Crunch Hype

Bling Capital, YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin and several others have participated in the round.

Volkswagen opened up pre-orders in Europe at a launch event Wednesday for a special edition of the first model in its new all-electric ID brand. Within 24 hours, the company received more than 10,000 registrations, a result that suggests growing demand for electric vehicles. VW revealed Wednesday the name, some pricing and range specs for […]

A little over two years ago, The New Yorker ran a story about the survivalism craze sweeping Silicon Valley. The moneyed elite behind the tools of convenience that make modern life were, it turned out, making detailed contingency plans for the collapse of the civilization they’d help architect. Now, there’s a media company for that. The […]

Such hate. Such dismay. “How Slack is ruining work.” “Actually, Slack really sucks.” “Slack may actually be hurting your workplace productivity.” “Slack is awful.” Slack “destroys teams’ ability to think, plan & get complex work out the door.” “Slack is a terrible collaboration tool.” “Face it, Slack is ruining your life.” Contrarian view: Slack is […]

More dismal news from the smartphone number crunchers. New figures out of Canalys put the North American smartphone market at five year low for the first quarter of 2019. That’s…bad. But also, pretty inline with what we’ve been seeing globally. The market has stagnated, and while manufacturers aren’t in full on panic mode, there’s certainly […]

Existing approaches to blocking malicious advertising aren’t working — at least according to digital ad veteran Seth Demsey. That should resonate with anyone who’s ever encountered an ad that immediately redirected them to a website filled with annoying gift card offers. And it’s the issue that the startup Demsey co-founded, clean.io, is working to address. Today, […]

Facebook’s VP of VR product Hugo Barra is out after some leadership changes at the top of the Oculus organization. He’ll be stepping down into a new role leading global AR/VR partnerships, while Eric Tseng, Facebook’s director of product management, will be replacing Barra with a new title as head of VR product management. Barra […]

Netflix is further investing in its children’s programming ahead of the launch of a highly anticipated rival: Disney+. The company announced today it has acquired StoryBots — a children’s media company and brand created by JibJab’s founders, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis. The streaming service isn’t disclosing the acquisition price, but CNBC says the price was […]

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. Google Play is changing how app ratings work Specifically, Google says it will start giving more weight to reviews that discuss […]

Instagram isn’t just pretty pictures. It now also harbors bullying, misinformation, and controversial self-expression content. So today Instagram is announcing a bevvy up safety updates to protect users and give them more of a voice. Most significantly, Instagram will now let users appeal the company’s decision to take down one of their posts. A new […]

Docpack is offering businesses a simple way to share their documents — particularly with customers at large enterprises that may block services like Dropbox or Google Drive. Founder and CEO Rurik Bradbury said he encountered this issue while serving as the head of conversational strategy at LivePerson (he’s also been an executive and/or co-founder at […]

Blue Origin is hosting a media event later today in Washington, D.C. TechCrunch will be on the ground, reporting live, though details around precisely what will be announced are still pretty minimal. According to new reporting from Reuters, however, boss-man Jeff Bezos is set to unveil his plans to help the U.S. government establish a […]

Base coined the term “blanding,” but the international branding agency is anything but boring. With clients ranging from AI startup Rival Theory to e-commerce company Kidbox, Base leverages its broad portfolio of clients and designers from all around the world to help startups develop their individual personas. As they celebrate their 20th anniversary this year, […]

The latest call to break up Facebook looks to be the most uncomfortably close to home yet for supreme leader, Mark Zuckerberg. “Mark’s power is unprecedented and un-American,” writes Chris Hughes, in an explosive op-ed published in the New York Times. “It is time to break up Facebook.” It’s a long read but worth indulging […]

The constant refrain in the tech world is that the world is about to be rocked by the combination of AI and robots. Therefore you’d think that startups that build either AI or robots would be onto a winner. However, there’s a serious misunderstanding going on. What is becoming clear is that the closer companies […]

Jumpin’ Jack Flash-sale, startup fans! If you love the idea of saving even more money on passes to the preeminent tech conference focused on early-stage startups (and hey, who wouldn’t?), this is your chance. We’re holding a 48-hour flash sale that shaves an extra $200 off the price of select passses to Disrupt San Francisco […]

Samsung has been understandably silent about the Galaxy Fold for the last couple of weeks. The company’s been reassessing issues with the foldable’s display after initially chalking up problems with review units to small sample sizes and user error. It’s tough to say how difficult and expensive a fix will be, but this surely isn’t […]

Edgewell Personal Care, which owns brands like Schick (razors), Banana Boat (sunscreen) and Wet Ones (moist wipes), is adding Harry’s to that list in a $1.37 billion acquisition. Founded in 2013, Harry’s is part of the current wave of brands using the internet to sell products directly to consumers. (In addition to razors, it also […]

Twitter’s latest transparency report is out. The social media giant said it received 6% fewer requests for user data from governments between June and December 2018 than during its previous reporting period. According to the newly released data, Twitter received 6,904 government requests for information on 11,112 accounts — the exact number of requests as its […]

Intello, the New York City-based SaaS management platform, announced a $2.5 million extended seed round today, along with some product enhancements. The round was led by Resolute Ventures . Harrison Metal and Magnetico Ventures also participated, along with various individual angel investors, including Zane Lackey from Signal Sciences, Chris Smoak from Atrium and Zach Sherman […]

Singapore has passed a controversial bill that could equip the government with extensive powers to police online media and free speech. The bill was first drafted last month and, as had been expected, it passed 72-9 in Singapore’s parliament, dominated by the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) party, late on Wednesday. As we reported last […]

Hotels are convenient but rarely homey. Short-term rentals through Airbnb or HomeAway are often comfy but can be a pain to book and check-in. Business travelers often have to pick the best of two lousy options. Mint House is summed up best by Tige Savage, Revolution Venture managing partner: “Mint House is the best of […]

“Fake news” — news content that either misleads people with half-truths, or outright lies — has become a permanent fixture of the internet. Now, as tech and media platforms continue to search for the best way to fight it, Factmata — a London startup backed by Biz Stone, Craig Newmark, Mark Cuban, Mark Pincus, and […]

Coalition, a cybersecurity insurance company, has raised $40 million in its latest round of funding. Fintech investment giant Ribbit Capital led the investment with participation from Greenoaks Capital and Hillhouse Capital. Coalition’s insurance covers expenses incurred from liabilities related to third-parties, such as fines and penalties — as well as fraud, breach response, extortion and […]

A coalition of child protection and privacy groups has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging it to investigate a kid-focused edition of Amazon’s Echo smart speaker. The complaint against Amazon Echo Dot Kids, which has been lodged with the FTC by groups including the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, the Center […]

Rae Witte Contributor Share on Twitter Rae Witte is a New York-based freelance journalist covering music, style, sneakers, art and dating, and how they intersect with tech. You can find her writing on i-D, The Wall Street Journal, Esquire and Forbes, among others. More posts by this contributor Why women are indefinitely sharing their locations […]

It’s that time again. Parents across the world are doling out $15 to Epic Games after the developer released Season 9, the latest update for its hit game Fortnite that’s particularly popular among kids and young adults. Fortnite is estimated to have over 250 million players, and it has proven to be a major money-spinner […]

Qualcomm today announced that it has partnered with Google to create a reference design and development kit for building Assistant-enabled Bluetooth headphones. Traditionally, building these headphones wasn’t exactly straightforward and involved building a lot of the hardware and software stack, something top-tier manufacturers could afford to do, but that kept second- or third-tier headphone developers […]

Uber, WeWork and Slack’s IPOs are poised to pay out for SoftBank’s Vision Fund, but already the megafund is claiming impressive results. At SoftBank Corp’s annual shareholder meeting, chairman Masayoshi Son revealed return rates for LPs for the first time: and funds value is up 45 percent. The Vision Fund is fascinating for many reasons […]

In a move clearly driven by economic interests and an urgency to meet stringent regulations, the world’s largest games publisher Tencent pulled its mobile version of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds on Wednesday and launched a new title called Game for Peace (the literal translation of its Chinese name 和平精英 is ‘peace elites’) on the same day. As […]

Money, prizes, glory — it could all be yours, but only if you’re good enough. Do you have the stamina, focus and coding chops it takes to create something awesome out of nothing in less than 24 hours? Then sign up to compete in the TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 in Paris on 17-18 May. […]

A drone sighting caused all flights to be suspended at Frankfurt Airport for around an hour this morning. The airport is Germany’s busiest by passenger numbers, serving almost 14.8 million passengers in the first three months of this year. In a tweet sent after flights had resumed the airport reported that operations were suspended at […]

Uber has partnered with bicycle sharing platform Yulu in India as it looks to grab a piece of the growing e-bikes market that is increasingly posing a challenge to taxi services in the nation. The San Francisco-headquartered firm, which is expected to go public later this week, said it will provide its users in Bengaluru with […]

It might feel strange to think about December in May, but the smart money goes to startuppers who do just that. Why? Because we’re returning — for the seventh time — to Europe’s international city extraordinaire to host Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December. And what better way to celebrate than to offer […]

The African no-fee, cross-border payment startup Chipper Cash has raised a $2.4 million seed round led by Deciens Capital. The payments company also persuaded 500 Startups and Liquid 2 Ventures—co-founded by Joe Montana—to join the round. Chipper Cash’s Ugandan chief executive, Ham Serunjogi, pitched the U.S. football legend directly. “He was quite excited about what […]

It’s easy to push a narrative of fintech upstarts versus the big incumbent banks, but the more subtle reality is that as well as competing on numerous fronts, there are partnerships being formed across the board. The latest such move sees Tink, the Sweden-based banking platform that raised €56 million in new funding in February, […]

With Uber just days away from going public, a small challenger has raised some funds of its own to take it and the rest of the field on in francophone markets. Heetch, a ride-sharing platform based out of Paris with operations across France and French-speaking Africa, has picked up a Series B of $38 million, […]

Kahoot, the popular e-learning platform that provides a range of games to teach subjects (it has described itself as the “Netflix of education”), has made its first acquisition: it has acquired DragonBox, a startup that builds math apps, for $18 million in a combination of cash and shares. Åsmund Furuseth, Kahoot’s CEO and co-founder, said […]

Good news for U.S. consumers, the smart TV market is about to get more competitive after Sharp announced plans to resume selling TVs in America before the end of this year. The Japanese firm quit the U.S. in 2015 when crumbling finances threatened its very existence. It was bailed out by Hon Hai Precision — […]

Walt Disney Co. is writing down its investment in Vice Media for the second time in less than a year. In its otherwise upbeat second-quarter earnings report, the company said it was taking an impairment of $353 million for Vice. This follows the $157 million write-down Disney disclosed during its fourth-quarter earnings report in November. […]

In addition to preserving art and historic landmarks around the world, Google’s Arts & Culture division also likes to collaborate with artists to experiment with integrations between technology and art. The latest of these efforts, a new AR app called “Weird Cuts,” was formally introduced this evening at the Google I/O developer conference. The concept […]

GumGum, the Los Angeles-based startup that’s spent the past decade applying machine learning technologies to advertising and sports, has spun out a new healthcare startup focused on the dental industry called Pearl. The company has raised $11 million in financing from undisclosed strategic investors and Craft Ventures, the investment firm set up by former Yammer […]

Today, the Android platform sees more app downloads than iOS, but Apple’s App Store continually dominates in terms of revenue. Now, Google is aiming to narrow the revenue gap by introducing a new way for users in emerging markets to pay for apps: with cash. The company today announced it’s launching “pending transactions,” which offers […]

Some big changes are afoot for Mobike, the Chinese bike-sharing company that was acquired by IPO-bound on-demand service startup Meituan-Dianping for $2.7 billion last year. Mobike executives in Europe are raising $20 million from outside investors as part of a plan to spin off the European operation. Under the deal, Mobike would not completely divest […]

Announced yesterday at Google’s opening I/O keynote, the Pixel 3a arrives at a tenuous time for the smartphone industry. Sales figures have stagnated for most of the major players in the industry — a phenomenon from which Google certainly isn’t immune. CEO Sundar Pichai discussed exactly that on the company’s Q1 earnings call last week. […]

General Motors is in talks to sell its Lordstown vehicle factory in Ohio to Workhorse Group, a battery-electric transportation technology company, to produce EV pickup trucks. It’s a development that could produce a positive outcome for Workhorse, GM and the laid-off workers at the Lordstown factory that stopped producing the automaker’s Chevrolet Cruze in March. […]

There’s a new teen app sensation. Anonymous question-asking app YOLO has rocketed to the #1 US app position just a week after launching thanks to Snapchat. Built on top of the Snap Kit platform, YOLO uses Snapchat for login and Bitmoji profile pics to let you add an “ask me anything” sticker to your Snapchat […]

Virtual reality is the ultimate money pit. Tech giants are selling low-margin hardware on which users play software that was funded by those same companies. This strategy seems to continue year after year without a hockey stick chart in sight. While VR may still be waiting for its breakout hardware hit, there has already been […]

A group of former Uber employees unveiled their podcasting startup RedCircle last week, and now they’re already launching new features — specifically the ability for listeners to make small tip payments to podcasters. RedCircle has created a web-based podcast player of its own, but CEO Michael Kadin (previously an engineering manager at Uber) said the […]

Slack will make its pitch to prospective shareholders on Monday at an invite-only event in New York City.