Crunch Hype

Snapchat appears to have turned the corner after a year of flat or negative user growth thanks to a strong Q1 2019 earnings report. It reached 190 million daily active users, up 2 percent from 186 million in Q4 2018 when it plateaued but still down from 191 million a year ago. Snap added as […]

After a year of its user count shrinking or staying flat, Snapchat is finally growing again, and more growth is likely on the way. That’s because it’s finally completed the rollout of Project Mushroom aka a backend overhaul of its Android app that’s 25 percent smaller and 20 percent faster. Designed for India and other […]

Device addiction plagues us all — even Apple CEO Tim Cook. But children with phones and tablets are even more susceptible to the lures of apps and games, which often use psychological tricks keep users logging in and regularly returning. A new PSA from Sesame Workshop and advocacy organization Common Sense aims to address kids’ […]

When it comes to working with journalists, so many people are, frankly, idiots. I have seen reporters yank stories because founders are assholes, play unfairly, or have PR firms that use ridiculous pressure tactics when they have already committed to a story. There is so much bad behavior that I thought that it might be […]

Startup growth comes from many places, but one option is through “earned media” — stories and mentions in the press. Earned media is great, because the channel is nominally free, and it can often get many more of the right eyeballs than advertising. Minus some sleazy behavior in the journalism world, you should never have […]

Squarespace is announcing its first acquisition today, a 13-year-old company called Acuity that allows businesses to manage their online appointments. Squarespace CEO Anthony Casalena noted that the company has been expanding beyond website building already — he said he now wants to provide tools around online presence (i.e., building a website), commerce and marketing. To […]

Group Nine Media has hired Brian Lee as its first executive vice president of commerce. Lee held a similar role at Maker Studios before its acquisition by Disney, and he also founded the New York-based accelerator SKIG. Group Nine — which was created by the merger of Thrillist, NowThis Media, The Dodo and Discovery-owned Seeker […]

The RealReal has authorized the sale of up to $70 million in new shares in a round that could value the luxury consignment shop at $1.06 billion.

Warehouse automation is all the rage in robotics these days. No surprise then, that another emerging player just got a healthy slice of venture funding. Massachusetts-based Locus Robotics this week announced that it has secured a $26 million Series C. The round, led by Zebra Ventures and Scale Venture Partners, brings the startup’s total funding […]

Wing Aviation, the drone-based delivery startup born out of Google's X labs, has received the first FAA certification in the country for commercial carriage of goods. It might not be long before you're getting your burritos sent par avion.

The Chinese government has been using a private company jointly owned by a U.S. investment firm and its Chinese counterpart to expand its surveillance and telecommunications capabilities using American technology, The Wall Street Journal reports. At the center of the Journal’s reporting is a company called Asia Satellite Telecommunications (AsiaSat). It’s a satellite operating company […]

Tim Cook thinks people should get off their iPhones and decrease their engagement with apps. The Apple CEO, speaking at the TIME 100 Summit today, was discussing the addictive nature of our mobile devices and Apple’s role in the matter when he made these comments. He said the company hadn’t intended for people to be […]

Facebook has quietly removed three far-right networks that were engaged in coordinated inauthentic behavior intended to spread politically divisive content in Spain ahead of a general election in the country, which takes place on Sunday. The networks had a total reach of almost 1.7 million followers and had generated close to 7.4 million interactions in […]

Less than a month after rebranding as Canoo, the startup electric vehicle company formerly known as Evelozcity is on the hunt for $200 million in new capital. The startup, which is backed by a clutch of private individuals and family offices hailing from China, Germany and Taiwan, is hoping to line up the new capital […]

Waymo, the self-driving vehicle technology startup under Alphabet, is setting up shop in a Detroit factory on American Axle & Manufacturing’s campus. Waymo said Tuesday it will partner with American Axle & Manufacturing to repurpose the existing facility, which was most recently used as a sequencing center for a local parts supplier. The goal is […]

It’s one thing to be able to get everything delivered to your doorstep, it’s another to then have to actually have to leave your home, brace the elements and return those things that just didn’t work out (or work at all). Typically, that means a run to your local FedEx or UPS store. For the […]

Casino Group and Amazon announced that they’re expanding their partnership in France. In particular, there will be Amazon lockers in 1,000 supermarkets and smaller grocery stores across France. Casino Group partnered with Amazon last year to launch Monoprix on Amazon Prime Now. Prime members in Paris can order groceries and other products you’d regularly find […]

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 Brian Heater and Lucas Matney shared their key takeaways from our Robotics+AI Sessions event at UC Berkeley last week. The event was filled with panels, demos and intimate discussions with […]

I know, I know. I will say this about the Galaxy Fold, however: it has been a hell of a conversation piece. I’ve had a LOT of dialogues with strangers since I started using it as my day-to-day. And let’s be honest, that’s a big part of being an early adopter. The Galaxy Fold is […]

Fintech startup N26 is opening an office, its fourth, in Vienna. Eventually, the company plans to hire 300 software engineers, product managers and IT specialists. N26 is building a mobile bank and has managed to attract 2.5 million users over the past few years. It raised a $300 million round back in January. This is […]

Oracle was founded in 1977. While it’s not exactly IBM or GE, which date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries respectively, it is old enough to be experiencing a fair bit of disruption in its own right. For a good part of its existence, it sold databases to some of the biggest […]

Netflix is raising another $2 billion in debt to fund its content spending and other expenses, the company announced this morning. The news comes ahead of the launches of new streaming service competitors from Disney, Apple and AT&T’s WarnerMedia. It also follows Netflix’s offer of another $2 billion in debt back in October 2018. The […]

Just days after Google and Amazon buried the hatchet over their longstanding streaming feud, Google has made another interesting inroad in its bid to bring yet more ubiquity to its YouTube-based premium video efforts. Today, Verizon (which owns TechCrunch) and the search giant announced a new partnership where Verizon customers will be able to subscribe […]

Astound, a company selling automated employee help desk services, has raised a new round of $15.5 million from investors led by the Los Angeles investment firm March Capital Partners. Previous investors Vertex Ventures, Pelion Venture Partners, Moment Ventures, and the Slack Fund also participated in the funding, which brings Astound’s total capital raised to $27 […]

At the end of the day, Laundroid amounted to little more than a fun show demo. The device was a bit silly and prohibitively large and expensive for most to consider actually purchasing. All in all, it was a lot of work for the relatively simple task of folding laundry. Seven Dreamers, which has been […]

Mfine, an India-based startup aiming to broaden access to doctors and healthcare using the internet, has pulled in a $17.2 million Series B funding round for growth. The company is led by four co-founders from Myntra, the fashion commerce startup acquired by Flipkart in 2014. They include CEO Prasad Kompalli and Ashutosh Lawania who started […]

The market for voice apps has opened up — Amazon Alexa’s platform alone has over 80,000 skills as of earlier this year — and there’s little sign of that growth slowing now that smart speakers have hit critical mass in the U.S. To capitalize on this trend, Voiceflow, a startup making it easier for product […]

Starting today, Amazon can drop off packages to your garage. Assuming, of course, you’re cool with that. The massively multiplayer online retailer just expanded its Key delivery options to include garage, a feature it announced at the beginning of the year at CES. Customers will have to opt-in, of course. And the whole thing requires […]

When Chive Media Group spun out its out-of-home TV business last year, co-founder and CEO Leo Resig said the structure should help the new company, called Atmosphere, raise venture capital. Looks like those fundraising efforts were successful, with Atmosphere announcing that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by S3 Ventures, with […]

Blueshift is startup founded by tech industry veterans, who saw first-hand how difficult cross-channel marketing was. They decided to launch a company and build a cross-channel marketing platform from the ground up that uses AI and machine learning to make sense of the growing amount of customer data. Today, the startup announced a $15 million […]

Omni simply couldn’t scale storing stuff in giant warehouses while dropping it and off picking it up from people on demand. Storage was designed to bootstrap Omni into peer-to-peer rentals of the goods in its care. But now it’s found a better way by partnering with retailers which will host and rent out goods for […]

Verizon just released its first quarter earnings report, with earnings per share that came in significantly ahead of analyst expectations, while revenue was right in line with predictions. The company reported EPS of $1.22 per share (or $1.20 when adjusted to exclude a 2 cent benefit due to a pension re-measurement triggered by its recent […]

With remote working becoming more of a norm than ever before, remote interviews have, in turn, become a necessity. But how can you truly assess someone from these? In addition, it’s easy to miss great candidates just because you don’t have time to interview all the candidates. A number of startups have appeared to try […]

Series B rounds used to be about establishing a product-market fit, but for some startups the whole process seems to be accelerating. Harness, the startup founded by AppDynamics co-founder and CEO Jyoti Bansal is one of those companies that is putting the pedal the metal with his second startup, taking his learnings and a $60 […]

Social networking and media platform Twitter today reported its results for the first quarter of the year, and it’s a strong one. The company said that revenues came in at $787 million, up 18 percent on a year ago; with net income of $191 million and earnings per share of $0.25. However, monthly active users […]

Binance, the company widely seen as the world’s largest crypto exchange, has officially set up shop in Singapore after it launched a service in the country. The new Singapore service, however, bears more of a resemblance to U.S. rival Coinbase than a classic Binance exchange. Binance’s rapid ascent is thanks to a service that lets […]

KeepTruckin, a developer of hardware and software that helps truck drivers manage their vehicles and cargo, is the latest entrant to the unicorn club.

There’s no question that springtime in Paris is the stuff of legend. TechCrunch is returning to the City of Lights to continue building another legendary experience. The TechCrunch Hackathon at VivaTech 2019 takes place at the Expo Porte de Versailles on 17-18 May. If you’re a developer, a UX/UI designer or an all-around tech creator, […]

Le Wagon has been steadily growing for the past few years. The bootstrapped French company now has 34 campuses across 22 countries. And now, Le Wagon is about to welcome a whole lot more students thanks to a new part-time program. The startup has been testing a new part-time format in London and now wants […]

Douyu, a Chinese live streaming service focused on video games, has filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as it prepares to raise up to $500 million on the NYSE less than a year after its archrival floated on the same stock market. Wuhan-based Douyu, whose name translates as “fighting fish”, is the second […]

Ruthless copying is common in tech. Just ask Snapchat. However, it’s typically more conceptual than literal. But car API startup Smartcar claims that its competitor Otonomo copy-and-pasted Smartcar’s API documentation, allegedly plagiarizing it extensively to the point of including the original’s typos and randomly generated strings of code. It’s published a series of side-by-side screenshots […]

Fintech is very much still hot in Asia. ZestMoney, a startup that helps consumers with no credit history get loans to buy online, announced today it has raised a $20 million Series B. The round is led by Quona Capital, a stealthy Washington-based fund that invests in emerging market fintech and has an office in […]

Twitter shut down Dom Hoffman’s app Vine, giving away the short-form video goldmine to China’s TikTok. Now a year and half since Hoffman announced he’d reimagine the app as V2 then scrapped that name, his follow-up to Vine called Byte has finally sent out the first 100 invites to its closed beta. Byte will let […]

Tesla expects to launch the first robotaxis as part of broader vision for an autonomous ride-sharing network in 2020, CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s Autonomy Day. “I feel very confident predicting that there will be autonomous robotaxis from Tesla next year — not in all jurisdictions because we won’t have regulatory approval everywhere” […]

At its "Autonomy Day" today, Tesla detailed the new custom chip that will be running the self-driving software in its vehicles. Elon Musk rather peremptorily called it "the best chip in the world...objectively." That might be a stretch, but it certainly should get the job done.

China’s Luckin Coffee has registered plans with the SEC to go public on the Nasdaq, setting a placeholder amount of $100 million, shows its filing. The development comes less than a week after the 18-month-old company announced $150 million in Series B “plus” funding led by the giant asset manager BlackRock, which pumped $125 million […]

The Tesla computer, a new custom chip designed to enable full self-driving capabilities, is now in all new Model 3, X and S vehicles, CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s Autonomy Day. Tesla switched over from Nvidia’s Drive platform to its own custom chip for the Model S and X about a month ago and […]

Today at Tesla’s first Autonomy Day event, Elon Musk took questions from the press but didn’t have time for questions about lidar. Historically, he’s been vocal about the technology, and this time he put it as clear as he could. “Lidar is a fool’s errand,” Elon Musk said. “Anyone relying on lidar is doomed. Doomed! […]

As the internet TV services have matured, their pricing has as well. The majority have raised their price points — some have even done so multiple times. Today, Philo is following suit…but only by a little. The streaming TV service has been one of the cheapest on the market, with an entry-level plan that began […]

Over the last five years, almost everything about web development has changed. Oh, the old tech still works, your WordPress and Ruby On Rails sites still function just fine — but they’re increasingly being supplanted by radical new approaches. The contents of your browser are being sliced, diced, rendered, and processed in wholly new ways […]