateur home gumshoes are now tasked with finding out the secrets of The Keys to the Kremlin Caper, which […]

Salesforce announced it is making progress toward releasing a Customer Data Platform (CDP) this week at Salesforce Connections in Chicago. While the company is talking in greater detail about the platform, they are calling Customer 360, it won’t be available for pilot customers until this Fall. The idea behind the CDP isn’t all that different […]

Xiaomi, best known for its smartphones, is making serious inroads into Russia as it launched a collection of products in the country where some 145 million people live. That includes its smart TVs featuring 700,000 hours of content, smart wristbands, wireless earbuds, and flagship phone Mi 9T, which is identical to its recently announced Redmi […]

The first time I showed the Palm phone to the TechCrunch staff, they were excited. At the very least, it was a unique take on the category, designed to be a second phone for those moments that didn’t require a larger, bulkier device. But reality set in pretty quickly. The device’s capabilities were severely limited […]

Knowledge is the fuel of business. Every decision requires a full understanding of the data underlying it, and that means reaching out not only to an organization’s own staff for insight, but also to experts in the wider world. Management consultants, research agencies, and data providers make hundreds of billions of dollars per year attempting […]

Volvo and Nvidia announced a new partnership today aimed at developing the next-generation decision-making engine for Volvo Group’s fully autonomous commercial trucks and industrial service vehicles. The partnership will use Nvidia’s Drive artificial intelligence platform, which encompasses processing data from sensors, perception systems, localization, mapping and path prediction and planning. Volvo already has some freight […]

A number of incumbent backs are known to be developing new digital-first products in a bid to keep the new wave of challenger banks at bay and now it appears that the latest to make that move is J.P. Morgan. According to sources, the investment bank has begun recruiting for a secretive skunkworks project within […]

Optimizely, a platform that offers tools for A/B testing and personalization on the web and in mobile apps, today announced that it has raised a total of $105 million. This includes a $50 million Series D round led by Goldman Sachs Private Captial, with the participation of Accenture Ventures, as well as $55 million line […]

Facebook has finally revealed the details of its cryptocurrency Libra, which will let you buy things or send money to people with nearly zero fees. You’ll pseudonymously buy or cash out your Libra online or at local exchange points like grocery stores, and spend it using interoperable third-party wallet apps or Facebook’s own Calibra wallet […]

A couple of years ago London-based startup Zego realised gig-economy workers would need insurance, and went on to raise a very healthy £6 million in Series A funding, led by Balderton Capital. Its first products were pay-as-you-go scooter and car insurance for food delivery workers. It’s now announced a $42million raise in one of the […]

French startup Fairjungle wants to make it easier to book a flight or a hotel room for corporate purposes. The company just raised a $2 million funding round (€1.8 million) from Thibaud Elzière, Eduardo Ronzano, Bertrand Mabille and Whitestones Ventures. If you work for a big company, chances are you book corporate flights through GBT, […]

Following in the footsteps of AT&T and Verizon*, Sprint is now offering an LTE tracker. The matchbook-sized device, simply called Tracker, provides real-time location tracking on Safe + Found app. The Tracker competes with Tile, but instead of Bluetooth, Sprint’s device uses 4G LTE, GPS and Wi-Fi location services, so it can be used to […]

GuestReady, a three-year-old service that lets shared-economy hosts manage their business on Airbnb and other rental sites, has announced a $6 million Series A round. The investment was led by existing backer Impulse VC — the Russian fund that is backed by billionaire Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich — and new addition VentureSouq from Dubai. Other […]

Apple TV is getting a Picture-in-Picture mode that will allow users to stream two shows at the same time, TechCrunch has confirmed. The feature’s forthcoming launch was first reported by Apple news site 9to5Mac earlier today, following today’s release of new beta software for all of Apple’s operating systems, including tvOS. After installing tvOS beta […]

Many investors in Silicon Valley are waiting the next big platform. That’s fine with Lior Susan, a former Flex exec who in 2015 cofounded Eclipse Ventures with the legendary venture capitalist Pierre Lamond, long of Sequoia Capital. The duo, along with a team that has now grown to 13 people — happen to think the […]

Get ready for summer in the city, TechCrunch -style. We just released a fresh batch of tickets to the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party. Available on a first-come, first-served basis, tickets to our popular event sell out quickly, and they’ll be gone before you know it. Don’t wait — buy your ticket today. Join us […]