Crunch Hype

Ahead of Spotify’s entry into the Indian market, the streaming service this morning announced a global content deal with a leading Indian film and music company, T-Series, which gives it access to T-Series’ entire Indian song catalog. This includes Bollywood and regional movie soundtracks, plus other non-film albums and emerging artist content, the company says. […]

The world wowed a few years ago when a very clever startup from Bristol, UK, came up with 3D printed bionic limbs for amputees. Uniquely, the limbs were lightweight, cheap to make and could even be made into Iron Man-style arms to enthuse amputee children. They went on to sign a deal with the huge […]

Ford is adding a hybrid Explorer to the mix, the first time the popular SUV has been offered with any kind of electrification. The automaker unveiled Monday the Explorer hybrid as well as a new Explorer ST at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The reveal followed the debut last week of the […]

A security researcher has found, reported, and now disclosed a dozen bugs that made it easy to steal sensitive information or take over any customer’s account from some of the largest web hosting companies on the internet. In some cases, clicking on a simple link would have been enough for Paulos Yibelo, a well-known and respected bug […]

Schneider has fixed three vulnerabilities in one of its popular electric car charging stations, which security researchers said could have easily allowed an attacker to remotely take over the unit. At its worst, an attacker can force a plugged-in vehicle to stop charging, rendering it useless in a “denial-of-service state,” an attack favored by some […]

As people increasingly use their mobile phones and other devices to shop, it has become imperative for vendors to improve the shopping experience, making it as simple as possible, given the small footprint. One way to do that is using artificial intelligence. Today, Salesforce announced some AI-enhanced APIs designed to keep us engaged as shoppers. […]

As we continue the quest for better and more efficient sources of energy to link up our connected world, companies that are developing new power solutions are attracting attention. Today, a startup called Wiliot, which makes semiconductors that harness ambient nanowatts of electromagnetic energy from cellular, WiFi and Bluetooth networks to work without batteries or […]

Immersive Labs, a cyber security skills platform founded by James Hadley, who used to be a researcher at GCHQ, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Goldman Sachs, with participation from a number of unnamed private investors. Operating in the cyber security training space, Immersive Labs helps enterprise IT and […]

Instagram has found something it likes more than a Kardashian-Jenner family baby, and it’s an egg. This weekend, a photo of a plain egg became the most-liked photo on Instagram, the social app owned by Facebook with over one billion users that’s reflective of internet culture. The photo, which you can see below in its […]

Samsung will launch its new lower-priced Galaxy M series in India before the smartphones roll out globally. Asim Warsi, senior vice president of Samsung India’s smartphone business, told Reuters that three devices will be available through its website and Amazon India at the end of January and are intended to help the company double online […]

Apple is finally launching HomePod in China, but the timing is tricky as the premium device will have to wrestle with local competitors and a slowing economy. The firm said over the weekend that its smart speaker will be available in Mainland China and Hong Kong starting January 18, adding to a list of countries where […]

Cadillac revealed Sunday what will likely be the first electric vehicle in the luxury brand’s portfolio. And surprise, it’s a crossover. The images of the full-size crossover SUV, which was unveiled during a debut party for the 2020 Cadillac XT6 in Detroit, kicks off a transformation of GM’s luxury brand. On Friday, GM announced plans […]

Twitter has made a name for itself, at its most basic level, as a platform that gives everyone who uses it a voice. But as it has grown, that unique selling point has set Twitter up for as many challenges — harassment, confusing way to manage conversations — as it has opportunities — the best […]

Investors are still pouring millions into scooter startups, albeit sometimes at flat valuations. At the same time a little cash is flowing the other way, in cases where cities have realized the importance of prioritizing the needs of the local environment and its citizens, over and above the ambitions of VCs for a swift and lucrative […]

Henrique Dubugras Contributor Share on Twitter Henrique Dubugras is the founder Brex, the billion-dollar corporate credit provider for startups. More posts by this contributor Lessons from building Brex into a billion-dollar startup When I hear protesters shout, “Immigrants are welcome here!” at the San Francisco immigration office near my startup’s headquarters, I think about how […]

The Gillmor Gang — Keith Teare, Esteban Kolsky, Doc Searls, Michael Markman and Steve Gillmor . Recorded live Saturday January 12, 2019. OK, it’s 2019 and we’re talking yet again about RSS, the social decline, and whatever micronetworks is supposed to mean. Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor @kteare, @ekolsky, @fradice, @mickeleh, @stevegillmor […]

We in the West love our apocalyptic science fiction, in which cartoonishly evil authorities ruthlessly oppress all who so much as wonder about their absolute power, enforced via ubiquitous surveillance technology. Think The Hunger Games, Blade Runner 2049, V for Vendetta, just to pick a few. Well — to trot out that infamous William Gibson […]

Romero Rodrigues Contributor Romero Rodrigues is a managing partner at Redpoint eVentures, the Brazilian-focused arm of the Silicon Valley venture firm Redpoint. More posts by this contributor Brazil’s fintech boom offers new vertical opportunities for investors Brazil’s tech-sector bright spots beckon as it begins to emerge from long economic crisis In late October following a significant […]

Is the market mostly buoyed by the billions raised by the biggest private tech companies, or is a rising tide in this extended aquatic metaphor raising all ships?

Mike Volpi Contributor Share on Twitter Mike Volpi is a general partner at Index Ventures. Before co-founding the firm's San Francisco office with Danny Rimer, Volpi served as the chief strategy officer at Cisco Systems. It was just 5 years ago that there was an ample dose of skepticism from investors about the viability of open source […]

Just as on-demand electric scooters are trying to pick up speed in Europe, one of the scooter market’s most ambitious startups has halted operations in one country after its e-scooters started halting mid-ride, throwing off and injuring passengers. Lime, the Uber-backed bike and scooter rental company that is reportedly raising money at between a $2 […]

We explore the government shutdown's connection to tech IPOs, recount the demise of a well-funded AR project and introduce readers to an AI-enabled self-checkout shopping cart in this week's startups weekly.

This week, the Las Vegas Convention Center was packed with many of the year’s biggest new devices. But over the last several years, The Sands has become the place where the real magic happens. The segment of the show known as Eureka Park is where the startups and accelerators congregate, often times showing off products […]

I had to fight a couple of coworkers for this thing. It’s a strange thing to fight over, I realize, but we are strange people with a strange job. And more importantly, I won. I’m plugged into the PowerPort Atom as I write this. It’s keeping my 13-inch MacBook Pro alive via the plane power […]

SpaceX plans to lay off approximately 10 percent of its workforce in order to manage its costs, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. The news comes as the company embarks on an ambitious plan to develop and test an interplanetary spacecraft while simultaneously performing frequent orbital launches.

Cory Doctorow doesn’t like censorship. He especially doesn’t like his own work being censored. Anyone who knows Doctorow knows his popular tech and culture blog, Boing Boing, and anyone who reads Boing Boing knows Doctorow and his cohort of bloggers. The part-blogger, part special advisor at the online rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation has written […]

The Morph is a fun little computer peripheral. The small trackpad uses a series of silicone covers to recreate different interfaces, from a QWERTY keyboard to a drum pad. Ultimately, however, it’s the tech that drives the product — rather than the product itself — that may prove the most useful. Sensel was on-hand at […]

WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has been described as an avid surfer, one who has been known to grab his board and go, both in the Hamptons in Long Island, where he reportedly owns a home, as well as in Hawaii. Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that WeWork is now also investing in a so-called superfood […]

A Trump-inspired GoFundMe campaign that raised $20 million ostensibly to build a wall on the southern U.S. border will refund every cent. Run by Brian Kolfage, a veteran with a track record of questionable business practices, the project defied all logistical considerations with its proposal for a “simple and straightforward” plan to build the wall. That […]

General Motors is turning Cadillac into its lead electric vehicle brand in a bid to compete against Tesla as well as a host of other automakers bringing EVs onto the market. Plans are already underway to introduce the first model from the company’s new battery electric vehicle architecture, GM said Friday during an investor meeting. […]

Improbable may be pissed at Unity, but they still want them back. In a blog post titled “A final statement on SpatialOS and Unity,” the team at the cloud gaming startup aimed to tell their side of the story and implored Unity to “clarify their terms or unsuspend our licenses.” Unity is a game engine […]

The New York Times is expanding its efforts around audio programming and voice assistants, the company announced today. The NYT says it’s launching a daily flash briefing for Alexa devices, as well as an interactive news quiz, and — in an interesting twist — it will be introducing “enhanced coverage” in its Sunday paper that […]

The Chromecast Audio is no more. Google has decided to stop manufacturing the audio dongle that allowed you to add any “dumb” speaker to your Google Cast setup. If you still want one, you’ll have to hurry — and to entice you to buy a discontinued product, Google is now selling its remaining inventory for $15 […]

If you watched Netflix’s latest “Black Mirror” production, there’s no doubt it reminded you of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books. Now, the publisher that owns the trademark to “Choose Your Own Adventure,” Chooseco, LLC, is suing Netflix. The publisher is alleging trademark infringement, The Hollywood Reporter first reported. In the complaint, Chooseco says Netflix […]

The news comes shortly after Jack Dorsey's merchant services and mobile payments company lost long-time CFO Sarah Friar to Nextdoor.

Gartner has released its quarterly PC sales survey for the fourth quarter of 2018, and it was the same old story. PC sales plunged in the fourth quarter and were down 1.3 percent for the year. The three top players — HP, Dell and Lenovo — accounted for 63 percent of sales worldwide in the […]

After weeks of teasing renderings and production photos, Elon Musk finally showed off the finished Starship test rocket last night. Starship test flight rocket just finished assembly at the @SpaceX Texas launch site. This is an actual picture, not a rendering. pic.twitter.com/k1HkueoXaz — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 11, 2019 As you can well see, the Starship […]

It’s another week, and another bevy of hits on Chinese tech by the U.S. government. Let’s get up to speed, plus a request for startup lawyer recommendations. TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you […]

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. Microsoft Bing not only shows child pornography, it suggests it A TechCrunch-commissioned report has found damning evidence on Microsoft’s search engine. […]

Tor, the open-source initiative that provides a more secure way to access the internet, is continuing to diversify its funding away from its long-standing reliance on U.S. government grants. The Tor Foundation — the organization behind the service which stands for “The Onion Router” — announced this week that it brought in a record $460,000 […]

In a government shutdown, everything deemed non-essential stops. As we found out, renewing the certificates on its websites is considered non-essential. Several government sites are currently inaccessible or blocked by most browsers after their HTTPS certificate expired. With nobody available to renew them during the government shutdown, these sites are kicking back warning errors. According […]

Xiaomi, the Chinese company best known for budget phones, is betting big on a future of connected homes. It plans to plough at least 100 billion yuan, or $1.48 billion, into the so-called “AIoT” sector over the next five years, founder and chief operating office Lei Jun announced on Friday. AIoT, short for “AI + […]

Two months ago, NASA quietly fixed a buggy internal server that was leaking sensitive information about the agency’s staff and their work. The leaking server was — ironically — a bug reporting server, running the popular Jira bug triaging and tracking software. In NASA’s case, the software wasn’t properly configured, allowing anyone to access the […]

The Fortnite community may be polite, but that doesn’t mean they’re getting the customer service they deserve. The Better Business Bureau gave Fortnite maker Epic Games an “F,” the lowest possible grade. The Better Business Bureau, which is not a government agency but rather a national network of nonprofits that measures how well businesses handle […]

Amazon’s Dash buttons have been found to breach consumer ecommerce rules in Germany. The push-to-order gizmos were debuted by Amazon in 2015, in an attempt by the ecommerce giant to shave friction off of the online shopping process by encouraging consumers to fill their homes with stick-on, account-linked buttons that trigger product-specific staple purchases when pressed […]

Lisbon, characterized occasionally by some tech scene observers as ‘the warm Berlin’, has been threatening to generate more startups in the last few years, not least because it will now have the enormous Web Summit conference there for the next 10 years, and because it’s a cheap and great place to live. But the startups […]

VLC, the hugely popular media playing service, is filing one of its gaps with the addition of AirPlay support as its just crossed an incredible three billion users. The new feature was revealed by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, one of the service’s lead developers, in an interview with Variety at CES and it will give users a chance to beam […]

The personal details belonging to more than 202 million job seekers in China, including information like phone numbers, email addresses, driver licenses and salary expectations, were freely available to anyone who knew where to look for as long as three years due to an insecure database. That’s according to findings published by security researcher Bob Diachenko […]

The world’s highest-valued artificial intelligence startup SenseTime has set foot in Japan. The Beijing-based firm announced on Friday that it just opened a self-driving facility in Joso, a historic city 50 kilometers away from Tokyo where it plans to conduct R&D and road test driverless vehicles. The initiative follows its agreement with Japanese auto giant Honda in […]