Crunch Hype

In its second year, All Raise plans to go far and wide to support women on both sides of the table.

While the former CEO of Nissan and Renault Carlos Ghosn is currently in jail, his lawyer and communication team released a new video statement. The seven-minute video was shot hours before his latest arrest. Ghosn claims that there’s a conspiracy against him. “This is about back-stabbing,” he said. “If you are listening to me through […]

Cashfree, an India-based startup that specializes in making corporate banking services more accessible and easier to use, has closed a $5.5 million Series A round. The deal is led by Smilegate Investment — the fund affiliated with Korean games firm Smilegate — with participation from Y Combinator, the U.S. accelerator program that Cashfree graduated from […]

Cryptocurrency mining has become the latest target for the Chinese government seeking to phase out industries considered a drag on the country’s economy. The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the top economic planning agency in the world’s largest market for bitcoin mining, released on Monday a list of sectors it plans to promote, restrict […]

The European Parliament’s civil liberties committee (Libe) voted yesterday to back proposed legislation for a one-hour takedown rule for online terrorist content which critics argue will force websites to filter uploads. MEPs on the committee also backed big penalties for service providers that systematically and persistently fail to abide by the law — agreeing they […]

India has a new unicorn after Dream11, an online fantasy sports service, claimed its valuation has surpassed $1 billion following a new investment. This isn’t your regular unicorn valuation deal. Instead, the company — which hosts cricket, NBA, soccer and other sports contests — crossed the milestone through a secondary sale that reportedly involves the […]

Leadfeeder, a Helsinki-based startup that helps B2B companies generate new leads from website analytics, has closed a €3.1 million in series A funding. Leading the round is Dutch growth capital firm Endeit Capital, with Finland’s Superhero Capital and Vendep Capital participating. The Finnish company says the new capital will be used to further develop its […]

Target Global, the Berlin-headquartered VC that has backed the likes of Auto1, Delivery Hero, Omio (formerly GoEuro) and Wefox, is opening up its first U.K. office — undeterred by Brexit uncertainty. The U.K. expansion, which adds to Target’s Berlin, Tel Aviv and Moscow offices, was overseen by General Partner Yaron Valler. Two of the firm’s […]

We recently noted that SoftBank’s Vision Fund has stepped up its deal-making in Asia this year, and today it added a new company to its roster: travel services platform Klook. Hong Kong-based Klook announced today that it has raised a $225 million round led by the Vision Fund with participation from existing investors. The deal […]

Blackpink, one of the highest-profile Korean pop groups, is breaking YouTube records with its latest video. A Google spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that “Kill This Love” is the fastest music video to hit 100 million views, having hit that number in less than three days. It is also now YouTube’s most viewed music video debut, […]

Rocket Lab, one of the biggest startups in the NewSpace category of companies providing launch and satellite services, has added satellite manufacturing to the array of services it offers to customers. The company, which already had developed launch capabilities and has begun sending payloads into space, can now deliver fully built satellites to its customers, […]

The broadband divide in the U.S. is real, but if you want to know how real, don't ask the FCC. Its yearly broadband deployment report, already under fire for serious data problems, has now been further questioned by Microsoft, which says its own data contradicts coverage data provided by internet providers. Despite $22 billion in government spending, it says, "adoption has barely budged."

Lubbock fans watching tonight’s NCAA Men’s National Championship basketball game between the University of Virginia and Texas Tech will have numerous ways to celebrate if the latter wins, but riding Lime -branded electric scooters will not be among them. Six months after Lime rolled out its motorized vehicles in Lubbock — the city in Northwest […]

I know it’s been tough. All the waiting. The sleepless nights. But fear not, the Titanium version of RED’s wholly ridiculous Hydrogen One is finally here. And yes, it costs as much as you remember. The $1,595 phone is essentially the same as its $1,295 counterpart, save for the different material casing. That means the […]

Her startup, Mos, is backed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and Kleiner Perkin's John Doerr

If you’ve been on Twitter today, you’ve probably seen one story making the rounds. So the Secret Service stuck Zhang's thumbdrive into their computer. https://t.co/0T6LAfOtEl pic.twitter.com/RSfUgw4I4n — Chris Wysopal (@WeldPond) April 8, 2019 The case follows a Chinese national, Yujing Zhang, who is accused of trying to sneak into President Trump’s private Florida resort Mar-a-Largo […]

Eleven democratic senators, led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), have penned a letter to Juul Labs, asking a series of questions around the product’s marketing, its effectiveness as a tool to help people quit smoking combustible cigarettes, sales figures and, perhaps most importantly, more information on the deal that gave Altria a minority stake in […]

The popular TechCrunch podcast Equity this week launched a new series called Equity Dive, wherein a host interviews the writer of the latest edition of the Extra Crunch EC-1. If you’ve ever wanted to know everything there is to know about Patreon, the platform that connects creators with fans and their wallets, then this is […]

This post is a part of our latest initiative to demystify design and find the best brand designers and agencies in the world who work with early-stage companies.

Zoom prices its IPO, defends CFO after an anonymous source exposed a previously undisclosed workplace relationship.

Boston University grad students analyzed more than four million pitches from 11 seasons of Major League Baseball (2008-2018), and the findings aren’t great for human umpires. According to the study, umps made 34,294 incorrect ball and strike calls in 2018. That works out to 14 blown calls per game and 1.6 per inning. It’s not […]

Twitter just took another big step to help boot spammers off its platform: it’s cutting the number of accounts Twitter users can follow, from 1,000 per day to just 400. The idea with the new limit is that it helps prevent spammers from rapidly growing their networks by following then unfollowing Twitter accounts in a […]

The San Francisco-based startup Branch International, which makes small personal loans in emerging markets, has raised $170 million and announced a partnership with Visa to offer virtual, pre-paid debit cards to Branch client networks in Africa, South-Asia and Latin America. Branch — which has 150 employees in San Francisco, Lagos, Nairobi, Mexico City and Mumbai — […]

Spotify is launching new analytics tools to help artists and their teams better understand how well their ads are working. The company today says it’s rolling out new streaming conversion metrics that will show how Spotify listeners reacted to a particular ad campaign — whether they clicked through to listen, saved the music or added […]

Reliable pick and place systems have long been a kind of Holy Grail among industrial robotics. The job of moving products in and out of bins is high among the jobs that many warehouse and fulfillment centers are looking to automate. For a few years now, RightHand Robotics has been one of the more exciting […]

Three million dollars. That’s the largest amount of money I’ve ever walked away from in terms of a customer contract that I decided we shouldn’t take.

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. Pinterest sets IPO range at $15-17, valuing it at $10.6B vs previous valuation of $12.3B Social media platform Pinterest filed an […]

Kids gaming platform Roblox, most recently valued at over $2.5 billion, has reached a new milestone of 90 million monthly active users, the company said on Sunday. That’s up from the 70 million monthly actives it claimed at its last funding round – a $150 million Series F, announced last fall. The sizable increase in […]

Ikea and Sonos are partnering on a a new range of connected speakers that will be available in August 2019. The Symfonisk speakers aren’t just cheap Ikea speakers with a Sonos logo. You’ll be able to control the speakers from the Sonos app just like a normal Sonos product. Ikea and Sonos showcased two different […]

Microsoft today launched the first official version of its Edge browser with the Chromium engine for Windows 10. You can now download the first developer and canary builds here. The canary builds will get daily updates and the developer builds will see weekly updates. Over time, you’ll also be able to opt in to the […]

As more universities turn to offering online degrees to expand their student bodies by way of cyberspace, one of the pioneers in enabling that trend has made an acquisition to expand into new territory around skills training and continuing education. 2U, which helps build online degree programs for a number of top universities, is paying $750 […]

After a couple of few rocky years, 2020 will mark a rebound for phone shipments, according to new projections from Gartner. But device makers aren’t out of the woods just yet. 2021’s numbers find things dipping yet again. The analyst firm sees the category experiencing a 0.5 percent decline for 2019. That comports with recent […]

Gizmodo Media Group and The Onion have a new owner — private equity firm Great Hill Partners. As part of the deal, digital media executive Jim Spanfeller is becoming CEO of (and an investor in) the renamed G/O Media. Spanfeller previously led Forbes.com as CEO and also founded Spanfeller Media Group, the company behind the […]

Security researchers have discovered a powerful surveillance app first designed for Android devices can now target victims with iPhones. The spy app, found by researchers at mobile security firm Lookout, said its developer abused their Apple-issued enterprise certificates to bypass the tech giant’s app store to infect unsuspecting victims. The disguised carrier assistance app once […]

One thing we count on for sure in this unpredictable world of ours: there will, indeed, be new iPhones. Another thing that’s looking — at the very least — pretty likely is the inclusion of a three-camera array. A number of different rumors from different sources are currently circling around the addition of a third […]

The European Commission has announced the launch of a pilot project intended to test draft ethical rules for developing and applying artificial intelligence technologies to ensure they can be implemented in practice. It’s also aiming to garner feedback and encourage international consensus building for what it dubs “human-centric AI” — targeting among other talking shops […]

Klaviyo, a Boston-based email marketing firm founded in 2012, went about building its email marketing business the old fashioned way. First it built a profitable company, then it went looking for funding to accelerate the growth. Today, it announced a massive $150 million Series B with the entire sum coming from Summit Partners. The company […]

Just 5 months after announcing £85 million in Series E funding, Monzo is already gearing up to raise additional funding, which would almost double its valuation. As reported in the Sunday Times yesterday, the U.K. challenger bank is close to raising £100 million in further funding in a new round led by an unnamed U.S. […]

Viber, the messaging app owned by Rakuten that a year ago said it had 1 billion registered users, has added another feature in its longer-term efforts to add more stickiness to its service, while also bringing in a little more revenue to the business: users now have the option of subscribing to have “local numbers” […]

Fleetsmith launched in 2016 with a mission to manage Apple devices in the cloud. It simplified an IT activity that had previously been complex with help from Apple’s Device Enrollment Program. Over the last year, the startup has beefed up its offering considerably, and today it announced a $30 million Series B round led by […]

Loan platform Kabbage — which offers quick assessment and approvals for small business loans using machine learning algorithms that pull data from dozens of sources — has closed another large securitization as it continues to grow its operations. The company said has closed an asset-backed securitization of $700 million, which it says it the largest transaction […]

After dropping its IPO filing two weeks ago, today Pinterest, the social media platform where people can discover and share ideas and content through grids of “pinned” images, filed an updated S-1 where it set the price range at $15-17 per share for a sale of 75 million shares. At this range, the company will raise between […]

The UK government has laid out proposals to regulate online and social media platforms, setting out the substance of its long-awaited White Paper on online harms today — and kicking off a public consultation. The Online Harms White Paper is a joint proposal from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Home […]

Veratrak, a London-based startup that aims to digitise the pharmaceutical supply chain, has picked up £1 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Force Over Mass, with participation from Seedcamp, Ascension Ventures, Blockchain Valley Ventures, and Truesight Ventures. A number of individual investors have also backed the young company. They include ex-Head of Corporate […]

A powerful data-stealing malware campaign with a tax theme is on the rise to target unsuspecting filers ahead of Tax Day. TrickBot, a financially motivated trojan, infects Windows computers through a malicious Excel document sent by a specially crafted email. Once infected, the malware targets vulnerable devices on the network and combs for passwords and […]

Southeast Asian media is ablaze with discussion of the latest “decacorn” — $10 billion-valued startup — in the region after Go-Jek reportedly hit the milestone, but the Indonesia-based company is being prematurely anointed. Two sources close to Go-Jek told TechCrunch that the ride-hailing firm’s current valuation is just shy of the $10 billion mark — […]

Source Code Capital, the venture capital firm that’s backed some of China’s most prominent tech unicorns and boasts a network of high-profile investors and founders, announced Monday it has closed a new $570 million fund as it continues to hunt down early to mid-stage companies. The latest close catapults Source Code’s capital under management to […]

Octopus Ventures, the European venture capital firm that’s part of Octopus Group, is launching an £83 million growth fund to further invest in its most promising portfolio companies. The new fund, which is backed by a number of undisclosed institutional investors rather than individual investors, brings the total Octopus Ventures’ various funds has under management […]

Always be raisin’. That appears to be the motto of Southeast Asia’s ride-hailing companies Grab and Go-Jek. Fresh from closing a near-$1.5 billion raise from SoftBank’s Vision Fund as part of a huge, multi-billion Series H deal, Grab said today that it plans to extend the round to $6.5 billion to amp up its battle […]

B Capital, the VC firm from Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, has made the first close of its second fund. The firm has closed out $406 million in initial capital, according to a filing lodged with the FCC last month. The document doesn’t include details of a target raise or which LPs have committed. Saverin came […]