Crunch Hype

A fresh $15 million in funding led by Forerunner Ventures should help. Forerunner founder Kirsten Green, who takes a board seat as part of the round, is known for countless savvy bets on a wide number of consumer brands that have taken off with users, from Dollar Shave Club to Bonobos to Glossier. With Forerunner’s […]

Facebook will not remove the faked videos featuring Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian and President Donald Trump from Instagram, the company said in a statement. Earlier today, Vice News reported on the existence of videos created by the artists Bill Posters and Daniel Howe and video and audio manipulation companies including CannyAI, Respeecher and Reflect. The work, featured in […]

Tesla wants to show off a prototype of an electric pickup this year and it’s working on bringing the Model Y and Class 8 semi truck into production. But really, who cares about any of that because Tesla apparently has a design for a submarine car just sitting around collecting dust. Tesla CEO Elon Musk […]

The value of all the nickel and iron that scientists believe make up 16-Psyche’s potato-shaped asteroid in the outer reaches of the asteroid belt totals some $10,000 quadrillion. It’s an astronomical sum, but NASA’s Psyche mission, which has now received approval to enter the final design and development stages before manufacturing begins for its 2022 […]

Tesla might get into the business of mining minerals used in electric vehicle batteries if it wants to expand its product lineup and scale production, CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s annual shareholder meeting. The comments came after Musk talked about plans for an electric pickup truck and an aim to begin production of […]

It’s going to be a while before players can get their hands on the Breath of the Wild sequel teased at the end of Nintendo’s E3 Direct earlier today. The good news, however, is that Nintendo’s got a few other Zelda-related adventures in the pipeline before that. There’s the compelling beat-based Cadence of Hyrule, due […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk says that the company is in the process of completing a “small acquisition” that will help it release its own insurance product, something it said in April that it was only around “a month” away from bringing to market. One month is at least two months when translated from Musk-time to […]

Tesla is currently installing its solar roof product in eight states, according to Elon Musk, speaking at the Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting on Tuesday. The solar roof-tile project has had a relatively long genesis since being unveiled three years ago, in 2016. In 2017, the company claimed its first-ever installations of the Tesla solar roof, […]

During the Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting that took place on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk didn’t mince words when he talked about what he thinks of the value proposition of traditional fossil fuel vehicles. He called it “financially insane” to buy any car that isn’t an electric car capable of full autonomy — which, conveniently, […]

A number of states have filed a lawsuit to block the proposed $26.5 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. The lawsuitm, filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile would be anti-competitive and drive up costs for consumers. “When it comes […]

Lidar is a critical part of many autonomous cars and robotic systems, but the technology is also evolving quickly. A new company called Sense Photonics just emerged from stealth mode today with a $26M A round, touting a whole new approach that allows for an ultra-wide field of view and (literally) flexible installation.

The capstone to an eventful Nintendo's E3 Direct was an unexpected joy: A sequel to the modern classic in the Zelda series, Breath of the Wild. Of course, all they said was that it's "in development," but that's enough for me.

Amazon HQ2 may be out of New York City, but Amazon continues to set the standard for what New Yorkers expect from their companies.

In May, Twitter announced plans to launch its Twitter Developer Labs program, a way for app developers to sign up to experiment with pre-released beta APIs. The idea, the company explained at the time, is to allow developers to test new API products early and offer feedback. Today, Twitter says it’s introducing its first Twitter […]

WhatsApp has so far relied on past dealings with bad players within its platform to ramp up its efforts to curtail spam and other automated behavior. The Facebook -owned giant has now announced an additional step it plans to take beginning later this year to improve the health of its messaging service: going after those […]

Uber’s architecture and engineering partners have unveiled some new skyport designs. To be clear, Skyports are the areas where people will be able to board and disembark from Uber Air vehicles. At Uber Elevate today, eight firms unveiled 16 new designs for Skyports. Below, you’ll find the top concept from each firm. You may be […]

When Uber first announced Uber Air, it intended for Dubai to be its first international city. That changed last year when Uber put out an open call to interested cities to describe the clear need for aerial transit, the environmental conditions of the city and local government commitment. Today at Uber Elevate, Uber announced Melbourne, […]

You might figure the biggest U.S. banks would have some of the most secure mobile apps. Spoiler alert: not so much. New findings from security firm Zimperium, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, say most of the top banking apps have security flaws that put user data at risk. The security firm, which has a commercial stake […]

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the home of open-source projects like Kubernetes, today announced that Apple is joining it as a top-level Platinum End User Member. With this, Apple is joining 89 existing CNCF end-user members like Adidas, Atlassian, Box, GitHub, the New York Times, Reddit, Spotify and Walmart. Apple, in typical fashion, isn’t […]

After a weekend of press events, E3 officially kicks off in earnest this morning. Nintendo continued its tradition of starting the show off with its customary Direct streaming event. Aside from a brief Doug Bowser/Bowser Koopa mixup at the top, there was very little executive chatter, with the company instead focusing on trailers. And that’s […]

You might have notice something funny if you visited TechCrunch dot com this morning (aside form the usual dryly hilarious tech commentary, that is). Our site, along with others, was hit by a major issue to WordPress’s VIP Go platform. For now, you’ll have to settle for a potted plant in place of our normal […]

Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant faces a massive challenge: Operating not only as a multi-lingual product, but also ensuring that all regional variants of languages it supports are well understood by Alexa, too. To help accomplish that, Alexa has been retrained entirely for every variant needed – a time- and resource-heavy activity. But a new machine […]

Dropbox is evolving from a file storage system to an enterprise software portal where you can coordinate work with your team. Today the company launches a new version of Dropbox that allows you to launch apps with shortcuts fo G Suite and more plus use built-in Slack message-sending and Zoom video calls. It lets you […]

Fans had few expectations rolling into Nintendo’s E3 Direct that were more pronounced than hopes for more details on Animal Crossing for Switch. We got some insight into the title’s storyline, but the bigs news is that the originally announced 2019 release timeframe is getting pushed back. Now, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, as it’s being […]

Mobile gaming continues to hold its own, accounting for 10% of the time users spend in apps — a percentage that has remained steady over the years, even though our time in apps overall has grown by 50% over the past two years. In addition, games are continuing to grow their share of consumer spend, … Continue reading "Mobile games now account for 33% of installs, 10% of time, and 74% of consumer spend"

Mary Meeker presents tech's favorite slide deck.

Growth Pilots is one of the more exclusive performance marketing agencies in San Francisco, but they know how to help high-growth startups excel at paid marketing. CEO and founder Soso Sazesh credits his personal experiences as an entrepreneur along with his team’s deep understanding of high-growth company needs and challenges as to what sets Growth … Continue reading "Verified Expert Growth Marketing Agency: Growth Pilots"

As studies show that early diagnosis and preventative therapies can help prevent the onset of Alzheimer’s, startups that are working to diagnose the disease earlier are gaining more attention and funding. That’s a boon to companies like Neurotrack, which closed on $21 million in new financing led by the company’s previous investor, Khosla Ventures, with … Continue reading "As Alzheimer’s costs soar, startups like Neurotrack raise cash to diagnose and treat the disease"

We’re totally stoked to see all of you at TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 on July 10 in San Jose, Calif. That’s slightly less than a month away, and if you want to save on the price of admission, you need to play beat the clock. Early-bird pricing ends on Friday, June 14 at 11:59 p.m. … Continue reading "72 hours left on early-bird savings for TC Sessions: Mobility 2019"

Facebook shut down its Research and Onavo programs after TechCrunch exposed how the company paid teenagers for root access to their phones to gain market data on competitors. Now Facebook is relaunching its paid market research program, but this time with principles — namely transparency, fair compensation and safety. The goal? To find out which other … Continue reading "Facebook’s new Study app pays adults for data after teen scandal"

In a talk at the Uber Elevate summit in Washington, D.C., today, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao shared a total overall figure for ongoing testing of autonomous vehicles on U.S roads: Over 1,400 self-driving cars, trucks and other vehicles are currently in testing by over 80 companies across 36 US states, plus DC […]

Mozilla’s Firefox is getting a new logo that is meant to reflect that the brand now stands for more than a browser. With products like its password manager Lockwise, private file sharing service Send and security tools like Firefox Monitor, Mozilla has greatly expanded the brand. That’s a challenge no branding expert can refuse, so […]

A legal challenge to the UK’s controversial mass surveillance regime has revealed shocking failures by the main state intelligence agency, which has broad powers to hack computers and phones and intercept digital communications, in handling people’s information. The challenge, by rights group Liberty, led last month to an initial finding that MI5 had systematically breached […]

“You’re probably asking, ‘what is a gaming browser?’ ” Opera PM Maciek Kocemba says in the opening of the Opera GX introduction video. Fair enough. My first thought when the Norwegian browser company mentioned the concept to me was something akin Google Stadia, with remote game streaming. Turns out a gaming browser — in this […]

It’s been just over a year since Microsoft bought GitHub for $7.5 billion, but the company has grown in that time, and today it announced that it has hired former Bitnami COO and cofounder, Erica Brescia to be its COO. Brescia handled COO duties at Bitnami from its founding in 2011 until it was sold […]

Goodwill and mobile marketplace app OfferUp have announced a new partnership focused on bringing Goodwill’s secondhand inventory to the millions of OfferUp shoppers, for both local pickup and delivery. The deal sees over 100 Goodwill stores listing their inventory in OfferUp in New York, New Jersey, San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin Counties, South Florida, […]

Uber is partnering with mobile network operator AT&T on the always-on connectivity it’ll require for its aerial transportation service network. The on-demand mobility company announced the team-up at its annual Elevate Summit, which brings together a number of key players working toward making affordable, accessible in-city aerial transit a reality. Uber said that it’s already […]

As grocery shopping moves online, one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been directly addressed: fresh fruits and vegetables. That also happens to be a category in which there is a ton of food waste, with a good deal of fruits and veggies never making it out of the grocery store to begin with. Misfits Market […]

Andreessen Horowitz <3 Latin American startups. Latin America is the only region outside of the U.S. where the venture firm is routinely investing capital, and it just made another commitment, doubling down on its early-stage support for the point-of-sale lending startup ADDI. ADDI picked up $12.5 million in new financing in April of this year […]

Following November’s closure of Amazon’s restaurant delivery business in London, the company is now shutting down operations in the U.S. The service, which was launched back in fall 2015, was designed to give Prime members another perk — a way to order meals, not just products and groceries — through the e-commerce giant. But the […]

Uber has big dreams for Uber Air, the flying taxi service it’s wanting to launch in 2023. At the third annual Uber Elevate, Head of Elevate Eric Allison said the company expects Uber Air to be cheaper than driving a car. It surely won’t be that way on day one, but once Uber deploys fully […]

Short-distance commuter air travel has come a long way in the past few years – at least when it comes to concepts. The latest vision of how we’ll get around in the city skies of the (near?) future from Embraer evolves some of what we’ve already seen, and highlights a few things that make clear […]

The future of rocket manufacturing has touched down in Mississippi. At NASA’s John C. Stennis Space Center, nestled in Hancock County, Miss. right on the border of Louisiana, the Los Angeles-based 3D printed spacecraft manufacturer, Relativity Space, is planning a massive $59 million expansion to make a permanent manufacturing hub in this bucolic corner of […]

Europe has today published common rules for the use of drones. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) says the regulations, which will apply universally across the region, are intended to help drone operators of all stripes have a clear understanding of what is and is not allowed. Having a common set of rules will […]

Welcome is a new app that CEO Matthew Rosenberg said is designed for a more spontaneous approach to traveling. “What we’re going after is these millennials [and] Gen Z travelers who feel comfortable going in the moment,” Rosenberg told me. “Eighty-five percent of people aren’t even looking at activities before they arrive.” So instead of […]

Lyft is ditching Ford’s branding for its own with the launch of its new pink-wheeled pedal-assist bikes in the San Francisco Bay Area. Instead of Ford GoBike, these bikes will now be known as Bay Wheels with Lyft’s branding prominently displayed. Eventually, all of the bikes in the Ford GoBike fleet will become Bay Wheels. […]

Transit, a company that has spent its entire life trying to make it easier to get around cities, is unveiling a new machine-learning powered estimated time of arrival prediction feature to help address one of the most annoying things about taking public transit: not knowing when the next bus is going to arrive. Montreal-based Transit […]

Part real estate fund, part tech startup, ZeroDown wants to make it easier to buy a home in the Bay Area.

Brex CEO Henrique Dubugras details the fintech startup's latest round.