Crunch Hype

After months and months of rumors it’s finally been confirmed that ride-hailing giant Uber is picking up its Middle East rival Careem in an acquisition deal worth $3.1 billion — with $1.7BN to be paid in convertible notes and $1.4BN in cash. Uber writes that it expects the transaction to close in Q1 2020, pending […]

Apple flexed its wallet today in a way Facebook has been scared to do. Tech giants make money by the billions, not the millions, which should give them an easy way to break into premium video distribution: buy some must-see content. That’s the strategy I’ve been advocating for Facebook but that Apple actually took to […]

We’ve been writing about Abundant Robotics for roughly three years at this point. Now the SRI spin out is finally ready for primetime. Abundant announced this week that New Zealand-based T&G Global will be using its robots to harvest apples. Abundant says the news is part of a plan to be involved in year-round picking, […]

No Man’s Sky just figured out a way to make a wildly absorbing space exploration game even more immersive. Announced during Sony’s first PlayStation State of Play update, No Man’s Sky devotees will soon be able to explore an endless procedurally generated universe in virtual reality. Hello Games’ Sean Murray followed Sony’s news with a […]

Mike Novogratz, a former hedge fund manager who was once captain of Princeton’s college wrestling team, has been described as many things, including in just one New Yorker article in which he was featured last year. An on-and-off-again billionaire. A sidelined Wall Street legend. “Bombastic.” “Full of shit.” A former party animal whose “lifestyle issues” […]

Apple rolled out major updates to main consumer services today, including a new Apple credit card, an ad-free TV subscription service, a paywalled version of News (that includes Extra Crunch), and a gaming platform upgrade. TechCrunch Editor-In-Chief Matthew Panzarino attended live to hear the latest, and I can tell you that he has already developed […]

McDonald’s is announcing an agreement to acquire personalization company Dynamic Yield. The announcement does not include a price, but a source with knowledge of the deal said that it’s more than $300 million. This is the fast food chain’s largest acquisition in 20 years. Dynamic Yield works with brands across e-commerce, travel, finance and media […]

Deep Science AI made its debut on stage at Disrupt NY 2017, showing in a live demo how its computer vision system could spot a gun or mask in CCTV footage, potentially alerting a store or security provider to an imminent crime. The company has now been acquired in a friendly merger with Defendry, which is looking to deploy the tech more widely.

The Game Developers Conference was held last week in San Francisco and we wanted to get together to discuss what we saw at the show for Extra Crunch members. VR, gaming engines, Unity, Unreal and Epic were just some of the topics we touched upon. But perhaps the biggest of all was Google’s new game-streaming […]

Australia-based Airwallex is the latest tech startup to enter the billion-dollar “unicorn club.” The company announced today that it has closed a $100 million Series C round that values its business above $1 billion. Started in Melbourne in 2015 by four Chinese founders, Airwallex provides a service that lets companies manage cross-border revenue and financing […]

In 1999, Mike Lincoln co-founded the first East Coast office of top Silicon Valley law firm Cooley LLP. Over the last two decades, he has built out the practice to extend well beyond the region, today covering Boston and New York too, while also heading up the firm’s business department, and serving as an adjunct […]

While creating self-driving car systems, it's natural that different companies might independently arrive at similar methods or results — but the similarities in a recent "first of its kind" Nvidia proposal to work done by Mobileye two years ago were just too much for the latter company's CEO to take politely.

Even after last week’s stream of hardware releases — a new iPad, new iMacs, and new AirPods all back-to-back — Apple had more to announce. The company announced a bunch of new stuff at a two hour event this morning, primarily focusing on its new premium media subscriptions. Don’t have time to catch up on […]

On the heels of Apple announcing paid, monthly subscription services for video, games, and news, YouTube says it is also doubling down original video content. Parent company Google has denied a report in Bloomberg that YouTube has stopped accepting pitches for scripted shows. But it also confirmed another aspect of the same report: it plans a […]

Before people ever use or buy your product, they’ll interact with your brand. What does your company stand for? How is your product different? Branding is an often overlooked, but essential component of communicating your company’s values, connecting with potential customers and, ultimately, driving conversions. But finding the right brand designer is hard. Depending […]

Video served as both form and function today at Apple’s media event, and the company wasn’t stingy with classic Apple event videos. Ranging from previews of new services like Apple Arcade to a look at the artists creating content for Apple TV +, the videos should give folks who missed the live stream a quick […]

Apple’s event today, where it announced its streaming plans and more, ended with a whole bunch of celebrities taking the stage to talk about the shows they’re making for the new TV+ service. The boldface names included Steven Spielberg, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston — but for the big finish, Apple brought out Oprah Winfrey. […]

The original “Sesame Street” TV show taught preschoolers basics like numbers and letters, but Apple’s new Sesame Street-themed show will instead focus on teaching kids coding basics. Introduced on stage today at Apple’s press event by none other than Big Bird himself, the Sesame Workshop-produced show is one of the new arrivals to Apple TV+, […]

Social investing and trading platform eToro announced that it has acquired Danish smart contract infrastructure provider Firmo for an undisclosed purchase price. Firmo’s platform enables exchanges to execute smart financial contracts across various assets, including crypto derivatives, and across all major blockchains. Firmo founder and CEO Dr. Omri Ross described the company’s mission as “…enabl[ing] our […]

To close out today’s press event focused on Apple’s services business, the company has officially announced its streaming initiative, Apple TV+. CEO Tim Cook said this will be an ad-free subscription, with everything available for online and offline viewing, in more than 100 countries. It’s coming this fall, but Apple hasn’t shared any pricing info. […]

Ouster has raised $60 million as the San Francisco-based lidar startup opens a new facility that will have the capacity to assemble and ship several thousand sensors a month by the end of 2019. The new factory, which will have a grand opening ceremony March 28, currently produces hundreds of sensors per month. Ouster says […]

Along with the long-awaited introduction of Apple’s TV and movie streaming service, the company also introduced a new Apple TV app for iPhone, iPad and Apple TV. The updated design is meant to make it easier to find content, no matter the source – whether that’s Apple’s new TV channels service, Apple TV+, your iTunes […]

Apple’s new credit card has a curious security feature that will make it much more difficult to carry out credit card fraud. The aptly named Apple Card is a new credit card, built into your iPhone Wallet app, which the company says will help customers live a “healthier” financial lifestyle. The card is designed to […]

Apple is revamping its Apple TV app with a new offering. But how will you be able to access the service exactly? Apple is launching the Apple TV app on smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony and Vizio. The Samsung app will land first, and other manufacturers will get the Apple TV app this Spring. […]

Apple wants to tilt the balance from ad-laden freemium gaming titles towards all-access ad-free gaming experiences that can be downloaded across platforms on iOS, macOS and tvOS. At the company’s services event this morning, they announced Apple Arcade, their new premium subscription service for gaming across their hardware products. “We want to make gaming even […]

Being able to pay for things like subways and buses with your phone just makes sense, but in much of the US, you’ll still need a paper ticket or an oh-so-losable reloadable card if you want a ride. At its big press event this afternoon, Apple announced that transit systems in a few major US […]

Today, Apple announced… a credit card. The Apple Card is designed for the iPhone and will work with the Wallet app. You sign up from your iPhone and you can use it with Apple Pay in just a few minutes. Before introducing the card, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared a few numbers about Apple Pay. This […]

A large-scale independent study of pre-installed Android apps has cast a critical spotlight on the privacy and security risks that preloaded software poses to users of the Google developed mobile platform. The researchers behind the paper, which has been published in preliminary form ahead of a future presentation at the IEEE Symposium on Security and […]

Apple today unveiled a revamped Apple News app which now includes a premium tier called Apple News+, offering access to over 300 magazines and newspapers for $9.99 per month. At launch, the subscription includes magazine titles like Bon Appétit, People, Vogue, National Geographic Magazine, ELLE, Glamour, and others, along with top publishers like The Wall […]

You know Apple’s got something big in the works when it went ahead and launched new iPads, iMacs and AirPods in one week with little fanfare. And while this week’s event was a bit of a surprise, Apple’s clearly been working to it for a long time. The company sent out invites for “Show Time” […]

Apple is holding a keynote today on its campus in Cupertino, and the company is expected to talk about new services. Don’t expect any new device; today’s event should be all about content. At 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 5 PM in London, 6 PM in Paris), you’ll be able to watch […]

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. What to expect from Apple’s ‘Show Time’ event Apple is holding a big press event today, where it’s expected to finally […]

Video sharing app TikTok passed 1 billion downloads last month, and its parent company ByteDance is ramping up its efforts to monetize those users with ads, while also continuing to add more features to the app to keep people engaged. In a move that could help both of those efforts, ByteDance has made a small […]

It’s been just over a year since Google announced its $300 million News Initiative, which included funding for independent journalism efforts along with products developed by Google. One of those products was News Consumer Insights, which has been used by publishers like BuzzFeed, Business Insider and Conde Nast. It takes data already collected through Google […]

China’s Pinduoduo was all the rage in 2018 as the ecommerce upstart quickly rose to challenge Alibaba and raised $1.63 billion through a Nasdaq listing. Much of its success was attributable to its link to WeChat, China’s messaging leader. Now, another emerging ecommerce player that has leveraged WeChat is gearing up for a listing in […]

Hackers targeted and compromised “hundreds of thousands” of Asus computer owners by pushing a backdoored update software tool from the company’s own servers. The bombshell claims, first reported by Motherboard, said the hackers digitally signed the Asus Live Update tool with one of the company’s own code-signing certificates before pushing it to Asus’ download servers, […]

A new U.S. Supreme Court decision is pitting entertainers and video game developers against one another in a high-stakes battle royale.

Log management service Scalyr today announced the beta launch of PowerQueries, its new tools for letting its users create advanced search operations as they manage their log files and troubleshoot potential issues. The new service allows users to perform complex actions to group, transform, filter and sort their large data sets, as well as to […]

Telegram has added a feature that lets a user delete messages in one-to-one and/or group private chats, after the fact, and not only from their own inbox. The new ‘nuclear option’ delete feature allows a user to selectively delete their own messages and/or messages sent by any/all others in the chat. They don’t even have […]

There’s nothing like a niche language to create a sort of lock-in for a startup, and that’s exactly what’s happened with e case of Gjirafa. Focusing exclusively on Albanian-speaking countries, co-founder and CEO Mergim Cahani started out developing an Albanian language search engine and then literally digitizing the country’s information, from bus timetables to a […]

Omers Ventures, the venture capital arm of Canadian pension fund Omers, is officially launching a new €300 million fund aimed at European technology startups. Headed up by Harry Briggs, who was previously at BGF Ventures, Omers Europe will back companies at Series A to B stage. The new fund will typically invest between €5m-€10m per […]

Infinity Augmented Reality, an Israeli virtual reality startup, has been acquired by Alibaba, the companies announced this weekend. The deal’s terms were not disclosed. Alibaba and InfinityAR have had a strategic partnership since 2016, when Alibaba Group led InfinityAR’s Series C. Since then, the two have collaborated on augmented reality, computer vision and artificial intelligence […]

What are you up to this afternoon? If your answer is anything “watching the livestream of an empty Steve Jobs Theater,” honestly, I’m not sure how you call yourself an Apple fan. A day before the company’s event in Cupertino, Apple’s streaming video of what looks to be an empty theater, bathed in darkness, with […]

Solugen, a startup that has set itself up with no less lofty a goal than the decarbonization of a massive chunk of the petrochemical industry, may be the first legitimate multi-million dollar company to start out in a meth lab. When company co-founders Gaurab Chakrabarti and Sean Hunt began hunting for a lab to test […]

The Wall Street Journal has published a report on Apple’s media push. The company is about to unveil a new video streaming service and an Apple News subscription on Monday. According to The WSJ, you’ll be able to subscribe to multiple content packages to increase the video library in a new app called Apple TV […]

Apple is about to announce some new services on Monday. While everybody expects a video streaming service as well as a news subscription, a new report from Bloomberg says that the company might also mention its gaming subscription. Cheddar first reported back in January that Apple has been working on a gaming subscription. Users could […]

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. We love the reader feedback. Keep it coming. Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation Weekly? Read the first edition here. As I’ve written before, consider this a soft launch. Follow me on Twitter @kirstenkorosec to ensure you see it each week. […]

For most of my life, the Internet, particularly its social media — BBSes, Usenet, LiveJournal, blogosphere, even MySpace, early Twitter and Facebook — consistently made people happier. But roughly 5 years ago it began to consistently make people more miserable. What changed? I posted that question to Twitter a week ago, and the most notable […]

Obvious Ventures was founded in 2014 by Ev Williams, Vishal Vasishth and James Joaquin. Its mission? To invest in startups that make a positive impact on the world.

In the space of a few months, MoviePass went from being the hottest startup on the block to a cautionary tale about growing too big, too fast. By the time the summer of MoviePass came to an end, the company that was going to permanently disrupt the box office was hemorrhaging money. It changed its […]