Crunch Hype

Entrepreneur First (EF), the company builder and “talent first” investor, held its eleventh Demo Day in London this afternoon. The event included newly formed startups from EF’s London, Berlin and Paris cohorts, and represented a showcase of the investor’s now pan-European reach. Once again, the pitches took place in front of a near-overcapacity crowd at […]

Artiphon, the startup behind the electronic instrument that it’s dubbed the Instrument 1, has raised $2 million in seed funding. We previously described the Instrument 1 as a symphony, rock band and DJ that you can hold in your hand. It’s a device that allows you to create the sounds of a guitar, violin, bass, […]

Wyze, they of the $20 home security camera, announced this morning the launch of comparably priced home sensor system. The $20 Wyze Sense kit ships with a motion sensor, two contact sensors (to be mounted on doors or windows) and a bridge system that connects them to the aforementioned cheap camera. The sensors are roughly […]

We’ve not seen a lot of the Samsung Galaxy Fold. The device didn’t make its way off-stage at the Unpacked event in late February, and a week later, it was trapped behind glass at Mobile World Congress. But Samsung insists that not only is the handset real, it’s actually going on stage pretty soon. What […]

Four senior senators have called on the largest U.S. voting machine makers to explain why they continue to sell devices with “known vulnerabilities,” ahead of upcoming critical elections. The letter, sent Wednesday, calls on election equipment makers ES&S, Dominion Voting, and Hart InterCivic to explain why they continue to sell decades-old machines, which the senators […]

All new vehicles sold in the European Union must have a wide range of safety features baked in as standard in the coming years, after EU institutions reached provisional agreement on a safety regulation that’s aimed at protecting passengers, pedestrians and cyclists. Once formally adopted most of the new safety features will become mandatory from […]

Beware children. April Fools’ Day is nearly upon us. It’s arguably the worst day of the year, but one we stubbornly cling to because of tradition. Tech companies certainly aren’t immune from the draw of building up and instantly crushing the dreams of millions of users, and pranks have become pretty common place with many […]

There are better employee perks than a ping-pong table. 70 percent of Americans graduate college with student loan debt. That’s 45 million people who owe $1.6 trillion. So when employers use Goodly to offer $100 per month in student loan payback for a $6 fee, talent sticks around. The startup found 86 percent of employees said […]

Instacart is today launching a new feature aimed at allowing shoppers to access their earnings more quickly, the company announced this morning. Instant Cashout, as the option is called, was built in partnership with payments platform Stripe and is being made available to shoppers in-app for instant transfers to a debit card. Previously, workers would […]

Grindr, the popular dating app for gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, looks like it might be changing hands again, a year after it was acquired at a valuation of $245 million. According to a report in Reuters, Grindr’s owner Kunlun is looking for a buyer of the company after the Committee on Foreign Investment […]

Amazon Prime Video is developing a series based on “Wild Seed,” the novel by acclaimed science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Deadline reports that the project comes from Juvee Productions (the production company of Viola Davis and Julius Tennon) and will be written by author Nnedi Okorafor and filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, with Kahiu directing. Hollywood seems […]

In 2013, Google went big on robotics. Under the leadership of Android father Andy Rubin, the company went on a shopping spree that included marquee companies like Boston Dynamics. The division was named Replicant, in an homage to Blade Runner that worked with the whole Alphabet motif. It was big and secretive and expensive, and […]

Productivity nerds, rejoice! Flexibits, the company behind Fantastical, is releasing Cardhop on the iPhone and iPad today. Cardhop was originally released on macOS, and it lets you text or call your contacts as well as add information more quickly. If you have an iPhone, chances are you're using the default Contacts app. It's a pretty […]

[Editor’s note: This is part of a series we’re writing about branding for startups. Join our latest initiative to find the best brand designers and agencies in the world who work with early-stage companies by nominating a talented brand designer you’ve worked with.] Basecamp, maker of project management and team communications software, is a company […]

From Extra Crunch Apologies – yesterday’s daily got stuck on a plane from LAX and never sent out. This is your combined Tuesday + Wednesday editions. New Experiment: The Bold Italic’s popular podcast This is Your Life in Silicon Valley is a mainstay on playlists in the Bay Area. Given the popularity of Equity’s transcripts, […]

Kespry, a company that offers industrial users a subscription-based drone service, today announced that it has raised funding from Salesforce Ventures, marking that firm’s first hardware investment. With this, Salesforce and Kespry are also partnering around bringing Kespry’s drone services for the insurance industry to Salesforce’s own tools for this vertical. Sadly, the companies did […]

FarmWise wants robots to do the dirty part of farming: weeding. With that thought, the San Francisco-based startup enlisted the help of Michigan-based manufacturing and automotive company Roush to build prototypes of the self-driving robots. An early prototype is pictured above. Financial details of the collaboration were not released. The idea is these autonomous weeders […]

With six new guests checking in every second, the $31 billion company is rapidly surpassing hospitality industry incumbents.

It’s Qualcomm 1, Apple 1 in the latest instalment of the pair’s bitter patent bust-up — the litigious IP infringement claim saga that also combines a billion dollar royalties suit filed by Cupertino alleging that the mobile chipmaker’s licensing terms are unfair. The iPhone maker filed against Qualcomm on the latter front two years ago […]

SparkLabs Group, the network of accelerators and venture funds that has now worked with more than 200 startups around the world, wants to foster the next generation of entrepreneurs with a new program for universities. Called SparkLabs Frontier, the program’s first accelerator will launch at Arizona State University this summer. SparkLabs Frontier-ASU is open to […]

For the last two years, Didi has been the dominant car-hailing force in China and its success has spawned a handful of competitors initiated by both internet firms and old-school carmakers. Just last week, another notable challenger has stepped up. T3, which is short for “top 3”, officially launched after a dozen entities, including three […]

Qupital, a fintech startup that bills itself as Hong Kong’s largest trade financing platform for SMEs, has closed a $15 million Series A led by CreditEase FinTech Investment Fund (CEFIF), with participation from returning investors Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and MindWorks Ventures, both participants in its seed round. To date, Qupital has raised $17 […]

Glassdoor has released its latest gender pay gap data analysis. In the U.S., the unadjusted pay gap comes in at 21.4 percent, meaning women make just $0.79 for every $1 men earn. But, when controlling for variables like age, education, location, experience, occupation and industry, the pay gap is 4.9 percent. That’s a slight improvement […]

Jon Sakoda needed to decompress, he says. The founder-turned-venture investor had logged a dozen years with the investing heavyweight New Enterprise Associates after selling his last startup to Symantec in 2006. And what he wanted by last summer was more time with his kids and less time with his phone, so he turned it off […]

In the increasingly digitized world of healthcare, how can all involved uphold their responsibilities, follow relevant laws and maintain the trust of patients when it comes to privacy?

Apple doesn’t care about news, it cares about recurring revenue. That’s why publishers are crazy to jump into bed with Apple News+. They’re rendering their own subscription options unnecessary in exchange for a sliver of what Apple pays out from the mere $10 per month it charges for unlimited reading. The unfathomable platform risk here […]

Even by the standards of the often, ah, “wide-ranging” conversations on the Original Content podcast, this latest episode covers a lot of ground. The initial focus is “Triple Frontier,” a film directed by J.C. Chandor and starring Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal, Charlie Hunnam and Garrett Hedlund as friends who served in the special […]

This morning, a publicly traded transplant diagnostics company called CareDx, along with Stanford University, sued another publicly traded genetic testing company, Natera, for patent infringement. Much appears to be at stake, and it all centers on cell-free DNA testing, a type of technology that has already been at the crux of numerous lawsuits and looks […]

On Tuesday, the FAA and Department of Transportation published a proposal that greases the wheels for the commercial space industry, long bound by outdated regulations that were not created with a modern vision of private spaceflight in mind. Last May, the Trump administration signaled its intention to ease commercial spaceflight regulations with Space Policy Directive […]

On Wall Street's leniency toward unprofitable tech companies and outsized exits.

Curious whether you should cancel your existing magazine subscription and just subscribe to Apple News+? Apple certainly seems to believe News+ is an outsized bargain for you. The company’s claim that it would cost users $8,000 to get annual access to the publications they are giving readers for $9.99 per month suggests that they see […]

The FTC, in what could be considered a prelude to new regulatory action, has issued an order to several major internet service providers requiring them to share every detail of their data collection practices. The information could expose patterns of abuse or otherwise troubling data use against which the FTC — or states — may want to take action.

Welcome to this week’s transcribed edition of This is Your Life in Silicon Valley. We’re running an experiment for Extra Crunch members that puts This is Your Life in Silicon Valley in words – so you can read from wherever you are. This is your Life in Silicon Valley was originally started by Sunil Rajaraman […]

Mozilla’s free password manager designed for users of the Firefox web browser is today officially arriving on Android. The standalone app, called Firefox Lockbox, offers a simple if a bit basic way for users to access their logins already stored in their Firefox browser from their mobile device. The app is nowhere near as developed […]

The Oxford Internet Institute has published what it bills as the world’s first rating system for working conditions on gig economy platforms. The Fairwork academic research project is a collaboration with the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore, the University of Cape Town, the University of Manchester, and the University of the Western Cape. As […]

Linear Labs, a startup developing an electric motor for cars, scooters, robots, wind turbines and even HVAC systems, has raised $4.5 million in a seed round led by Science Inc. and Kindred Ventures. Investors Chris and Crystal Sacca, Ryan Graves of Saltwater Ventures, Dynamic Signal CEO Russ Fradin, Masergy executive chairman and former-CEO Chris MacFarland, […]

Microsoft and Adobe have been building a relationship for some time, and today at Adobe Summit in Las Vegas the two companies announced a deeper integration between the two platforms. It involves sharing Marketo data, the company that Adobe acquired last September for $4.75 billion. Because it’s marketers, they were duty-bound to give it a […]

The European Union’s current approach to potential cybersecurity threats posed by Huawei 5G products is caution, but not an outright ban. The topic was the subject of new recommendations issued by the EU this week in response to U.S. calls to boycott the electronics giant over fears around its connection to the Chinese government. The […]

Another major e-commerce brand its expanding its business offline. Wayfair, the Boston-based online furniture retailer whose net revenue topped $2 billion in the fourth quarter, announced this morning it plans to open its first full-service retail store this fall. The store, which will be based in Natick, Mass., will connect the company’s online business to […]

When you hit the ground running at Disrupt San Francisco 2019 — and you will — be sure to save time for a Q&A session. You’re going to hear a bevy of world-class speakers discussing a range of thought-provoking topics on the Main Stage. A Q&A Session is the place where you can continue the […]

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I was at GDC participating in a demo of a service I didn’t think could exist: OnLive. The company had promised high-definition, low-latency streaming of games at a time when real broadband was uncommon, mobile gaming was still defined by Bejeweled (though Angry Birds was about to change that), and […]

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. Here’s everything Apple announced at its ‘Show Time’ event Let’s see if I can get this all into one blurb: There’s […]

Unmanned drone deliveries are making their way inside the UPS network. Thanks to a partnership with drone startup Matternet, UPS will start delivering medical samples via unmanned drones at WakeMed’s hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina. With the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration and North Carolina’s department of transportation, UPS and Matternet will conduct routine […]

Spotify this morning announced a major change to how its playlists will operate, with the news that some of its previously human-curated playlists will now be personalized based on listeners’ tastes. Before, Spotify offered personalized playlists like Discover Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mixes, among others, to offer users a way to enjoy the music […]

Google today officially launched AMP for Email, its effort to turn emails from static documents into dynamic, web page-like experiences. AMP for Email is coming to Gmail, but other major email providers like Yahoo Mail (which shares its parent company with TechCrunch), Outlook and Mail.ru will also support AMP emails. It’s been more than a […]

There are actually a lot more than five great reasons, but these five should be enough to make just about anyone eager to join TechCrunch’s robotics and AI show April 18 at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall. 1. Fireside & Panel Discussions TechCrunch’s editors will have a busy day with more than 20 riveting sessions — […]

Customers across the U.S. reported airline computer issues at a number of airports. A flood of tweets began to roll in a little after 11am ET (8am PT) about computer or network issues. Passengers on the ground said the issues related to the flight check-in systems and were unable to issue boarding passes. A spokesperson […]

Spotify, the music streaming platform with 207 million users, is making good on its commitment to invest up to $500 million into its new podcasting business — a promise it made in February after announcing the acquisitions of podcast networks Gimlet and Anchor. Today, Spotify announced that it has acquired a small podcasting studio called Parcast, […]

As we wrote last week in How Salesforce paved the way for the SaaS platform approach, the ability to build extensions, applications and even whole companies on top of the Salesforce platform set the stage and the bar for every SaaS company since. Vlocity certainly recognized that. Targeting five verticals, it built industry-specific CRM solutions […]

Around 10 years of ecosystem development has left European high-growth companies in a much stronger position counter their global rivals, according to new research from the FT and Statista dubbed the FT 1000. And in the realm of tech startups, they continue to create the software which is, famously, eating the world. Despite trade wars, […]