Crunch Hype

Apple has finally listened to its small, but slowly growing user base in India. The iPhone-maker today announced a range of features in iOS 13 that are designed to appease users in the world’s second largest smartphone market. First up, the company says its Siri voice assistant now offers all new and “more natural” Indian English […]

Check your calendars, mobility startup fans. It’s only five short weeks until TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 goes down in San Jose. Get ready to dive into the current state of mobility, challenge assumptions, put hyperbole in its place and help shape the future of these rapidly evolving technologies. And if you want to expose your […]

Distru, a nearly three-year-old, Oakland-based startup whose platform aims to help track cannabis through its seed-to-sale process, has raised $3 million in seed funding led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from Village Global, Global Founders Capital, and numerous notable angel investors, including Elad Gil, Katie Stanton, and Avichal Garg. The deal is an interesting one […]

Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developer Conference in San Jose this morning with a two-and-a-half hour keynote, showing off everything the company has been working on for the past many months. Want to know everything they announced, but don’t have time to watch the whole thing yourself? We’ve wrapped it all up for you […]

A new deal between the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will see U.S. regulators divide and conquer as they expand their oversight of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook, according to multiple reports. New details have emerged of an agreement between the two U.S. regulators that would see the Federal Trade Commission take […]

Apple has told developers to stop including third-party trackers in apps designed for kids — or they face having their apps pulled from the app store. The tech giant quietly updated its guidelines for apps that are submitted to the app store’s kids category following the keynote address at its annual developer conference on Monday. […]

Apple is dismantling its aging iTunes software with today’s announcement that it’s launching standalone versions of its Music, Podcasts and TV apps for Mac users on the next version of macOS, Catalina. These same apps are currently available on iOS where they’re separate from Apple’s two marketplace apps, the iTunes Store and the App Store. […]

Apple announced during its WWDC keynote that iOS apps will run on macOS, starting with the next major release of macOS this fall — macOS Catalina. Third-party developers will be able to release their iOS apps on the Mac starting this fall. This might seem like a small change, but it requires a ton of radical […]

Apple will soon let you grant apps access to your iPhone’s location just once. Until now, there were three options — “always,” “never,” or “while using,” meaning an app could be collecting your real-time location as you’re using it. Apple said the “just once” location access is a small change — granted — but one […]

Onstage at WWDC, Apple announced that iPad’s software will now exist inside its own vertical OS. iPadOS doesn’t look dramatically different from iOS 12, this actually might be the lamest update they’ve had in a while, but the name change undoubtedly makes it easier for Apple to introduce functionality to iPads that won’t exist in […]

Today at Apple’s annual developer’s conference, Apple revealed the biggest update to CarPlay since its release. The revamped in-car system looks dramatically better, leaving behind the faux iPhone layout for something that looks better suited for us in cars. Until now, CarPlay was left largely forgotten since its debut in 2014. Most vehicles are now […]

We still don’t know exactly when Apple will launch its subscription streaming service TV+ (it’ll be sometime this fall), or how much it will cost, but CEO Tim Cook showed off a trailer for one of the original shows today at the Worldwide Developers Conference. That show is “For All Mankind,” a new drama from Ronald […]

Apple is giving iMessage a big upgrade with iOS 13, the company announced today at its Worldwide Developer Conference. At last, it will offer a way to get rid of those annoying gray initials that appear when someone isn’t in your Contacts with a photo you’ve uploaded. Instead, users will be able to add their […]

Apple shared some of the new features that you’ll get with the release of iOS 13 this fall. There are a ton of small and big feature updates and it felt like Apple executives were rushing through the presentation because there are so many things to announce. “iOS 13 is a huge release packed with […]

Apple has a new way to stop third-party sites and services from getting your information when you sign up to an app. All too often, developers give users the chance to sign in with one-click — using data fed in from Facebook, Google or Twitter. “Now this can be convenient, but it also can come […]

Today at Apple’s annual developer’s conference Apple added a cycle tracker for women the Apple Watch and iOS. This is being billed as a marquee new feature in its updates to the Apple Watch’s health app. “In watchOS 6 the cycle tracking app gives you a simple discreet way to visualize your cycle right on […]

Apple talked about the next major release for tvOS, the operating system for the Apple TV. The home screen has been slightly redesigned with autoplaying full screen previews. I hope you’ll be able to disable autoplaying videos as many people already hate those video previews on Netflix. tvOS will support multiple users so that your […]

LevelTen Energy, a marketplace that consolidates renewable energy projects and potential buyers to lower prices for aggregated buyers and expand the market for sellers, has raised $20.5 million in a new round of funding. Investors in the round included the venture arms of utility and energy companies like Constellation Technology Ventures (the investment arm of […]

Greetings from sunny San Jose. Apple’s annual World Wide Developers Conference officially kicks off this morning at the McEnery Convention Center with a big keynote. While the rest of the week is focused on developers, today’s show is all about what’s the come from the company, and after relatively low key events from Google and […]

Apple is holding a keynote today on the first day of its developer conference, and the company is expected to talk about a ton of software updates. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch the event as the company 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. Twitter bags deep learning talent behind London startup, Fabula AI Fabula AI has been developing technology to identify online disinformation by […]

Netflix announced this morning that it’s producing an animated series based on the popular card game Magic: the Gathering. Anthony and Joe Russo, the brothers who directed “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” have signed on as executive producers, while Henry Gilroy (a writer on “Star Wars Rebels”) and Jose Molina (“The Tick”) will serve […]

If Uber gets its way, flying taxis will be coming our way in the next couple of years. The company plans to launch trials as early as 2020. Mark Moore, Uber’s engineering director for Elevate, is one of the people tasked with making sure that happens. Moore joined the company back in 2017 from a […]

Medical testing giant Quest Diagnostics has confirmed a third-party billing company has been hit by a data breach affecting 11.9 million patients. The laboratory testing company revealed the data breach in a filing on Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to the filing, the breach was a result of malicious activity on the […]

Ditch those generic emoji. Facebook’s new Avatars feature lets you customize a virtual lookalike of yourself for use as stickers in chat and comments. Once you personalize your Avatar’s face, hair, and clothes, they’ll star in a range of frequently updated stickers conveying common emotions and phrases. From Likes to Reactions to Avatars, you could […]

Substack is launching a new feature called “community” — namely, the ability for newsletter publishers to create discussion threads, which can either be open to anyone or limited to subscribers. The idea of starting a discussion thread where readers can argue about things like the season finale of “Game of Thrones” isn’t new — and […]

Marcin Kleczynski is a shining example of the American dream. A Polish-born immigrant turned naturalized citizen, Kleczynski grew up in the Chicago suburbs spending much of his time on computers and the early days of the world wide web. He couldn’t afford to buy computer games; instead, he downloaded them from the internet — and […]

Anyplace, a startup offering furnished rooms and apartments to anyone who’s not interested in signing a long-term lease, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. CEO Satoru Steve Naito said he co-founded the company to meet his own needs as a “digital nomad” who likes to move from city to city […]

Amazon on its latest earnings call announced it was working towards making one-day shipping the new standard for Prime members. This morning, the retailer touted a milestone related to those efforts with news that now over 10 million items are now available for one-day shipping to Prime members. The news was largely a shot at […]

Before it got into the smart screen market with the Nest (nee Home) Hub, Google opted to let its hardware partners do the heavy lifting. Last year at CES, it announced a trio of devices from JBL, LG and Lenovo . All three were built around the same smart home user experience, but Lenovo was […]

Every year before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, the Chinese government begins to exert even more control over what information people can access online. This year is the 30th anniversary of the day the protests ended when the government sent troops to fire on students, activists and other people demonstrating […]

Twitter has just announced it has picked up London-based Fabula AI. The deep learning startup has been developing technology to try to identify online disinformation by looking at patterns in how fake stuff vs genuine news spreads online — making it an obvious fit for the rumor-riled social network. Social media giants remain under increasing […]

Fluree, a North Carolina startup that wants to bring the immutability of blockchain to the database, announced a $4.7 million seed round today led by ​4490 Ventures​ with participation from Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund​. As CEO and co-founder Brian Platz explains, the database combines blockchain and graph database technologies to offer a […]

Ring’s new outdoor lighting products are impressive. It’s rare, even in 2019, for something to work out of the box, but that’s what happened when I installed Ring’s outdoor lighting products. They just worked. You know the drill. You get a gadget and go to install it. Somewhere during the installation, it fails or hiccups. […]

The ongoing evolution of the startup factory known as Rocket Internet continues apace. Today, the group of regional e-commerce fashion sites incubated in the Berlin outfit that eventually got spun out under the Global Fashion Group umbrella — Zalora, Dafifi, The Iconic and La Moda — announced that it is planning a public listing on […]

A security researcher has disclosed a new flaw that undermines a core macOS security feature designed to prevent apps — or malware — from accessing a user’s private data, webcam or microphone without their explicit permission. The privacy protections, recently expanded in macOS Mojave, were meant to make it more difficult for malicious apps to […]

Analyst Canalys has updated its forecast of global smartphone shipments — saying it expects just 1.35 billion units to ship in 2019, a year-on-year decline of 3.1%. This follows ongoing uncertainty around US-China trade talks and the presidential order signed by Trump last month barring US companies from using kit by Chinese device makers, including […]

The next innovation in mobile is peeking its head for all to see today after Chinese companies Oppo and Xiaomi both showed off under-screen cameras. Apple’s notch set the ball rolling as a new way to pack a front-facing camera without compromising on the screen size, but it is already feeling date. The industry has […]

Internet shopping has been blamed for boarding up high streets across the UK. So it looks politically judicious for Amazon, the original ecommerce behemoth, to now be attaching its brand name to a pilot project aimed at sparking a little commercial life in denuded UK towns and cities by parachuting online SMEs into pop-up shops […]

As anyone who has ever tried to buy or sell a home knows, the entire process can be the most stressful of one’s life. Traditional real estate agents rarely make the process any less stressful, leaving the industry ripe for disruption by tech companies which can automate many of the existing processes. Startups like Offerpad […]

The value of remittances globally continues to rise, and today a startup that has built a business targeting money transfers into emerging markets has raised a large round of growth funding to capitalize on that. WorldRemit, the London startup that has focused on enabling competitively-priced, quick money transfers from migrant workers and immigrants living in […]

There’s a widely accepted method to interpret China’s official announcements: the shorter the news, the heavier it is. Today, in one concise sentence, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s telecom regulator, announced that it will “soon grant 5G licenses for commercial use.” That’s according to the Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily. TechCrunch reported […]

A big shout out to all you savvy startuppers — the day you’ve been waiting for has finally arrived. Yup, registration for Disrupt Berlin 2019 is officially open for business. We’re kicking things off with a super early-bird special, and that means only one thing — serious savings. Buy your passes now, and you can […]

Owlin, a startup we covered all the way back in late 2012, has raised $3.5 million in Series A funding. The fundraise follows the fintech company’s pivot from a real-time news alert service to a more comprehensive “AI-based” text and news analytics platform to help financial institutions assess risk. The new round is led by […]

SoftBank shook up the venture capital world with its unprecedented $100 billion Vision Fund, and the speculation continues around its follow-up. The fund hasn’t quite closed $100 billion — it is mighty close… — but that hasn’t stopped reports of a sequel from surfacing for the last 18 months. SoftBank has mown through its allocation […]

Hon on the heels of being acquired by company builder Finleap, German SME banking upstart Penta has appointed a new CEO. Marko Wenthin, who previously co-founded solarisBank (the banking-as-a-service used by Penta), is now heading up the company, having replaced outgoing CEO and Penta co-founder Lav Odorović. I understand Odorović left Penta last month after […]

After a temporary ban, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, commonly known as the IEEE, announced on Monday it has lifted curbs on editors and peer-reviewers that work for Huawei and the Chinese firm’s affiliates. The reversal is yet another example of the regulatory murkiness in the U.S.-China trade negotiations. In response to the […]

Five hours after Google publicly announced that it was working to resolve an outage in its Cloud computing network that had taken out a large chunk of Google services as well as Shopify, Snap, Discord and other popular apps, the problem seems to be resolved. The outage hit everything from the ability to control the […]

A Google Cloud outage is currently affecting a number of services in and out of the Google suite including Snap and Discord as well as Google services like Gmail, Nest, and others. The problem was first reported by East Coast users in the U.S. in the afternoon, but reports from outage monitor DownDetector indicate that […]