Crunch Hype

An old rule of thumb for building a startup is to find a group of professionals who use spreadsheets to do their work and then build an app to replace their spreadsheet usage. Presto, you have a startup, and perhaps even a new software category. Spreadsheet.com, however, is doing the opposite. Instead of turning spreadsheets […]

While markets grapple with the concept that the pandemic might not be entirely in the rear view mirror, investors are continuing to seek out investment opportunities outside public markets as they seek to diversify. Vincent, an alternative asset aggregation hub, is hoping to capture some of that investor attention, allowing users to scour multiple types […]

Stripe, with its $95 billion valuation, has been taking on the payment landscape with a whole platform approach, bringing in dozens of adjacent services to snag a wider and deeper set of customers that use these services by way of APIs. But in the world of so-called “embedded finance” there still remains a lot of […]

Much has been made of the rise of the “creator economy” in the last year. With the Pandemic biting, millions flooded online, looking for a way to make money or promote themselves. The podcasting world has exploded, and with it platforms like Patreon, Clubhouse, and many others. But the thorny problem remains: Do you really […]

Customer success company Vitally raised $9 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz to continue developing its SaaS platform automating customer experiences.

DNSFilter, an artificial intelligence startup that provides DNS protection to enterprises, has secured $30 million in Series A funding from Insight Partners. DNSFilter, as its name suggests, offers DNS-based web content filtering and threat protection. Unlike the majority of its competitors, which includes the likes of Palo Alto Networks and Webroot, the startup uses proprietary AI […]

More than half of the U.S. population has stayed away from considering life insurance because they believe it’s probably too expensive, and the most common way to buy it today is in person. A startup that’s built a platform that aims to break down those conventions and democratize the process by making life insurance (and […]

Just over five months after securing $50 million in debt & equity, Valoreo has closed on a $30 million Series A funding round. Mexico City-based Valoreo aims to invest in, operate and scale e-commerce brands as part of its self-described mission “to bring better products at more affordable prices” to the Latin American consumer. Valoreo […]

Byju’s said on Wednesday it has acquired California-headquartered reading platform Epic for $500 million, the latest in a series of moves from India’s most valuable startup as it deepens its footprint in the U.S. market. The deal involves both cash and stock and Epic founders — Kevin Donahue and Suren Markosian — will continue to […]

Fetch Package, a last-mile package delivery company for apartment communities, has raised $50 million in a Series C round of funding and closed on a $10 million venture debt facility. Michael Patton founded Fetch in May 2016 after being frustrated by having packages lost at the apartment community in which he was living. “I took […]

What with the planet collapsing and democracy under constant attack from all quarters – you know, just the usual – one or two members of the global population have, idly or not, wondered if the private sector might want to step up? I mean, as well as shooting billionaires into space. At the same time, […]

Fintech startup Yapily has raised a $51 million Series B funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. The company has been working on a single, unified open banking API for several European markets. Developers can leverage that programming interface to interact with third-party bank accounts directly from their own products. “The core difference between us and […]

Expense management has long been a pain point for employees and accounting departments: for many, tracking and parsing how money is spent on behalf of a company is just too bogged down in legacy software ill-equipped to handle more modern demands. Today, a UK startup building solutions to bring the process into the 21st century […]

The University of Tokyo Edge Capital Partners (UTEC) is launching a new program to address a problem the venture capital fund says many deep-tech founders face. They may raise pre-seed capital from an incubator or accelerator program, but reach a funding gap before moving on to early-stage rounds. Without financial resources, it takes longer to […]

Samsung just sent out invites for its next Unpacked event. There are those companies that like to sneak hints into their invites — and then there’s Samsung. The note leads with the big, bold words “Get ready to unfold” and features a pair of flat-colored objects that can reasonably be said to resemble the form […]

Tesla will allow other electric vehicles to access its global network of chargers later this year, CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday. The comment follows years of chatter by Musk that signaled the company was amenable to the idea. Until now, there have never been any details about how or when the company would open up […]

Instagram is giving its users a tiny bit more power to see what they want — and not see what they don’t want — in its content discovery hub. The company introduced a new toggle called “Sensitive Content Control” on Tuesday that allows anyone to screen posts that it thinks could be offensive, hiding them […]

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A Tesla in full self-driving mode makes a left turn out of the middle lane on a busy San Francisco street. It jumps in a bus lane where it’s not meant to be. It turns a corner and nearly plows into parked vehicles, causing the driver to lurch for the wheel. These scenes have been […]

Pivot Bio makes fertilizer — but not directly. Its modified microorganisms are added to soil and they produce nitrogen that would otherwise have to be trucked in and dumped there. This biotech-powered approach can save farmers money and time and ultimately may be easier on the environment — a huge opportunity that investors have plowed […]

With the pandemic affecting every aspect of life and industry, it’s no surprise that digitization is coming to construction fast. Construction suppliers are increasingly under the same pressure as other sectors to perform at a higher level. We’ve seen the rise of companies like Dozer, Reno Run and Toolbox try to address this, but often […]

The Biden administration tripled down on its commitment to reining in powerful tech companies Tuesday, proposing committed Big Tech critic Jonathan Kanter to lead the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Kanter is a lawyer with a long track record of representing smaller companies like Yelp in antitrust cases against Google. He currently practices law at his […]

On Tuesday, R-Zero, a pandemic-era biosafety company, announced the acquisition of CoWorkr — a company that develops room occupancy sensors. The acquisition marks a shift in focus for R-Zero as people return to work, vaccines are rolled out and companies that sprung up in response to the COVID-19 adapt to another phase of the pandemic. […]

A report last week hinted at some of Netflix's gaming ambitions. In its Q2 2021 earnings report, the company confirmed some things, including a mobile-first focus.

A famous poem advises us not to compare ourselves with others, "for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself." The same holds true for startup fundraising.

Twitter announced today it will begin testing a new set of features for TweetDeck, the company’s often-ignored social media dashboard aimed at Twitter’s power users, which Twitter may soon turn into a new subscription service. According to a post from Twitter Product Lead Kayvon Beykpour, the revamped version of the Twitter client will include a […]

The ACLU urges all Americans to ask their members of Congress to join the movement to halt facial recognition technology and support federal legislation limiting it.

Mobileye, a subsidiary of Intel, has expanded its autonomous vehicle testing program to New York City as part of its strategy to develop and deploy the technology. New York City joins a number of other cities including Detroit, Paris, Shanghai and Tokyo where Mobileye has either launched testing or plans to this year. Mobileye launched […]

The tech boom in Southeast Asia isn’t just seeding a wave of new entrepreneurs building the next generation of unicorns, it’s also ushering young talent into the roles of first-time managers. And NewCampus, a Singapore-based startup co-founded by Will Fan and Fei Yao, announced today that it has raised millions of dollars to help coming […]

Looking back, narrowly focusing on a branch of applied science undergoing a breakthrough paradigm shift that hadn’t yet reached the business world changed everything.

Our kids can’t read. As of 2019, roughly a third of U.S. fourth graders were unable to read at the level expected of them. The scores have barely changed in decades. Something isn’t working here. Litnerd, a company out of New York City, wants to try something new. They’re writing books and building lesson plans […]

Maya Moufarek, founder of Marketing Cube, spent more than 15 years working for companies like Google and American Express before launching her own growth consultancy. Today, her London-based firm works with startups around the world — and her startup clients have raved about the results, based on what we’ve heard in our TechCrunch Experts growth […]

PayPal-owned payments app Venmo will no longer offer a public, global feed of users’ transactions, as part of a significant redesign focused on expanding the app’s privacy controls and better highlighting some of Venmo’s newer features. The company says it will instead only show users their “friends feed” — meaning, the app’s social feed where […]

Jeff Bezos was so triumphant he was practically glowing at a press conference following the Blue Origin’s first crewed mission to space, 21 years after he founded the company in 2000. The billionaire talked about the future of the company and his role in it, and then casually gave away a couple hundred million dollars. […]

Even though Europe has a reputation for lengthy summer vacations, investors don’t expect much -- if any -- slowdown to come in Europe during this sun-drenched quarter.

As you scale and onboard employees, make sure they know their importance — emphasize the stakes in their role related to the business and value that responsibility.

Late last month, Facebook announced Bulletin, its newsletter platform. Unlike Substack, Medium and other competitors, Bulletin hand-picks its writers to curate a more controlled platform, with stars ranging from Mitch Albom, whose book “Tuesdays with Morrie” continues to break hearts in seventh grade English classes, to Queer Eye’s Tan France, who taught a generation of […]

Research says that counterfeit medication is the cause of 1 million deaths per year. One-tenth of this number comes from Africa. Counterfeiting is hard to detect, investigate, quantify or stop. It is a global problem, with annual earnings from substandard drugs standing at over $100 billion. Some technologies have helped deal with this menace; for […]

YouTube announced its latest feature, Super Thanks, on Tuesday. This is YouTube’s fourth Paid Digital Good, which is what the platform calls any product that lets fans directly pay creators. So far, these tools include Super Chat, Super Stickers and channel subscriptions — but Super Thanks is YouTube’s first of these features that allows fans […]

In a bid to boost sign-ups to its streaming service, HBO Max is partnering with Snap to bring free episodes from its original programing to Snapchat users in the U.S. The episodes will stream via a Snap Mini — the company’s bite-sized third-party apps that live within Snapchat. The experience will offer users a way […]

ChargePoint struck a deal to buy European charging software company has.to.be for €250 million ($295 million) in cash and stock, the electric vehicle charging network’s first acquisition since it became a publicly traded company. Through the deal, ChargePoint gains more than just 125 employees and the company’s operating software, which manages more than 40,000 networked […]

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. A tectonic shift is underway in how Beijing regulates and accesses the troves of citizen data collected by its tech giants. More details of China’s new […]

Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at the new generation of “everyday investors,” has closed on $58 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The financing comes just over five months after Titan raised $12.5 million in a Series A round led by General Catalyst, […]

One step at a time, Square is creating a new bank from scratch. Today, the company is launching a new product called Square Banking that combines a checking account, savings accounts, debit cards and loans under a single roof. With Square Banking, the company wants to convince small businesses that it’s just easier to manage […]

The quest to disrupt the traditional baby food aisle continues as more of today’s parents seek out nutritional food for their children.

Edtech entrepreneurs are using their moment in the sun to rethink the structures and impact of nearly every aspect of modern-day learning, from the art of testing to the reality of information retention. Yet, the most popular product up for grabs may just be a seemingly simple one: the almighty tutoring session. and Numerade, an […]

“We are true believers in the fact that the world needs a new Amazon, a better one, a more sustainable one, one that appreciates local areas and products.” It’s quite one thing to claim you are out to replace Amazon (just as its founder goes into space), but Ralf Wenzel, Founder and CEO of JOKR, […]

Blue Origin successfully completed its first crewed launch Tuesday, sending four human passengers to space – including the company’s founder, Jeff Bezos. The result of billions of dollars of investment, dozens of test launches and some petty squabbling amongst ultra-rich founders, the triumph of the New Shepard, along with that of Virgin Galactic earlier this […]

As its name suggests, venture firm Pillar VC is focused on building "pillar" companies in Boston and across the Northeast.