Crunch Hype

The number of U.S. households without a traditional cable or satellite TV subscription that instead receive broadcast stations using a digital antenna has jumped by nearly 50 percent over the past 8 years to reach 16 million homes, according to a new report from Nielsen. Today, 14 percent of all U.S. TV households are watching […]

Even your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man needs a vacation. Between all of the mild-mannered studenting and Avenger-style world saving (not mention what transpired during Infinity War), Peter Parker could clearly use a break. The first trailer for July’s Far From Home finds Parker going Griswold, for a little European vacation, sans-suit (and Lindsey Buckingham soundtrack). But […]

That question in the headline was the challenge posed by a group of open knowledge junkies in Germany who wanted to understand how a person’s Schufa was calculated. Schufa is a credit bureau that generates financial scores for potential borrowers in Germany, and it is roughly equivalent to a FICO score in the United States. […]

Almost every word in the name of TAG Heuer’s new watch – the Carrera Calibre Heuer 02T Tourbillon Nanograph – is important. Carrera connects it to TAG’s long history of chronographs while Calibre suggests a handmade watch made with some technical prowess. Tourbillon means you can expect this thing to cost more than a car […]

Educational computing kit company Kano announced today that it has signed a two-year licensing deal to create Disney-branded products later this year. Details are still pretty scant on how precisely the deal with Disney’s Parks, Experiences and Consumer Products will take shape, but the first product looks to be a Star Wars-themed kit due out […]

Netflix is raising fees for U.S. subscribers in its biggest price increase since the company first launched its streaming service 12 years ago. Depending on your plan, the cost will go up increase by 13 percent to 18 percent. For the most popular plan (which includes high-definition streaming for up to two devices simultaneously), the […]

CyPhy Works announced this morning that it is shifting focus and rebranding as Aria Insights. The new company is focused on utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to help analyze data collected by drones. Aria will build upon CyPhy’s tethered drone data collection, to help pull information in dangerous situations from oil tankers and pipelines […]

There is a growing demand for stronger security at every point in the IT ecosystem, and today, one of the the more successful enterprise startups to emerge in the last several years is announcing a big round of funding to provide that. Rubrik, which provides enterprise data management and backup services across on-premise, cloud and […]

Smartsheet, the project management and collaboration tool that went public last April, announced the acquisition of Seattle-based TernPro, Inc., makers of Slope, a collaboration tool designed for sharing creative assets. The companies did not share the acquisition price. Bringing Slope into the fold will enable Smartsheet users to share assets like video and photos natively […]

The under-the-radar VC firm counts 13 unicorns in its portfolio.

Pandora today announced the launch of its own, in-app voice assistant which you can call up at any time by saying “Hey Pandora,” followed by a request to play the music or podcasts you want to hear. The feature will allow you to not only control music playback with commands to play a specific artist, […]

You might not know Amadeus by name, but hundreds of millions of travelers use it each year. Whether you’re traveling for work or vacation, most consumers book their flights through one of a handful of bespoke reservation systems used across the commercial aviation industry. Amadeus is one of the largest reservation systems, serving customers of […]

A new network for powerful women launches today with $3 million in venture capital funding.

Qualcomm has had a patent lawsuit against Apple dismissed by a court in Mannheim, Germany, as groundless (via Reuters). The chipmaker had argued Intel -powered iPhones infringed a transistor switch patent it holds. But in an initial verbal decision the court disagreed. Qualcomm has said it will appeal. In a statement, Don Rosenberg, Qualcomm’s executive […]

It turns out Stride.VC isn’t going to focus exclusively on the U.K. after all. Pia d’Iribarne is leaving Accel to join Stride.VC as a partner. Stride.VC was originally co-founded by former Accel partner Fred Destin along with Harry Stebbings, producer of “The Twenty Minute VC” podcast. Back in October, when TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear covered the […]

Quinyx, the cloud-based workforce management solution, has raised a further $25 million in funding. The investment was led by the startup’s existing investors Alfvén & Didrikson, Battery Ventures, and Zobito. Founded in 2005 by Erik Fjellborg, Quinyx’s CEO, after he spent the summer working at McDonald’s, the company’s workforce management software helps businesses of all […]

Online tax filing and accounting service, Contabilizei, has raised $20 million in a new round of financing led by Point72 Ventures, the early stage investment arm associated with hedge fund guru Steven Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management. Smart money in both the venture and private equity space has been long Brazil for a bit, and the new investment […]

Digital insurance firm Singapore Life has started 2019 with a bang after it raised $33 million across two investments as it eyes new market expansions in Southeast Asia. The company pulled in $20 million from NYSE-listed Aflac Investment on December 31 and then it added a further $13 million this week via an investment from […]

Facebook plans to make a significant investment in local news over the next three years, with $300 million going to a variety of initiatives and organizations. The company has had a rocky relationship with news publishers recently. While it’s funded programming from partners like CNN and Fox News, it’s also played a role in some […]

American Express has made an acquisition in Japan after it picked up restaurant booking service Pocket Concierge in an undisclosed deal. The acquisition was announced in Japanese and in English by James Riney, the head of 500 Startups Japan which invested in Pocket Concierge as one of its first deals in the country. The service was launched in […]

ByteDance, the world’s most-valued startup, just launched a new social media product under its Douyin brand in what many people see as a serious attempt to challenge WeChat. Tencent has long dominated China’s social networking space with WeChat and QQ. WeChat claims to have one billion monthly active users worldwide, most of whom are in China. […]

Manual, a ‘wellbeing platform’ for men, has closed £5 million in seed funding. Backing the round is the U.K.’s Felix Capital, Germany’s Cherry Ventures, and U.S.-based Cassius Capital. The first iteration of the startup’s offering is being launched today: a new website that aims to arm men with the knowledge and tools they need “to […]

Over one billion people leave behind trails of information on WeChat every day as they use the messenger to chat, read, shop, hail rides, rent umbrellas and run many other errands. And the Tencent app has quietly started using this type of signal to determine whether a user is worthy of perks such as deposit-free […]

Not since the literary biopic showdown between “Capote” and “Infamous” has there been such an intense battle for the attention of viewers. This time, the fight is between Hulu and Netflix’s competing documentaries about the disastrous Fyre Festival, a 2017 music festival whose failure led to eight lawsuits and a six-year prison sentence for co-founder […]

A new study is making waves in the worlds of tech and psychology by questioning the basis of thousands of paper and analyses with conflicting conclusions on the effect of screen time on well-being. The researchers claim is that the science doesn't agree because it's bad science. So is screen time good or bad? It's not that simple.

NBCUniversal is joining the long list of media giants looking to compete with Netflix. The company today announced plans to launch its own streaming service in early 2020. The still-unnamed service will include advertising and will be available at no additional cost to pay TV subscribers. If you aren’t a pay TV subscriber, or if […]

The future of AR/VR could be bright, but only if it moves beyond where it is today. Let’s look at where we are today, where we’re heading tomorrow and some of the changes needed to get us there.

Remember, way back on January 2 when Netflix issued a warning to its customers over the viral Bird Box challenge meme to “PLEASE DO NOT HURT YOURSELVES WITH THIS BIRD BOX CHALLENGE?” That warning wasn’t heard or followed by at least one 17-year-old in Utah who decided to give the challenge — which involves a blindfold — […]

Self-driving car startup Zoox has selected its new CEO following the unexpected firing of co-founder and former CEO Tim Kentley-Klay in August. According to Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson, he and the board of directors believed “that to take the company through the next stage and to scale the company, we thought finding someone with […]

Companies impatient to make drone deliveries a viable reality should have a win to celebrate soon. On Monday, Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao announced in a “sneak preview” that her department would move forward with plans to remove waiver requirements for two key drone operation circumstances: flying after dark and flying over populated areas. “First, […]

Last year, Dish-owned streaming service Sling TV launched a free tier to its service designed to attract those with lapsed subscriptions to come back and watch. On Roku devices, former customers were able to tune into more than 100 hours of TV shows and movies without a subscription by launching the Sling TV app. Today, […]

The company behind a texting platform that powered more than 1,300 Democratic campaigns has slashed its staff in the lull following the 2018 midterms. Hustle co-founder and CEO Roddy Lindsay, a former Facebook engineer, disclosed the layoffs in a recent Medium post, apologizing for the choices that led up to the decision to “right-size” Hustle’s […]

Nissan unveiled Monday its latest vision for electric vehicles at the North American International Auto Show — the third consecutive year the automaker has teased what its EV future might look like. This time it’s a sleek EV concept called the Nissan IMs, which the automaker describes as an “elevated sports sedan.” If the IMs name […]

YouTube is updating its mobile app to make it easier to navigate through videos. The company announced it will this week roll out a new horizontal swiping gesture that lets you move forward and backward through the videos you’re watching. Swiping forward takes you to the next recommended video, while swiping back will take you […]

Today at the North American International Auto Show held in Detroit, Mich., Infiniti revealed its latest electric concept vehicle. Called the QX Inspiration Concept, this crossover is a preview of what’s to come from Infiniti. The concept is built on Infiniti’s upcoming EV platform that will reportedly be used in all of Infiniti’s initial electric […]

French startup Shine wants to be the only professional bank account you need if you’re a freelancer. So far, 25,000 people have signed up to the service, and the company recently raised a $9.3 million funding round. Shine wants to help freelancers in France all steps of the way. After signing up, the app helps […]

While there have been a few massive surveillance startups in China that have raised funds on the back of computer vision advances, there’s seemed to be less fervor outside of that market. Tel Aviv-based AnyVision is aiming to leverage its computer vision chops in tracking people and objects to create some pretty clear utility for the […]

A group of Google employees is taking to Twitter and Instagram tomorrow in an attempt to educate the public about forced arbitration, Recode first reported. From 9 a.m. – 6 p.m. EST, this group will share stories and facts about forced arbitration, as well as interviews from survivors and experts. This comes about one month […]

Valar Ventures plans to raise $350 million across two new funds, according to a pair of SEC documents filed this morning.

Brud, the company behind the virtual celebrity Lil Miquela, is now worth at least $125 million thanks to a new round of financing the company is currently closing. Meanwhile, new venture-backed companies like the superstealthy Shadows, SuperPlastic and Toonstar are all developing virtual characters that will launch via social media channels like Snap and Instagram, […]

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. A first look at Twitter’s new beta app and its bid to remain ‘valuable and relevant’ In the coming weeks, Twitter’s […]

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, is announcing a new project called Newspack. While details are still thin, the company wants to help news organizations with an all-in-one solution to publish and monetize their content. WordPress, the open-source project that lets you create websites on WordPress.com, is already a solid content management system (we use it […]

Alibaba’s long-term ambition to grow its business in the US is taking another step forward. To increase sales to US small businesses, the company has partnered with Kabbage, the Softbank-backed unicorn that provides loans to SMBs using big data and machine learning to determine eligibility faster than a traditional bank lender, to provide up to $150,000 […]

If you’re down in ///joins.slides.predict you may want to visit ///history.writing.closets or, if you’ve got a little money to spend, try the Bananas Foster at ///cattle.excuse.luggage. Either way, don’t forget to stop by ///plotting.nest.reshape before you fly out. If things go what3words way, that’s how you’ll be sending out addresses in the future. Founded by […]

Volkswagen will spend $800 million to expand a U.S. factory that will produce the automaker’s next generation of electric vehicles. The factory in Chattanooga, Tenn. will be the company’s North American base for manufacturing electric vehicles, VW CEO Dr. Herbert Diess said during a presentation at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday. The expansion is expected […]

Facebook wants to make it easier for users share events and coordinate with friends before the event’s start. The company this morning said it will test a new feature that lets users share those events they’re interested in attending to their Story, then make plans to meet up with friends who also plan to attend. […]

This weekend, I finished reading Oliver Morton’s The Planet Remade (thanks to reader Eliot Peper for recommending it). Morton has a multitude of goals with the book, but there were two I think are deeply valuable. First, geoengineering is a plausible approach to solving our climate problems this century, and second, engineering the climate generates […]

In 2017, Apple announced the Qi-compatible AirPower Mat, a device that would charge multiple devices at once simply by placing them on the mat. That product has been seriously delayed due to reported interference and overheating issues, with a whole year going by without hearing much about the availability of the product. In fact, Apple’s […]

One Man's Trash from We Are Films on Vimeo. Peter Kokis makes robots or, more correctly, he turns into robots. This Brooklyn artists takes parts from different things – slicers, juicers, and the like – and sticks them together to make some amazing costumes. He then wanders the streets of Brooklyn looking like an escaped […]