Crunch Hype

Plaid, developers of financial services APIs, has been helping developers connect an app to a major US bank account for several years, but today they expanded that API to include all US banks, including smaller banks that might not have as advanced technology. The product in question is called Auth. Prior to today’s announcement, this […]

Apple has agreed to pay back a large sum in backdated taxes. The company has confirmed the information to the AFP and Reuters. According to L’Express, Apple could have paid as much as €500 million ($572 million) — the AFP also confirmed that sum. “The French tax administration recently concluded a multi-year audit on the company’s […]

Tyra Banks, the supermodel-turned-entrepreneur, has unveiled her latest venture. Dubbed Modelland, the in-person theme park-like experience will bring technology to the forefront, Banks told TechCrunch over the phone last week. “We’re very open to partnering with and having integrations with different brands that bring technology to the forefront and make sure what we’re providing in […]

Facebook is taking action in Myanmar, the Southeast Asian country where the social network has been used to incite racial tension and violence, after it banned four armed groups from its service. The U.S. company said in a blog post that it has booted the groups — the Arakan Army (AA), the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance […]

Two dog walking and sitting startups are merging: HouseMyDog, the U.K.-headquartered online community that enables dog owners to find and book local trusted dog walkers and sitters, has agreed to join forces with Gudog, a similar offering based in Spain. I understand that HouseMyDog and Gudog will continue to operate under their existing brands for […]

Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal’s next act is aimed at helping the next generation of startup founders in India. Bansal has already etched his name into India’s startup history after U.S. retail giant Walmart paid $16 billion to take a majority stake in its e-commerce business to expand its rivalry with Amazon. Things turned sour, however, […]

Databricks, the company behind the Apache Spark big data analytics engine, today announced that it has raised a $250 million Series E round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Coatue Management, Microsoft and NEA, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $498.5 million. Microsoft’s involvement here is probably a bit of a […]

Coda, which is coming out of its limited beta today, wants to reinvent how you think about documents and spreadsheets. That’s about as tough a challenge as you can set yourself, given how ingrained tools like Word, Excel and their equivalents from the likes of Google, Zoho and others are. Coda’s secret weapon is that […]

Festicket, the U.K.-headquartered festival booking platform, has picked up another $4.6 million in funding, an extension of the startup’s $10.5 million Series D late last year. The new backing comes from Edge Investments, the creative industries investor that counts music industry veteran Harvey Goldsmith as a director. Edge joins an existing roster of Series D […]

Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in Europe, are partnering to bring longer-lived avocados to market. Subject to regulatory approval in the EU, Nature’s Pride said it will integrate Apeel’s plant-based preservation […]

Toyota has officially launched Kinto, a company first revealed late last year that will manage a car subscription program and other mobility services in Japan, including the sale and purchase of used vehicles as well as automotive repair and inspection. Kinto is jointly funded by Toyota Financial Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of Toyota, and Sumitomo Mitsui […]

French startup Lunchr is raising a $34 million funding round (€30 million) from Index Ventures, with existing investors Daphni, Idinvest and Kima Ventures also participating. The company had already raised $13 million 7 months ago (€11 million). In France, companies of a certain size have to support employees in one way or another when it […]

Teens’ aversion to Facebook jeopardizes not only the company’s feed ad revenue, but its dominance as an identity provider. The Facebook Login platform keeps people tied to the social network in order to easily access other apps without a separate username and password. But for younger users who ditch or neglect Facebook in favor of […]

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today we’re bringing back an old Equity format: The Shot. No, I haven’t started drinking again. Equity Shots are short takes on breaking news. And no news was more explosive recently than word that Slack has filed to […]

Despite delivering a Q4 earnings revenue beat, Google parent company Alphabet’s stock is seeing a bit of a drop. The massive search company reported revenue of $39.3 billion, up 22 percent year-over-year with an EPS of $12.77. Alphabet stock dropped more than 2 percent in after-hours trading. The company’s beat of analyst estimates would have been a […]

Leap, the women’s networking group that was developed by Y Combinator, is spinning out of the company with a new name — Elpha. Co-founded by Cadran Cowansage, Abadesi Osunsade and Kuan Luo, Elpha is designed as a professional network for women offering content and access to a directory to make it easier for women in the technology industry to […]

A bit over a year after its release, Nest’s security alarm system is picking up a new trick: it can now double as a Google Assistant device. Nest announced the new functionality this afternoon, saying that it’s being “pushed out to all Nest Secure systems both new and old” today. This update effectively turns the […]

YouTube is expanding the test of its “Explore” feature, a new discovery tool it first introduced as an experiment within its iPhone app last year. Similar to Instagram’s Explore page, the new YouTube feature aims to introduce users to a diverse set of personalized recommendations so they can more easily find something new to watch. […]

Electrify America, the entity set up by Volkswagen as part of its settlement with U.S. regulators over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, plans to install Tesla Powerpack battery systems at more than 100 of its electric vehicle charging stations this year. Electrify America aims to use the Tesla Powerpacks to offset the cost of charging for […]

Tethering your laptop and phone can be a bit of a hassle. Google’s Chrome OS has long offered a solution called Instant Tethering that makes the process automatic, but so far, this only worked for a small set of Google’s own Chromebooks and phones, starting with the Nexus 6. Now Google is officially bringing this feature […]

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. Google intros a pair of Android accessibility features for people with hearing loss Live Transcribe is, perhaps, the more compelling of […]

There are many things worse than autoplaying video and audio on the web. The world is a messy place, after all. But it sure is distracting when you surf to a website and suddenly some video starts playing at full volume. Google’s Chrome browser and Microsoft Edge both offer tools to disable these annoyances and, […]

Amazon’s annual 10-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission confirmed the high prices the e-commerce giant paid for its two biggest M&A deals last year. According to the filing, the company paid approximately $839 million in cash for Ring and $753 million for PillPack, with all other acquisitions totaling $57 million. GeekWire was […]

When it comes to live streaming, the viewer contributions are pretty light. In Periscope, you can drop a comment of leave a floating heart icon, but there isn’t a deep way to contribute to a stream. Today, Twitter is rolling out a change to Periscope that hands broadcast viewers the microphone, allowing a video stream […]

Tesla has acquired energy storage company Maxwell Technologies in an all-stock deal valued at $218 million, a deal aimed at helping the electric automaker improve its batteries and lower costs as more competitors enter the market. The offer will value each of Maxwell’s 45.9 million shares at $4.75. The merger is expected to close in the […]

The still fresh-in-post boss of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, has been asked to meet the UK’s health secretary, Matt Hancock, to discuss the social media platform’s handling of content that promotes suicide and self harm, the BBC reports. Mosseri’s summons follows an outcry in the UK over disturbing content being recommended to vulnerable users of Instagram, following the suicide […]

Five years ago today, Satya Nadella took over as CEO at Microsoft, and by most any measure has been wildly successful. It’s common to look at the stock price as the defining metric of Nadella’s tenure, but the stock price triumph has followed something more fundamental and harder to measure, how he changed the culture […]

The company has taken its first official step toward a rumored direct listing.

Solar installations are becoming a no-brainer for anyone with a roof in much of the country. But getting an estimate on how much it would cost and how much juice it would generate can be complicated and time consuming. Aurora Solar has made an automated process for doing this, and attracted $20 million in funding as a result.

One of Microsoft’s oldest and biggest verticals for its Azure cloud business has been education, and today it announced an acquisition that it hopes will help it deepen its reach: it has acquired DataSense — a data management platform that can be used to collect, integrate and report information from across a range of online education […]

Productboard, the San Francisco and Prague-based startup that offers product management software, has raised $10 million in further funding, adding to its Series A in July last year. The round is led by Index Ventures, and sees Index General Partner Jan Hammer joining the board. Also participating is previous backers Kleiner Perkins, Credo Ventures, Rockaway […]

On-demand food delivery startup DoorDash has partnered with mRelief, a startup focused on helping people access food stamps. As federal workers — especially low-wage workers like janitors, cooks and security guards — recover from the 35-day partial government shutdown, DoorDash and mRelief are teaming up to offer those eligible for food stamps in California DoorDash credit. In […]

The confusingly-titled “You” first premiered on Lifetime last fall, but it’s moving to Netflix for its second season, making the show a Netflix Original — and fair game for the Original Content podcast. The series stars Penn Badgley of “Gossip Girl.” This time, plays Joe Goldberg, a charming, “nice guy” bookstore manager (the second episode […]

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken just closed its biggest acquisition to date. The company is buying Crypto Facilities in a nine-figure deal. Crypto Facilities is an exchange and index provider regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority in the U.K. In particular, Crypto Facilities lets you trade futures on multiple cryptocurrency pairs. Following this acquisition, some Kraken users […]

As Airbnb adds more features to court business users, a smaller startup has raised some funding to take it on in the $18 billion business travel market. 2nd Address, an Airbnb-style platform for business travellers looking for home rentals that extend beyond 30 days — as an alternative to staying in hotels — is announcing […]

When Samsung announced a collaboration with Supreme at an event back in December, it didn’t go over great. It wasn’t that people weren’t excited about the potential of rocking a Supreme-branded Galaxy Note or whatever, so much as which Supreme the company had struck a deal with. You see, there’s Supreme, the U.S.-based streetwear company […]

Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop is coming to Netflix. According to a scoop from Variety, Goop will expand its original content offerings with a docuseries on Netflix, focused on issues related to physical and spiritual wellness, much like Goop itself. The brand also partnered with Delta Airlines for an exclusive podcast, and is planning its […]

Google this morning unveiled a pair of new Android features for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. As the company notes in a blog post this morning, the WHO estimates that 900 million people will be living with heading loss by 2055. The ubiquity of mobile devices — Android in particular — offers […]

Choose Your Own Adventure-style stories have been making a comeback, thanks to Netflix’s adoption of the format for kids TV and other interactive tales, like “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch,” as well as earlier efforts, like HBO’s Mosaic. Now Amazon is testing out the genre for Alexa devices, with the launch of professionally performed, voice-controlled narratives from the publisher […]

Another week, another set of scandals at Facebook and Google . This past week, my colleagues reported that Facebook and Google had abused Apple enterprise developer certificates in order to distribute info-scraping research apps, at times from underage users in the case of Facebook. Apple responded by cutting off both companies from developer accounts, before […]

Warby Parker is today introducing virtual try-on to let shoppers select a pair of frames and instantly see how they look. The tech was built on Apple’s ARKit, and the feature is only available to users on the Warby Parker iOS app on an iPhone X or later. Warby Parker, which launched in 2010, attempted […]

Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is as hot as any enterprise technology at the moment, as companies look for ways to marry their legacy systems with a more modern flavor of automation. Catalytic, a startup from the midwest is putting its own flavor on RPA, aiming at more unstructured data. Today it was rewarded with a […]

In its latest monitoring report of a voluntary Code of Conduct on illegal hate speech, which platforms including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube signed up to in Europe back in 2016, the European Commission has said progress is being made on speeding up takedowns but tech firms are still lagging when it comes to providing feedback […]

Micromobility startup Lime, the company that operates shared electric scooters and bikes, has brought on its first chief marketing officer and appointed its first chief technology officer. Duke Stump, now CMO at Lime, is joining the company from Lululemon, where he served as EVP of Brand and Community. Li Fan, who served as Lime’s head of […]

Japanese messaging app company Line is pumping 20 billion JPY ($182 million) into its mobile payment business as it tries to turn things around following a challenging year in 2018. The company announced the infusion into Line Pay, a subsidiary that it fully owns, in a filing which stated that the new capital is “necessary […]

WhatsApp users updating to the latest version of the messaging app on iOS will find a new setting lurking at the bottom of the ‘Privacy’ menu that adds support for Apple’s biometric authentication technologies. Under the new setting, called ‘Screen Lock’, users of WhatsApp on iOS can tap through to another menu to add an […]

Aire, the U.K. startup that wants to give the credit scoring system a 21st century “upgrade,” has raised $11 million in Series B funding. The round is backed by European enterprise VC Crane Venture Partners, with strategic investments from Experian Ventures and Orange Digital Ventures. Existing investors WhiteStar Capital and Sunstone Capital also followed on, […]

Announcements that Apple has partnered with Aetna health insurance on a new app leveraging data from its Apple Watch and reports that Verily — one of the health-focused subsidiaries of Google‘s parent company — Alphabet, is developing a shoe that can detect weight and movement, indicate increasing momentum around using data from wearables for clinical health applications and […]

Remember that egg that became Instagram’s most-liked post? It used its recently-acquired fame to shed light on mental health and the pressures of social media. The account now has 10 million followers — its record photo has over 52 million likes — and it put that audience to use with a 30-second video that aired on […]

FertilityIQ's survey also indicates some companies implicated by the #MeToo movement improved their fertility benefits in 2018.