Crunch Hype

Disrupt San Francisco 2019 — the epic, three-day conference celebrating early-stage startups — may not take place until October 2-4, but it’s never too soon for serious savings. Want to shave $500 off the price of admission? Heck yeah, you do! Here’s the deal. Registration officially opens later this month. Simply sign up for our […]

Automobili Pininfarina, the automaker brand infused with Pininfarina design house DNA and owned by India’s Mahindra Group, revealed its first production car this week at the Geneva International Motor Show. And it’s an audacious inaugural effort. The Pininfarina Battista — a nod to design house founder Battista “Pinin” Farina — is an all-electric beast of […]

In a recent Twitter thread, comedian Miel Bredouw recounted some shady behavior by Barstool Sports’ legal team. In fact, even Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy isn’t trying to defend it, and instead reportedly described it as “moronic,” admitting it, “makes us look like assholes.” According to Bredouw (who backed up her account with screenshots of […]

Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, a Far Right UK activist who was permanently banned from Facebook last week for repeatedly breaching its community standards on hate speech, was nonetheless able to use its platform to livestream harassment of an anti-fascist blogger whom he doorstepped at home last night. UK-based blogger Mike Stuchbery detailed the intimidating incident in a […]

Wefox Group, the Berlin-based insurtech startup behind the consumer-facing insurance app and carrier One and the insurance platform Wefox, has raised $125 million in Series B funding. Notably, the round is led by Abu Dhabi government-owned Mubadala Ventures (which is also an LP in SoftBank’s Vision Fund) and is the first investment from Mubadala’s newly […]

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. The lonely death of Jibo, the social robot The company behind Jibo came to an unceremonious end late last year, in […]

The Los Angeles-based video gaming clipping service, Medal, has made its first acquisition as it rolls out new features to its user base. The company has acquired the Discord -based donations and payments service Donate Bot to enable direct payments and other types of transactions directly on its site. Now, the company is rolling out […]

Audi provided Tuesday an advanced look at what will be its fifth production electric vehicle, a compact crossover concept that is expected to come to market at the end of 2020. The all-electric Q4 e-tron SUV concept, which was revealed at the Geneva International Motor Show, is equipped with dual motors with a power output […]

Apple devices continue to lead the wearables market, according to a new report from IDC out today, which claimed the Cupertino-based company shipped a total of 46.2 million wearables for the year. The firm also reported the worldwide market for wearable devices grew 31.4 percent during the fourth quarter of 2018, to reach 59.3 million […]

The growth of augmented and virtual reality applications and hardware is ushering in a new age of digital media and imaging technologies, and startups that are putting themselves at the center of that are attracting interest. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Matterport, which started out making cameras but has since diversified into a wider […]

The official trailer for the final season of Game of Thrones has landed. Behold: As you can see, we’ve been blessed with peeks at a few scenes that promise a climactic final season. The trailer includes dragons flying over Winterfell, Gendry, sinister Cersei, and a teaser for the battle fans have been waiting for: the […]

Blueground, the startup providing turnkey flexible rental apartments, has raised $20 million in a round led by Athens-based VentureFriends, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst, Dubai’s Jabbar Internet Group, and serial entrepreneur Kevin Ryan. Ryan – who helped found MongoDB, Gilt Groupe, Zola, and others – will also join Blueground’s Board of Directors. It’s no secret […]

The French government has unveiled a complete overhaul of the French Tech Visa for employees working for a tech company. And France is taking a contrarian stance by making it easier to come work in France. Let’s start with the big number. According to French Tech Mission director Kat Borlongan, there are more than 10,000 […]

Let me blunt up front: I think Google should launch a censored search engine in China (albeit with careful organizational boundaries). And I think that Google employees who would undermine such a project need to step down and walk out the front door to opportunities more in line with their purported values. I am reacting […]

Mercedes-Benz revealed Tuesday the Concept EQV, an all-electric premium van designed to travel up to 249 miles on a single charge. Concepts often never become production vehicles. But this one will. The EQV, which was unveiled at the Geneva International Motor Show, will go into series production. The automaker plans to produce an electric van […]

SoundCloud wants to make its streaming music service more affordable to a key demographic: younger users who generally spend more time listening to music, compared with their older counterparts. This morning, the company announced the launch of discounted student accounts, offering a 50 percent discount off its top-tier SoundCloud Go+ subscription. That brings the cost […]

San Francisco-based mobile banking startup Chime announced this morning it has raised an additional $200 million in Series D financing led by DST Global, valuing its business at $1.5 billion. The oversubscribed round also included participation from new investors Coatue, General Atlantic, ICONIQ Capital and Dragoneer Investment Group, along with existing investors Menlo Ventures, Forerunner […]

Soldo, the London-based fintech startup that offers a multi-user spending account primarily for businesses, has secured an Electronic Money Institution licence from Ireland’s Central Bank, a move the company says is designed to mitigate against the uncertainty of Brexit. The Accel-backed company is currently licensed by U.K. financial regulator the FCA and benefits from so-called […]

The August View didn’t launch at CES as anticipated (the smart home maker had some slightly underwhelming brand announcements instead), but earlier leaks did seem to get just about everything else spot on about the doorbell camera. The new wireless model features a bit of a sleek, minimalistic redesign, coupled with a 1440 sensor, for […]

The latest round of capital comes from new investor Future Fund and existing investors NEA, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Nan Fung Life Sciences and Maveron.

SurveyMonkey announced today that it has acquired Usabilla, an Amsterdam-based website and app survey company, for $80 million in cash and stock. Zander Lurie, CEO at SurveyMonkey, said Usabilla filled in a missing piece in its survey toolkit. “A key product that we identified that we really wanted to add to the portfolio, which is […]

Roku this morning announced its devices will now be compatible with Amazon’s Alexa. Through a new Roku skill for Alexa, Roku owners will be able to control their devices in order to do things like launch a channel, play or pause a show, search for entertainment options, and more. Roku TV owners will additionally be […]

Hardware, as the saying goes, is hard, but today a startup has raised some money for a manufacturing service that it believes can make the prospect of starting and running hardware businesses a little easier. Fictiv, which positions itself as a kind of AWS for manufacturing — providing a platform both to design components and […]

Quip, the dental care startup, is releasing a new product aimed toward kids. Similar to the electric toothbrush it makes for adults, the kids’ brush features a timer that pulsates every 30 seconds and automatically turns off after two minutes. The main differences between the brush for kids and one for adults is the non-slip […]

Salesforce has been using the notion of trailblazers as a learning metaphor for several years, since it created a platform to teach customers Salesforce skills called Trailhead. Today, the company announced the availability of myTrailhead, a similar platform that enables company to create branded, fully-customizable training materials based on the Trailhead approach. It’s worth noting […]

Atomico, the European venture capital firm founded by Skype’s Niklas Zennström, sometimes feels like it’s on a perpetual hiring and promotions spree, even if a number of partners have also departed over the years. Most recently, in November Sophia Bendz, the former Spotify Global Director of Marketing, promoted to Partner. Bendz had already spent two […]

Twelve years after a first patient was identified as cured of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, a second patient undergoing similar treatment was diagnosed as in long-term remission, according to a New York Times report citing an article in to be published tomorrow in the journal Nature. The report means that a cure for […]

Oh joy, oh rapture, unsubdued, Flickr’s login is no longer tied to Yahoo. The photo-sharing platform announced today that it will roll out a new system to members over the next few weeks that doesn’t require a Yahoo ID. This is welcome news to long-time Flickr users who are still bitter over the requirement, introduced […]

Facebook is rolling out a new feature for memorialized accounts that will allow people to leave messages in a Tributes section that is separate from the rest of the profile’s timeline. Depending on a memorialized account’s privacy settings, friends can currently still post on its timeline, including in the comments of posts the person made […]

The 500 Startups Japan crew is going independent. The VC firm announced a $30 million fund in 2015, and now the follow up is a new $45 million fund called Coral Capital. Helmed by James Riney and Yohei Sawayama, just like 500 Startups Japan, Coral will essentially continue the work the U.S. firm made in Japan, […]

Last month, Coinbase’s acquisition of blockchain analytics startup Neutrino was criticized because of the founders’ ties to a controversial surveillance technology company called Hacking Team. Today Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in a blog post that employees of Neutrino who had previously worked at Hacking Team will transition out of Coinbase, instead of joining its […]

One of China’s top live streaming companies YY bought a stake and obtained the right to purchase a majority share in Bigo last June, and now the other shoe has dropped after YY fully acquired the Singapore-based startup behind live streaming app Bigo Live and short-video service Like. That’s according to an announcement YY made […]

Precursor Ventures, a 3.5-year-old, seed-stage investment firm in San Francisco, just closed its second fund with $31 million in capital commitments, roughly double what it raised for its debut effort in 2017. Somewhat amazingly, it has 75 portfolio companies to show from that first fund, and many more that it has been quietly funding with […]

Volkswagen has added another member to its ever-expanding I.D. line of concept electric vehicles that’s meant to showcase the automaker’s electric future. This time it’s the I.D. Buggy, an all-electric dune buggy with some 1960s California subculture flair. The I.D. Buggy, which made its global debut Monday at the 89th Geneva International Motor Show, is […]

Netflix did pretty well at this year’s Academy Awards, but it’s also facing pushback from some big names in the movie business. “Roma” took home more high-profile Oscars (Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography) than any Netflix or streaming original before it. But it lost out to “Green Book” for Best Picture, a […]

Several weeks after a sudden shutdown that left vendors and customers in the lurch, Munchery has filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy protection.

We knew this moment was coming — we just never expected it to arrive so soon. Jibo owners all over are reporting a final death rattle from their beloved home robot. The last message finds Jibo announcing the imminent shutdown of it servers, noting that its interactions will soon be limited — likely meaning anything […]

Not all the bots on Twitter are spammers or democracy hackers. You may recall seeing requests to the Thread Reader app bot to “unroll” a long thread into readable copy, for example, and in more recent days you may have spotted Twitter users tagging a newer bot, @this_vid, on tweets with a video file attached. […]

A16z has tapped General Atlantic's David George to focus on late-stage deals.

There’s been a bit of hysteria -- AI-steria, if you will -- over the Trump administration’s recently issued American AI Initiative, formally known as "Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence."

Glossier Play, inspired by 70s' nostalgia, steers away from the brand's no makeup aesthetic with blue eyeliner, multi-purpose glitter gel and more.

The story we’re used to hearing is that women get paid less than men. In Google’s case, according to its own internal pay audit, it turned out male-identified Level 4 Software Engineers received less money than women in that same role. That led to Google paying $9.7 million to adjust pay for 10,677 employees. It’s […]

As you may have gathered from our review of Samsung's Galaxy S10, it's a very solid phone with lots of advanced features. But one thing that's especially difficult to test is the absolute quality of the displaymate — which is why we leave that part to the experts. And this expert says the S10's screen is the best ever on a smartphone.

Late last week, we announced the schedule for April 18’s TC Sessions: Robotics + AI event at UC Berkeley, including some heavy hitters like Marc Raibert, Melonee Wise and Ken Goldberg. At the time, we noted we still had some big names left to reveal — and we weren’t joking. Today we’re excited to announce […]

Sometimes the “smartest” gadgets come with the shoddiest security. Alan Monie, a security researcher at U.K. cybersecurity firm Pen Test Partners, bought and tested a pair of Chips 2.0 wireless speakers, built by California-based Outdoor Tech, only to find they’re a security nightmare. The in-helmet speakers allow users to listen to music on the go, […]

Changes are afoot at WarnerMedia. Last week, Richard Pleper announced that he was leaving the CEO role at HBO, following reports that WarnerMedia and its new corporate parent AT&T were pushing for network to get bigger and broader. Turner President David Levy is also departing. Today, WarnerMedia announced that former NBC Entertainment Chairman Bob Greenblatt […]

Massive-scale predictive analytics is a relatively new phenomenon, one that challenges both decades of law as well as consumer thinking about privacy. As a technology, it may well save thousands of lives in applications like predictive medicine, but if it isn’t used carefully, it may prevent thousands from getting loans, for instance, if an underwriting […]

Paris-based Shift Technology has raised another $60 million funding round. Bessemer Venture Partners is leading the round and existing investors Accel, General Catalyst, Iris Capital and Elaia Partners are also participating. Shift Technology is all about detecting fraudulent insurance claims. There are 70 insurance companies around the world relying on its product, such as MACIF […]

Uber Rewards is officially available to all riders in the U.S. This comes after Uber began rolling out Rewards in January. Uber’s loyalty program incentivizes you to be, well, loyal to Uber and not to its competitors. For example, every dollar you spend on UberPool, Express Pool and Uber Eats gets you one point. Once […]

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 won’t let you opt out of its phone number ‘look up’ setting Users are complaining that the phone number Facebook […]