Crunch Hype

While crypto exchanges have demystified some of the largest cryptocurrencies for retail investors, many of the intricacies of decentralized finance are still lost on even more savvy investors as a result of DeFi’s weave of diverse offerings. Zerion, a startup building a decentralized finance “interface” for crypto investors, has attracted venture capitalist attention on the […]

Trump’s spicy trio of lawsuits against the social media platforms that he believes wrongfully banned him have succeeded in showering the former president with a flurry of media attention, but that’s likely where the story ends. Like Trump’s quixotic and ultimately empty quest to gut Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act during his presidency, […]

By streamlining the process to fail fast on infeasible projects, teams can significantly increase their overall success with AI initiatives.

The harsh truth: Some of the advice you read about marketing is incorrect.

Virtual reality did not turn into the ultimate office replacement telepresence machine during the pandemic — and it wasn’t for lack of trying — but some startups focused on employee training in VR have found added validation in the past year as professionals across industries were forced to access institutional knowledge in remote settings. Osso […]

The emergence of Pakistan’s tech ecosystem has been driven by three major factors: an improving security situation, quickly growing mobile connectivity, and critical legal changes and deregulation.

WellSaid Labs, whose tools create synthetic speech that could be mistaken for the real thing, has raised a $10M Series A to grow the business. The company’s home-baked text-to-speech engine works faster than real time and produces natural-sounding clips of pretty much any length, from quick snippets to hours-long readings. WellSaid came out of the […]

European SPAC creation is modest compared to what’s been going on in the U.S, but it still represents material growth and a new avenue for European tech startups still hungry for exit opportunities.

Corporate venture capital used to get a bad rap. The money flowed from corporations into startups when times were good, and quickly disappeared when the market turned. But startups and corporations discovered something over time: They’re a lot stronger together no matter the market conditions. Most big companies can’t gain enough insight into what’s bubbling […]

When the Pentagon killed the JEDI cloud program yesterday, it was the end of a long and bitter road for a project that never seemed to have a chance. The question is why it didn’t work out in the end, and ultimately I think you can blame the DoD’s stubborn adherence to a single vendor […]

In his first press event since ignominiously leaving office earlier this year, former President Donald Trump announced that he is launching a volley of class-action lawsuits against Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, claiming that the three companies violated his First Amendment rights. The suits also name Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s chief […]

This morning r2c, a startup building a SaaS service around the Semgrep open-source project, announced that it has closed a $27 million Series B. Felicis led the round, which the company said was a pre-emptive deal. Prior investors firms Redpoint and Sequoia also participated in the fundraising event; r2c last raised a $13 million Series […]

If you’re a frequent TechCrunch reader, you probably already know about mmhmm, the startup with the name you likely either love or hate. It’s Phil Libin’s second act after Evernote, and it’s a startup born of the pandemic maybe more so than any other, providing improved video chat tools, including automatic background removal and advanced […]

I co-founded a startup and have an O-1A visa. My wife wants to return to work, but she cannot get authorization on an O-3. If I switch to International Entrepreneur Parole, can she get a work permit?

Unit21, a startup that helps businesses monitor fraudulent activities with its no-code software, announced today it has raised $34 million in a Series B round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. The round values San Francisco-based Unit21 at $300 million and comes nine months after the startup raised a $13 million Series A that […]

Opaque, a new startup born out of Berkeley’s RISELabs, announced a $9.5 million seed round today to build a solution to access and work with sensitive data in the cloud in a secure way, even with multiple organizations involved. Intel Capital led today’s investment with participation by Race Capital, The House Fund and FactoryHQ. The […]

A new startup called SwoonMe aims to fix the problem with superficial dating apps, where users primarily make decisions based on how someone looks in their photos. Instead of swiping through profiles, SwoonMe’s idea is to use a combination of avatars and audio to encourage users to connect based on someone’s personality, not their appearance. […]

Do you want your city to get its own TechCrunch Survey? They join in! So if you are a tech startup founder or investor in one of these cities please fill out our survey form here Check the list of European cities we’ve surveyed so far in our regular <a href=”https://forms.gle/jCcVCV9TgRjqJcRZ7“>survey</a> of European founders and […]

Tighten your bootstraps and get ready to wring every last ounce of education and opportunity out of TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising. Our two-day deep dive into the essential skills every early-stage founder needs to build a stronger startup begins tomorrow! Hold the proverbial phone. You still have time (though not much) to […]

Subscriptions have become a popular way to pay for digital services, like Netflix or Spotify, but they haven’t yet taken off as a means of reordering your everyday items or other household essentials. Retailers, including Amazon, have tried shifting consumers to a subscription model for these sorts of purchases — even by offering discounts. Still, […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided that it was time to talk about drugs. No, not like drugs for fun, but instead drugs that you might have considered fun, but are now being redirected to help […]

Cloverly, an Atlanta-based early stage startup, has developed an API that helps companies measure and then offset their carbon emissions. Today the company announced a $2.1 million seed round. TechSquare Ventures led the round with participation from SoftBank Opportunity Fund and Panoramic Ventures along with Circadian Ventures, Knoll Ventures, and SaaS Ventures
. While it was […]

When Daniel Simon sold Bread, a consumer purchase finance and payments startup he’d co-founded, to Alliance Data Systems for over $500 million late last year, he quickly set his sights on building another startup. During the pandemic, Simon says he observed how much strain was placed on what he described as ‘real-world’ businesses and their […]

When it comes to detecting events transpiring anywhere in the world, few companies hold a candle to Dataminr. Founded in 2009, the company has raised more than $1 billion over the past 12 years (including $475 million at a $4.1 billion valuation just this past March) to build out a data-gobbling platform that transforms raw […]

ZeroFox, a cybersecurity startup that helps companies detect risks found on social media and digital channels, has announced it has acquired dark web threat intelligence company Vigilante. Vigilante — not to be confused with the controversial crime reporting app — scours the dark web to source intelligence that helps to protect organizations from cyberattacks. The […]

Several widely used opioid treatment recovery apps are accessing and sharing sensitive user data with third parties, a new investigation has found. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to reduce transmission in the U.S, telehealth services and apps offering opioid addiction treatment have surged in popularity. This rise of app-based services comes […]

India’s IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Information and Broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar resigned from their roles on Wednesday, adding to the list of high-profile local politicians who have vacated their positions ahead of India Prime Minister Narendra Modi reshuffling his cabinet. The resignations of Prasad — who also served as the minister of Law […]

UK-based smartphone subscription startup Raylo has tucked $11.5 million in Series A funding into its top pocket, led by Octopus Ventures. The equity round follows a debt raise last year — and brings Raylo’s total raised since being founded back in 2019 to $40M (in equity and debt). Its roster of investors to date also […]

Outbrain, an adtech company that provides clickbait ads below news articles, has raised $200 million in funding — Outbrain didn’t disclose the valuation of the company for this deal. The Baupost Group is investing in the company — it’s a Boston-based hedge fund. Outbrain filed for an initial public offering just last week. Today’s funding […]

Nigerian fintech and lending startup Lidya today announced that it has completed its $8.3 million pre-Series B funding round. Alitheia Capital led the investment via its uMunthu Fund. Other investors that participated include Bamboo Capital Partners, Accion Venture Lab and Flourish Ventures. In addition to the $1.3 million seed round secured in 2017 and $6.9 […]

Planet, which operates a network of around 200 satellites that provides Earth imaging, as well as analytics of the data derived from that observation, is going public in a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) dMY Technology Group IV. The deal has a post-transaction equity value of $2.8 billion, and will provide Planet with […]

Facial recognition has been one of the more conflicted applications of artificial intelligence in the wider world: using computer vision to detect faces and subsequent identities of people has raised numerous questions about privacy, data protection, and the ethics underpinning the purposes of the work, and even the systems themselves. But on the other hand, […]

Y-Combinator-backed Localyze has nabbed $12 million in Series A funding led by Blossom Capital for a SaaS that supports staff relocations and hiring across borders. Previous investor Frontline Ventures also participated,with a number of angel investors joining the round — including Andrew Robb (ex-Farfetch); Des Traynor, co-founder and CSO at Intercom; Hanno Renner, co-founder and […]

For years YouTube’s video-recommending algorithm has stood accused of fuelling a grab-bag of societal ills by feeding users an AI-amplified diet of hate speech, political extremism and/or conspiracy junk/disinformation for the profiteering motive of trying to keep billions of eyeballs stuck to its ad inventory. And while YouTube’s tech giant parent Google has, sporadically, responded […]

Just a Spotify used VC and PE backing to acquire the assets of the music industry so that we must now all rent our music via subscription, rather than own it for life, so a PropTech startup plans to follow a similar strategy for single-family homes. Casafari, a real estate data platform in Europe based […]

A startup founder, who hasn’t had much sleep all week, woke up on a recent Sunday to a phone call from his co-founder. A senior engineer was feeling burnt out and was contemplating leaving. For the founder, who had several calls scheduled with many high-profile Silicon Valley investors later in the day, talking this developer […]

Renegade Partners — a Bay Area-based venture firm cofounded by veteran VCs Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek — is taking the wraps off a $100 million debut venture fund that’s been capturing the imagination of the business press since almost its conception in late 2019. The effort is interesting for a number of reasons, not […]

E-commerce in Europe is expected to grow 30% this year to $465 billion, and that’s giving rise to a new ecosystem of services built to cater to e-commerce merchants. In the latest development, Juni, a neobank that is built specifically for companies selling online, has closed a Series A of $21.5 million, only 12 weeks […]

The numbers don’t lie. According to DocSend, the average pitch deck is reviewed for just three minutes. And if you think a senior VC is studying the presentation your team crafted for months as if it were a Fabergé egg — well, you might be disappointed. Even if you are lucky enough to land a […]

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Well, that was fast. Just days after a Twitter clone from former Trump spokesperson Jason Miller launched, the new social network is already beset by problems. For one, hackers quickly leveraged Gettr’s API to scrape the email addresses of more than 85,000 of its users. Usernames, names and birthdays were also part of the scraped […]

While SaaS has become the default way to deliver software in 2021, it still takes a keen eye to find the companies that will grow into successful businesses, maybe even more so with so much competition. That’s why we’re bringing together three investors to discuss what they look for when they invest in SaaS startups. […]

How do you stay ahead of your competition when you know it's only a matter of time before they copy your best features? The solution is messaging, says conversion optimization expert Peep Laja.

Yandex Self-Driving Group, a unit of Yandex, the publicly-traded Russian tech giant, has announced a partnership with food delivery service GrubHub to be its multi-year robotic delivery provider across American college campuses. Yandex hopes to reach over 250 campuses over the course of this partnership, beginning with dozens of robots in the fall, according to […]

The company kicks off with a note that it has 27 million weekly active users and claims users in around one in three U.S. households. The argument, then, is that Nextdoor has scale.

This Thursday and Friday, TechCrunch will host Early Stage – a virtual bootcamp for early stage founders. After the success of the spring event, on Friday, TC will feature 10 phenomenal early-stage startups to on the virtual stage. Hailing form around the States and the globe, founders will pitch on live, for five minutes, followed […]

The increasingly intense heats bearing down feverishly across the globe are accelerating the number, scale, and complexity of disasters worldwide. Just in the past few weeks, we have seen record heat in the United States Pacific Northwest that has led to hundreds of deaths — with more heat on the way. Heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, […]

Twitter today has shared a few more ideas it’s thinking about in terms of new features around conversation health and privacy. This includes a one-stop “privacy check-in” feature that would introduce Twitter’s newer conversation controls options to users, and others that would allow people to be more private on the service, or to more easily […]

How should a founder go about effectively naming their baby startup and avoid picking a name that will hurt them?

After several years of fighting and jockeying for position by the biggest cloud infrastructure companies in the world, the Pentagon finally pulled the plug on the controversial winner-take-all, $10 billion JEDI contract today. In the end, nobody won. “With the shifting technology environment, it has become clear that the JEDI cloud contract, which has long […]