Crunch Hype

Well, here’s a bit of surprise news this evening: at some point in the future, Pokémon GO is going to wrap the player’s sleep habits into the gameplay. It’ll come as part of a wider initiative by The Pokémon Company to — as CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara put it in a press conference this evening — […]

When FireEye reported its earnings last month, the outlook was a little light, so the security vendor decided to be proactive and make a big purchase. Today, the company announced it has acquired Verodin for $250 million. The deal closed today. The startup had raised over $33 million since it opened its doors five years […]

Chinese automotive startup Nio is tweaking its plans for future electric vehicles, a move prompted by sluggish sales of its ES8 model. Nio, which reported in its unaudited financial results Tuesday a loss of $390.9 million in the first quarter, is taking a number of measures in response to a slowdown in sales. Those changes […]

Uber’s JUMP will soon no longer be the sole operator of stationless bike-share programs in San Francisco. Today, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced the expansion of its stationless bike-share program to allow additional companies to operate in the city. JUMP received an exclusive, 18-month permit to operate a stationless electric bike-share service in […]

We have an ever-growing number of distracted and inept drivers turning our crowded highways into a dystopic version of real-life Frogger. Enter the autonomous vehicle.

Google Lens users on iOS and ARCore-compatible Android phones are getting some added utility when it comes to ordering at restaurants or translating foreign languages on-the-go. The functionality was announced earlier this month at Google I/O. Users can access Lens in the Google Assistant, Google Photos and main Google search apps. It’s also baked directly […]

As Beyond Meat continues its reign as one of the kings of this year’s IPO mountain, and Impossible Foods serves up impossibly good numbers for Burger King, venture capitalists seem ready to feast on new food deals. And judging by market size and the returns that some companies have already realized by targeting the dairy […]

Before automakers and giant tech companies kicked off their own autonomous vehicle pilots, a startup called nuTonomy launched a self-driving taxi service in Singapore for the public, not just its test engineers. The AV industry took notice, and by October 2017 it was snapped up for $450 million by Aptiv, a U.S. auto supplier and […]

If you're feeling flush this week, then perhaps instead of buying a second Bugatti you might consider picking up this lightly used Enigma Machine. These devices, the scourge of the Allies in World War II, are rarely for sale to begin with — and one in such good shape that was actually used in the war is practically unheard of.

There are plenty of travel apps for researching flights and hotels or generally organizing your trips, but indie German developer Hans Knöechel struggled to find one that could gather all his travel-related information in one place, in addition to allowing a group of friends to collaborate on the trip-planning process. So he built one for […]

Warranties for purchased products is a $40 billion annual market. But in their current form, they are considered by some to be one of the bigger scams in the world of retail because they cost so much and often return too little. Now there is an alternative emerging. A startup out of Minneapolis, Minn. called […]

We’re hunting for bold, boundary-breaking founders of early-stage mobility startups to apply to our TC Top Picks program at Disrupt San Francisco 2019. “Bold and boundary-breaking” pretty much describes the current tech revolution taking place in mobility and transportation — one that Henry Ford and the Wright brothers could never have imagined. Top Pick designees […]

Honda e, the compact electric vehicle that’s coming to market in spring 2020, is bringing its side-view mirrors inside. The company confirmed Tuesday that its side-camera-mirror system, which was on the prototype version, will be a standard feature when the car enters production. The side-camera-mirror system includes two six-inch screens, situated on the left and […]

All-in-one PCs have adopted some pretty odd designs over the years, but I’ve never seen one quite like this. The Looking Glass Pro is an all-in-one gaming PC that’s focused on one thing, visualizing 3D content on its bizarre lenticular display that makes you feel like you’re staring into a glass box filled with pixels. […]

MyndYou, which has developed a technology to assess cognitive degeneration in senior citizens, has partnered with the Japanese company Mizuho Information & Research Institute to test the company’s product for a potential nationwide rollout later in 2019. Starting with five cities in Japan over the course of May, MyndYou’s technology will be deployed in homes around […]

Walmart announced today it has hired former Google, Microsoft and Amazon veteran Suresh Kumar in the newly created position of chief technology officer and chief development officer — a role that will report directly to Walmart CEO Doug McMillon. The CTO position was previously held by Jeremy King, who departed the retailer in March to […]

AR startup Meta’s original investors might have been screwed by the company’s collapse and fire sale, but a pair of VC firms are giving the brand another shot with a new corporate entity and CEO that the new backers hope will lead to a less abysmal outcome. Meta Company is now Meta View, “a wholly […]

9to5Mac’s Guilherme Rambo managed to obtain screenshots of iOS 13. While it still looks like iOS, there’s a twist — there will be a system-wide dark mode to make your apps look better at night. Apple is expected to announce the new version of iOS at its WWDC keynote on Monday. With iOS 13, users […]

There is a tendency at any conference to get lost in the message. Spending several days immersed in any subject tends to do that. The purpose of such gatherings is, after all, to sell the company or technologies being featured. Against the beautiful backdrop of the city of Barcelona last week, we got the full […]

Last week Modsy, a San Francisco-based startup raised a large amount of funding – $37 million in C-round funding to be precise. And that followed a $23 million series B round in December 2017. Why the large amounts I hear you ask? Well, Modsy is developing a platform that lets property owners create virtual renderings […]

Last year IBM and Danish shipping conglomerate Maersk announced the limited availability of a blockchain-based shipping tool called TradeLens. Today, the two partners announced that a couple of other major shippers have come on board. The partners announced that CMA CGM and MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company have joined TradeLens. When you include these companies together […]

MacKenzie Bezos, the world’s third-richest woman following her divorce from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, has signed the Giving Pledge — a commitment that will see her giving away more than half her wealth to philanthropy or charitable causes, either during her lifetime or in her will. Bezos recently made headlines when she gave […]

Spanish on-demand delivery startup Glovo is facing angry protests from couriers on its platform following the death of a 22-year-old rider on Saturday in Barcelona where the business is headquartered. Local press reports that the man, a Nepalese national called Pujan Koirala, had been substituting for a registered Glovo courier at the time he was […]

Huawei is understandably reexamining a number of relationships in the wake of a recent U.S. trade ban. While various component and software providers including Google and ARM have suspended dealings with the Chinese hardware giant, the latest issue comes from an altogether different source. The company told Reuters this week that it’s reassessing its relationship […]

The role of Product Manager can mean very different things at various companies. Should a product manager be technical? Scientific? Opinionated? J Crowley has run product at three big-name companies. At Foursquare, he led the rebuild of Swarm after a rocky initial launch and eventually became Head of Product. He then moved on to Blue […]

In emergency situations, minutes can mean the difference between life and death. Paladin Drones, a company launching out of Y Combinator, wants to use technology to minimize the amount of time between a 911 call and a response through autonomous drones. The company today announced the close of a $1.3 million seed round with participation […]

Remember that future we were promised where our vehicle magically tells us that we’re about to break down? Or actually never does? Or that the pick-up truck arrives before the driver even knows something wrong? That future is arriving. But like many things, the practical reality is that this technology starts to arrive in the […]

DJI this morning announced the latest version of its Manifold on-board drone computer. The second-generation device can be programmed for myriad different enterprise purposes, from research to routine inspections. The Manifold 2 packs either an Intel Core i7 or Nvidia Jetson TX2, integrating with the built-in sensors on the company’s Matrice 210 and 600 series […]

At the end of 2018, Google said mobile-first indexing — that is, using a website’s mobile version to index its pages — was being used for over half the web pages in Google search results. Today, Google announced that mobile-first indexing will now be the default for all new web domains as of July 1, […]

Efforts by shareholders to instruct Amazon to stop selling its facial recognition technology to government customers failed by a wide margin, according to a new corporate filing with regulators. About 2.4 percent of shareholders voted for the proposal, a fraction of the 50 percent necessary to pass. The measure needed to reach a 5 percent threshold […]

In 1992, Nintendo released Mario Paint. The SNES title was a strange departure, even as far as the diverse and wide-ranging gameplay of Mario’s world goes. For one thing, it shipped with a mouse, perhaps the unsexiest of all Nintendo peripherals. For another, it was far more focused on creation than gameplay — drawing, music, […]

When SeedLegals launched in 2017 in the UK, I’d say many of us thought “why has that not been done before?”. After all, two things have happened which make this an obvious idea for a startup: startup funding rounds are now so common that there is no reason large amounts of automation could be done. […]

Apple is updating the iPod touch with an A10 Fusion system-on-a-chip. Other than that, it looks pretty much like the old iPod touch with a 4-inch display, a classic home button and many different color options. The A10 Fusion chip was first introduced with the iPhone 7. In other words, the new iPod touch performs […]

Few things are more interesting that the convergence of old and new. It’s with that in mind that we once again look to Indonesia where East Ventures, an early-stage VC that’s behind a project to digitize the country’s street vendors, has backed a new startup that is modernizing street vendors who sell fresh produce. In […]

There’s more money racing into India’s increasingly-competitive two-wheeler market after electric scooter maker Ather Energy said today it has raised $51 million in new funding. The round was led by early backer Sachin Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, who invested $32 million. The rest of the money was provided by Hero MotoCorp, which added $19 million […]

A legal challenge to the EU-US Privacy Shield, a mechanism used by thousands of companies to authorize data transfers from the European Union to the US, will be heard by Europe’s top court this summer. The General Court of the EU has set a date of July 1 and 2 to hear the complaint brought […]

Even before Computex officially launched today, AMD and Qualcomm threw down the gauntlet at Intel with a new chip and a 5G PC, respectively. Today Intel responded in kind during its keynote presentation in Taipei, introducing new processors and laptops, in addition to unveiling Ice Lake, its 10th generation Intel Core chips. Now shipping to […]

The past year has seen Spotify embark on a series of acquisitions to beef up its service, particularly on podcast content. Now it is the turn of SoundCloud, another European music startup — albeit one that had lost its way in recent years — to go deal-making: the Berlin-based company has picked up Repost Network, […]

Future Positive Capital, an early-stage VC firm co-founded by ex-Index Ventures associate Sofia Hmich, breaks cover today. The new pan-European fund, which has a first close of $57.1 million, will invest in “deep tech” startups right across the region that are attempting to solve “the world’s most pressing problems”. Specifically, Hmich and her co-founders Alexandre […]

Massive news just dropped for Hong Kong’s capital markets. Alibaba, one of the world’s largest tech companies, is considering raising $20 billion through a second listing in Hong Kong, Bloomberg reported on Monday citing sources. TechCrunch has reached out to Alibaba for comment and will update the story if and when we have more information. […]

Most people wouldn’t think too much of a computer crammed into a briefcase — but if it’s one of the few remaining examples of the first computer ever built by Apple? That’s a whole different story. An original Apple I from 1976 — as hand-built by Steve Wozniak — just sold for £371,260 (or […]

Apple has issued a short statement on its website and in various newspapers announcing Apple Maps plans in Canada. The company plans to drive around the country with cars equipped with a ton of sensors in order to improve Apple Maps in Canada. Apple doesn’t say when it plans to finish scanning Canadian roads and […]

Meet French startup Reminiz, a computer vision company that can index any type of video — it’s a sort of Googlebot, but for video content. Reminiz can add tags of people, logos or emotions on live streams and on-demand videos. “The web is designed so that you can search for text — not video. We are […]

Writing app Ulysses has been updated with a few nifty feature additions. On the iPad, you can now split the editor into two side-by-side editors — this feature alone opens up a lot of possibilities. Ulysses also now supports the option to publish your writing directly to a Ghost blog. Ulysses is currently available on […]

Shan Kadavil, who spent early days of his career managing tech support firm Support and then heading India operations of gaming firm Zynga, says he had a calling of sorts when his son was born. Kadavil realized that much of the meat that sells in India is not exactly healthy. The perishables are loaded with […]

Qualcomm announced during its Computex press conference today that it will launch the first Snapdragon-powered 5G PC with Lenovo. The two companies describe the PC, called Project Limitless, as “the world’s first 7nm platform purpose-built for PCs that offers 5G connectivity.” The laptop runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8cx Compute Platform, which is designed to support […]

Planning to join us and more than 1,200 other startuppers at Disrupt Berlin 2019 on 11-12 December? That’s great news, but this is even better; you can save €200 off the super-early-bird ticket price if you sign up for our mailing list. Here’s the catch: You must sign up before registration officially opens, and that […]

It’s been a busy couple of months for Bytedance, one of the world’s most valuable startups and the operator of globally popular video app TikTok. The Beijing-based company has continued to grow its list of apps to include the likes of work collaboration tool Lark, an instant messenger called Feiliao as well as a music streaming […]

During its press conference in Taipei a day before Computex starts, Nvidia announced a new line of laptops that will run its RTX graphics processing units, as well as a new software platform called Studio, with SDKs and drivers to make graphics rendering and other tasks faster. The units are targeted to creative professionals, like […]

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles has proposed merging its business with Renault that, if accepted, would create the third largest global automaker with 8.7 million in annual vehicle sales. FCA delivered Monday a non-binding letter to Renault’s board that proposes combining the business as a 50-50 merger. FCA’s proposal illustrates the growing desire among automakers to consolidate, […]