Crunch Hype

Amazon rules the roost when it comes to e-commerce marketplaces in countries like the US, but today it’s announcing a deal that it hopes will be a start its plan to have that same kind of ubiquity outside of its walled garden. The company has inked a deal with Worldpay for the latter to become […]

From Extra Crunch Patreon, the focus of our first EC-1, has now announced the new pricing tiers that they telegraphed in our deep dive. New reports discuss the growing demand for foreign talent and consumer annoyance with media fragmentation (i.e. can’t everything just be on Netflix?) One of our Verified Expert lawyers, José Ancer, discusses […]

If you live in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, you could be one of the first consumers to ride in a self-driving car in the state of New York. That’s thanks to autonomous vehicle startup Optimus Ride, which today announced its plans to deploy self-driving vehicles to the 300-acre development in Brooklyn. The development houses 400 […]

Yes. We’re as stoked as you are.

Cost has always been a big part of the Kindle line’s appeal at the low end. Amazon’s very good at undercutting the competition, while still managing to provide a workhorse e-reader in the process. Of course, paying $90 for the device comes with a number of cut corners, not the least of which has been […]

Last month, we reported that Opendoor — the startup that is taking on the real estate industry with its own platform for buying up homes and selling them on to interested buyers — filed to raise $200 million on a $3.7 billion valuation. Now, we can confirm that the round has closed, and it has […]

Apple has just announced the second-generation AirPods. The new AirPods are fitted with the H1 chip, which is meant to offer performance efficiencies, faster connect times between the pods and your devices, and the ability to ask for Siri hands-free with the “Hey Siri” command. Because of its performance efficiency, the H1 chip also allows […]

Yesterday, the World Health Organization wrapped up its first meeting of a new advisory committee set up to create global governance and oversight standards for human gene editing. The committee was hastily pulled together in December after the revelation last year that a Chinese scientist had genetically modified two embryos using CRISPR technology to remove the […]

Iterable, a startup that helps companies build complex marketing campaigns across channels to reduce churn and increase usage, announced a $50 million Series C round today. Investors include Blue Cloud Ventures, CRV, Harmony Partners, Index Ventures and Stereo Capital. Today’s investment brings the total raised to $80 million. Company co-founder and CEO Justin Zhu says […]

Design and engineering are two sides of the same coin when it comes to building software and hardware, and yet — unlike engineers, who can use services like GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab or many others to help manage their development process — it’s traditionally been slim pickings for designers when it comes to tools to manage […]

Called Rory, the new line will target menopausal women with treatments for hot flashes, insomnia and more.

The seven African-focused companies which presented as part of Y Combinator’s 200 strong cohort of Winter 2019 class of 200 startups may seem like a small percentage for such a large class, but it represents the growing significance of African ventures in YC’s universe. Since 2016, the Silicon Valley accelerator—that provides seed funds and mentorship […]

As enterprises adopt cloud-native technologies like containers to build their applications, the next question they often have to ask themselves is how they adapt their data storage and management practices to this new reality, too. One of the companies in this business is the four-year-old Portworx, which has managed to attract customers like Lufthansa Systems, […]

Robert Anderson Contributor Robert Anderson served for 21 years in the FBI, retiring as executive assistant director of the Criminal, Cyber, Response and Services Branch. He is currently an advisor at The Chertoff Group and the chief executive of Cyber Defense Labs. Over the past several years, the law enforcement community has grown increasingly concerned […]

Site Reliable Engineering (SRE) is an extension of DevOps designed for more complex environments. The problem is that this type of approach is difficult to implement and has usually only been in reach of large companies, requiring custom software. Blameless, a Bay Area startup, wants to put it reach of everyone. It emerged from stealth […]

The European Commission has just announced another antitrust fine for Google . The latest fine — $1.49BN — relates to its search ad brokering business, which involves Google selling advertising space related to searches carried out on third party websites. Speaking at a press conference, EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the search giant — […]

3D printer manufacturer Markforged has raised another round of funding. Summit Partners is leading the $82 million Series D round with Matrix Partners, Microsoft’s Venture Arm, Next47 and Porsche SE also participating. When you think about 3D printers, chances are you’re thinking about microwave-sized, plastic-focused 3D printers for hobbyists. Markforged is basically at the other […]

Google is widely expected to be handed a third antitrust fine in Europe this week, with reports suggesting the European Commission’s decision in its long-running investigation of AdSense could land later today. Right on cue the search giant has PRed another Android product tweak — which it bills as “supporting choice and competition in Europe”. […]

Opera had a couple of tumultuous years behind it, but it looks like the Norwegian browser maker (now in the hands of a Chinese consortium) is finding its stride again and refocusing its efforts on its flagship mobile and desktop browsers. Before the sale, Opera offered a useful stand-alone and built-in VPN service. Somehow, the […]

Welcome Pickups, an Athens-based startup offering a range of “in-destination” travel services from the point of pickup onwards, has raised €3.3 million in Series A funding. The backing comes from VentureFriends, Market One Capital, Howzat, Jabbar, and Openfund. Also participating is Alejandro Artacho, who founded Spotahome, and John Tsioris, founder of Instashop. Launched in Greece […]

Tencent Music Entertainment Group, the Chinese answer to Spotify that Tencent spun out and floated on the New York Stock Exchange in December, reported a net loss of 876 million yuan ($127 million) in its first set of quarterly results since going public. The loss, which TME forecasted in its prospectus filed ahead of the IPO, […]

Tim Armstrong will leave Verizon Communications with an awards and benefits package worth more than $60 million. The Wall Street Journal calculated the total amount based on a securities filing from last Monday by combining Armstrong’s compensation in 2018, severance and a special incentive package he was given by Verizon when it acquired AOL in […]

French startup Doctolib has raised a new round of funding of $170 million (€150 million). The round is led by General Atlantic, with existing investors Accel, Eurazeo, Kernel and Bpifrance also participating. Some German healthcare entrepreneurs are also joining the round — the company isn’t detailing the names of those investors. But Doctolib is detailing an […]

Today was the second half of Y Combinator’s two-day Demo Day for its Winter 2019 class. Over 85 startups pitched on stage yesterday, and another huge batch launched today. Previously held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, this YC Demo Day instead took over a massive warehouse in San Francisco. Like yesterday’s pitches, […]

Mike Duda comes from the world of advertising. In fact, he spent 13 years at the renowned ad agency Deutsch, becoming the youngest partner in the company’s history until another creative, Brent Vartan, came along and stole the title. Little wonder that in 2010, when Duda struck out on his own to create Bullish (formerly […]

Eclipse Foods may be the company that finally takes milk out of the dairy business. Ever since the acquisition of WhiteWave Foods by the French dairy giant Danone for over $10 billion investors have been thirsting for a technology that would give consumers a better tasting, more milky (for lack of a better word), milk […]

Waymo is opening another technical service center in the Phoenix area, an expansion that will allow the autonomous-vehicle technology startup to double its capacity in the area as it prepares to grow its commercial fleet. The new 85,000-square-foot center will be located in Mesa and is expected to open sometime in the second half of […]

Deloitte’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications division published its 13th-annual Digital Media Trends survey, focused on identifying changes in the ways US consumers engage with various types of media. Led by an independent research firm, the survey had roughly 2,000 consumer respondents across demographics – with the report categorizing respondents based on age (Gen-Z: ages 14-21, […]

You probably know that Netflix is big on data and personalization — it tailors the shows and movies recommended to each user, and even tests different images to promote those titles. Now it’s extending that approach to the episode order of a new show, the animated science fiction series “Love, Death & Robots.” Lukas Thoms, […]

When Salesforce bought Quip in 2016 for $750 million, it was fair to wonder what it planned to do with it. While company founder Bret Taylor has moved up the ladder to chief product officer, Quip remained a standalone product. Today that changed when the company announced it was embedding Quip directly into its sales […]

Google's Stadia is an impressive piece of engineering to be sure: Delivering high definition, high framerate, low latency video to devices like tablets and phones is an accomplishment in itself. But the game streaming services faces serious challenges if it wants to compete with the likes of Xbox and PlayStation, or even plain old PCs and smartphones. Here are our 9 biggest questions about the new platform.

Kickstarter CEO Perry Chen issued an open letter on the site’s blog today, noting that he will be stepping down from his role. The executive served as one of three co-founders for the service, launching the site in 2009, with Yancey Strickler and Charles Adler. He served as CEO for Kickstarter’s first five years and […]

Insta360, one of the pioneers in making 360-degree cameras, just raised $30 million in a Series C+ funding round from Chinese investors, including Everest Venture Capital, MG Holdings and Huajin Capital. The Shenzhen-based camera maker declined to disclose its latest valuation. It plans to use the fresh proceeds in research and development, marketing and after-sales services […]

We're close to the deployment of a commercial quantum computing system. We need a security scheme that will protect data exchanged between quantum computers on the existing internet infrastructure.

Thirstie announced today that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding, and that it’s partnering with Drinkworks to power the e-commerce experience for the cocktail-making machine created by Keurig and Anheuser-Busch. Co-founder and CEO Devaraj Southworth suggested that this is emblematic of the company’s current direction — rather than building a consumer app […]

Electric-vehicle chargers, heads-up displays for soldiers and the Costco of weed were some of our favorites from prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator’s Winter 2019 Demo Day 1. If you want to take the pulse of Silicon Valley, YC is the place to be. But with more than 200 startups presenting across two stages and two […]

As the saying goes, where you stand on an issue often rests on where you sit. Translated into startup law and finance, your views on how to approach fundraising are often heavily influenced by where your company and your investors are located. As a startup lawyer at Egan Nelson LLP (E/N), a leading boutique firm focused on tech markets outside of Silicon Valley -- like Austin, Seattle, NYC, Denver, etc. -- that’s the perspective I bring to this post.

Savvy early-stage startup founders are making plans to attend our flagship event, Disrupt San Francisco 2019, on October 2-4 at Moscone North. It’s three jam-packed days of connection, inspiration and discovery that you don’t want to miss. But here’s a hot tip for founders who want to wring every drop of opportunity out of their […]

Gone are the days when cities and tech startups are constantly at odds with each other. Passport, a mobility management startup, has partnered with Charlotte, N.C., Detroit, MIch., and Omaha, Neb. to create a framework to apply parking principles, data analysis and more to the plethora of shared micromobility services. “For many cities, the only […]

Google isn’t launching a gaming console. The company is launching a service instead, Stadia. You’ll be able to run a game on a server and stream the video feed to your device. You won’t need to buy new hardware to access Stadia, but Stadia won’t be available on all devices from day one. “With Google, […]

Here’s a shout-out to students fascinated by the world of robots and artificial intelligence. There’s a limited supply of discounted tickets left for TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI, a one-day conference that takes place at UC Berkeley on April 18. Apply now to reserve your $45 student ticket, and spend a full day learning from […]

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 are the 85+ startups that launched at YC’s W19 Demo Day 1 With more than 200 companies, the Winter 2019 […]

When the newly-minted chair of a congressional antitrust committee calls you out, it’s probably time to start worrying. In an op-ed for the New York Times, Rhode Island Representative David N. Cicilline has called on the Federal Trade Commission to look into Facebook’s behavior for potential antitrust violations, citing TechCrunch’s own reporting that the company […]

Patreon announced today that it was creating multiple pricing tiers for its membership service, with varying levels of features offered depending on price. The company will now offer a “Lite” offering that charges a 5% commission, a “Pro” offering at 8%, and a “Premium” option at 12%, with discounted rates for existing founders. Today’s announcement […]

Google just unveiled Stadia at a conference in San Francisco, its cloud gaming platform. While most of the conference showcased well-known games you can play on your PC, Xbox One or Playstation 4, the company also announced that it is launching its own first-party game studio, Stadia Games and Entertainment. Jade Raymond is going to […]

The tech industry is volatile and Backstage Capital founder and Managing Partner Arlan Hamilton is experiencing that firsthand. Last May, Hamilton announced the launch of a $36 million fund to invest in as many women of color as possible. But the $36 million fund, which would mark Backstage’s second fund, has yet to close, as […]

Google unveiled its new Stadia game streaming service today and while we’re still waiting to hear more details about how (and when) consumers will be able to access the service, it’s clear that Google clearly kept game streamers in mind when it designed this new service. Indeed, it’s the first modern gaming platform that was […]

If you’ve ever tried Pandora, you know the basic deal. The service offers a more passive form of music discovery than other streaming services, encouraging users to let algorithms do most of the heavy lifting, as radio stations are generated based on thumbs up and down. Today, the company puts a new spin on the […]

Facebook and the ACLU issued a joint statement this morning, noting that they have settled a class action job discrimination suit. The ACLU filed the suit in September, along with Outten & Golden LLC and the Communications Workers of America, alleging that Facebook allowed employers to target ads based on categories like race, national origin, […]