Crunch Hype

News junkies who want something more in-depth than Alexa’s Flash Briefing now have a new option for listening to the day’s news — as well as features and other reporting — right from their smart speaker. A company called Noa has just launched an Alexa skill that uses human narrators to read you the news from […]

Earlier this year, Netflix was seen testing a bypass of iTunes billing across dozens of markets worldwide. As 2018 draws to a close, Netflix — the App Store’s top grossing app — has ditched the ability for new users to sign up and subscribe to the streaming service within its iOS app across all global markets. The […]

My parents are approaching 60. When they were young, they hung out at diners, or drove around in their cars. My generation hung out in the parking lot after school, or at the mall. My colleague John Biggs often talks of hanging out with his nerd buddies in his basement, playing games and making crank […]

The timing is… less than ideal. Just as the industry is recovering from a holiday-induced hangover, we’re thrust into the country’s largest consumer electronics show. The timing, of course, is not coincidental. The show is intended to offer a preview for the tech year to come. Many companies thrive on CES’s pace. It’s a five-day […]

The Gillmor Gang — Keith Teare, Esteban Kolsky, Frank Radice, Michael Markman and Steve Gillmor. 2019 — the year to come in review.

Four billion miles from Earth, the New Horizons probe that recently sent such lovely pictures of Pluto is drawing near to the most distant object mankind has ever come close to: Ultima Thule, a mysterious rock deep in the Kuiper belt. The historic rendezvous takes place early tomorrow morning. This is an encounter nearly 30 […]

Venture capitalists remain bullish on Bitcoin and its underlying technology despite sinking crypto prices.

2018 was a year of massive mergers and acquisitions. The #MeToo movement made headlines. So what does the crystal ball predict for 2019?

On January 1, 2019, the New Year will ring in untold numbers of additions to the public domain in the U.S., including hundreds and maybe thousands of works with at least a small public reputation.

As anyone from the Gizmondo to the Virtual Boy can tell you, it’s tough to launch a console. Of course, it helps when your device apparently comes pre-loaded with thousands of games from big-name companies like Nintendo, Sony, Square and Bandai. It was clear the moment they were launched that Soulja Boy’s SouljaGame console and […]

Around this time every year, my inbox fills with the same repetitive junk. “Would you consider putting [any random company] in your gift guide?”, “are you going to CES and if so can I pitch you [a gadget that literally won’t be around this time next year]?”, and, “do you want to cover [a company […]

Amazon is planning a Whole Foods expansion in the U.S., according to a report by The Wall Street Journal published this weekend. The goal is to put more customers within the range of Amazon’s two-hour Prime Now delivery service, including those in suburban areas outside cities, as well as those in regions where the grocer […]

I thought the worst thing about Popsugar’s Twinning tool was that it matched me with James Corden. Turns out, the hundreds of thousands of selfies uploaded to the tool were easily downloadable by anyone who knew where to look. The popular photo-matching tool is fairly simple. “It analyzes a selfie or uploaded photo, compares it […]

We predicted fintechs would prove to be the more relevant disruptors in 2018. Looking ahead to 2019, we predict that fintechs will continue to steal the show.

While the thought of a machine that can squirt out endless ropes of molten glass is a bit frightening, the folks at MIT have just about perfected the process. In a paper published in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing, researchers Chikara Inamura, Michael Stern, Daniel Lizardo, Peter Houk and Neri Oxman describe a system for […]

One of the tallest buildings in the world, Taipei 101’s New Year’s Eve fireworks have become an iconic celebration since the first show at the end of 2004. But despite being a major tourism draw, the fireworks haven’t been immune to criticism. Over the past couple of years, as poor air quality becomes an increasingly […]

If you’ve gone down the rabbit hole with Netflix’s latest Black Mirror release, there’s (at least) one more Easter egg out there. As some intrepid Reddit users discovered, you can actually visit two different versions of fictional software company Tuckersoft’s website and… spoilers ahead. On the regular Tuckersoft site, discovered through a QR code embedded […]

The most brilliant and creative amongst us are sometimes the most troubled, and nowhere is that clearer than in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Think you know tech? Square off against TechCrunch editors with 2018’s year in tech quiz. TechCrunch’s 2018 Year In Tech Quiz Square off against TechCrunch’s reporters and editors in this year’s annual quiz, covering the major stories of the past twelve months. Have you got what it takes? Which big tech company didn’t get called […]

It was the best of years, it was the worst of years, it was the wokest of years, it was the most problematic of years, it was the year of AI, it was the year of scooters, it was the year of Big Tech triumph, it was the year of Big Tech scandals, it was […]

Chinese internet giant Tencent has been excluded from the first batch of video game license approvals issued by the state-run government since March. China regulators approved Saturday the released of 80 online video games after a months-long freeze, Reuters first reported. None of the approved titles listed on the approval list were from Tencent Holdings, the […]

Citi Research has joined a growing list of analysts to lower first-quarter production estimates for Apple’s iPhones amid weakening demand for the smartphones. Citi Research analyst William Yang cut the overall iPhone shipment forecast by 5 million to 45 million for the quarter, reported Reuters. That’s a sting that falls in line with others such […]

FlixBus, the low-cost tech-forward bus service out of Europe that launched in U.S. this year, has added a VR experience to some long-distance routes to and from Las Vegas. For now, the FlixBus VR feature, which includes about 50 virtual reality games and travel experiences, is limited to routes from Tucson, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San […]

Things are tough all over — but especially in the digital media business of 2018. Probably the most high-profile flameout this year was at Mic, which laid off most of its staff ahead of an acquisition by Bustle. Mic had raised nearly $60 million in funding, with major media organizations like Time Warner and Bertelsmann […]

The Chinese scientist who shocked the world with claims of creating the first genetically engineered babies is being detained in the Chinese city of Shenzhen, according to a report in The New York Times. He Jiankui, a Chinese research scientist at the Southern University of Science and Technology and an entrepreneur involved in two Chinese biotech […]

2018 has been a rough year for China’s bike-sharing giants. Alibaba-backed Ofo pulled out of dozens of international cities as it fought with a severe cash crunch. Tencent-backed Mobike puts a brake on expansion after it was sold to neighborhood services provider Meituan Dianping. But one newcomer is pedaling against the wind. Hellobike, currently the country’s […]

As we do each year, the TechCrunch Staff — our writers, our illustrators, our editors and more — have gathered together and come up with a mega list of our favorite things of 2018.

Porsche’s first all-electric sports car might be the most hotly anticipated vehicle of 2019. Even Tesla owners are hooked. In a recent interview with CNET, Porsche North America president and CEO Klaus Zellmer said if everyone who has placed a deposit to pre-order the car actually buys it, the Taycan will be sold out in its […]

After the year Mark Zuckerberg’s had, you’d think he’d struggle to appear so chipper. “I’m proud of the progress we’ve made,” he said in an end-of-year note posted on his Facebook page for everyone to see. Acknowledging that the social network played its part in the spread of hate speech, election interference and misinformation, Zuckerberg’s […]

Sandra Bullock’s star power can still sell a movie, apparently. Though reviews for the Netflix horror film “Bird Box” have been lukewarm — the movie has a respectable, but not outstanding, score of 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — it has still managed to break records for the streaming service, Netflix said this afternoon. The company […]

It seems someone took Every Frame a Painting literally: The Very Slow Movie Player is a device that turns cinema into wallpaper, advancing the image by a single second every hour. The result is an interesting household object that makes something new of even the most familiar film.

Sensor data platform Samsara is closing out the year with a fresh investment from Andreessen Horowitz and General Catalyst.

911 emergency services in several states across the U.S. remain down after a massive outage at a CenturyLink data center. The outage began after 12pm ET on Thursday, according to CenturyLink’s status page, and continues to cause disruption across 911 call centers. Some states have seen their services restored. CenturyLink has not said what caused the […]

We already know Alexa had a good Christmas — the app shot to the top of the App Store over the holidays, and the Alexa service even briefly crashed from all the new users. But Alexa, along with other smart speaker devices like Google Home, didn’t just have a good holiday — they had a […]

About 13 years ago I faced an excruciating decision: whether to sell my company, Pinnacle Systems, to a private equity firm or to another large public company.

Tesla has added two independent directors to its board — Oracle founder, chairman and CTO Larry Ellison and Walgreens executive Kathleen Wilson-Thompson — as part of a settlement with U.S. securities regulators over CEO Elon Musk’s infamous tweets about taking the company private. The pair joined the board as of December 27, Tesla said in an […]

Hello! Welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. As you know, typically, a few of us try cramming into the Equity podcast dungeon, including the nimble Alex Wilhelm, the scholarly Danny Crichton and, when we can lasso her, the razor-sharp Kate Clark, plus a guest from the investment world. With […]

We are living in an interstitial period. In the early 1980s we entered an era of desktop computing that culminated in the dot-com crash — a financial bubble that we bolstered with Y2K consulting fees and hardware expenditures alongside irrational exuberance over Pets.com . That last interstitial era, an era during which computers got smaller, […]

A project by students at Carnegie Mellon could save lives. Called the HopeBand, the wristband senses low blood oxygen levels and sends a text message and sounds an alarm if danger is imminent. “Imagine having a friend who is always watching for signs of overdose; someone who understands your usage pattern and knows when to […]

Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab is aiming to start the new year with a bang and an awful lot of bucks. The company, which acquired Uber’s local business earlier this year, is planning to raise as much as $5 billion from its ongoing Series H round, up from an original target of $3 billion, a […]

2018 saw Africa’s tech sector become more dynamic and international. Here’s a snapshot of the news that shaped African tech over the last year.

Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest country by population, has unblocked Tumblr nine months after it blocked the social networking site over pornographic content. Tumblr — which, disclaimer, is owned by Oath Verizon Media Group just like TechCrunch — announced earlier this month that it would remove all “adult content” from its platform. That decision, which angered […]

Porsche’s upcoming Taycan, which is expected to go on sale next year, will have at least three variants of the all-electric sports car, including an all-wheel drive version. But it’s the Taycan Turbo — the name Porsche is giving its top-of-the-line variant — that reveals the automaker’s strategy. The names — the Taycan for the […]

There's a lot of talk about the many potential uses of multi-legged robots like Cheetahbot and Spot — but in order for those to come to fruition, the robots actually have to go out and do stuff. And to train for a glorious future of sewer inspection (and helping rescue people, probably), this Swiss quadrupedal bot is going deep underground.

Your startup may have the coolest tech, be in the biggest market and have the smartest team, but no matter what your board says, revenue is not the primary indicator.

Fitness trackers and heart-rate monitors are all well and good, but if you want to track activity inside the body, the solutions aren’t nearly as convenient. Iota Biosciences wants to change that with millimeter-wide sensors that can live more or less permanently in your body and transmit wirelessly what they detect, and a $15 million […]

Earlier today, when Instagram suddenly transformed into a landscape-oriented Tinder-esque nightmare, the app’s dedicated users extremely lost their minds and immediately took to Twitter to be vocal about it. As we reported, the company admitted that the abrupt shift from Instagram’s well-established vertical scrolling was a mistake. The mea culpa came quickly enough, but Instagram’s […]

One of Silicon Valley’s prominent billionaires is in hot water after funding deceptive social media campaigns with echoes of Russia’s own political playbook. Reid Hoffman, who co-founded LinkedIn in 2003 and is now a partner at Greylock, footed the bill for a small political project with the aim of getting Democrat Doug Jones elected in […]

The secondary luxury goods market has been growing wildly in recent years, with more shoppers opting to both sell their lightly used luxury goods like clothing and jewelry for cold, hard cash, as well as buying the pre-owned, authenticated luxury goods of others. One of the biggest beneficiaries of the trend is The RealReal, a […]