Crunch Hype

The U.S. healthcare system spends roughly $190 billion every year on physical therapies prescribed to treat muscular and skeletal disorders, and Sword Health has raised $8 million in a new round of financing to slash those costs. The New York-based company was founded in Europe four years ago and recently relocated to the U.S. where […]

Venture capitalists are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into healthcare startups pitching lower cost alternatives to traditional services and one of their primary targets is diagnostics. As investors look to back services that can pitch lower cost alternatives to customers, companies like EverlyWell, the Disrupt Battlefield alumnus which just raised $50 million in new […]

Facebook is pulling away from its ambitions to provide peer-to-peer money transfers via Messenger in Europe. Today, the company announced that it would be discontinuing the service — which let individuals send money to each other — in the two countries in the region where it had rolled it out, the UK and France on […]

Between Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive and iCloud Drive, consumer cloud storage is a crowded space. And yet, a small company called pCloud has managed to attract over 9 million users over the past five years. The company recently reached profitability with a team of 32 people. If you’re familiar with Dropbox, pCloud won’t surprise […]

The race is on for building and shipping more cost-effective electric cars, but today one of more ambitious startups in the field announced some significant changes that underscore some of the challenges in making that a reality. Byton, the Chinese electric car startup, today announced that Carsten Breitfeld, the former BMW executive and Byton co-founder […]

Security researchers have discovered an unusual new malware that steals user passwords and account payment methods stored in a victim’s browser — and also silently pushes up YouTube subscribers and revenue. The malware, Scranos, infects with rootkit capabilities, burying deep into vulnerable Windows computers to gain persistent access — even after the computer restarts. Scranos […]

The Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris has been saved after fire broke out in the early hours of Monday evening, but not before extensive damage was inflicted on the 856-year-old building, with much of its roof collapsing into itself, along with its main spire. The fire had blazed for eight hours before firefighters were able […]

On the same day that she became a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her work bringing the Cambridge Analytica scandal to light, journalist Carole Cadwalladr took the stage at TED to “address you directly, the gods of Silicon Valley.” Cadwalladr began her talk by recounting a trip she took after the Brexit referendum, back to her […]

Alibaba’s arch-foe JD.com has long prided itself on owning and controlling its logistics services: couriers are treated as in-house staff and paid a basic income. But that will end soon as costs keep piling up for the ecommerce giant. In an internal letter sent to the staff on Monday, JD founder and chief executive Richard […]

Venture capitalists plow more dollars into men's health.

Electric vehicles, still a small percentage of the total automotive market in the U.S., are beginning to gain ground, according to analysis by IHS Markit. There were 208,000 new registrations for electric vehicles in the U.S. last year, more than double the number filed in 2017, IHS said Monday. That growth in EVs was heavily […]

Intense and graphic violence is something we've come to simply expect from games, but sexual and other adult themes are still largely taboo — including, as publisher Devolver Digital is learning, drugs. Even if the game in question is a relatively serious tycoon-type look at the current (and legal!) business of selling weed.

Gene Wolfe, author of “The Book of the New Sun” and other acclaimed works of science fiction and fantasy, died Sunday at the age of 87. According to Locus, his death came after a long struggle with heart disease. While Wolfe was never quite as famous as some of his peers, his writing was loved […]

Hulu has paid $1.43 billion to buy AT&T’s minority stake in the streaming video company. The companies announced Monday that the transaction valued Hulu at $15 billion. As a result, AT&T’s 9.5 percent stake in Hulu was worth $1.43 billion. The valuation is two-thirds higher than last November when Disney reported in a regulatory filing […]

Volvo is taking technology that allowed some of its vehicles to communicate with each other about hazardous road conditions and expanding it across Europe in an effort to increase safety, the automaker announced Monday. Volvo first introduced its Hazard Light Alert and Slippery Road Alert system in 2016 on Volvo’s 90 Series cars. But it […]

Some viewers following live coverage of the Notre-Dame Cathedral broadcast on YouTube were met with a strangely out of place info box offering facts about the September 11 attacks. BuzzFeed first reported the appearance of the misplaced fact-check box on at least three live streams from major news outlets. Twitter users also took note of […]

In addition to a growing lineup of scripted fare, documentaries will be another key focus for Apple TV+, the company’s new streaming service set to launch in May. According to a new report today from Variety, Apple has hired A&E’s Molly Thompson as its head of Documentaries. Thompson’s experience at A&E includes founding its documentary […]

On January 4, 2019, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) released new Patent Examiner Guidance (“the Guidance”) for subject matter eligibility.

We’re always curious to see how rounds come together when there is limited capacity for both new investors and existing investor pro-rata.

The Bessemer Process patented in 1856 by Sir Henry Bessemer is one of the inventions most closely associated with catalyzing the second industrial revolution. By reducing the impurities of iron with an innovative oxidizing air blast, the process ushered in a new wave of inexpensive, high-volume steel making.

Dota2 is one of the most popular, and complex, online games in the world, but an AI has once again shown itself to supersede human skill. In matches over the weekend, OpenAI's "Five" system defeated two pro teams soundly, and soon you'll be able to test your own mettle against — or alongside — the ruthless agent.

“Welcome to the United States of America.” That’s the first thing you read when you find out your green card application was approved. Those long-awaited words are printed on fancier-than-usual paper, an improvement on the usual copy machine-printed paper that the government sends to periodically remind you that you, like millions of other people, are […]

Lyft is going to integrate Citi Bike into its app for some riders in New York City. Lyft acquired bike-share startup Motivate back in July and proceeded to become a one-stop transportation app in three cities in December. Now, it’s ready to do the same in New York. Beginning early next month, Lyft customers in […]

Justin Cowperthwaite Contributor Share on Twitter Justin Cowperthwaite is an Engineering Manager at CircleCI passionate about helping remote teams build collaborative delivery paradigms. Every engineer deserves a clear growth path so they can understand, plan, and execute on meaningful career growth. Providing a framework for this growth (we call ours a competency matrix; it’s also […]

In addition to exciting its loyal legion of fans, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” premiere was also once again great news for installs of the network’s app for cord cutters, HBO NOW, which shot to the top of the App Store this weekend. The app this weekend saw a combined 300,000-plus new mobile subscribers in the […]

Ride-sharing companies and airports have always had a bit of a fractious relationship. Riders looking to catch an Uber or Lyft have had to walk to parking garages, follow makeshift signage, find arbitrary pickup points all while waiting multiples of the ETA for their pickup at busy airports. Lyft is piloting a new way to […]

Airbnb has completed its largest acquisition yet.

San Francisco has hit the mid-point for its one-year electric scooter pilot program. In a slide deck to be presented at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors meeting tomorrow, the SFMTA reports that there were 242,398 electric scooter trips between October 2018 and February 2019. What especially jumps out is the fact […]

Matrix Partners has backed one of Y Combinator's recent graduates.

This Thursday, we’ll be hosting our third annual Robotics + AI TechCrunch Sessions event at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. The day is packed start-to-finish with intimate discussions on the state of robotics and deep learning with key founders, investors, researchers and technologists. The event will dig into recent developments in robotics and AI, which startups […]

The loss of Israel's Beresheet lander during its descent to the lunar surface was unfortunate, but the mission was still largely a success — and has certainly created an interesting cultural artifact on the moon where it impacted. Perhaps more interesting than we could have known: It turns out David Copperfield stashed the secrets to his illusions onboard, and they may have survived the crash.

Apple’s new gaming subscription service Apple Arcade may have been a bit of a footnote at its Services event earlier this month compared to the stage time given to more prime time-ready efforts like Apple TV+ and Apple News+, but the company is throwing some major funding behind its effort to get people paying a […]

Micromobility — electric personal vehicles — has gone from being non-existent to ubiquitous across cities all over the world. Currently, we’re seeing micromobility take on the form of electric scooters and pedal-assist bikes. JUMP and Scoot operate in both of those categories. JUMP got its start as a pedal-assist bike-share startup, but has since evolved […]

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. Mutiny at HQ Trivia fails to oust CEO This week’s banishment of host Scott Rogowsky was merely a symptom of the […]

The Galaxy Fold is real. I’ve held it in my hands — a few of them, actually. Samsung’s briefing this morning was littered with the things, in different colors and different states of unfolded. A month or so ago, this was anything but a given. After eight years of teasing a folding device, Samsung finally […]

Smart speakers’ global installed base is on track to top 200 million by the end of this year, according to a report out today from analysts at Canalys. Specifically, the firm forecasts the installed base will grow by 82.4 percent, from 114 million units in 2018 to 207.9 million in 2019. The U.S. will continue to […]

After leading design teams at Code and Theory, ABC News, and Newsweek Digital, Mark Forscher retired his managerial hat and decided to start his own creative studio called Under After in 2008. His natural interest in technology coupled with his background in branding and product design, makes him an obvious collaborator for founders looking to […]

According to a report from 9to5mac’s Guilherme Rambo, the next major version of iOS for the iPhone and iPad will present many new features, such as universal dark mode, new gestures, visual changes for the volume popup and more. Dark mode should work more or less like dark mode on macOS Mojave. You’ll be able […]

Tinder parent company Match Group, also the owner of a suite of dating apps including OkCupid, Meetic, Match, PlentyofFish and others, announced this morning plans to restructure its leadership team in order to better focus on the market opportunities for dating apps in Asia. Specifically, the company has appointed three new general managers in Asia […]

Microsoft is about to launch an even cheaper Xbox One S. In order to cut costs, the company is removing the Blu-ray disc drive altogether. According to leaked marketing images spotted by WinFuture (via Thurrott), the console could launch on May 7th for €229 in Germany. Given that the launch is just a few weeks […]

The last several years have seen an interesting pivot for Parrot, from Bluetooth headset/speakers to drones. The company’s ANAFI line is probably one of the best-positioned products to go head to head with DJI’s successful Mavic line, but the company’s looking to take things a bit further by moving beyond hobbyists/consumers. The system’s primary differential […]

Feed and Stories unite! Facebook is so eager to preempt the shift to Stories that it might even let us use the same interface of horizontally swipeable cards to sift through News Feed posts. If users won’t scroll down any more, Facebook’s ad business could take a huge hit. But by allowing traditional feed posts […]

Vimeo, the IAC-owned platform for hosting, sharing and monetizing streamed video, has made an acquisition to expand into providing more creation and editing tools. The company has acquired Magisto, a startup founded in Israel that currently has more than 100 million users, which focuses on providing tools to create and edit short-form videos, providing not […]

Jeff Farrah Contributor Share on Twitter Jeff Farrah is the general counsel of the National Venture Capital Association. More posts by this contributor US rule changes could mean more startups would need government approval to hire immigrants Foreign investment scrutiny continues to creep into the startup world via a once obscure U.S. government agency that […]

Medbelle, the London and Berlin-based startup offering what it calls an “end-to-end platform” for medical procedures, has raised $7 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Signals Venture Capital — the VC fund of major German health insurer Signal Iduna — with partipation from Talis Capital, Mutschler Ventures, IBB and Cavalry Ventures. […]

This week’s banishment of host Scott Rogowsky was merely a symptom of the ongoing struggle to decide who will lead HQ Trivia. According to multiple sources, over half of the startup’s staff signed an internal petition to depose CEO Rus Yusupov who they saw as mismanaging the company. But Yusupov then fired some core supporters […]

Jamie Metzl Contributor Share on Twitter Jamie Metzl is a futurist and the author of Hacking Darwin: Genetic Enhancement and the Future of Humanity. More posts by this contributor Is America’s national security Facebook and Google’s problem? Homo Sapiens 2.0? We need a species-wide conversation about the future of human genetic enhancement If it feels […]

The minds behind Israel’s SpaceIL attempted lunar landing convened today to begin planning for a second lunar mission. In an announcement yesterday, the chairman of SpaceIL, Morris Kahn, said that the leaders of the group behind the Beresheet launch would begin meeting to find a new group of donors for another run at a lunar […]

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 Frederic Lardinois and Ron Miller offered up their analysis on the major announcements that came out of Google’s Cloud Next conference this past week, as well as their opinions on […]

I’ve noticed something interesting lately. Five years ago, senior developers with significant iOS experience available for new work seemed approximately as easy to find as unicorns who also laid golden eggs. Even two years ago, they were awfully hard to unearth. This year, though? Maybe it’s just a random blip — but this year, like […]