Crunch Hype

Blockchains are boring now. It’s been ten years since Bitcoin launched, and cryptocurrencies have almost exclusively been used to recapitulate existing monetary systems in slightly new forms. This is boring. Programmable currencies give us the ability to build whole new categories of economies, ones which reject all traditional assumptions about how value is generated, transferred, […]

Gousto, the U.K. cook-at-home meal kit service that competes most directly with HelloFresh, has raised a further £18 million in funding. The round is backed by Instagram “health influencer” Joe Wicks, along with existing investors Unilever Ventures, Hargreave Hale, BGF Ventures, MMC Ventures, and Angel CoFund. The new funding brings the total raised by Gousto […]

In a new a16z podcast with the venture firm’s founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, there’s a lot to enjoy, from Andreessen’s TV show recommendations to Horowitz’s secret to excellent barbecue. (It’s pretty much just “time,” as you might imagine.) More useful for our founder readers may be Andreessen’s predictions around tech and, because he’s […]

The image here come from Elon Musk and is concept art of the Starship test vehicle SpaceX is currently assembling at its Boca Chica, Texas launch facility. The real thing will be even better. This test vehicle is shorter and lacks the windows of the production ship that will eventually go into production. Starship test […]

It’s tax season! You know what that means? It’s scamming season, too. You might have heard this story before. A scammer starts by spoofing an email pretending to be the chief executive of a company, angrily demanding that someone in accounting or human resources immediately sends over their employees’ W-2 forms “or there will be trouble!” […]

There’s a good chance you reached out to your employer and interviewed with other humans to get your job. But if some startups have their way, your next employment experience could be quite different.

Security researchers say they’ve found more than a dozen iPhone apps covertly communicating with a server associated with Golduck, a historically Android-focused malware that infects popular classic game apps. The malware has been known about for over a year, after it was first discovered by Appthority infecting classic and retro games on Google Play, by […]

As every software company knows, over time as code ages and workarounds build on work-arounds, the code base becomes bloated. It becomes ever more difficult to get around the technical debt that you’ve built up over time. It’s really impossible to avoid this phenomenon, but at some point, companies realize that the debt is so […]

A dismal future for augmented reality businesses, VC subsidized vending machines and more this week in startup news.

Jonathan Teo, long a Bay Area venture capitalist, might be regretting having a Twitter account tonight. The reason: it was used to serve a summons to Teo by the law firm Baker Curtis & Schwartz, which represents a former employee of the early-stage venture firm Teo had cofounded in 2014, Binary Capital. The plaintiff is […]

We know Disney’s Star Wars Land (or “Galaxy’s Edge,” if we’re being formal) is opening sometime in summer 2019. But that’s about as exact as anyone at Disney would get. The rumors said June. Now, it seems, so does Disney CEO Bob Iger. Iger casually dropped the June target in an interview with Barron’s (as […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is looking to keep his ex-girlfriend Grimes and alleged acquaintance Azealia Banks out of the official record of a lawsuit concerning his "420" "joke" that brought the SEC down on him. An attempt to subpoena both Grimes and Banks was met with stiff opposition by Musk's lawyer, who accused the plaintiffs of attempting to sensationalize the case.

Signs that the Federal Reserve could hold off on further interest rate hikes coupled with a booming jobs report sent stocks on Wall Street surging to close a volatile first trading week for the New Year. After yesterday’s Apple-induced slide, and in the face of economic indicators that signaled a potential slowdown in global and […]

It won’t be long before the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, an enormous and complex feat of engineering — but all one piece. That’s a good thing for now, but new research suggests that in the near future giant telescopes like the Webb might be replaced (or at least augmented) by swarms of tiny […]

The up to $818 million deal between Locus Biosciences and Janssen Pharmaceuticals (a division of Johnson & Johnson) that was announced yesterday points toward a new path for CRISPR gene editing technologies and (potentially) the whole field of microbiome-targeted therapies. Based in Research Triangle Park, N.C., Locus is commercializing research initially developed by scientists at […]

More than 100 million devices with Amazon’s Alexa assistant pre-installed have been sold, the company said Friday. The new metric, revealed by Amazon devices SVP Dave Limp in an interview with The Verge, showcases just how quickly the company has crammed the voice assistant into disparate hardware devices and shoved them out the door. The […]

A new voice phishing scam is going after iPhone users in a clever new way: by making calls seem like they are coming directly from Apple Support. Brian Krebs reported today that a user, Jody Westby, got a call from Apple Support asking for her to call back. The contact information that came along with […]

Glu Mobile is mourning the loss of one of its celebrity-branded apps, Taylor Swift's The Swift Life.

A system that uses a technique called constructive solid geometry (CSG) is allowing MIT researchers to deconstruct objects and turn them into 3D models, thereby allowing them to reverse-engineer complex things. The system appeared in a paper entitled “InverseCSG: Automatic Conversion of 3D Models to CSG Trees” by Tao Du, Jeevana Priya Inala, Yewen Pu, […]

Short-form video app TikTok has been growing in popularity across international markets, including in the U.S. where a merger with Musical.ly has seen the app topping the App Store charts. Facebook and Snapchat have been hastily trying to copy TikTok’s features as a result. A part of TikTok’s ambitious global expansion plan has been its […]

Starwood’s data breach just got both better and worse at the same time. Marriott, which owns hotel chain giant Starwood, said it has revised the number of customers affected by its recently disclosed data breach from 500 million to “fewer than 383 million unique guests.” That doesn’t mean all those 383 million guests are affected, Marriott […]

If you think times are bad at Apple, spare a thought for HTC, the once king-of-the-hill phone maker that continues to struggle very badly. The Taiwanese smartphone company, which offloaded a portion of its business to Google for $1.1 billion and is pivoting to VR, laid off yet more staff in 2018 and had its worst […]

Amazon just over a year ago launched its first in-home furniture brands, with private labels Rivet and Stone & Beam. This past fall, it began experimenting with a new, more visual way to shop for furniture and other merchandise with its Pinterest-like recommendation service Scout. Now, Amazon is venturing further into home furnishings with the debut […]

DiscountMugs.com, a large online custom mug and apparel store, had a four-month-long data breach just before the busy Christmas holiday season. The company said in a letter to state attorneys general that hackers siphoned off credit card numbers from customers who made orders through its site between August 5 and November 16, 2018 using code injected […]

A hacker has targeted and released private data on German chancellor Angela Merkel and other senior German lawmakers and officials. The data was leaked from a Twitter account, since suspended, and included email addresses, phone numbers, photo IDs and other personal data on hundreds of senior political figures. According to a government spokesperson, there was […]

Robinhood, the U.S.-based “zero-fee” stock-trading app and cryptocurrency exchange, is stealthily recruiting for a new London office ahead of plans to eventually launch in the U.K., TechCrunch has learned. According to sources within London’s thriving fintech industry, Robinhood is hiring for multiple U.K. positions. These span recruitment, operations, marketing/PR and customer support. Notably, the company […]

Today, many companies provide developer access to their services via APIs. Moesif, a San Francisco startup, wants to help these companies gain insight into their customer’s API usage patterns. Today, the company announced a $3.5 million seed round. The investment was led by Merus Capital, with participation by Heavybit, Fresco Capital and Zach Coelius, whose investments […]

As predicted, Twitter’s subtle new feature showing from which clients tweets are sent is already embarrassing brands. Following on from a Korean boy band sponsored by LG and Apple’s own Music staff, Huawei is the latest to be embarrassed after it sent a New Year’s Eve message using an iPhone. A since-deleted message included the embarrassing […]

The founder of Korea’s Nexon, one of the biggest gaming companies on the planet, today appeared to acknowledge his intention to sell his controlling interest for around $9 billion. The divestment has been a hot rumor after a report from newspaper Korea Economic Daily this week [via Reuters] suggested that Jung-Ju Kim, who founded Nexon back in 1989, is moving to […]

In more bad news for Apple, the company’s iPhone 7 and iPhone 8 models are not currently on sale in its own retail stores in Germany. This follows an injunction issued by a Munich court last month related to patent litigation brought by chipmaker Qualcomm that’s being enforced from today. The patent dispute concerns smartphone power management […]

Roads in a Chinese city have gotten much quieter in recent years. Shenzhen, widely called the Silicon Valley of hardware, has been pouring resources to phase out rattling diesel vehicles chugging through the city of 12 million people. All public buses in the city went electric by the end of 2017. Taxis soon followed suit. […]

Another sizeable cash injection for big data biotech: Sophia Genetics has announced a $77M Series E funding round, bringing its total raised to $140M since the business was founded back in 2011. The company, which applies AI to DNA sequencing to enable what it dubs “data-driven medicine”, last closed a $30M Series D in fall 2017. […]

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank with more than a million customers and a unicorn valuation to boot, has quietly began working on a U.S. launch, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the fintech startup has set up a small team to begin laying the ground work to bring a version of Monzo to North […]

An ongoing case in Singapore is testing the legal boundaries of virtual conferences. A court in the Southeast Asian city-state this week convicted human rights activist Jolovan Wham of organizing a public assembly via Skype without a permit and refusing to sign his statement when ordered by the police. Wham will be sentenced on January 23 […]

FloWater, an eight-year-old, Burlingame, Ca.-based company whose reusable water bottle refilling stations produce purified water, has raised $15 million in its first major round of funding. Bluewater, a Swedish company that sells water purifiers, among other things, led the round. FloWater caters to schools, colleges, fitness centers, hotels, and offices, and, in the words of […]

Samsung always has a huge presence at CES, but it isn't the giant TVs and flashy next-generation gadgets that have my attention this year; it's this simple, flexible monitor that looks like it would be right at home in any workspace. It's called the Space Monitor, presumably because it gives you space, not because it's meant for use in space. I don't see why you couldn't, though.

Mobile AR gaming startup Niantic has closed a $190 million round of funding according to newly filed SEC docs. The filing comes after a WSJ report last month suggested the company was in the process of closing a $200 million raise from investors, including IVP, aXiomatic Gaming and Samsung, at a $3.9 billion valuation. The […]

Listen, everyone. It's not every day that a new fact comes to light regarding a game that came out more than 30 years ago. And I happen to love it when retro games get broken in fabulous and entertaining ways. So the news that The Legend of Zelda for NES has a minus world like Super Mario Bros and others hit me like like a freight train.

Bad news from Apple and signs of slowing international and domestic growth sent stocks tumbling in Thursday trading on all of the major markets. Investors erased some $75 billion in value from Apple alone… an amount known technically as a shit ton of money. But stocks were down broadly based on Apple’s news, with the Nasdaq […]

The mobile payments company has tapped former Blizzard Entertainment CFO Amrita Ahuja.

Led by early Uber investor and advisor Bradley Tusk, the firm has invested in Bird, Coinbase, Eaze and several others.

Well, what have we here? If it isn’t the Samsung Galaxy S10, courtesy of perennial smartphone outer, EVLeaks. This marks one the first good looks we’ve got at the phone, which is likely due out in a couple of months at Mobile World Congress. It’s a pretty rough photo — the icons are all blurred […]

Several weeks ago, the WSJ reported that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company, was set to raise $500 million from earlier shareholders and the Scottish money management firm Baillie Gifford & Co. in a bid to help get its internet service business off the ground. The Hawthorne, Calif. company still hasn’t announced the round, but it nevertheless […]

With all of the advances made by computer vision tech in the past few years, it might seem a little crazy that so much of the x-ray security equipment being used at sensitive locations is leaning so heavily on human workers to stop weapons from slipping through. Synapse Technology is creating computer vision tech that can […]

The unbundling of the bank has begun.

The State of Texas has indicted Cody Wilson, a 3D-printed gun rights activist who fought to allow makers to post and print guns, of sexual assault after he had sex with a 17-year-old girl. The affidavit noted that he met the girl on a website for finding “sugar daddies.” The indictment, posted on Ars, notes […]

Cruise is partnering with DoorDash to pilot food and grocery delivery in San Francisco using self-driving vehicles. The companies announced Thursday that the testing program will begin in early 2019 with an initial focus on the San Francisco market. “Delivery is a significant opportunity for Cruise as we prepare to commercialize our autonomous vehicle technology and […]

Apple today is sharing some good news in the wake of yesterday’s reveal of a significant, market-moving cut to its revenue forecast, attributed to declining iPhone sales in China’s slowing economy. The company says its App Store, at least, was having a good holiday. This year, customers spent $1.22 billion during the 2018 holiday season and […]

The only kids’ programming language worth using, Scratch, just celebrated the launch of Scratch 3.0, an update that adds some interesting new functionality to the powerful open-source tool. Scratch, for those without school-aged children, is a block-based programming language that lets you make little games and “cartoons” with sprites and animated figures. The system is […]