Crunch Hype

The Biden administration and its allies has formally accused China of the mass-hacking of Microsoft Exchange servers earlier this year, which prompted the FBI to intervene as concerns rose that the hacks could lead to widespread destruction. The mass-hacking campaign targeted Microsoft Exchange email servers with four previously undiscovered vulnerabilities that allowed the hackers — […]

Online learning continues to see a huge boost of attention and use in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and today a startup building tools specifically for enterprises to deliver on their internal education remits is announcing a big round of funding that points to the startup’s own growth and ambitions. Go1, which provides curated […]

As more consumers embrace plant-based diets and sustainable food practices, Rise Gardens is giving anyone the ability to have a green thumb from the comfort of their own home.

When Ashley Sumner designed and launched Quilt, it was meant to be a response to digital social networking, preferring creating authentic in-person interactions between people who didn’t necessarily know each other before. The app would match members for in-person conversations and informal meetups in their own homes — but when COVID-19 arrived, the fundamentals of […]

Streaming is the name of the content game these days, and now one of the companies that builds tech to do this from anywhere in the world is getting acquired. LiveU — whose satellite/cellular hardware and software for capturing and delivering live streaming and broadcasting video is used by over 3,000 large media organizations — […]

The universe of Indian firms attempting to replicate Thrasio’s success in the world’s second largest internet market just got bigger. Three-month-old GlobalBees said on Monday it has raised $150 million in a Series A financing round led by FirstCry. Lightspeed Venture Partners also invested in the new financing round, which is $75 million in equity […]

When Robinhood raised its $3 million seed round in 2013, it was a couple of months old with huge ambitions of democratizing securities access to the underserved and unserved. Robinhood has since taken the world by storm and grown to serve more than 30 million users with its zero-commission trading. In the past, we’ve seen […]

Blackstone is acquiring a majority stake in Bangalore and San Francisco-headquartered edtech startup Simplilearn for $250 million. Simplilearn operates an eponymous online bootcamp to help people learn data science, AI, machine learning, cloud computing and other skills that are in demand in the market. The startup has partnerships with several universities and colleges including IIT […]

Temasek and Falcon Edge Capital have led a $220 million investment in Indian omni-channel eyewear retailer Lenskart, valuing the Bangalore-based startup at $2.5 billion. The new investment, which includes primary and secondary transactions, is part of a new round Lenskart unveiled a month ago when it raised $95 million from global investment fund KKR. Bay […]

Zoom is taking advantage of the impressive rise in its stock price in the past year to make its first major acquisition. The popular video conferencing firm, which was valued at about $9 billion at its IPO two years ago, said Sunday evening it has agreed a deal to buy cloud call centre service provider […]

While working as the chief operating officer of a pizza chain in Vietnam, Taku Tanaka saw how difficult it is for restaurants to connect with farmers. Many small F&B businesses can’t buy in large volumes, so they rely on nearby markets or multiple suppliers who only sell one category. In turn, this means farmers are […]

As the pandemic dwindled enough to get in our car with dogs, SiriusXM, and our children in the rear view mirror, we drove to South Carolina. Tina had endured the last year and almost another half while her mother languished with aging pets, her husband in a facility, and eventually his death. As the miles […]

Though exploit development and disclosure is often messy, running technically complex "red team" programs against the world's biggest and most important open-source project feels a little extra.

Relevance is often tied to rarity. As a result, the first anything — whether a birthday, scientific feat or female vice president — comes with its own weight. Whether that pressure is warranted is a discussion in and of itself, but today, we’ll focus on the ripple effects of India’s first unicorn IPO: Zomato. Food […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

Like some of the best consumer tech from the last decade, I didn’t know I needed an e-bike until I was on one, breezing down the bike lane contemplating my newfound freedom. Before buying a Nintendo Switch, I would have never guessed how much a candy-colored gaming console that I could pop out of a […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

At our recent Early Stage event, we had the opportunity to talk at length with Arvind Purushotham, the managing director and global head of Citi Ventures, about how startups should think about corporate venture arms, including what a check from an enterprise like Citi can mean, and how to leverage that kind of Goliath once […]

Google favors large sites more than ever, basically because it is trying to avoid providing misinformation in our polarized age. But sometimes the small sites have key new information — like the content that your startup is trying to share with the world. How can you stand out in the right search results, as algorithms continue […]

When you hire a marketing consultant, you don’t necessarily expect to wind up discussing your life’s purpose. Yet, that is what Spanish marketing expert and entrepreneur Alex Barrera often ends up doing with startup founders who hire him to help improve their pitch. They think they are going to get help convincing investors, and they […]

In order to understand the changes that are sweeping fintech and reconfiguring the way that the industry works with small businesses, it’s important to understand open banking.

ServiceMax, a company that builds software for the field-service industry, announced yesterday that it will go public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a deal valued at $1.4 billion. The transaction comes after ServiceMax was sold to GE for $915 million in 2016, before being spun out in late 2018. The company […]

Decisions about protecting your company’s IP can’t wait — founders must start aligning their IP and company strategies as soon as possible, even during the formation of the company itself.

Don't wait until it's too late to build your early-stage marketing team — but don't hire too hastily, either.

This last weekend featured the much-ballyhooed launch of Virgin Galactic’s first (nonpaying) passengers, with founder and CEO Richard Branson along for the ride. After the festivities, I had the chance to talk with the company’s president, Mike Moses, who seems to be familiar with every detail of the operation and the company’s plans for going […]

Mortgages may not be considered sexy, but they are a big business. If you’ve refinanced or purchased a home digitally lately, you may not have noticed the company powering the software behind it — but there’s a good chance that company is Blend. Founded in 2012, the startup has steadily grown to be a leader […]

Visualping, a service that can help you monitor websites for changes like price drops or other updates, announced that it has raised a $6 million extension to the $2 million seed round it announced earlier this year. The round was led by Seattle-based FUSE, a relatively new firm with investors who spun out of Ignition […]

Pocket Casts will soon have a new home. Automattic, the parent company of Tumblr and WordPress.com, is buyinh the podcast app from a collective of public radio groups, including NPR and BBC Studios.

Rivian is pushing back deliveries of its long-awaited R1T electric pickup truck and R1S SUV several more months due to delays in production caused by “cascading impacts of the pandemic,” particularly the ongoing global shortage of semiconductor chips, according to a letter sent to customers from CEO RJ Scaringe. The R1T deliveries will begin in […]

There are many blockchain platforms competing for investors’ and developers’ attention right now, from the big daddy of them all, Ethereum, to so-called “Ethereum Killers” like Solana, which we wrote about in May. Often, these technologies are seen as so promising that investors are willing to fund not only the blockchains but an ecosystem of […]

Dayna Grayson has been in venture capital for more than a decade and was one of the first VCs to build a portfolio around the transformation of industrial sectors of our economy. At NEA, where she was a partner for eight years, she led investments in and sat on the boards of companies including Desktop […]

A security lapse at insurance technology startup BackNine exposed hundreds of thousands of insurance applications after one of its cloud servers was left unprotected on the internet. BackNine might be a company you’re not familiar with, but it might have processed your personal information if you applied for insurance in the past few years. The […]

India is on pace for a record year of money flowing into its booming startup sector. But as Q3 gets underway, something perhaps even more important is going on in India: public-market liquidity.

Jen Young and Jeff Cavins decided to craft a business around their passion for being in nature. They saw an opportunity in the 20 million RVs in the U.S., most used just a few days a year.

Reliance Retail said on Friday it has acquired a controlling stake in 25-year-old Indian search and discovery firm Just Dial for $469 million. The Indian retail giant, which leads the market, said it has acquired 41% stake in publicly listed Just Dial for $469 million and will make an open offer to acquire an additional […]

When it comes to M&A in the chip world, the numbers are never small. In 2020, four deals involving chip companies totaled $106 billion, led by Nvidia snagging ARM for $40 billion. One surprise from last year’s chip-laced M&A frenzy was Intel remaining on the sidelines. That would change if a rumored $30 billion deal […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole crew was here this week, with Danny and Natasha and Alex together with Grace and Chris to sort through a very, very busy week. Yep, somehow it is Friday again which means it’s time for our weekly news roundup. […]

"When a VC says they don't like an LLC, they literally mean they are definitely allergic to peanuts, and you are a bowl of nuts."

Vyrill helps brands discover and leverage video reviews created by authentic customers and users. The company presented its product at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing and Fundraising, where it beat out nine other companies, winning the pitch-off. The judges were impressed with Vyrill’s novel approach and innovative technology around discovering and filtering relevant videos. This is […]

Yummy, a Venezuela-based delivery app, raised $4 million in funding to expand its dark store delivery operations across Latin America.

Halla wants to answer the question of how people decide what to eat and now has $4.5 million in fresh Series A1 capital from Food Retail Ventures to do it.

Switzerland-based privacy startup Nym Technologies has raised $6 million, which is being loosely pegged as a Series A round. Earlier raises included a $2.5M seed round in 2019. The founders also took in grant money from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research fund during an earlier R&D phase developing the network tech. The latest funding […]

Nasir Qadree, a Washington-based investor who just raised $62.1 million for his debut venture fund, recently told us that as his fundraising gained momentum, he was approached by established firms that are looking to absorb new talent. He opted to go it alone, but he’s hardly alone in attracting interest. Anecdotally, bringing emerging managers into […]

Digital payments giant Paytm, one of India’s most valuable startups, plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in an initial public offering, it said in draft papers submitted to the country’s market regulator on Friday. The Noida-headquartered firm — backed by Alibaba (which, alongside Ant Financial, owns 36% of Paytm), Berkshire Hathaway, and SoftBank (owns […]

FedEx Express, a subsidiary of delivery services giant FedEx, is investing $100 million in Indian startup Delhivery as the global firm looks to expand its presence in the South Asian country. Friday’s investment comes less than two months after the Gurgaon-headquartered startup, which is valued at $3 billion, secured $277 million ahead of an initial public […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

On July 16th, Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain will open in US theatres. Like many documentaries, the film pieces together archival footage, including interviews and show outtakes, to attempt to tell the story of its subject in their own words.

Before we discuss the changes that produced the lift, it is important to quickly go over the research that informed those changes.

A banner quarter for Xiaomi helped the Chinese mobile company snag the No. 2 spot in global smartphone shipments, according to newly posted Q2 numbers from research firm Canalys. It’s pretty stunning growth for the company, up 83% year-over-year for the quarter and capturing 17% of the global market. The surge puts Xiaomi at No. […]

Disrupt 2021 stands to be the best Disrupt yet. We have an incredible lineup of speakers both on the Disrupt Stage and the Extra Crunch Stage. And, of course, we can’t forget the Startup Battlefield, which has been a launch pad for some of the biggest tech companies in the world today, including Dropbox, Mint […]