Crunch Hype

Remember when the idea of having a terabyte of storage was just mind-blowing? Now they’re packing a terabyte onto a card the size of your pinky nail. In news that would have made teenage me’s head pop, SanDisk is now selling a 1 terabyte version of its Extreme microSD line for $450. The company first […]

President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency to “deal with the threat posed by the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology… supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries.” Reports that the President would sign the executive order […]

Tesla has started pushing out a software update that will change battery charge and thermal management settings in Model S sedans and Model X SUVs following a fire in a parked vehicle in Hong Kong earlier this week. The software update, which Tesla says is being done out of “an abundance of caution,” is supposed […]

Augmented reality has the potential to instill awe and wonder in us just as magic would. For the very first time in the history of computing, we now have the ability to blur the line between the...

Every day we creep a little closer to Douglas Adams' famous and prescient babelfish. A new research project from Google takes spoken sentences in one language and outputs spoken words in another — but unlike most translation techniques, it uses no intermediate text, working solely with the audio. This makes it quick, but more importantly lets it more easily reflect the cadence and tone of the speaker's voice.

The United States will not join other nations in endorsing the “Christchurch Call” — a global statement that commits governments and private companies to actions that would curb the distribution of violent and extremist content online. “While the United States is not currently in a position to join the endorsement, we continue to support the […]

Google today disclosed a security bug in its Bluetooth Titan Security Key that could allow an attacker in close physical proximity to circumvent the security the key is supposed to provide. The company says the bug is due to a “misconfiguration in the Titan Security Keys’ Bluetooth pairing protocols” and that even the faulty keys […]

VMware announced today that it’s acquiring Bitnami, the package application company that was a member of the Y Combinator Winter 2013 class. The companies didn’t share the purchase price. With Bitnami, the company can now deliver more than 130 popular software packages in a variety of formats, such as Docker containers or virtual machine, an […]

Microsoft today announced that it has open-sourced a key piece of what makes its Bing search services able to quickly return search results to its users. By making this technology open, the company hopes that developers will be able to build similar experiences for their users in other domains where users search through vast data […]

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. San Francisco passes city government ban on facial recognition tech The Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, introduced by San Francisco Supervisor Aaron […]

“Black Mirror” is coming back for its fifth season to once again show us why technology’s progress means we can no longer have nice things. The new season will tell three stories written by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones. Featured performers include Anthony Mackie, Miley Cyrus, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Topher Grace, Damson Idris, Andrew Scott, […]

Conference call with CEO Eric Yuan of newly-IPOd Zoom Since we first started Extra Crunch three months ago (my, time flies), we’ve been offering members live conference calls with our reporters. This week, we are trying something new and bringing a guest aboard. TechCrunch’s SF-based startup and venture capital reporter Kate Clark is going to […]

Moving anything or anyone from point A to point B will never be the same, thanks to the rapid evolution taking place in mobility technology. And if you’re ready to demo your mobile-focused early-stage startup tech to this community’s top influencers, there’s no better place to do it than onstage at TC Sessions: Mobility 2019. […]

Twitch Prime, the game streaming service’s version of Amazon Prime, has typically focused on offering subscribers free loot and other game-related perks since its debut a few years ago. Now, that’s changing. Twitch Prime is today rolling its first-ever non-gaming “loot” — a 30-day subscription to the anime streaming service Crunchyroll Premium. Crunchyroll is a […]

Amazon Fire TV’s lead over rival streaming platform Roku is widening. In January at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Amazon said it had “well over” 30 million Fire TV users compared with Roku’s then 27 million active users. In roughly four months’ time, Fire TV has grown to over 34 million active users, […]

Digital ministers of the Group of 7 nations are meeting today to discuss an upcoming charter on toxic content and tech regulation at large. Those countries plan to sign a charter during the annual G7 meeting in Biarritz, France in August. “Everyone has to deal with hateful content,” France Digital Minister Cédric O said in […]

The average enterprise today uses about 90 different software packages, with between 30-40 of them touching customers directly or indirectly. The data that comes out of those systems can prove to be very useful — to help other systems and employees work more intelligently, to help companies make better business decisions — but only if […]

As containers and microservices have proliferated, a new kind of tool called the service mesh has developed to help manage and understand interactions between services. While Kubernetes has emerged as the clear container orchestration tool of choice, there is much less certainty in the service mesh market. Solo.io announced a new open source tool called […]

The startup studio model is taking off.

The current FCC commissioners’ stances haven’t always made them the most popular with consumers (see: net neutrality), but new, stricter robocall rules could help them win over some fans. Ajit Pai this morning proposed new rules that would let mobile carriers block the unwanted calls by default. The Chairman explained that current rules have left […]

It’s been a long road for BookingBug, a software platform originally conceived because its founder had trouble coordinating dates for a squash match. Born out of the evergreen problem companies have in scheduling staff, since 2008 it’s gradually become a full-blown SaaS solution for a variety of customer journeys, of which scheduling is only one […]

Measured is giving advertisers a new way to determine whether their ads are actually working. Many of those advertisers currently rely on multi-touch attribution, an approach designed to measure how each channel and each ad contributed to a purchase decision. In fact, that’s what Measured CEO Trevor Testwuide offered at his last startup, Conversion Logic. But […]

I’m struggling to come up with a single bit of technology I was more excited about at CES than the Nuraloop. I reviewed Nura’s original product fairly positively, but I’ve never really be an over-ear headphone person. The company’s latest strips a lot of the unnecessary bits from those original Nuraphones, into a far more […]

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has resumed trading activity. Users can now cancel open orders, deposit crypto assets into their Binance account, and of course buy and sell cryptocurrencies. You can’t withdraw crypto assets to an external wallet just yet, but the company says that this feature will be available shortly. You can cancel orders now. Trading, […]

Egnyte announced today that customers can now store G Suite files inside its storage, security and governance platform. This builds on the support the company previously had for Office 365 documents. Egnyte CEO and co-founder Vineet Jain says that while many enterprise customers have seen the value of a collaborative office suite like G Suite, […]

Startup CEOs heading to the public markets have a love/hate relationship with their investment bankers. On one hand, they are helpful in introducing a company to a wide range of asset managers who will hopefully hold their company’s stock for the long term, reducing price volatility and by extension, employee churn. On the other hand, […]

It’s business as usual for Alibaba after the Chinese e-commerce giant bounced back from a lackluster Q3 — which saw its slowest growth for three years. For Q4, the company saw revenue surge 51 percent year-on-year to reach 93.5 billion RMB, or $13.9 billion. That revenue beat analyst expectations of 91.5 billion RMB, according to […]

For a brief time, DJI and GoPro were partners — or at least uncomfortable allies. Way back in 2014, the companies were joined together with the intention of building a drone designed to capture athletes in motion. It must have seemed like a perfect piece of synergy from two players at the top of their […]

Boosted, the maker of the electric skateboard Boosted Board, has unveiled its next mode of transportation: the electric scooter. Available for pre-order today, Boosted Rev costs $1,599 and is designed to be durable, fast, efficient up hills and safe. The Boosted Rev, which has been about 18 months in the making, will start shipping this […]

American Express has today announced its intentions to acquire Resy, the CRM and reservation platform based out of New York. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Resy launched back in 2014 as a platform that allowed users to buy reservations from restaurants in situations where they’d usually have to book months in advance. […]

A high demand for engineering talent in our digital world has driven companies that need to make these technical hires to cast their nets wider in the search for good people. Now, a company that has built a platform that it says helps companies do this in a more accurate and efficient way has raised […]

Furniture subscription rental service, Feather, is heading to Los Angeles and Orange County, California with $12 million in new funding and “thousands” of customers in New York and San Francisco. Sourcing its furniture from West Elm, Feather has come up with a business model that it says solves the problem fast furniture quickly filling up […]

The growth of Airbnb and other big travel startups has given a fillip to the wider travel industry, and today several smaller startups in the short-term property sector are announcing that they have merged to tackle the opportunity with more scale. The UK’s BnbBuddy and The London Residents Club, along with both Hintown from Italy […]

Tencent, Asia’s largest tech firm, had a horrific 2018 on account of a country-wide freeze on new game monetization in China, but there’s evidence it has turned the corner. The company’s new mobile gaming hit Game for Peace has yet to kickstart the company’s recovery from a few weakening quarters, but its booming financial technology […]

Hot on the heels of Indian delivery startup BigBasket raising $150 million — at a unicorn valuation, no less — so its close rival Grofers has also pulled in capital after it announced a $200 million raise to battle its local competition and international giants Amazon and Walmart. The round is the largest in India’s online […]

A day after India’s largest wallet app Paytm entered the credit cards business, local ride-hailing giant is following suit. Ola has inked a deal with state-run SBI bank and Visa to issue as many as 10 million credit cards in next three and a half years, it said today. The move will help Visa and […]

This one’s dedicated to all the genius hackers, coders and creators who also happen to be inveterate procrastinators. Right here, right now — this is your final opportunity to participate in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May. The application is free and the process couldn’t be easier, so drop whatever you’re […]

Facebook is cracking down on its live streaming service after it was used to broadcast the shocking mass shootings that left 50 dead at two Christchurch mosques in New Zealand in March. The social network said today that it is implementing a ‘one strike’ rule that will prevent users who break its rules from using the […]

China’s Huawei is making a serious foray into the enterprise business market after it unveiled a new database management product on Wednesday, putting it in direct competition with entrenched vendors like IBM, Oracle and Microsoft. The Shenzhen-based company, best known for making smartphones and telecom equipment, claims its newly minted database uses artificial intelligence capabilities […]

As the trade war with China intensifies again, President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order that would make possible a ban on American companies from using telecommunications equipment from Huawei and other companies that the government believes pose a national security risk, Reuters reports. The executive order cites the International Emergency Economics […]

Volvo Car Group has inked a massive multi-billion dollar supply deal with the Chinese battery manufacturer, CATL, and Korea’s LG Chem to supply its planned fleet of electric vehicles. The lithium ion batteries from both suppliers will power the development of Volvo Cars’ electrification strategy for its own brand and the company’s Polestar joint venture […]

As measles outbreaks in the United States and other countries continue to get worse, Twitter is introducing new search tools meant to help users find credible resources about vaccines. It will also stop auto-suggesting search terms that would lead users to misinformation about vaccines. In a blog post, Twitter vice president of trust and safety […]

Tired of chatty drivers? Uber is finally giving users its most requested feature: an in-app way to ask for minimal conversation during your ride. The “Quiet Mode” feature is free and will be available to everyone in the US tomorrow, but only on Uber Black and Uber Black SUV premium rides. Users can select “Quiet […]

Amazon want to be plenty of things, the most predictable of which is its ambition to control America’s shipping backbone. The company’s efforts to bring users whatever they desire in 24 hours requires movements by land, air and sea. Today, the company broke ground on expanding its airborne ambitions, breaking ground on a three million […]

Away's new lofty valuation proves how far you can get with excellent branding.

The SaaS endpoint protection firm submitted documents to the SEC on Tuesday afternoon.

On Tuesday, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted to approve a ban on the use of facial recognition tech by city agencies, including the police department. The Stop Secret Surveillance Ordinance, introduced by San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, is the first ban of its kind for a major American city and the seventh major surveillance […]

There are as many reasons to get excited about solving the problem of drone-filled skies as there are reasons to be concerned about their negative implications.

Stocks had their best trading day in a while on Tuesday as investors took a break from selling to assess the actual effects of the trade war with China. Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 gained back some of their losses with the DJIA climbing 207.06 points to close at 25,532.05 […]

We’re looking for fearless early-stage startup founders who want to launch their business on a global stage. We’re talking about competing in Startup Battlefield, our legendary, life-altering pitch-off that takes place at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 on October 2-4. Do you have what it takes to be legendary? Apply right here and find out. What […]