Crunch Hype

Tesla is going to raise an additional $400 million in its latest sale of stock, with co-founder and chief executive Elon Musk committing to buy an additional $15 million in shares, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The electric vehicle, energy storage and solar panel manufacturer said it will sell 3.1 […]

CBS credited its direct-to-consumer streaming services in helping it achieve double-digit revenue growth and record quarterly revenues in Q1, along with the gains that came from hosting Super Bowl LIII and those from affiliate revenue. The network said its over-the-top service for cord cutters, CBS All Access, combined with Showtime’s direct-consumer subscriptions, grew 71% year-over-year […]

With six deals already under its belt, the sustainability focused investment firm Ecosystem Integrity Fund has closed its third investment vehicle at its $100 million target. Investments in the third fund include EV Connect, an electric charging company; eMotorWerks, the charging demand management software and service provider acquired by Enel; the solar mounting company, Pegasus […]

In 2006, New Line Cinema added five days of reshoots for Snakes on a Plane, six months after principal filming had wrapped. The new shoots helped change the film’s rating from PG-13 to R, courtesy of, among other things, the addition of the line “I have had it with these motherf****** snakes on this motherf****** […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week brought the ever-excellent Danny Crichton back to the show, along with myself. The two of us opted to do a bit of a news run, so strap in for a host of topics. Of course, we […]

With the SEC recently releasing its long-awaited guidance on Crypto token issuers, it’s becoming clear that the crypto world is edging closer to the traditional financial world. New players are joining the sector who hail from traditional finance and trading backgrounds. Until this year, crypto exchanges focused on providing access to ICOs instead of providing […]

Asto, the Santander owned “upstart” developing financial tools for freelancers and SMEs, is adding invoice financing to its bookkeeping app. The new offering, which potentially opens up so-called “micro-financing” to a much broader business market, comes hot on the heels of Santander Group acquiring Albert, an invoicing and expenses app for freelancers and micro-businesses. Albert’s […]

WorldCover, a New York and Africa-based climate insurance provider to smallholder farmers, has raised a $6 million Series A round led by MS&AD Ventures. Y-Combinator, Western Technology Investment, and EchoVC also participated in the round. WorldCover’s platform uses satellite imagery, on-ground sensors, mobile phones, and data analytics to create insurance options for farmers whose crops […]

Data mining firm Palantir’s software was used by a US government agency during an operation in 2017 in which immigrants crossing the border were arrested for deportation, newly released documents (PDF) have shown, contradicting the $20 billion firm’s earlier public statements. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement documents, obtained by advocacy organization Mijente through Freedom of Information […]

YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl reaffirmed the company’s plans to take its Originals out from behind the paywall, making them free and ad-supported. Kyncl was speaking at YouTube’s annual Brandcast event, where the Google-owned company lays out its plans for advertisers (with lots of razzle dazzle provided by musicians and YouTube stars). Since last […]

Tumblr has been squandered ever since it was bought for $1.1 billion in 2013 by Yahoo, now part of Verizon Media Group. Without proper strategy or talent, the blogging tool and early meme-sharing network fell into decline while Medium and Instagram soared. Yahoo wrote down Tumblr’s value by $230 million in 2016. Then last year, […]

It's time for another SpaceX launch, and though tonight's (technically tomorrow morning's) isn't as historic as the Falcon Heavy, it's always impressive to see a Falcon 9 lift off with supplies for the International Space Station. But inclement weather threatens to delay delivery.

Bradley Tusk’s story is well-known by now. A political operative who managed Michael Bloomberg’s successful third mayoral campaign, Tusk soon turned a bonus from his powerful boss into an opportunity that most people can only dream about. He launched his own business to help clients navigate turbulent regulatory waters, and one of his first calls […]

Everyone knows birds descended from dinosaurs, but exactly how that happened is the subject of much study and debate. To help clear things up, these researchers went all out and just straight up built a robotic dinosaur to test their theory: that these proto-birds flapped their "wings" well before they ever flew.

Activision Blizzard said it has lined up five franchises for a new, city-based Call of Duty esports league. Atlanta, Dallas, New York, Paris and Toronto will all play host to franchise teams that will compete in a professional league based on what is perhaps Activision Blizzard’s most successful title, the company announced after its earnings […]

You probably haven’t heard of Checkout, a digital payments processing company that was founded in 2012 in London. Apparently, however, investors have been keeping tabs on the low-flying company and like what they see. Today, Checkout announced that it has raised $230 million in Series A funding at a valuation just shy of $2 billion […]

Ahead of its Build conference, Microsoft today released a slew of new machine learning products and tweaks to some of its existing services. These range from no-code tools to hosted notebooks, with a number of new APIs and other services in-between. The core theme, here, though, is that Microsoft is continuing its strategy of democratizing […]

The microbiome testing service uBiome has placed its founders and co-chief executives, Jessica Richman and Zac Apte, on administrative leave following an FBI raid on the company’s offices last week. The company’s board of directors have named John Rakow, currently the company’s general counsel, as its interim chairman and chief executive, the company said in […]

As part of its rather bizarre news dump before its flagship Build developer conference next week, Microsoft today announced a slew of new pre-built machine learning models for its Cognitive Services platform. These include an API for building personalization features, a form recognizer for automating data entry, a handwriting recognition API and an enhanced speech […]

Microsoft today announced that it wants to bring the ease of use of Plug and Play, which today allows you to plug virtually any peripheral into a Windows PC without having to worry about drivers, to IoT devices. Typically, getting an IoT device connected and up and running takes some work, even with modern deployment […]

Microsoft today announced three new services that all aim to simplify the process of machine learning. These range from a new interface for a tool that completely automates the process of creating models, to a new no-code visual interface for building, training and deploying models, all the way to hosted Jupyter-style notebooks for advanced users. […]

Microsoft didn’t rush to bring blockchain technology to its Azure cloud computing platform, but over the course of the last year, it started to pick up the pace with the launch of its blockchain development kit and the Azure Blockchain Workbench. Today, ahead of its Build developer conference, it is going a step further by […]

As part of its rather odd Thursday afternoon pre-Build news dump, Microsoft today announced the HoloLens 2 Development Edition. The company announced the much-improved HoloLens 2 at MWC Barcelona earlier this year, but it’s not shipping to developers yet. Currently, the best release date we have is “later this year.” The Development Edition will launch […]

Twenty years after Jesse Jackson first took aim at tech employers, Silicon Valley’s enduring diversity gaps remain a painful reminder of its origins as a mostly white boy’s club.

Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency says a popular gas station software contains several security vulnerabilities that require “low skill” to exploit. The advisory, posted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), gave the Orpak SiteOmat software a rare vulnerability severity rating of 9.8 out of 10. Orpak’s SiteOmat systems monitor the amount of fuel stored […]

Facebook just announced a new round of controversial accounts that will be kicked off the platform for violating its rules. In this instance, Facebook cited its policy against “dangerous individuals and organizations” to bring the ban hammer down on Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer, Paul Nehlen, Louis Farrakhan. The company also doubled down […]

Monitoring a space is about a lot more than security cameras, Awair is trying to help businesses and consumers more deeply understand the environments they live and work in. Awair has raised a $10 million Series B led by The Westly Group with participation from iRobot, Altos Ventures, Emerson Electric and Nuovo Capital as well. […]

Extra Crunch offers members the opportunity to tune into conference calls led and moderated by the TechCrunch writers you read every day. This week, TechCrunch’s Josh Constine and Frederic Lardinois discuss major announcements that came out of Facebook’s F8 conference and dig into how Facebook is trying to redefine itself for the future. Though touted […]

With a new $20M fund, the Unshackled team will invest in immigrants and help them secure visas.

For the first time after a video of an exploding Dragon capsule leaked in late April, SpaceX confirmed the spacecraft’s destruction during testing. In statements made today, SpaceX’s vice president of mission assurance Hans Koenigsmann provided a little insight on the mysterious ground test gone wrong. As CNBC reports, Koenigsmann said during a press event […]

Meat alternatives are getting a big public market debut with the Beyond Meat public offering, as shares of the company rocketed above their initial list price. The company’s shares surged up 135% in their market opener, valuing the company as high as $3.52 billion. Volatility was so high on the company’s stock that the Nasdaq […]

A surprise addition to this year’s NewFronts, first-time participant Target today announced its plans to rebrand its media network formerly known as “Target Media Network” to be called “Roundel.” The goal with the repositioning is to better communicate to clients that its focus goes beyond display ads on Target.com. Instead, Roundel will create campaigns and […]

Even as the giants of the autonomous vehicle industry were setting ambitious timelines for their robotaxi deployments, May Mobility was already hitting the streets. The startup launched its first low-speed autonomous shuttle service in Detroit in summer 2018. By March, the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based company was operating in at least three U.S. cities. It’s a […]

Couchbase, the company behind the eponymous NoSQL database, announced a major update to its mobile database today that brings some machine learning smarts, as well as improved synchronization features and enhanced stats and logging support to the software. “We’ve led the innovation and data management at the edge since the release of our mobile database […]

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. Facebook pivots to what it wishes it was Facebook is rolling out what could be called an aspirational redesign known as […]

Developing new technology, identifying product/market fit, creating a go-to-market strategy… When building businesses, these are the types of challenges entrepreneurs tend to spend the majority of their time thinking about (and talking about with other entrepreneurs). And

The last few years have seen a rapid expansion of national regulations that, in the name of data protection, govern how and where organizations like healthcare and insurance companies, financial services companies and others store residents’ personal data that is used and collected through their services. But keeping abreast of and following those rules has […]

A distributed denial-of-service attack launched against an energy company providing power in several western U.S. states was enough to report “interruptions of electrical system operations” to the government’s energy authority. The “cyber event” lasted almost ten hours on March 5, according to an electric emergency and disturbance report filed with the Department of Energy by the […]

Uber, which is days away from going public, has added in-app ticketing to its transit offering in Denver. This comes a few months after Uber first launched transit integration in the city. “For the first time ever, taking an Uber trip can mean taking public transit,” Uber Head of Transit David Reich said in a […]

Perhaps people fear robotics and automation simply because they’re not cuddly enough. It’s certainly an under-explored aspect in the growing field of soft robotics. A team at Carnegie Mellon is taking on the challenge by creating soft robots with knitting machines. Cuddliness aside, the real goal here is to design robotic form factors that are […]

Developer season has begun! Next week, Google will be putting on a big party at the pointy outdoor amphitheater in Mountain View. It’s shaping up to be a biggie, too, if this week’s Google earnings call was any indication. Sundar Pichai teased out a number of upcoming offerings from the company that we can expect […]

Down in Christchurch, New Zealand a team of roboticists at Invert Robotics has commercialized an inspection robot that uses tiny suction cups on a series of treads and a specialty chemical to create a technology that has robots literally climbing the walls. Meanwhile, a world away in Pittsburgh, Gecko Robotics is tackling much the same […]

In the latest of a string of products aimed at attracting and engaging a younger demographic, dating app Tinder this morning announced the launch of a new feature called “Festival Mode,” designed to connect singles attending the same music festival. Similar to “Spring Break Mode,” announced this February, “Festival Mode” will also involve the use […]

Spotify is increasing its investment in voice technology, as hinted at earlier this week on the company’s earnings call with investors. The streaming service today is announcing the launch of voice-enabled advertisements, which will encourage the listener to say a verbal command in order to take action on the ad’s content. Initially, the audio ads […]

Mosaic, founded by Blue Apron’s former senior director of operations Matt Davis and Sam McIntire, is entering the next phase of direct-to-consumer meal services with frozen foods. Phase one of meal kits entailed prepared ingredients (Blue Apron) or pre-made meals that went into the refrigerator (Munchery). Blue Apron has since gone public, albeit experiencing a […]

It’s long been known that China is developing a dystopian surveillance system in Xinjiang, the Northwest province that’s home to China’s Uyghur Muslim population. Among the evidence includes poorly managed database and now we have details of a mobile app used by police in the region to track Uyghur citizens. Human Rights Watch today published […]

In the two years since GrainChain launched its distributed ledger-based transaction platform for bulk dry goods the company has brokered thousands of contracts on everything from corn, sorghum, wheat, and soybeans to even sand from its headquarters in McAllen, Tex. Now the company is expanding its services to Mexico, partnering with the government of Tamaulipas, […]

Toyota AI Ventures, a subsidiary of Toyota Research Institute, has a new $100 million fund that will focus on finding and investing in early-stage robotics and autonomous technology startups. This second fund, aptly dubbed Fund II, brings the firm’s total assets under management to more than $200 million. “The growing interest in automated systems has […]

Tesla is raising up to $1.55 billion through the sale of notes and shares, according to a filing made by the EV maker today. The document outlines that Tesla will sell up to $1.35 billion in convertible senior notes. The number could increase further: Tesla is giving underwriters the chance to buy a further $202.5 […]

Another tech giant is under investigation in Europe for potential privacy breaches of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), TechCrunch has learnt. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is the lead data protection regulator for most multinational tech giants in Europe, has opened a formal probe into Quantcast’s business — adding +1 to the […]