Crunch Hype

If you’re planning to attend TC Sessions: Mobility 2019 on July 10, then get ready to network like never before. And by that, we mean easily. TC’s day-long event — dedicated to the future of mobility and transportation — features discussions, demos and workshops with the brightest founders, technologists and investors in these industries. With […]

Airbnb is looking to book a place in the streaming media business. The company best known for its controversial marketplace of on-demand accommodations is now plotting a foray into becoming a production studio, according to a report in Reuters. Tons of companies in Silicon Valley have taken to producing marketing features and print magazines as […]

Braille is a crucial skill for children with visual impairments to learn, and with these LEGO Braille Bricks kids can learn through hands-on play rather than more rigid methods like Braille readers and printouts. Given the naturally Braille-like structure of LEGO blocks, it's surprising this wasn't done decades ago.

As the Kleiner Perkins empire crumbles, Meeker builds her own.

Pinterest is a great place to find digital art but a terrible place to sell it. The fact that anything online is infinitely copyable makes it tough for artists to establish a sense of scarcity necessary for their work to be perceived as valuable. Yash Nelapati saw this struggle up close as Pinterest’s first employee. […]

Over the course of the last year or so, Google started adding more job search features to its search engine. Today, it’s expanding this program by also making it easier to find work-from-home jobs. Typically, when you searched for a job like that, chances are you’ll be bombarded with a bunch of low-quality or even […]

Dating apps are finally leveraging AI to clean up users’ chat messages. Badoo has introduced a new feature coming to its network of dating apps, including most notably, Bumble. The penile detecting “Private Detector” feature will leverage deep learning to identify dick pics and other inappropriate photos and label them as such in chat, giving […]

Microsoft has proposed scrapping a policy in Windows that requires users to periodically change their login password. In a blog post, the software giant said its new draft security configuration baseline settings would no longer force users whose accounts are controlled by a network’s group policy to change their passwords every few weeks or months. […]

In the future, everyone will have a podcast — and by “future,” I mean like mid-2020. But one step at a time, starting with Facebook founder, CEO and definite human person, Mark Zuckerberg . Facebook announced the podcast’s Spotify link on Twitter. How’s that for platform synergy? The rather dryly named “Tech and Society With […]

Vue.ai, a U.S/India startup that develops an AI platform to help online retailers work more efficiently and sell more, has announced a $17 million Series B round. The investment is led by Falcon Edge Capital with participation from Japan’s Global Brain and existing backer Sequoia Capital India. Parent company Mad Street Den was founded in […]

Last year the Gosu.ai startup, which has developed an AI assistant to help gamers play smarter and improve their skills, raised $1.9M. Using machine learning, it analyzes their matches and makes personal recommendations, and allows the gamer to be taught by a virtual assistant. Because they have this virtual assistant they can now do some […]

With the latest desktop version of the Brave browser, users can now opt-in to the Brave Ads program. Brave is an ad-blocking web browser startup led by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript programming language and former Mozilla CEO. He’s long maintained that the vision is “bigger than an ad blocker,” with a goal of finding […]

It’s been a month since Huawei unveiled its latest flagship device — the Huawei P30 Pro. I’ve played with the P30 and P30 Pro for a few weeks and I’ve been impressed with the camera system. The P30 Pro is the successor to the P20 Pro and features improvements across the board. It could have been […]

An Indian state court has reversed its ban on TikTok, allowing the short video app to return to both Apple and Google’s app stores, according to a report this morning from Reuters. Earlier this month, India’s Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology had ordered TikTok be removed from app stores, after a High Court in […]

While Samsung performs its own internal investigations, the folks at iFixit had plenty to say about the Galaxy Fold in their own teardown. The writeup is a bit of a rollercoaster ride, admiring the “ambitious first-generation device,” while noting some clear flaws in the way the foldable was put together. There’s a full 19 step […]

MongoDB announced today that is acquiring Realm, an open source database geared for mobile applications for $39 million. The startup had raised just over $40 million before being acquired today. Not exactly a staggering return on investment. It’s the kind of acquisition that makes a lot of sense though from a tech perspective. Both companies […]

Aaron Patzer launched Mint to help consumers organize their finances. Now he’s raised $5.2 million from investors to launch Vital to bring that consumer-focused mindset to emergency rooms and hospitals to help them organize patient flow. Patzer co-founded the company with his brother-in-law Justin Schrager, a Doctor of Emergency Medicine at Emory University Hospital. The […]

Just nine months after launching from Y Combinator with a new propulsion technology, Momentus has inked its first customers for its transportation technology that can take cargo beyond geostationary orbit — and ultimately to a lunar orbit. With those customers in tow, the company is also out fundraising, looking for up to $25 million in […]

Soon: Live conference call with Anthony Ha on TED At 2pm EST / 11am PST, we will have TechCrunch writer Anthony Ha talking live with Extra Crunch readers about all things TED conference, which was last week in Vancouver. Come armed with your questions, or send us an email if you want us to ask […]

Google today announced that Google Fit, the company’s fitness tracking app that launched on Android back in 2014, is now available on iOS. It definitely took Google a while to bring the app to iOS. Until today, the only way to get your Fit data on your iPhone was in a special section of the […]

A new report out this morning from Pew Research Center offers insight into the U.S. adult Twitter population. The firm’s research indicates the Twitterverse tends to skew younger and more Democratic than the general public. It also notes that the activity on Twitter is dominated by a small percentage — most users rarely tweet, while […]

Managed By Q, the office management platform recently acquired by WeWork, has today announced the launch of Task Management. The feature comes to Managed By Q by way of Hivy, a startup acquired by MBQ back in 2017, that focuses on connecting a company’s employees to the office manager that handles their requests. Pre-Hivy, collecting […]

SoftBank is making a huge investment into one of the providers of the kind of digital commerce infrastructure that underpins many of the companies that it backs. Today, Wirecard — a digital payments provider based out of Germany — announced that SoftBank Group is investing around €900 million ($1 billion) as part of a broader […]

If you’ve ever had a parking ticket, there’s a good chance you know what “chalking” is. A federal appeals court ruled this week that the practice of marking a car tires unconstitutional, a violation of your Fourth Amendment rights against unwarranted searches and seizures. For years traffic enforcement officers have marked car tires with chalk […]

Getaround, the peer-to-peer car-sharing startup that launched at TC Disrupt back in 2011, is making moves to become a global car rental service. Today, the Softbank-backed startup announced its acquisition of Drivy, a Paris-headquartered car-sharing startup that operates in 170 European cities. “We were obviously looking at what our European strategy was and how we […]

Alexa devices just got a new use case: live customer service help. This morning, Amazon’s e-book company Audible announced the first live customer service experience on Alexa devices, activated through voice commands. Instead of dialing a phone number or writing an email, Audible customers can ask Alexa to reach Audible on their behalf. They’re then […]

Twitter is adding a dedicated report option that enables users to tell it about misleading tweets related to voting — starting with elections taking place in India and the European Union . From tomorrow users in India can report tweets they believe are trying to mislead voters — such as disinformation related to the date […]

Rivian today announced a major investment from Ford. The 115-year old automaker is investing $500 million into the Michigan-based EV startup. Along with the cash, Ford announced plans to build a vehicle on Rivian’s electric vehicle platform. “This strategic partnership marks another key milestone in our drive to accelerate the transition to sustainable mobility,” said […]

Docker and Arm today announced a major new partnership that will see the two companies collaborate in bringing improved support for the Arm platform to Docker’s tools. The main idea here is to make it easy for Docker developers to build their applications for the Arm platform right from their x86 desktops and then deploy […]

Embrace, an LA-based startup that offers a mobile-first application performance management platform, today announced that it has raised a $4.5 million funding round led by Pritzker Group Venture Capital. This brings the company’s total funding to $7 million. New investors Greycroft, Miramar Ventures and Vy Captial also participated in this round, as did previous investors […]

Databricks, the company founded by the original developers of the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has open-sourced Delta Lake, a storage layer that makes it easier to ensure data integrity as new data flows into an enterprise’s data lake by bringing ACID transactions to these vast data repositories. Delta Lake, […]

R/GA Ventures, a company that acts as investment arm and startup incubator for R/GA corporate client work, announced plans to open a new studio in Portland devoted to encouraging startups working on enterprise blockchain projects. R/GA itself has a three-pronged purpose. It helps companies like Samsung, Google and Verizon (which owns this publication) in the […]

Grab is once again on the hunt for a CTO after Theo Vassilakis, the former Microsoft and Google executive who currently occupies the role, announced that he will leave the ride-hailing company this summer. Vassilakis became Grab CTO in October 2017, ending a very long search to fill the job, but he explained in a […]

The rising tide of Airbnb is lifting all boats, and today a startup that’s building a series of living-coworking-activity spaces across the world primarily geared at digital nomads is reeling in a sizeable round to take its business to the next level. Selina, which operates a network of 22,000 beds out of boutique hostel-style operations […]

Our universe of connected things is expanding by the day: the number of objects with embedded processors now exceeds the number of smartphones globally and is projected to reach some 18 billion devices by 2022. But just as that number is growing, so are the opportunities for malicious hackers to use these embedded devices to crack […]

Zipline, the San Francisco-based UAV manufacturer and logistics services provider, has launched a program in Ghana today for drone delivery of medical supplies. Working with the Ghanaian government, Zipline will operate 30 drones out of four distribution centers to distribute vaccines, blood, and life-saving medications to 2000 health facilities across the West African nation daily. […]

The UK government will allow Huawei to be a supplier for some non-core parts of the country’s 5G networks, despite concerns that the involvement of the Chinese telecoms vendor could pose a risk to national security. But it will be excluded from core parts of the networks, according to reports in national press. The news […]

Holded, the Barcelona-based startup that offers a SaaS to help SMEs with a range of business tasks, has raised €6 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Lakestar, with previous backers Nauta Capital and Seedrocket 4Founders Capital following on. Founded in 2016 by Bernat Ripoll and Javi Fondevila, Holded describes itself as […]

The fund, headquartered in Palo Alto and London, is backed solely by German insurance business Allianz.

Tesla has announced that it has extended the range of its Model S vehicle to 370 miles and Model X to 325 miles on a single charge — extending the range of its flagship car to make the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco on a single charge. The extensions beat Tesla’s previous records […]

It’s been an exciting couple of months for startup employees and public market shareholders alike, as a growing number of brands that have talked about going public for some time are finally marching out the door and, on the whole, receiving enthusiastic receptions. Lyft, Zoom, PagerDuty, and Pinterest all priced above their marketed ranges in […]

With just a few days until the release of “Avengers: Endgame,” Marvel fans everywhere are probably wondering A) Who dies?? and B) Will this actually resolve the cliffhanger ending of “Infinity War” in a satisfying way? So, just to get it out of the way: A) I’m not telling, and B) Kind of? Mostly? It […]

Twitter’s co-founder and CEO historically doesn’t have the most discerning tastes when it comes to who he decides to engage with. Fresh off the podcast circuit, today a thoroughly beardy Jack Dorsey sat down with President Trump for his most high-profile tête-à-tête yet. Unlike his recent amble onto the Joe Rogan show, Dorsey’s 30-minute meeting […]

The on-demand delivery platform is expanding rapidly ahead of its 2019 IPO.

Aebi Schmidt, a European manufacturing giant with operations in the U.S., has been hit by a ransomware attack, TechCrunch has learned. The Switzerland-based maker of airport maintenance and road cleaning vehicles had operations disrupted Tuesday following the malware infection, according to a source with knowledge of the incident. Systems went down across the company’s international […]

SalesWhale, a Singapore-based startup that uses AI to help marketers and salespeople generate leads, has announced a Series A round worth $5.3 million. The investment is led by Monk’s Hill Ventures — the Southeast Asia-focused firm that led SalesWhale’s seed round in 2017 — with participation from existing backers GREE Ventures, Wavemaker Partners and Y […]

I was 13 when I was selected for a competitive math, science and computer science program. Of the 100 kids, I was one of two black girls. The tech industry is no more diverse now than it was then.

Better late than never, Tumblr has rolled out HTTPS across its entire site. In a brief post on Tumblr’s engineering page, the company said all Tumblr sites will now have the web encryption setting enabled by default, though it admitted the move was “long-overdue.” Tumblr, which like TechCrunch is owned by Verizon, has 464 million […]

We’re incredibly proud of the programming we put together for this year’s TC Sessions: Robotics + AI. It’s my personal favorite TechCrunch event and I think this year’s way easily our best. We had top names in the industry like Marc Raibert, Claire Delaunay, Colin Angle, Anthony Levondowski and Melonee Wise join us onstage. But […]

As eBay continues to work through a restructuring strategy, the e-commerce marketplace and online auction pioneer reported earnings for the first quarter of the year that should keep some of the more activist shareholders a little at bay. The company reported revenues of $2.6 billion and non-GAAP net income of $608 million, or diluted earnings […]