Crunch Hype

Serial Box, a startup bringing back the tradition of serialized fiction, has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The company actually disclosed the funding last week, when announcing a partnership to produce stories about Marvel characters, but it’s sharing more details about the round — namely, the fact that it was led by Boat Rocker […]

Healthcare in the United States is so complicated that even employees with good benefits might have a hard time navigating their options. HealthJoy wants to help with a health benefits platform that uses AI to answer questions. The Chicago-based startup announced today that it has raised $12.5 million in Series B funding led by U.S. […]

The influential Massachusetts Senator and Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has been a longtime critic of the consolidation of economic power by Amazon, Google, and Facebook. Now she’s making their break-up a key component of her Presidential platform. Warren has just released her plan for breaking up big tech, in what seems like a watershed moment […]

In August 2018, Spotify became Samsung’s go-to streaming music service provider following a strategic partnership between the two companies that initially focused on bringing Spotify to Samsung Smart TVs and a deeper connection with Samsung’s assistant technology, Bixby. Today, timed alongside the retail launch of Samsung’s Galaxy S10, the companies are expanding their partnership to […]

During its earnings report yesterday afternoon, Okta announced it intends to acquire Azuqua, a Bellevue, Washington workflow automation startup for $52.5 million. In a blog post announcing the news, Okta co-founder and COO Frederic Kerrest saw the combining of the two companies as a way to move smoothly between applications in a complex workflow without […]

The Galaxy S10’s pre-sales were, by all accounts, quite brisk. In fact, the company ran out of the free Galaxy Buds its was bundling with the handset. That’s good news all around for Samsung, after sales for the S9 were reported to be fairly light. For those waiting for the reviews — or simply wanting […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.

It’s International Women’s Day today, but sadly the world remains far more unsafe for women than men. Every day, all over the world, women experience unsafe or uncomfortable environments or incidents of verbal, non-verbal or physical sexual harassment. Just to take one statistic, UK Government research showed that while 85% of women experience some form […]

Salesforce is celebrating its 20th anniversary today. The company that was once a tiny irritant going after giants in the 1990s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) market, such as Oracle and Siebel Systems, has grown into full-fledged SaaS powerhouse. With an annual run rate exceeding $14 billion, it is by far the most successful pure cloud […]

Another fine for Uber’s historical playbook: The ride-hailing giant has agreed to pay around $2.6 million (€2.3M) to settle charges in the Netherlands related to violations of local taxi law, dating back to when it was operating a peer-to-peer ride-hailing service in contravention of local transport laws. Uber offered its UberPop service in the Netherlands […]

Cookie walls that demand a website visitor agrees to their Internet browsing being tracked for ad-targeting as the ‘price’ of entry to the site are not compliant with European data protection law, the Dutch data protection agency clarified yesterday. The DPA said it has received dozens of complaints from Internet users who had had their […]

PolyAI, a London startup founded by experts in the field of “conversational AI” — including CEO Nikola Mrkšić who was previously the first engineer at Apple-acquired VocalIQ — has raised $12 million in Series A funding to deploy its tech in customer support contact centres. The round was led by Point72 Ventures, with participation from […]

Two popular car alarm systems have fixed security vulnerabilities that allowed researchers to remotely track, hijack and take control of vehicles with the alarms installed. The systems, built by Russian alarm maker Pandora and California-based Viper — or Clifford in the U.K., were vulnerable to an easily manipulated server-side API, according to researchers at Pen […]

Leica is a brand I respect and appreciate but don't support. Or rather, can't, because I'm not fabulously rich. But if I did have $5,000 to spend on a fixed-lens camera, I'd probably get the new Q2, a significant improvement over 2015's Q — which tempted me back then.

Marie Kondo wants to expand her 'Tidying Up' empire with help from venture capitalists.

A controversial blockchain-based mobile voting app called Voatz is getting put to the test again. The city of Denver revealed today that it has agreed to implement a mobile voting pilot in its May municipal election using the four-year-old, Boston-based startup’s technology. It will be offered exclusively to active-duty military, their eligible dependants and overseas […]

It's the FCC's official duty to promote connectivity throughout the U.S., and as part of that it issues a yearly report on improvements to broadband deployment. The latest report, however, seems to contain an error large enough to throw its numbers completely off what Chairman Ajit Pai has already claimed. His office says that they are "looking into the matter."

David Mayman has a vision for personal aviation that he’s spent the past dozen years and millions of his personal fortune chasing. He hasn’t accepted the convention that jetpacks were just a misguided fantasy for the future; his company, Jetpack Aviation, has been building them and he’s been zooming around in publicity-grabbing stunts in a […]

Want to see more women in tech? Don’t wait up for CEOs to bridge the gender gap.

It’s not a great time to be a live venue. Once the only game in town, clubs, arenas and other live event spaces now have to compete with the seemingly endless on-demand entertainment options. Competing with the convenience of 4K Netflix on a 50-inch screen is a big ask, even for the biggest stars. It’s […]

Earlier this week, we added Anthony Levandowski to a growing list of headliners that already includes Marc Raibert, Melonee Wise and Ken Goldberg. We’re back with one more headliner to add to our already packed schedule for April 18’s TC Sessions: Robotics + AI event at UC Berkeley (p.s. Early-Bird ticket sales end next week). […]

The next phase of social media is about hanging out together while apart. Rather than performing on a live stream or engaging with a video chat, Instagram may allow you to chill and watch videos together with a friend. Facebook already has Watch Party for group co-viewing, and in November we broke the news that […]

After indicating that it was exploring its options for fighting the potentially deadly rise of anti-vaccination content on its platform last month, Facebook is making a plan of attack. Facebook’s strategy in the effort is to both minimize the spread of vaccination misinformation and to point users away from inaccurate anti-vaccination propaganda and toward “authoritative […]

Many things are better said than read, but the best voice tech out there seems to be reserved for virtual assistants, not screen readers or automatically generated audiobooks. WellSaid wants to enable any creator to use quality synthetic speech instead of a human voice — perhaps even a synthetic version of themselves.

Is it happening? Is it not happening? After years of back and forth, it looks like the new tax on tech giants in France is about to become a law. Big tech companies that generate significant revenue in France will be taxed on their revenue generated in France. Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire has been […]

As the streaming world continues to grow, startups are looking to take advantage of the opportunity and grab a slice of the pie, and indeed create new revenue models around it entirely. Camelot, a YC-backed startup, is one of them. Camelot allows viewers to place bounties on their favorite streamers, putting a monetary value on […]

Venture investors are pouring billions of dollars into feeding their hunger for food and agriculture startups. Whether that trend line is due to enthusiasm for the sector or just broader heavy investing in the VC space is much less clear. According to a recent report published by AgFunder – a VC and investing marketplace focused […]

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. Mark Zuckerberg discovers privacy In a long post published yesterday, the Facebook CEO laid out his vision for making Facebook’s products […]

Airbnb to purchase HotelTonight, a hotel-booking app last valued at $463 million.

Want to trim a cool $500 off your ticket price to Disrupt San Francisco 2019? It’s easy to do, but you need to act before registration officially opens on Monday, March 11. Simply sign up for our mailing list. Seriously, just click the link, fill out four fields and hit the Submit button. Talk about easy money. […]

French cloud-hosting company Scaleway is rolling out new instances with an Nvidia Tesla P100 GPU. The company is opting for simple pricing with a single configuration that costs €1 per hour ($1.13). Many companies now use GPU instances to train models for their machine learning-powered app or service. Some companies also leverage these cloud instances […]

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut […]

Today, a bunch of analysis on stories we have been covering the last few weeks. You’re reading the Extra Crunch Daily. Like this newsletter? Subscribe for free to follow all of our discussions and debates. SoftBank wants to spend more billions Three inter-related stories today on SoftBank and its Vision Fund. First, an analysis from my Bangkok-based […]

Hammerhead founder and CEO Piet Morgan is a bicyclist, and he started the company because he wanted a better navigation system. So Hammerhead crowdfunded its first product, the H1, and subsequently built Karoo, a “cycling computer” that supports navigation and training. But Morgan told me his ambitions are bigger than that. After all, he sees […]

We built Extra Crunch from the ground up to solve your toughest challenges as a builder and founder, ranging from deep dives on successful startups to addressing key issues that startups face. And now that we’ve launched, we want to know what you think. Is there a specific topic you would like for us to […]

The world of movie ticket services has been undergoing quite an upheaval over the past year. Yesterday, MoviePass announced a strategic “refocus.” Today’s Sinemia news is decidedly less dramatic, however — as has been the case with most of the company’s recent announcements. It has been toying with ways to tweak its subscription offering, and […]

A San Francisco-based startup just raised $15 million to solve the complicated problem of transit infrastructure in urban environments. Remix was founded by Tiffany Chu, Dan Getelman, Danny Whalen, and Sam Hashemi in 2014 following a project they built during their Code For America fellowships. The $15 million Series B round was led by Energy […]

Motif, the startup using machine learning to develop investment strategies for consumers and institutional investors, and Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s leading investment banks, have launched new technology-driven indices to power a series of co-branded exchange traded funds. “All these [current] indices are built with humans doing research to go in and figure out […]

eToro, the social investing and trading platform, announced that it will finally be launching its platform in the US. The platform, which already operates in more than 140 countries, will be available in 30 states and two territories with plans to expand elsewhere in the US after receiving the necessary regulatory sign-offs. The US platform […]

When we first wrote about Hooch, it offered a fun, straightforward deal — for $9.99 per month, you could claim one free drink per day from participating bars and restaurants. Since then, the company launched Hooch Black, a pricier subscription that includes perks like hotel discounts and concierge service. But even then, co-founder and CEO […]

Bird is launching its new program, Bird Platform, in New Zealand, Canada and Latin America in the coming weeks. First up is New Zealand, where Bird has partnered with a local entrepreneur to manage a fleet of Bird electric scooters. Residents of New Zealand will start to see Bird scooters on the streets next week. […]

The continued presence of a UK Far Right activist on YouTube’s platform has been raised by the deputy leader of the official opposition during ministerial questions in the House of Commons today. Labour’s Tom Watson put questions to the secretary of state for digital, Jeremy Wright, regarding Stephen Yaxley-Lennon’s use of social media for targeted […]

Spill, the London-based startup that offers a message-based therapy app to help improve workplace well-being, has picked up £650,000 in seed investment. The round is backed by Passion Capital, Seedcamp and a number of angel investors, including Made.com founder Julian Callede and Urban co-founder Jack Tang. Founded a little over a year ago by Calvin […]

While SoftBank continues to make big bets on startups out of its $100-billion Vision Fund, it has also launched another investment vehicle to invest in tech opportunities specifically in Latin America. Today the group announced the SoftBank Innovation Fund, which is starting out with a $2 billion commitment to invest in tech startups in Central […]

Well that didn’t take long. Despite warning loudly and publicly that incoming changes to private hire vehicle (VTC) rules in Catalonia would drive it out of Barcelona for good, and force it to fire thousands of drivers, Spanish ride-hailing firm Cabify has announced it’s back operating in the city from today — a month after […]

Playfair Capital, the U.K. seed investor, has raised a new $32 million fund to continue investing in promising early-stage tech startups. The VC firm, founded in 2013 by Federico Pirzio-Biroli, who is fund II’s sole LP, is an early investor in the likes of Stripe, Ravelin, Thought Machine, CryptoFacilities and Mapillary. Pirzio-Biroli recently re-located to […]

Money talks in the startup community, especially when SoftBank comes knocking with the megabucks of its Vision Fund. Despite the public outcry around the firm’s dependence on money from Saudi Arabia in the wake of that country’s assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, deal flow for Softbank’s Vision Fund appears to be back to […]

Tesla is rolling out a third generation Supercharger that is designed to dramatically cut charging times for its electric vehicles as it seeks to keep its edge over new competitors. The V3 Supercharger, which was unveiled Wednesday at the company’s Fremont, California factory, supports a peak rate of up 250 kilowatts on the long range version […]

Hot on the heels of raising $114 million in Series D funding, Raisin, the pan-European fintech marketplace for savings and investment products, has acquired MHB Bank of Frankfurt, its main provider of banking services in Germany. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed and the deal is still subject to regulatory approval. However, the move signals […]

Taxify, the ride-hailing company from Estonia backed by Didi and Daimler and now active in 30 countries, is making a key shift in its business today as it gears up for its next stage of growth. The company is removing “taxi” from its name and rebranding as Bolt, the same name that it has been […]