Crunch Hype

3D printers have come a long way since the early days of RepRap and DIY hacker culture. First they flew to great heights with companies like Makerbot and Formlabs who aimed to create a prosumer product for designers, educators, and makers and then they fell to the doldrums when they became commodity hardware. Many people […]

Security researchers have found dozens of companies inadvertently leaking sensitive corporate and customer data because staff are sharing public links to files in their Box enterprise storage accounts that can be easily discovered. The discoveries were made by Adversis, a cybersecurity firm, which found major tech companies and corporate giants had left data inadvertently exposed. […]

Mike Ghaffary left Social Capital in August, shortly before the firm announced it would no longer raise outside capital.

After several days of speculation, today NVIDIA confirmed that it would acquire chipmaker Mellanox for $6.9 billion, paying $125 per share in cash, in an ongoing consolidation of chipmakers — and in this case those making chips for supercomputers, a crucial market segment in this age of cloud services. The deal is expected to close at […]

Crypto represent a ‘border-less’ that anyone can own, but actually getting hold it isn’t easy for everyone. Amun, a company that wants to make buying crypto as easy as stock, has pulled in $4 million in funding to offer more established channels for crypto ownership. The startup currently offers punters an ETP (exchange-traded product) on […]

Finding myself talking at a startup conference in Kosovo three years ago (as one does), I realized how close I was to Albania, a place which held some fascination for me. I managed to grab a lift with a friendly techie to Tirana, where they arranged for me to speak to the local tech community. […]

It wouldn’t be Tesla if it didn’t keep us guessing a little… Electric car company Tesla is making a u-turn of sorts with its sales strategy. After it’s announcement at the end of February that it would close down nearly all of its 200-400 retail stores to sell its cars online-only in an effort to bring […]

Algolux, founded in 2015, isn’t exactly a household name in the already-crowded world of automotive computer vision. But the Quebec-based startup has generated some interest among investors. For instance, it’s raised $13.4 million, including a $10 million Series A led by General Motors Ventures last May. Not bad, given the fact that it’s remained a […]

China is getting serious about the way live streaming videos affect tens of millions of youngsters, so much so a top authority has proposed to tighten restrictions on underage use. According to a report from the China Youth Daily, the Communist Party-controlled All Youth Federation recently submitted a proposal during the once-a-year parliamentary session, urging […]

Starling Bank, the U.K. challenger bank founded by banking veteran Anne Boden, is to open a second U.K. office this summer, where it plans recruit up to 50 software engineers and up to 100 customer service team members. The planned location is Southampton, on the south coast of England, and will be Starling’s first office […]

It’s impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponent of these technologies criticize a displacement that could some day result wide scale unemployment among what is often considered “unskilled” roles. Advocates, meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated. Workforces shift, as they […]

Appen just announced that it’s acquiring Figure Eight in an all-cash deal that sees Appen paying $175 million upfront, with an additional payment of up to $125 million based on Figure Eight’s performance this year. Both companies focus on using crowdsourced labor pools to annotate data, which in turn is used to train artificial intelligence and […]

Tony Blair Contributor Share on Twitter Tony Blair is the Executive Chairman of the Institute for Global Change and former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Industrial Revolution dramatically re-ordered the sociology of politics. In the US, the Populist Party in the United States was founded as a force in opposition to capitalism, wary […]

From 3500 feet up California is a glorious patchwork quilt of green and gold, textured by rippling mountains and shining water. Ahead of us we see the Carquinez Bridge and the Bay; behind us, the fingers of Lake Berryessa curl into the steep hills. Twenty minutes ago I stood barefoot in the soft grass on […]

Captain Marvel, the latest superhero film from Disney’s Marvel franchise, is bringing home the bacon — to the tune of a $455 million box office total for the weekend. The movie, Marvel’s first to be headlined exclusively by a female superhero, is off to the second largest global opening of any superhero movie behind Avengers: […]

In the age of Amazon, where up to 90 percent of all consumers use it to buy goods and Amazon is accounting for a rapidly-growing percentage of a consumer’s total retail spend (along with other giants like Walmart), direct-to-consumer brands — leveraging social media alongside tech-first apps — are emerging as sometimes surprising, but often effective, […]

After SoftBank announced its plans to launch a $5 billion innovation fund in Latin America, we reached out to the good folks at the Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA) for some context.

Brian O’Malley has enjoyed a lot of success as a venture capitalist, thanks to bets on Bazaarvoice before its IPO, Dollar Shave Club before it was nabbed by Unilever, and a variety of other startups that were ultimately acquired or went public. It’s one reason that O’Malley, who began his venture career with Battery Ventures […]

Beatrice Fihn Contributor Share on Twitter Beatrice Fihn is the executive director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and the winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. “Atomic bombs are primarily a means for the ruthless annihilation of cities.” Those are the words of Leo Szilard, one of the scientists who pushed for […]

Massachusetts Senator and 2020 presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren made waves yesterday when she outlined her plan for breaking up big tech companies like Amazon, Google and Facebook. Now, The Verge reports Warren also wants to break up Apple. This, of course, makes sense given that Apple falls into the bucket of a platform utility with […]

It was only a matter of time before I let a robot enter my apartment and run wild. Roomba’s have been around since 2002, so it’s somewhat odd that it took me so long to get on board the robot vacuum train. But, alas, I’ve been testing the Roborock S5, a combo vacuum and mop, […]

Andre Iguodala, a key member of the Golden State Warriors basketball team, is no stranger to the tech industry. He’s invested in Tristan Walker’s Walker & Company, which has since been acquired by Procter & Gamble, electric scooter startup Lime and many others. Now, he’s joined the board of directors over at Jumia, an African e-commerce […]

Y Combinator revealed yesterday that its president, Sam Altman, is stepping down from his role to become the accelerator program’s chairman. This change, said YC, will allow Altman to “spend more time focusing on OpenAI,” the San Francisco-based nonprofit that was cofounded by Altman and Elon Musk three years ago to get ahead of the […]

Recently, we bore out with data what has been felt for several years in most U.S. tech scenes: a rising venture market raises funds of all sizes. But it’s a trend that most favors entrenched firms.

Welcome back to Transportation Weekly; I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch . This is the fifth edition of our newsletter and we love the reader feedback. Keep it coming. Never heard of TechCrunch’s Transportation Weekly? Catch up here, here and here. As I’ve written before, consider this a soft launch. Follow […]

Alison Johnston didn’t plan to build a startup around death. An early employee at Q&A app Aardvark that was bought by Google, she’d founded tutoring app InstaEDU and sold it to Chegg. She made mass market consumer products. But then, “I had a family member who was diagnosed with terminal cancer and I thought about […]

With the smartphone operating system market sewn up by Google’s Android platform, which has a close to 90% share globally, leaving Apple’s iOS a slender (but lucrative) premium top-slice, a little company called Jolla and its Linux-based Sailfish OS is a rare sight indeed: A self-styled ‘independent alternative’ that’s still somehow in business. The Finnish […]

We’re starting an experiment for Extra Crunch members that puts the words of our wildly popular venture capital podcast, Equity, in your eyes instead of your ears. This week, the team discussed Y Combinator moving to San Francisco, Airbnb acquiring HotelTonight and an infusion of cash into the ride-hailing industry. But maybe you don’t like […]

In this week's startups newsletter: Y Combinator president Sam Altman is stepping down, Marie Kondo is raising VC and Munchery has finally filed for bankruptcy.

I co-run an agency that teaches a hundred startups per year how to do growth marketing. This gives me a unique vantage point: I know which types of startups most often reach profitability.

Responding to Elizabeth Warren’s call to regulate and break up some of the nation’s largest technology companies, the venture capitalists that invest in technology companies are advising the presidential hopeful to move slowly and not break anything. Warren’s plan called for regulators to be appointed to oversee the unwinding of several acquisitions that were critical […]

If you follow baseball with even a passing interest, you know that nearly everyone’s got a way to “fix” the national pastime. Pitch clocks, moving the mound — there are a million ideas for how to curb waning interest in the sport. Robo umpires have long been on the list, as well, but given the […]

As she sat in the airport with a one-way ticket in her hand, Tiffany Filler wondered how she would pick up the pieces of her life, with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt and nothing to show for it. A day earlier, she was expelled from Tufts University veterinary school. As a Canadian, […]

What's going on at Y Combinator?

“Fresh Prince” star Alfonso Ribeiro has dropped his lawsuit against Fortnite creator Epic Games for using without his permission his “Carlton” dance as an emote in the popular game. According to documents filed in an LA court, Ribeiro voluntarily dismissed the suit. He had already dropped a suit against Take-Two Interactive similarly related to his […]

Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman today announced a slate of new series and projects heading to their forthcoming video streaming service, Quibi. The list includes an origin story to complement Telemundo’s hit show “El Señor de los Cielos;” a music competition show produced by Justin Bieber manager and entertainment exec Scooter Braun; a show from […]

One would think that having one of the most high-profile breaches in recent memory would make a company take security to heart, but Equifax is full of surprises. The latest is that its MyEquifax.com site, to which the company invites those affected by its poor security practices to freeze and unfreeze their credit, itself has extremely poor security.

“Captain Marvel” isn’t a bad movie, exactly. It seems, at this point, that Marvel’s moviemaking machinery is incapable of producing a genuinely terrible film. There’s no “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice” or “Suicide Squad” in the Marvel filmography, just “Thor: The Dark World,” “Ant-Man” and “Doctor Strange” — movies that are fine but forgettable. Still, I […]

Flickr announced today that all Creative Commons images will remain protected on its site – including those uploaded in the past and those that will be added in the future. The news follows Flickr’s November 2018 announcement where it had stated it wouldn’t delete Creative Commons photos already on its service, after switching over to […]

What if, instead of sitting on your phone on the sofa ordering stuff from Amazon, you could buy the same things locally from local stores that ultimately enliven and enrich your local neighborhood? What if by doing that, you wouldn’t be walking through deserted main streets, past boarded-up shops, dark alleys and graffiti? What if […]

As Lyft continues to prepare for its IPO, the on-demand transportation startup is trimming staff to cut costs ahead of another wave of expansion. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Lyft has laid off around 50 staff in its bike and scooter division, mainly people who had joined the company when it acquired the electric […]

In a telling sign of the state of bike sharing, Mobike, a once red-hot startup that attracted billions in investment capital, is closing down all international operations and putting its sole focus on China. On Friday, Mobike laid off its operations teams in APAC, which entailed more than 15 full-time employees and many more contractors […]

The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos has inspired quite a bit of content, including a NYT Best Seller, an ABC podcast, a movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, and now an HBO documentary directed by Going Clear director, Alex Gibney. The documentary is called The Inventor: Out For Blood In Silicon Valley. The tech world was […]

Entrepreneurs and tech executives are widening their gazes outside of developed nations for their next source of growth. Ubiquitous cheap phones and increasingly affordable phone plans such as Jio in India are helping another billion users join the internet. What do those users want though, and how are they the same and different than existing […]

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. Airbnb agrees to acquire last-minute hotel-booking app HotelTonight Once the deal is complete, the HotelTonight app and website will continue to […]

U.S. smart speaker owners grew 40 percent over 2018 to now reach 66.4 million – or 26.2 percent of the U.S. adult population – according to a new report from Voicebot.ai and Voicify released this week, which detailed adoption patterns and device market share. The report also reconfirmed Amazon Echo’s lead, noting the Alexa-powered smart […]

Ten years after the launch of Foursquare at SXSW, the company is laying its technology bare with a futuristic version of its old app that doesn’t require a check-in at all. The godfather of location apps is returning to the launchpad with Hypertrending, but this time it hopes to learn what developers might do with […]

SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule has safely splashed down in the Atlantic, making it the first privately built crew-capable spacecraft ever to complete a mission to the International Space Station. It's one of several firsts SpaceX plans this year, but Boeing is hot on its heels with a crew demonstrator of its own — and of course the real test is doing the same thing with astronauts aboard.

According to a new report from Ming-Chi Kuo (via 9to5mac), a reliable analyst on all things Apple, the company has been working on an augmented reality headset and is about to launch the device. This pair of glasses could go into mass production as early as Q4 2019 and should be available at some point […]

It looks like the Disney Vault is dead. For years, Disney relied on limited time releases of its films on DVD and Blu-ray to encourage sales. The strategy worked. Consumers snapped up the titles to build out their home video collections. But in more recent years, DVDs have given way to streaming. For Disney, that’s […]