Crunch Hype

Sometimes it take a small bug in one thing to find something massive elsewhere. During an investigation recent, security firm Forcepoint Labs said it found a new kind of malware that was found taking instructions from a hacker sending commands over the encrypted messaging app Telegram . The researchers described their newly discovered malware, dubbed […]

Cracking the silos of digital health records promises to bring better care to patients by better informing doctors, according to Abhinav Shashank, the chief executive officer of San Francisco-based startup Innovaccer . Shashank’s company is just wrapping up a $35 million round of financing with a new $11 million commitment from Microsoft’s investment arm M12 […]

Two years on from the U.S. presidential election, Facebook continues to have a major problem with Russian disinformation being megaphoned via its social tools. In a blog post today the company reveals another tranche of Kremlin-linked fake activity — saying it’s removed a total of 471 Facebook pages and accounts, as well as 41 Instagram accounts, which […]

The era that saw China’s mobile payments providers making handsome interest returns on client money has officially ended. Starting this week, non-bank payments companies must place 100 percent of their customer deposit funds under centralized, interest-free accounts as Beijing moves to rein in financial risks. In the past, third-party payments firms were allowed to hold […]

A popular WordPress plugin, installed on thousands of websites to help users share content on social media sites, left linked Twitter accounts exposed to compromise. The plugin, Social Network Tabs, was storing so-called account access tokens in the source code of the WordPress website. Anyone who viewed the source code could see the linked Twitter […]

Coinbase is continuing its push to suck up talent after the $8 billion-valued crypto business snapped up Blockspring, a San Francisco-based startup that enables developers to collect and process data from APIs. The undisclosed deal was announced by Blockspring on its blog, and confirmed to TechCrunch by a Coinbase representative. Coinbase declined to comment further. […]

Personio, the German HR and recruiting platform, has raised $40 million in a Series B funding. Leading the round is London-based Index Ventures, with participation from existing investors Northzone and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders. Founded in 2015, Munich-based Personio has set out to build a “HR operating system” for small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) ranging […]

Ciitizen, the company founded by the creators of Gliimpse (an Apple acquisition that’s been incorporated into the company’s HealthKit) which is developing tools to help patients organize and share their medical records, has raised $17 million in new funding. Ciitizen, like Gliimpse before it, is an attempt to break down the barriers that keep patients […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor Harley Davidson reveals more about its push into electric vehicles Venture capital, global expansion, blockchain and drones characterize African tech in 2018 Fintech startup Flutterwave has partnered with Visa to launch […]

Ola, the ride-hailing service battling Uber in India, is introducing credit services to its users as it moves closer to a major new funding round. Today the company took the wraps off Ola Money Postpaid, a service that builds on Ola’s existing payment service — which can be used to pay rides and also third-party […]

At a time when tech companies are being blamed for creating housing shortages in cities across the country, Microsoft told the Seattle Times it will make a $500 million pledge, its largest ever, to create affordable housing around Seattle. The company is currently in the middle of a multi-billion dollar expansion of its Redmond, Washington […]

Amazon’s AWS cloud computing service today launched Backup, a new tool that makes it easier for developers on the platform to back up their data from various AWS services and their on-premises apps. Out of the box, the service, which is now available to all developers, lets you set up backup policies for services like Amazon EBS […]

Graduate Fund has written "angel-sized" checks to five companies so far, including Spellbrush and Ally Shoes.

Academics at the universities of Oxford and Stanford think Facebook should give users greater transparency and control over the content they see on its platform. They also believe the social networking giant should radically reform its governance structures and processes to throw more light on content decisions, including by looping in more external experts to […]

Google today announced that it is raising the price of its G Suite subscriptions for the first time. In the U.S., the prices of G Suite Basic and G Suite Business editions will increase by $1 and $2 per user/month, respectively, while increases in other regions will be adjusted according to the local currency and […]

Ford's iconic and popular F-series pickup line will soon have electric options, the company announced today. The move is intended to "future-proof" the enormous truck business against rising gas prices and regulations favoring electric vehicles over internal combustion.

Resolute Ventures, an early-stage firm with offices in San Francisco and Boston, just closed its fourth fund with $75 million. It’s an almost shockingly conservative amount of capital in today’s era of big-is-better funds. And with valuable companies like the real estate startup OpenDoor, the applicant tracking system company Greenhouse and the dog products company […]

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, U.S. federal prosecutors are preparing a criminal indictment against Huawei for stealing trade secrets. The report, which cites sources with knowledge of the indictment, specifically mentions Huawei’s actions surrounding a T-Mobile smartphone testing tool known as “Tappy.” The report notes that the current investigation is far […]

SpaceX will center its largest-scale operations not in its Los Angeles-area headquarters but in south Texas facilities, the company said today. Development of its next-generation Starship and Super Heavy launch vehicle will take place in Texas, while Falcon 9 and Dragon work will remain at Hawthorne.

The ongoing shutdown of the federal government has already had adverse effects on millions nationwide, and now could even delay a major legal challenge to the FCC’s infamous net neutrality repeal. The agency moved yesterday to delay oral arguments scheduled for just two weeks from now. The arguments in a consolidated lawsuit against the FCC […]

Steve Carell is coming back to small-screen comedy for a new Netflix series about the people tasked with creating the “Space Force” — the proposed sixth branch of the military. Details about the new show from Carell and Greg Daniels, who was the mind behind the American version of “The Office,” are sketchy. Netflix hasn’t […]

Facebook is bringing on the engineering lead for Google’s entire AR/VR team to tackle Portal hardware. Ryan Cairns comes aboard after 12 years at Google, where he was most recently the engineering lead for a team of more than 500 people tackling AR/VR at the big G, including Daydream, Lens and ARCore, according to his LinkedIn. […]

Local TV broadcasting company Sinclair Broadcast Group today announced the launch of a new streaming service called STIRR that aims to bring local TV news and other content to the growing number of cord cutters across the U.S. The company today owns more than 190 TV stations, which it’s leveraging in order to create its […]

Continuing a trend that VCs here in London tell me is seeing an increasing amount of deal-flow in Europe attract the interest of top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firms, TechCrunch has learned that email security provider Tessian is the latest to raise from across the pond. According to multiple sources, the London-based company has closed […]

New year, new you, new Slack. The popular workplace chat service’s resolution clearly involved a bit of a facelift, starting with a new logo. A redesigned version of the familiar grid logo launched this week, and appears to have rolled out on most major platforms. Slack did the customary thing of explaining the hell out […]

Lance Armstrong revealed last month that an early investment in Uber — courtesy of a $100,000 check that he funneled into the company in 2009 through Lowercase Capital — “saved” his family from financial ruin. This was after evidence surfaced in 2012 that he used performance-enhancing drugs and he was stripped not only of his […]

Robots are amazing things, but outside of their specific domains they are incredibly limited. So flexibility — not physical, but mental — is a constant area of research. A trio of new robotic setups demonstrate ways they can evolve to accommodate novel situations: using both "hands," getting up after a fall, and understanding visual instructions they've never seen before.

If nothing else, the addition of ECG/EKG reinforced Apple’s commitment to evolving the Watch into a serious medical device. The company has long looked to bring its best-selling wearable to various health insurance platforms, and, according to a new report, it’s reaching out to multiple private Medicare plans in hopes of subsidizing the product. If […]

Today, Ubiquity6 has announced that it is acquiring Wavy, a small AR music startup founded last year. In a blog post, the Wavy team confirmed they’ll be joining the Ubiquity6 team and won’t be continuing their work on the Wavy app. “When we met the team at Ubiquity6, it became apparent that joining the team […]

Acorn Biolabs wants consumers to pay them to store genetic material in a bet that the increasing advances in targeted genetic therapies will yield better healthcare results down the line. The company’s pitch is to “Save young cells today, live a longer, better, tomorrow.” It’s a gamble on the frontiers of healthcare technology that has managed […]

PayPal, Kabbage and Waze investor BlueRun Ventures invests in early-stage mobile software and fintech startups.

Sprint today announced it will support Apple’s Business Chat – the new platform that allows businesses and customers to interact over iMessage. According to the carrier, customers can now message a Sprint customer service agent, get info about plans and other services, as well as look up store information in Maps, Safari and with Siri […]

The company formerly known as WeWork has come under scrutiny for potential conflict of interest issues regarding CEO Adam Neumann’s partial ownership of three properties where WeWork is (or will be) a tenant. TechCrunch has seen excerpts of the company’s prospectus for investors that details upwards of $100 million in total future rents WeWork will […]

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. Snap CFO Tim Stone is resigning This marks Snap’s second CFO departure in the last 12 months. In a memo to […]

Google Cloud today announced that Nvidia’s Turing-based Tesla T4 data center GPUs are now available in beta in its data centers in Brazil, India, Netherlands, Singapore, Tokyo and the United States. Google first announced a private test of these cards in November, but that was a very limited alpha test. All developers can now take these new […]

Tinder has already developed a fairly robust chat platform within its dating app, with support for sharing things like Bitmoji and GIFs, and the ability to “like” messages by tapping a heart icon. Now, the company is testing a new integration – sharing music via Spotify. Tinder confirmed with TechCrunch it’s trying out a new […]

Podcasting’s greatest asset has always been its accessibility — for consumer and creator alike. But even the simplest medium requires a little know-how, and Anchor’s overarching goal has long been to further lower the barrier of entry for those looking to take the leap. It’s not perfect, and it’s not for everyone, but the service […]

Weeks after it raised a massive $540 million funding round, Indian education unicorn Byju’s is on the M&A path. The company announced today it has snapped up U.S-based Osmo, a startup that develops apps for kids that use offline input, in a deal worth $120 million. Osmo has raised over $30 million from investors that […]

We’ve known since around December that Niantic (the company behind Pokémon GO and the soon to be released Harry Potter Wizards Unite) was in the middle of raising a ton of money for its Series C round. At the time, it looked like it’d come in around $200M dollars. The company has just officially announced […]

Innovation’s leading-edge lives at the intersection of robotics and AI. What could possibly be more exciting than attending TechCrunch Sessions: Robotics + AI on April 18 — where you’ll spend a full day immersed in these world-changing technologies? Well, you could showcase your early-stage startup to nearly 1,000 of the best minds in robotics and […]

Infor, a NYC-based enterprise software company, announced a massive $1.5 billion investment today that could be the precursor to an IPO in the next 12-24 months. One analyst is estimating that the valuation could be at least $60 billion. The investment is being led by Koch Industries’ investment arm, Koch Equity Development, and Golden Gate […]

Global app downloads topped 194 billion in 2018, up 35 percent from 2016, according to App Annie’s annual “State of Mobile 2019” report released today. Consumer spending across app stores was up 75 percent to reach $101 billion. The report, which analyzes trends across iOS, Android and the third-party Android stores in China combined, follows […]

China’s massive auto market hit the brakes last year as trade tensions and a softening economy dampened consumer confidence, but one segment soared on account of increasing internet penetration — used car sales. New passenger car sales fell to 23.7 million last year, representing a 4.1 year-over-year drop according to a new report by China’s Association of […]

HyperScience, the machine learning company that turns human readable data into machine readable data, has today announced the close of a $30 million Series B funding round led by Stripes Group, with participation from existing investors FirstMark Capital and Felicis Ventures, as well as new investors Battery Ventures, Global Founders Fund, TD Ameritrade and QBE. […]

Techstars is announcing Techstars Studio, its latest attempt to bring corporations closer to the startup ecosystem.

You can now order meals via DoorDash in Alaska, Montana and South Dakota.

A study by the Pew Research Center suggests most Facebook users are still in the dark about how the company tracks and profiles them for ad-targeting purposes. Pew found three-quarters (74%) of Facebook users did not know the social networking behemoth maintains a list of their interests and traits to target them with ads, only […]

Motorola has revived the Razr name a few times over the years, but the once-mighty brand has failed to regain the heights of its early days as an ultra-slim flip phone. But what better time for the phone maker’s parent Lenovo to bring back the brand in earnest as the mobile world is readying itself […]

Amazon already gave Alexa the ability to whisper, and now it’s rolling out another way to change the assistant’s speaking style – it’s giving Alexa a “newscaster” voice. Starting today, when U.S. customers ask Alexa “what’s the latest?” to hear the day’s news, Alexa will respond using a voice that’s similar to how a professional […]

In India, startups are quietly building the tools and platforms to enable a different kind of gig economy: one that allows ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ to tap growing access to the internet to sell goods and services online. One such figure helping this burgeoning economy is Instamojo, a seven-year-old Bengaluru-based startup, has pulled in a $7 million Series B […]