Crunch Hype

This is not earth-shattering news by any means, but Google today announced that Gmail is getting a strikethrough button in its formatting bar. In addition, it’s also getting Undo/Redo options and the ability to download emails as .EML files. There really isn’t much more to be said about this, but if you ever wanted to […]

Latin America is getting another fintech unicorn thanks to Advent International’s acquisition of a 51 percent stake of Prisma Medios de Pago, an Argentine payments company formed as a joint venture between Visa International and local banks. The deal, which values Prisma at $1.42 billion, is yet another sign of Latin America’s growing prominence for […]

Zynga founder Mark Pincus is raising up to $700 million for a new investment fund that will focus on publicly traded tech companies in need of strategic restructuring, according to a new report in Axios. It says his new firm is called Reinvent Capital and that Pincus is founding the outfit with hedge fund manager […]

Having reached critical mass, Netflix shows are now influencing culture — whether that’s prompting everyone to “tidy up” or causing chaos with “Bird Box”-inspired challenges. For good or bad, what happens on Netflix is talked about, memed and shared across the social media landscape. Today, Netflix is launching a new feature aimed at better inserting […]

The electric guitar has been floating around in some form or another since the early 1930s. But given how much the instrument dominated the music landscape for the latter half of the 20th century, interesting innovations don’t really come along too often. Fender’s models are probably the most iconic of the bunch, and the company […]

Honor officially launched the Honor View 20 today in Paris. Honor is Huawei’s sub-brand for mid-range phones. And the View 20 doesn’t look like your average smartphone — the company traded the notch for a hole-punch display. Honor thinks this design isn’t as intrusive as a centered notch. And rumor has it that Samsung could […]

Mozilla, the not-for-profit behind the Firefox browser and other open-source projects, today announced that it has hired Roxi Wen, the former CFO of display manufacturer Elo Touch Solutions, as its new CFO. Wen will replace former Mozilla CFO Jim Cook, who departed almost a year ago after 14 years with the organization. Wen joins Mozilla […]

Google’s strategy around its consumer messaging services remains baffling, especially since it killed off Allo (yet kept Duo on life support). Today, the company clarified the timeline of the transition from classic Hangouts to Chat and Meet for its paying G Suite customers. For them, the Hangouts retirement party will start in October of this […]

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. After raising $125M, Munchery fails to deliver On-demand food delivery startup Munchery is ceasing operations, effective immediately. The company laid off […]

The Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project has a singular focus on the blockchain, but this morning it announced a framework for building supply chain projects where it didn’t want blockchain stealing the show. In fact, the foundation is careful to point out that this project is not specifically about the blockchain, so much as providing the building […]

Waymo and Magna plan to build thousands of self-driving cars at a factory in southeast Michigan, including autonomous versions of the all-electric Jaguar I-PACE and Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan. Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, announced Tuesday that the Michigan Economic Development Corporation voted to approve […]

Microsoft just unloaded a whole bunch of news in time for the BETT education show. The most interesting bit of the bunch, however, is probably Code Jumper. The tethered hardware device is design to teach children who are blind or have otherwise impaired vision how to code. The device is a continuation of Project Torino, […]

French startup Mooncard raised a $5.7 million funding round (€5 million) from Raise Ventures, Aglaé Ventures and business angels. The company provides a service to track and manage your company’s expenses with the help of good old plastic cards. Corporate credit cards aren’t as widespread in France as in the U.S. and other countries. That’s […]

We’ve got a double dose of exciting news for you, startup fans. First, we’re thrilled to announce that investment firms August Capital, SV Angel and Uncork Capital have partnered with us for the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize on February 8. And second, today we released into the wild another fresh, though limited, […]

Twitter’s dark mode is about to get darker. In response to a customer’s complaint that Twitter’s dark theme isn’t really black, but more of a blue-ish shade, company CEO Jack Dorsey replied that’s going to be fixed. Though a seemingly minor tweak, dark mode settings for apps have become increasingly popular as a means of […]

Varsity Tutors, the online learning platform that launched in 2011, has today announced the acquisition of Veritas Prep. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but, according to the press release, the Veritas Prep team will remain at its Calabasas, CA office and that the product will continue on as a separate brand. Veritas […]

Marcus Startzel is moving from the adtech to ecommerce: He’s becoming the new CEO at Whitebox. One of his first tasks, apparently, will be raising a Series A. Startzel was previously an executive at AppNexus, which he joined after the acquisition of MediaGlu, where he was CEO. (He departed AppNexus after it was bought by AT&T.) […]

Elliott Management, a NYC investment firm known for its activist streak, released a letter today sent to eBay’s management. The letter put the company on notice that the stock needs to do better, much better. And it outlined a five-step plan, including selling StubHub, it believes can get eBay there. Elliott is making this request […]

When it comes to reaching would-be customers today, one of the biggest investments that brands and retailers will make is in advertising, to the tune of nearly $630 billion globally. Now, a startup called Dosh, which offers cash back on purchases, is announcing that it has raised $40 million to take on the advertising industry, […]

Apple could drop LCDs from the iPhone line next year, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. That interesting — if not altogether surprising — revelation in buried in a piece about a Japan supplier’s struggles in the wake of disappointing iPhone XR sales. The news, which comes courtesy of people familiar […]

French startup Wynd raised another $82 million (€72 million) from Natixis, Sofina and BNF capital. The company started with a point-of-sale solution for restaurants and other brick-and-mortar stores. It now provides a one-stop-shop for all your digital needs when it comes to managing your offline and online sales. The startup has raised $127 million in […]

Starbucks on Monday announced an expansion of its delivery service in partnership with Uber Eats, which is now headed to six other major U.S. cities, starting with San Francisco this week. It will then roll out to Boston, Chicago, L.A., New York and Washington D.C., and is on track to reach one-quarter of U.S. company-operated […]

A little more retail momentum for Apple Pay: Apple has announced another clutch of U.S. retailers will soon support its eponymous mobile payment tech — most notably discount retailer Target. Apple Pay is rolling out to Target stores now, according to Apple, which says it will be available in all 1,850 of its U.S. retail […]

Netflix and Hulu will both have films in the running at the Academy Awards this year. Netflix changed its rules for theatrical releases to give “Roma” a better chance during awards season and it paid off today when the Alfonso Cuarón film was nominated for 10 Oscars, including best picture and best director. Netflix’s “The […]

We hear a lot about drones having the potential to revolutionize delivery and logistics. It’s easy to be dismissive — in many cases, a robot may take what would be a human’s job — but there are some examples where drone technology could genuinely be transformative. One such case is Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest […]

Citizens Reserve, a Bay Area startup, has a broad goal of digitizing the supply chain. Last fall, the company launched the Alpha version of Suku, a Supply Chain as a Service platform built on the blockchain. Today, it announced a partnership with Smartrac, an RFID tag manufacturer, based in Amsterdam, as a key identity piece for […]

After launching apparently successful pilot runs in San Francisco and New York, UPS announced today plans to expand its in-building delivery service to 10 additional U.S. cities. In mid-2019, the parcel service will be adding Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, Miami and Seattle to the list. UPS’s program was launched […]

Starship, an autonomous delivery robot startup, is deploying its first batch of robots as part of a commercial service. Starting today, Starship will begin delivering food to the 40,000 students, faculty and staff at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. in partnership with Sodexo, a food and facilities management company. Starship says the deliveries take […]

Adjust, a Berlin-headquartered company focused on mobile ad measurement and fraud prevention, is acquiring bot detection startup Unbotify. Founded in 2012, Adjust has become increasingly focused on ad fraud, and in fact created an industry group called the Coalition Against Ad Fraud a little over a year ago. Co-founder and CTO Paul Müller argued that […]

VMG Partners has led the $51 million round, with participation from new investors GV and ACME Capital (fka Sherpa Capital).

Wendy Tan White, a veteran of the U.K. startup scene — including founding SaaS website builder Moonfruit, which exited to Yell Group for $37 million — is joining Alphabet X (formerly Google X), TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, Tan White was approached by Google late last year, as she weighed up a number of […]

Just Eat, the takeout marketplace and food delivery service, has acquired Flyt, a startup that offers software for restaurants and restaurant suppliers. The acquisition price is £22 million, which Just Eat says it has financed from cash reserves. “A further cash consideration may also be payable subject to certain operational and financial criteria being met […]

TaxScouts, the U.K. “tax preparation” startup founded by TransferWise and Marketinvoice alumni, has created some new paperwork of its own. The London-based company has raised £1.2 million in seed funding. Leading the new round is SpeedInvest, with participation from Finch Capital and SeedCamp. It adds to £300,000 in pre-seed investment that TaxScouts announced six months […]

Axa Venture Partners, the venture capital arm of insurance company Axa, is raising an early-stage fund. Today’s new $150 million fund (€130 million) is called AVP Early Stage II. Previously, Axa Venture Partners had raised a $110 million early-stage fund back in 2015. So far, it has invested in 40 companies, such as Hackajob, K4Connect, […]

The global crypto market may have tanked last year, but notable names have joined forces to develop Bitcoin and blockchain financial services in Japan, which has emerged as one of the world’s most crypto-friendly markets. Blockstream, a blockchain startup founded by Bitcoin contributors, announced this week that it has launched a joint venture in Japan […]

On-demand food delivery startup Munchery is shutting down, the startup announced in an e-mail to customers on Monday.

On the surface, “Tidying Up With Marie Kondo” sounds like a simple show: Over the course of eight episodes, organizing guru Marie Kondo helps a variety Los Angeles residents sort through their belongings and clean up their homes. But for some, following Kondo’s KonMari method can be a surprisingly difficult or emotional experience — after […]

Last September, two former National Football League players launched an app called Politiscope to track the voting records of members of Congress and the bills that they were introducing — and provide non-partisan information about what those bills and votes would mean to voters. The pro-football-playing brothers, Walter Powell Jr. and Brandon Williams, launched the […]

Most founders don’t walk away from their startup after raising $32 million and reaching 1000 clients. But Roger Dickey’s heart is in consumer tech, and his company Gigster had pivoted to doing outsourced app development for enterprises instead of scrappy entrepreneurs. So today Dickey announced that he’d left his role as Gigster CEO, with former […]

AIESEC, a non-profit that bills itself as the “world’s largest youth-run organization,” exposed more than four million intern applications with personal and sensitive information on a server without a password. Bob Diachenko, an independent security researcher, found an unprotected Elasticsearch database containing the applications on January 11, a little under a month after the database […]

If you leave something on the internet long enough, someone will hack it. The reality is that many device manufacturers make it far too easy by using default passwords that are widely documented, allowing anyone to log in as “admin” and snoop around. Often, there’s no password at all. Enter “Shodan Safari,” a popular part-game, […]

According to a leaked image from Evan Blass, Samsung’s new flagship device could come in three different versions — the Samsung Galaxy S10, the Samsung Galaxy S10+ and the Samsung Galaxy S10E. That new leak lines up with previous leaks. As you can see on the photo, the new devices don’t have a notch. They […]

Facebook last year grounded its ambitious plan to develop a solar-powered drone to beam internet across the world, but the company isn’t done with the concept, it seems. The social media giant is working with aeronautics giant Airbus to test drones in Australia, according to a new report from Germany’s NetzPolitik. Using a request under […]

The CNIL, the French data protection watchdog, has issued its first GDPR fine of $57 million (€50 million). The regulatory body claims that Google has failed to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when new Android users set up a new phone and follow Android’s onboarding process. Two nonprofit organizations called ‘None Of […]

GoFundMe is partnering with Deepak Chopra to launch a different kind of campaigns. The company is going beyond its usual role as a platform and hosting its own campaign to provide relief for government workers impacted by the current government shutdown. The company is partnering with several nonprofit organizations that are providing support to government […]

Kaia Health, a self-styled digital therapeutics” startup, has pulled in $10 million in Series A funding for an app-based approach to chronic pain management. The idea is to offer an alternative to painkillers, using mobile technology to deliver what the founder describes as multimodal, “mind body therapy” for musculoskeletal (MSK) disorders — comprised of guided […]

Memes are the new vernacular of political culture and we dismiss them at our own peril. Liberals learned this the hard way late in the presidential campaign, when they began realizing how deftly the alt-right was able to use viral jokes, hashtags, and images as a propaganda tool, often to bolster white supremacist ideology. The phenomenon […]

Breathing down the neck of WeWork is Knotel, which in 2017 raised a Series A round of $25 million, then another round of $70m, and then another $5m in debt. It says it has one million square feet in New York versus WeWork’s four million. It’s now pushing out internationally. Last year it acquired Ahoy!Berlin, […]

Taxi drivers in major cities in Spain are on strike again to apply pressure for more stringent regulations to control app rivals such as Uber and Cabify which they view as unfair competition. In Barcelona the taxi sector called an indefinite strike on Friday, using their vehicles to block Gran Vía in the Catalan capital, […]