Crunch Hype

India’s B2B supply chain is slowly shifting into the digital era. Following a $23 million investment for Moglix, which helps bring business and manufacturing procurement online, LetsTransport, a startup that brings increased efficiency to logistics and business transportation, has raised $13.5 million for growth. Founded in 2015 by IIT Kharagpur graduates Pushkar Singh, Sudarshan Ravi and […]

WeChat, the Chinese messaging giant with over 1 billion monthly active users around the world, just added a Snap-like ephemeral video feature as part of its biggest overhaul since 2014. The revamp comes as Tencent, which owns stakes in Snap, sees increasing rivalry from up-and-comers like video app TikTok and news app Jinri Toutiao. WeChat has […]

Less than a week after mystery drones grounded flights at the U.K’s second largest airport, wreaking havoc on as many as 140,000 people’s travel plans for the Christmas period, police have admitted that there may in fact not have been any drones at all. Gatwick airport reopened on Friday after a one-day shutdown but it appears that investigators […]

Cyril Ebersweiler Contributor Cyril Ebersweiler is co-founder and managing partner of HAX, and a general partner at SOSV. More posts by this contributor What every startup founder should know about exits 70 years of VC innovation Benjamin Joffe Contributor Benjamin Joffe is a partner at HAX. More posts by this contributor What every startup founder […]

The term “social network” has become a meaningless association of words. Pair those two words and it becomes a tech category, the equivalent of a single term to define a group of products. But are social networks even social anymore? If you have a feeling of tech fatigue when you open the Facebook app, you’re […]

A number of critics have declared that “Roma” is the best movie of the year. Naturally, we had to weigh in on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast. Director Alfonso Cuarón’s recent (and excellent) films were all fantasy and science fiction films (“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” “Children of Men” and […]

Five unicorn IPOs we can expect to witness in the year ahead that no one's talking about.

HQ’s expansion beyond trivia is emerging from beta, but the question is whether it’s different and accessible enough to revive the startup’s growth. HQ Words opens to everyone today with games at 6:30pm PT within the HQ Trivia app after several weeks of closed beta testing of the Wheel Of Fortune-style game. The launch will […]

Today's launch is SpaceX's first-ever U.S. national security mission.

This was was undoubtedly the year of the electric scooter. Between massive fundraising rounds, lofty valuations and both Uber and Lyft’s entrance into the space, it’s clear these scooters are here for the long haul. But just because investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into these companies in the past year, the electric scooter […]

It’s remarkable how fast the tenor of the times has changed. Only a few months ago we were in a boom that seemed like it might never end. Now the yield curve has inverted; the markets have gone bear; and Google Trends has the word “recession” at its highest level since 2009. There seems to […]

Uber is reportedly on track to go public in the first quarter next year, and in the lead up to that, it’s sewing up some loose ends. TechCrunch has learned that Uber has offered a tentative settlement to pay out 11 cents for every mile driven for Uber (including adjacent services like Uber Eats) to […]

A Juul is not a cigarette. It’s much easier than that. Through devilishly slick product design I’ll discuss here, the startup has massively lowered the barrier to getting hooked on nicotine. Juul has dismantled every deterrent to taking a puff. The result is both a new $38 billion valuation thanks to a $12.8 billion investment […]

Facebook is fielding so many problems, oversights, scandals, and other miscellaneous ills that it wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that its fact-checking program, undertaken last year after the network was confronted with its inaction in controlling disinformation, is falling apart. But in this case the reason you haven’t heard much about it isn’t because it’s […]

This was a bad year for the smartphone. For the first time, its seemingly unstoppable growth began to slow. Things started off on a bad note in February, when Gartner recorded its first year-over-year decline since it began tracking the category. Not even the mighty Apple was immune from the trend. Last week, stocks took […]

Twitter’s newest feature is reigniting the flame war between iOS and Android owners. The U.S. social media company’s latest addition is a subtle piece of information that shows the client that each tweet is sent from. In doing so, the company now displays whether a user tweets from the web or mobile and, if they are on […]

Slack has apologized after it shut down the accounts of users who have visited Iran following a poorly executed effort at complying with U.S. sanctions against the country. The company, which has eight million users of its productivity tool, has scrapped that first go at the policy. But it did confirm it will now block […]

Convo, a tool perhaps best described as a real-time company message board, picked up a new trick this week: automated acknowledgements. It’s a pretty common thing in the corporate world: you need to send something out to all of the employees at your company, but you also need to know exactly who has seen it […]

Bad Lip Reading has held a special place in my heart longer than just about any other YouTube channel. The formula is just too perfect: take a thing we know, blend it up in a stew of uncanny absurdity, and re-release it into the world. They’ve done it with The Hunger Games, the NFL, and […]

The story of the game Star Citizen and Cloud Imperium, the company developing it, is almost too ludicrous to believe: a crowdfunding effort to create a space sim of unparalleled size and realism, raising hundreds of millions, with backers paying thousands for ships and gear in a game that's years from release. Yet it's real enough that it just pulled in $42 million in private funding to help bring it closer to release.

Chatty gamers are apparently worth billions. Discord, the gaming chat startup with more than 200 million active users, announced Friday that it had secured $150 million in funding at a $2.05 billion valuation. The round was led by Greenoaks Capital with participation from Firstmark, Tencent, IVP, Index Ventures and Technology Opportunity Partners. The company announced […]

For more than 60 years, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, better known as NORAD, and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s flight around the world on December 24. And it will continue this year, even if there’s a government shutdown, the operations center said Friday in a tweet. In […]

Roughly four months after JD.com’s billionaire CEO Richard Liu was arrested and later released by Minneapolis police on suspicion of alleged sexual misconduct, local authorities say they will not be charging him in a sexual misconduct case. In a statement, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said it was not possible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the […]

My podcasting rig is simple: Two microphones, a Tascam recorder, two XLR cables. I’ve upgraded things a bit in the past year — improved the mics, bought some foam windscreens and bought a pair of tabletop, foldable mic stands. But the principle is the same: take nothing I can’t fit into a laptop sleeve. It’s […]

Florida men are seemingly involved in so many strange happenings involving pythons, alligators and restaurant break-ins that when a parody “Florida Man” Twitter account surfaced back in 2013, it became an immediate sensation. But a five-day-old GoFundMe fundraiser for Donald Trump’s border wall by a Florida man is starting to look anything like a joke. With ambitions […]

In this app-laden world, there is now a void. One so large, it will be difficult to fill. Perhaps, the Kardashians will reconsider. The Kardashian sisters, specifically Kim Kardashian West, Khloé Kardashian and Kylie Jenner are shutting down their apps in 2019. Kendall Jenner stopped updating her app and website last year. The apps and accompanying websites […]

While more than 60 companies have received permits to test their driverless vehicles in California, Zoox has become the first permitted to actually transport people in those vehicles. The California Public Utilities Commission today granted Zoox a permit to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot. During the testing period, Zoox must have […]

Bellabeat, the company behind a variety of health and wellness wearable devices aimed at women, is now selling its first smartwatch. The device, which is simply called “Time,” was announced earlier this month right in the midst of holiday shopping season. Like other fitness trackers, the watch is capable of basic tasks like counting your […]

If you’ve ever found yourself lugging a big suitcase from meeting to meeting, a startup called Bounce could make your life easier. Using Bounce, you’ll be able to pay for short-term storage at hotels, dry cleaners and other local businesses. The San Francisco-based startup is announcing that it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding […]

Whoops. You goofed up. It seemed like you had plenty of time before Christmas was here and now there's four days left and all the shops are slammed and you've (mostly) missed the shipping window. It's okay! We've all been there.

The Securities and Exchange Commission appears to be keeping a close eye on financial services startups, with today’s news that the agency has settled cases with two robo-advisory companies over allegations that they misled investors. Wealthfront Advisers, one of the darlings of the fintech investment sector with $11 billion under management and roughly $200 million […]

A year ago, crypto was reaching ever new highs, and I was talking about whether ICOs would supplant the VC funding round and warning about Kim Jong Un’s crypto trading operations. And then the world turned upside down. Crypto prices are near rock-bottom prices, with Bitcoin hanging around $4,000 and Ethereum around $113, down from […]

Meet Spot, a beautifully designed mobile app to control your cryptocurrencies. Spot looks like a portfolio-tracking app. But the company has built a strong foundation to add more features in the coming months. Spot wants to be your unique gateway to the world of cryptocurrencies. “Spot’s vision isn’t to build a portfolio tracker — we […]

Where are you? That’s not just a metaphysical question, but increasingly a geopolitical challenge that is putting tech giants like Apple and Alphabet in a tough position. Countries around the world, including China, Japan, India and the United Kingdom plus the European Union are exploring, testing and deploying satellites to build out their own positioning […]

A new startup using AI to look after elderly people at home has raised a new round of funding to apply its platform to detect changes in gait or behavior, falls or stumbles. In other words, it could start to predict changes in long-term health. CherryHome, the home AI security system created by startup Cherry […]

We will be holding a small event during CES in Las Vegas and we want to see you! We’re looking to meet some cool hardware and crypto startups, so the good folks at Work In Progress have opened up their space to us and 200 of you all to hold a meetup and pitch-off. The […]

Before there were Siri Shortcuts, there was Launch Center Pro — a clever iOS utility that for years has allowed iPhone users to automate more complex tasks by creating shortcuts. For example, you could search Yelp for the nearest coffee shop, jump straight to the camera in Instagram or message a loved one, among other things — and […]

WireGuard is a new VPN protocol that promises to be faster and more secure at the same time. And you can now connect to a WireGuard server on iOS thanks to the official open-source app. Compared to other VPN protocols, such as OpenVPN and IPsec, it can maintain a VPN connection even if you change […]

The App Store has historically led Google Play in terms of developers’ ability to monetize their apps, including consumer spending on in-app purchases and subscriptions. Today, a new report from Sensor Tower offers new insight as to what that means for app publishers’ businesses: It found that the App Store produced more million-dollar apps in […]

Facebook looks to be jumping on the blockchain wagon with plans to introduce its own stablecoin, according to a report from Bloomberg. The social network company — under fire for a seemingly constant stream of privacy snafus of late — created an internal blockchain division in May and, while there has been plenty of speculation, […]

There were countless gadgets released in 2018. It’s the end of the year, so Brian and I rounded up the best of the best and the worst of the worst. Some where great! Like the Oculus Go. Or the Google Home Hub. But some were junk, like the revived Palm or PlayStation Classic. CES 2019 […]

Days after FedEx CEO Frederick Smith dismissed the Amazon threat to its business during the company’s earnings call, Amazon announced an expansion of its two-year old Amazon Air operation which will now add ten 767-300 dedicated Amazon cargo aircraft to its fleet. The planes are being leased from existing partner, Air Transport Services Group, Inc. (ATSG), which […]

Good news for the fashion forward and lazy alike — Nike is bringing back its self-lacing sneakers for another go. And this time they’re going to be significantly cheaper. Granted, $350 is still more than most of us pay for a pair of kicks, but it’s less than half their original $720 asking price. Details […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had 75 percent of the core crew on hand to chat: Connie Loizos, Danny Crichton, and myself. Kate will be back on the show early next year, we promise. We were also joined by Menlo […]

Iflix, the emerging market Netflix competitor that’s backed by Sky, is leaving Africa to double down on its business in Asia. The Malaysia-based company announced today it has sold the remaining shares in its Africa business — Kwesé Iflix — to Econet Group, the telecom firm that is already an investor in the business. The deal size […]

The Consumer Electronics Show, like Burning Man, is a massive event in the middle of the desert. Also like Burning Man it is populated by some of the greatest minds in technology. But, unlike Burning Man, these people are all dressed and only a few of them are on hard psychotropic drugs. Also CES is […]

IBM today announced that it has developed a small sensor that sits on a person’s fingernail to help monitor the effectiveness of drugs used to combat the symptoms Parkinson’s and other diseases. Together with the custom software that analyses the data, the sensor measures how the nail warps as the user grips something. Since virtually any activity […]

The UK’s second busiest airport, Gatwick, reopened its runway early this morning after a day of shutdown triggered after drones were repeatedly spotting flying nearby. Drones ground flights at UK’s second largest airport In a media statement issued at 08:00 GMT this morning, the airport said it reopened the runway at 06:00 and that a […]

One more big consolidation play is underway in the highly competitive European food delivery business, amid more pressure from newer players like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Today, Delivery Hero announced that it will be selling its operations in Germany — its actual home market — to Dutch rival Takeaway.com for a total consideration of €930 […]

As 2018 draws to a close, China’s gaming industry — which has been beaten by a nine-month-long freeze in license approvals — woke up to exhilarating news as officials announced that they have started to review new titles again. The much-coveted game licenses are essential for developers to legally monetize their work in China. “We’ve […]