Crunch Hype

Taylor Lorenz was in high demand this week. As a prolific journalist at The Atlantic and about-to-be member of Harvard’s prestigious Nieman Fellowship for journalism, that’s perhaps not surprising. Nor was this the first time she’s had a bit of a moment: Lorenz has already served as an in-house expert on social media and the […]

A pair of security researchers dominated Pwn2Own, the annual high-profile hacking contest, taking home $375,000 in prizes including a Tesla Model 3 — their reward for successfully exposing a vulnerability in the electric vehicle’s infotainment system. Tesla handed over its new Model 3 sedan to Pwn2Own this year, the first time a car has been […]

Blade, backed by Lerer Hippeau and Airbus, has begun chauffering the Bay Area's elite.

A popular family tracking app was leaking the real-time locations of more than 238,000 users for weeks after the developer left a server exposed without a password. The app, Family Locator, built by Australia-based software house React Apps, allows families to track each other in real-time, such as spouses or parents wanting to know where […]

From Extra Crunch We hope all of you enjoyed the conversation with Eric Peckham and Lucas Matney on GDC and game streaming. For those who couldn’t join, a transcript should be coming shortly. Our enterprise reporter Ron Miller has a dive into how Salesforce became the model for enterprise SaaS companies, with some great early […]

In a recently published, roughly 75-page report, British non-profit organization The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts (RSA) outlined several scenarios for how the UK labor market will be impacted by frontier technologies such as automation, AI, AVs and more. The analysis titled “The Four Futures of Work” was conducted in collaboration with design […]

Biotech venture funding has been on a tear for the past couple of years, and corporate investors in the space are doing their part to boost the totals.

Apple popped out a new pair of AirPods this week. The design looks exactly like the old pair of AirPods. Which means I’m never going to use them because Apple’s bulbous earbuds don’t fit my ears. Think square peg, round hole. The only way I could rock AirPods would be to walk around with hands […]

Autonomous delivery startup Nuro is bursting with ideas since SoftBank invested nearly $1 billion in February, new filings reveal. A recent patent application details how its R1 self-driving vehicle could carry smaller robots to cross lawns or climb stairs to drop off packages. The company has even taken the step of trademarking the name “Fido” […]

In this week's newsletter: Details on Pinterest, Lyft, Uber and Zoom's upcoming IPOs, plus Glossier and Rent The Runway's big rounds.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk argued Friday that his Twitter use did not violate a settlement agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and that the agency’s request to have him held in contempt is based on a “radical interpretation” of the order, according to court papers filed in Manhattan federal court. The SEC has asked […]

This post reveals the cost of acquiring a customer on every ad channel my agency has tested.

In the latest Equity Shot, Kate Clark and Alex Wilhelm take a closer look at Pinterest and Zoom's IPO filings.

Silicon Valley is known for its massive wealth. When these companies file to go public, we all finally get to know how much money these executives take home each year, and the millions they’ll take home after the IPO. In Pinterest’s S-1, which it filed earlier today, we see that co-founder and CEO Ben Silbermann […]

Heathcare kiosks, a home-cooked food marketplace, and a way for startups to earn interest on their funding topped our list of high-potential companies from Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 Demo Day 2. 88 startups launched on stage at the lauded accelerator, though some of the best skipped the stage as they’d already raised tons of money. […]

Earlier this year, Helen Greiner-founded drone startup CyPhy Works announced a major change. The company was rebooting and renaming itself Aria Insights, a move that arrived with a newfound AI/data-driven focus. Now, just over two months later, the company is no more. Reports that Aria had shuttered began surfacing earlier this week. Moments ago, the […]

The visual search engine will go public on the NYSE under the ticker symbol "PINS."

Zoom posted $330 million in revenue in the year ending January 31, 2019, a remarkable 2x increase year-over-year

The biggest surprise about next week’s Apple event may be the fact that the company has anything left to announce. This week, several core pieces of Apple hardware received upgrades, including the iPad Air and mini, iMac and AirPods. Given the company’s rush to get all of that out the door, we don’t expect to […]

A couple of years ago, Clark, a New York-based startup, appeared on the scene with tutoring software that aimed to both make it easier for educators to start and manage a tutoring business by handling on its platform all the work that tutors struggle to find time to do, from drumming up students, to managing […]

Pretty much every self-driving car on the road, not to mention many a robot and drone, uses lidar to sense its surroundings. But useful as lidar is, it also involves physical compromises that limit its capabilities. Lumotive is a new company with funding from Bill Gates and Intellectual Ventures that uses metamaterials to exceed those limits, perhaps setting a new standard for the industry.

Mailchimp today announced that the Mailchimp app, which let its users use their Shopify data to create targeted email campaigns, for example, is no longer available in the Shopify marketplace. The reason for this, Shopify itself says, is that it “had growing concerns about Mailchimp’s app because of the poor merchant experience and their refusal […]

Mozilla today announced a new iOS version of Firefox that has been specifically optimized for Apple’s iPad. Given the launch of the new iPad mini this week, that’s impeccable timing. It’s also an admission that building a browser for tablets is different from building a browser for phones, which is what Mozilla mostly focused on […]

The Game Developers Conference concludes today in San Francisco but that doesn’t mean our coverage is over. TechCrunch writer Lucas Matney and Extra Crunch contributor Eric Peckham were at the Moscone Center and got a first-hand glimpse into what is coming up for gamers and developers alike. And at noon PT today they’ll be sharing […]

Crunchyroll is announcing its first major price increase since the anime streaming service launched in 2006. Prices for its premium subscription will go up in the United States, Great Britain, Australia and the Nordics — in the U.S. and Australia, the monthly price will increase from $6.95 to $7.99 (or $79.99 per year), while British […]

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. Facebook admits it stored ‘hundreds of millions’ of account passwords in plaintext Prompted by a report by cybersecurity reporter Brian Krebs, […]

When we think of enterprise SaaS companies today, just about every startup in the space aspires to be a platform. That means they want people using their stack of services to build entirely new applications, either to enhance the base product, or even build entirely independent companies. But when Salesforce launched Force.com, the company’s Platform […]

GM announced Friday it will invest $300 million into a Michigan factory to produce a new Chevrolet electric vehicle, reversing a decision to build the EV outside of the United States. The announcement comes on the heels of recent job cuts and plant closures by GM, moves that have complicated bargaining with union workers over […]

“Don’t read the comments” is one of those clichés that sticks around because it’s still good advice — maybe the best advice. But the team at Respondology is trying to change that. The company started out by helping brands find and respond to messages on social media. Senior Vice President of Sales Aaron Benor explained […]

Google stole the spotlight at this year’s GDC with the launch of Stadia. What the game streaming service lacked in specifics, it more than made up for in buzz. The software giant certainly isn’t the only one eyeing the space, however. A new report from US Gamer puts Walmart in the running, as well. The […]

Homeland Security has issued a warning for a set of critical-rated vulnerabilities in Medtronic defibrillators that put the devices at risk of manipulation. These small cardio-defibrillators are implanted in a patient’s chest to deliver small electrical shocks to prevent irregular or dangerously fast heartbeats, which can prove fatal. Most modern devices come with wireless or […]

Further details have emerged about when and how much Facebook knew about data-scraping by the disgraced and now defunct Cambridge Analytica political data firm. Last year a major privacy scandal hit Facebook after it emerged CA had paid GSR, a developer with access to Facebook’s platform, to extract personal data on as many as 87 […]

From Extra Crunch We have published the transcript for Brian Heater’s conference call on robotics. Arman published report reviews on China’s luxury goods and consumer spending as well as on perceptions of automation in Europe. We have Lucas Matney and Eric Peckham scheduled for today at 3pm EST / noon PST discussing GDC on our […]

This week on Equity: Glossier and Rent The Runway enter the unicorn club and YC debuts 200 startups.

Travis Kalanick may be busy cooking up a cloud kitchen business, but that hasn’t stopped the former Uber CEO’s VC fund from making its first investment in Southeast Asia. 10100, the firm that Kalanick launched last year for investments in Asia, just took part in a $7.6 million seed round for Kargo, an early-stage ‘Uber […]

Keatz, one of a growing number of so-called “cloud kitchens” — delivery only restaurant brands running on the rails of Deliveroo and UberEats — has raised €12 million in new funding. Backing the round are existing investors Project A Ventures, Atlantic Labs, UStart, K Fund and JME Ventures, who are joined by RTP Global. It […]

Asia-focused marketing startup AnyMind Group has landed a further $8 million in funding to close out its Series B round and expand into new verticals. The company announced a $13.4 million raise back in November, but that has now expanded to $21.4 million thanks to an additional injection from VGI Global Media, a Thailand-based firm […]

Tesla killed off its customer referral program way back on Feb. 1, 2019 because the popular program was getting too costly to maintain. But now, less than two months later, Tesla is bringing it back with new incentives aimed at rewarding its customers, and bringing in new ones. Tesla’s customer referral program had offered a […]

Even the most successful tech company is going to have a stumble from time to time. Nintendo’s 45 years in the video game industry is spotted with a few doozies, but none are more infamous than the Virtual Boy. The 1994 portable console was marketed as an early home entry into virtual reality, but in […]

More than two years into the Trump administration, the long vacant post of U.S. Chief Technology Officer will be filled. Bloomberg first reported that today Trump is elevating Michael Kratsios, current deputy U.S. CTO, to the nation’s top tech position. Prior to his experience within the Trump administration, Kratsios served as chief of staff at […]

European governments have been bringing the hammer down on tech in recent months, slapping record fines and stiff regulations on the largest imports out of Silicon Valley. Despite pleas from the world’s leading companies and Europe’s eroding trust in government, European citizens’ staunch support for regulation of new technologies points to an operating environment that […]

Meet the startups that raised venture capital, or got acquired, before Demo Day.

One of the hottest Y Combinator startups just raised a big seed round to clean up the mess created by Uber, Postmates and the gig economy. Catch sells health insurance, retirement savings plans and tax withholding directly to freelancers, contractors, or anyone uncovered. By building and curating simplified benefits services, Catch can offer a safety […]

Facebook has given another update on measures it took and what more it’s doing in the wake of the livestreamed video of a gun massacre by a far right terrorist who killed 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Earlier this week the company said the video of the slayings had been viewed […]

The company, which is more than doubling its valuation, is expected to do $450 million in ARR in 2019, TechCrunch has confirmed.

[Editor’s note: This is the first of a series of articles that we’re writing about branding for startups. It’s part of our latest initiative to find the best brand designers and agencies in the world who work with early-stage companies — nominate a talented brand designer you’ve worked with.] When designer Ryan Hubbard joined Intercom, […]

Yesterday, renowned investor Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures observed in a blog post that fewer founders in today’s go-go market have been honoring what are called pro rata rights, or the right of an earlier investor in a company to maintain the percentage that he or she (or their venture firm) owns as that […]

The next wave of technology is arriving, transforming cities, healthcare and finance. But the regulatory landscape has become difficult to navigate. Regtech will ease these burdens.

On-demand video-streaming site Kanopy has fixed a leaking server that exposed the detailed viewing habits of its users. Security researcher Justin Paine discovered the leaking Elasticsearch database last week and warned Kanopy of the exposure. The server was secured two days later, on March 18, a spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are currently investigating the scope […]

Two days after MoviePass announced the return of the company’s unlimited ticket plan, Ted Farnsworth, CEO of its parent company Helios and Matheson Analytics, sat down with TechCrunch to offer insight into the state of the beleaguered service. According to the executive, MoviePass Uncapped is already seeing positive results. While he didn’t share concrete numbers, […]