Crunch Hype

Bioengineering may soon provide compelling, low-carbon alternatives in industries where even the best methods produce significant emissions. Utilizing natural and engineered biological process has led to low-carbon textiles from AlgiKnit, cell-cultured premium meats from Orbillion and fuels captured from waste emissions via LanzaTech — and leaders from those companies will be joining us onstage for […]

At its Game Developer Summit, Google today announced a new feature for Android game developers that will speed up by almost 2x the time from starting a download in the Google Play store to the game launching — at least on Android 12 devices. The name of the new feature, “play as you download,” pretty […]

Microsoft has confirmed it’s buying RiskIQ, a San Francisco-based cybersecurity company that provides threat intelligence and cloud-based software as a service for organizations. Terms of the deal, which will see RiskIQ’s threat intelligence services integrated into Microsoft’s flagship security offerings, were not disclosed, although Bloomberg previously reported that Microsoft will pay more than $500 million […]

Elon Musk is testifying Monday morning in a lawsuit over Tesla’s 2016 acquisition of SolarCity, a $2.6 billion transaction that a group of shareholders allege was a “bailout” of the failing solar company. The shareholders are seeking repayment to Tesla of the cost to purchase SolarCity. The suit, filed in the Delaware District Court in […]

The Amazon roll-up play — where one company creates economies of scale by buying up and consolidating multiple smaller third-party merchants that sell their goods via Amazon’s marketplace — continues to be a strong e-commerce trend, and in the latest development, one of the hopefuls in this space is announcing a major injection of capital […]

Hardware is hard. You can browse the archives of this site and come up with dozens of bold attempts to make new consumer electronics gadgets work — some of them very close to home. But, like all startups, most hardware companies run into the hard-core grind of turning atoms into something worth buying. To commemorate […]

Companies that jump on the rainbow bandwagon without fully living those values aren’t only hypocritical — they’re also doing themselves a disservice.

Do you really want Bezos tackling child hunger? Do you want Musk trying to expand healthcare access? Do you want Branson to focus on voting rights? Hell no.

Gembah’s mission statement is a deceptively simple one. The Austin-based company says it’s looking to “democratize product innovation by drastically lowering barriers to entry for creation of new products.” In that respect, at least, it’s not so dissimilar from various startup initiatives that have arrived over the past decade and change, from crowdfunding to additive […]

Gurgaon-based mobile wallet service firm MobiKwik plans to raise up to $255 million in an initial public offering, becoming the latest Indian startup to explore the public markets. The 12-year-old firm, which counts Sequoia Capital India and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority among its investors and has raised about $250 million to date, plans to offer […]

Pretty soon, people won’t have to provide a fingerprint or a driver’s license to prove their identity — if VU has its way.

Hello and welcome to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. I’m back from my road trip and swimming in emails. If you sent me a message on Twitter, email or pigeon post, please give me a few days […]

Facebook has been accused of multiple breaches of European Union consumer protection law as a result of its attempts to force WhatsApp users to accept controversial changes to the messaging platforms’ terms of use — such as threatening users that the app would stop working if they did not accept the updated policies by May […]

On June 18, Babajide Duroshola, ex-Country Head, SafeBoda Nigeria, stepped down from his role two years after taking the job post-Andela. Less than a month later, the executive has found a new role as General Manager in Kenyan company, M-KOPA. His appointment coincides with M-KOPA’s broader expansion strategy, which includes a move to Nigeria. In […]

Flipkart said on Monday it has raised $3.6 billion at a post-money valuation of $37.6 billion in what is considered as the pre-IPO round for the Indian e-commerce conglomerate as it works to list in the public markets as soon as early next year. The new round of funding — by far the largest for […]

Based in Sydney and Auckland, Dovetail is a full-service venture studio that works closely with founders who have a great idea, but may lack technical backgrounds. Dovetail helps them build companies from the ground up, preparing them for growth and more funding. Founded in 2014, Dovetail’s success stories include Afterpay, the Melbourne-headquartered unicorn that is […]

Virgin Galactic has successfully taken its first passengers to space, including its billionaire founder Richard Branson. The event, at Spaceport America in New Mexico, was a field day for press and employees, complete with an early-morning Khalid set and hero walk by Branson and the crew. “Just imagine a world where people of all ages, […]

"She pointed to the screen projected behind her to help us stay on the most relevant piece of information. The way she did it really made us stay with her. Like, we couldn't break eye contact."

Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules. On Sunday, Twitter identified Vinay Prakash as its new resident grievance officer and shared a way to contact […]

Virgin Galactic is set to launch its first passengers to space tomorrow morning, and you can watch the whole thing right here. The launch is scheduled for 7:30 AM Pacific, with streaming festivities (including commentary by Stephen Colbert) starting on the hour. Update: The launch has been delayed by 1.5 hours due to weather. New […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

After months of beta testing, Y Combinator has launched a co-founder matching platform. The platform invites entrepreneurs to create profiles, which include information about themselves and preferences for a co-founder, such as location and skill sets. It digests that information and offers a number of potential candidates that fit those needs — kind of like […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

Now is the time to go all-in on decarbonization. Funding fusion with its breakthrough potential must be part of that effort.

Last year, during the pandemic, a free browser extension called Netflix Party gained traction because it enabled people trapped in their homes to connect with far-flung friends and family by watching the same Netflix TV shows and movies simultaneously. It also enabled them to dish about the action in a side bar chat. Yet that […]

TechCrunch is searching for the best growth marketers for founders to work with. Click through to learn about some of our favorites.

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Netskope, focused on Secure Access Service Edge architecture, announced Friday a $300 million investment round on a post-money valuation of $7.5 billion.

Misconceptions about AI in the workplace have long been a barrier to widespread adoption — but companies experiencing labor shortages should consider where it can make their employees' lives better.

Just like NYC's flooded subway system, internet infrastructure doesn't attract much attention until there's a notable failure.

"There’s a bias for wanting to use what worked previously, but people forget … your customers and markets are totally different. You can’t just replicate."

Construction technology users are more like general consumers. This means the technology ideally must be easy to use on the first try and adaptable to a wide variety of job site protocols.

We’re entering a phase in the COVID-19 pandemic where transmission is going to go through the roof because of the Delta variant. But as vaccinations ramp up around the world, the main cost to society now will not be the health services being overwhelmed, but mass disruption to businesses as staff are forced to self […]

The Artemis Fund is a Houston-based firm built by three women with the goal of encouraging more women-led startups. The company launched in 2019 and has raised a $15 million initial fund, which closed earlier this year. Diana Murakhovskaya, who launched the firm with Stephanie Campbell and Leslie Goldman, says that the three women met […]

The Biden administration just introduced a sweeping, ambitious plan to forcibly inject competition into some consolidated sectors of the American economy — the tech sector prominent among them — through executive action. “Today President Biden is taking decisive action to reduce the trend of corporate consolidation, increase competition, and deliver concrete benefits to America’s consumers, […]

We asked several analysts to identify the top problems he will have to address in his new role.

Kris Holt Contributor Share on Twitter Kris Holt is a contributing writer at Engadget. WhatsApp is working on a setting that will let users more easily bypass its iffy image compression and send photos and videos in the highest available fidelity. The “best quality” option will likely join “auto” and “data saver” choices in a future […]

French startup Didomi has raised a $40 million Series B funding round led by Elephant and Breega. The company manages consent flows for web publishers and app developers. Didomi is already doing well in Europe with billions of consent interactions per month — it plans to expand to the U.S. with today’s funding round. “Jawad, […]

Ransomware attacks, fueled by COVID-19 pandemic turbulence, have become a major money earner for cybercriminals, with the number of attacks rising in 2020. These file-encrypting attacks have continued largely unabated this year, too. In the last few months alone we’ve witnessed the attack on Colonial Pipeline that forced the company to shut down its systems […]

The venture capital market is racing ahead, foot on the gas, middle finger out the window, hair on fire. That’s our read of the Q2 2021 data released thus far.

Frontier, which bills itself as a “new kind of vertically integrated jobs marketplace” launches today with a $2.8 million investment round led by NFX in the U.S., and backed by London’s firstminute Capital, FJ Labs, Cyan Banister, Ilkka Pannanen, Alex Bouaziz, Liquid 2 and several other funds and angels. Frontier’s schtick is that it pre-tests […]

There's never been a better time to pursue funding for robotics startups, but you are more likely to succeed if you build a strategy marked by the same sophistication you bring to your business.

And just like that, it’s day two of TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising! Yesterday not only flew by in a blur — it was also certifiably off the hook. We hope you came away with new information, actionable advice that you can implement in your business right away and that you connected with […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Danny and Alex were on deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. Natasha will be back with us starting next week. So, it was old times on the show with just two of our team to vamp on […]

Robots have a hard time improvising, and encountering an unusual surface or obstacle usually means an abrupt stop or hard fall. But researchers have created a new model for robotic locomotion that adapts in real time to any terrain it encounters, changing its gait on the fly to keep trucking when it hits sand, rocks, […]

A new biometrics privacy ordinance has taken effect across New York City, putting new limits on what businesses can do with the biometric data they collect on their customers. From Friday, businesses that collect biometric information — most commonly in the form of facial recognition and fingerprints — are required to conspicuously post notices and […]

Online grocery startups around the world continue to pull in major investment, underscoring how much they have all grown especially in the last year of pandemic living. In the latest development, Kurly — a startup in South Korea that provides next-day grocery delivery services across the country — has closed $200 million in funding, a […]

Seed investment firm Hummingbird VC, which previously invested in Deliveroo, Peak Games, MarkaVIP, and Kraken has a new Managing Partner. Firat Ileri, previously a Partner – who at 28 became one of Europe’s youngest VCs when he joined in 2012 – takes over from Founding Partner Barend Van den Brande, who will now take on […]