Crunch Hype

Rothy’s, a three-year-old, San Francisco-based company that makes a variety of colorful flats for women, has some more walking-around money today. According to Bloomberg, the company just closed on $35 million in funding from Goldman Sachs’ asset management unit. The round brings the young company’s total funding to $42 million, including an early $5 million […]

Developers and hipsters, it’s time to join together and ditch your web browser to read this article. Kosuke Yoshimura developed a fun little project and shared it on Product Hunt today. TechCrunch-CLI is a command line interface that lets you read TechCrunch articles in text mode. As my colleague Devin Coldewey suggested, TextCrunch would also […]

Target has grand plans for Shipt, the same-day grocery delivery service it bought a year ago for $550 million. While generally known today as something of an Instacart competitor — essentially Target’s answer to Walmart and Amazon’s grocery delivery businesses — Shipt has expanded to include more of Target’s assortment over the past year. By […]

It’s hard to believe that you still had to convert your BTC into USD in order to buy ETH on Coinbase. The company is finally adding direct cryptocurrency-to-cryptocurrency conversions. The feature works with Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Ethereum Classic (ETC), Litecoin (LTC), 0x (ZRX) and Bitcoin Cash (BCH). It is only available to U.S. customers […]

Mobile licensing changes made by Google this fall, when it tweaked terms for OEMs wanting to license its Android smartphone platform on devices destined for the European market, don’t appear to be offering succour to search rivals — despite being triggered by an antitrust ruling intended to reset the competitive playing field. The European Commission […]

If you’re reading this the year it was written, you’re almost certainly not getting it over 5G. If you’re reading this in the future, congrats, you made it. And hey, remember polar bears? 5G is the latest buzzword to send the mobile industry into a tizzy. This one’s got a particular weight to it, too, […]

Anthony Levandowski, the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur who was at the center of a trade secrets lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, has taken his newest autonomous vehicle technology company out of stealth mode with a product aimed at the commercial trucking industry. Technically, Levandowski involvement in a self-driving trucking company was first revealed by […]

Years ago, Google’s Street View program expanded from streets to virtually everywhere, thanks to Google’s Trekker program that put 360-degree Street View cameras into a single backpack. Today, Google announced its upgraded Trekker backpack, which is significantly smaller and lighter than before. The old one weighed in at about 44 pounds. It’s not just a […]

Our distinct skillsets and shortcomings mean people and robots will join forces for the next few decades. Robots are tireless, efficient, and reliable, but in a millisecond through intuition and situational awareness, humans can make decisions machine can’t. Until workplace robots are truly autonomous and don’t require any human thinking, we’ll need software to supervise them […]

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be seeing you Varsovians tomorrow night at our pre-holiday meet-up. The Warsaw event, here, is on the 19th at WeWork in Warsaw. I’ve already chosen folks to pitch but please come and support your fellow start-uppers. Special thanks to WeWork Labs in Warsaw for supplying some beer and pizza for […]

A few months after Nuro deployed self-driving cars to deliver groceries in partnership with Kroger, the autonomous delivery startup is deploying its custom delivery bots. Up until now, Nuro was relying on Prius vehicles and safety drivers. Now, its delivery service in partnership with Kroger will be completely driverless and without a safety driver on board. Nuro has been […]

Twitter is giving users the ability to easily switch between seeing the latest tweets first and seeing the company’s algorithmically chosen “Top Tweets” when they open the app. The company began testing this feature a few weeks ago, but they are officially rolling it out globally to all iOS users today with Android and desktop […]

Bumble has come up with a new way for its dating app and related businesses to generate revenue. The company this week launched filters – a way to sift through potential matches by a set of specific criteria. For example, Bumble Date users can now filter matches by astrological sign or relationship type, among other […]

Under the guidance of Shalin Mantri, a former product lead at Uber for its advanced technologies group, Skip is gearing up to make its scooters smarter and improve its businesses unit economics. “When I think about opportunities to figure out our unit economics,” Mantri, who joined Skip from Uber in November, told TechCrunch. “It’s no […]

When you have as much data under management as Box does, you have the key ingredient for artificial intelligence and machine learning, which feeds on copious amounts of data. Box is giving developers access to this data, while letting them choose the AI and machine learning algorithms they want to use. Today, the company announced […]

Today was supposed to be a historic day with four rocket launches by four different companies. But that’s not going to happen. As of publication, three of the four rocket launches are canceled. The flights were pushed until tomorrow, setting up another and more significant historical event. If all the rockets currently scheduled launch as […]

Hayneedle, the home furnishings retailer that joined Walmart by way of an acquisition by Jet back in 2016, is now serving as the testing grounds for Walmart’s own in-house visual search technology. Built in collaboration between Hayneedle and Walmart Labs, the new technology has been slowly scaling up on Hayneedle over the course of the year. […]

As Uber continues to expand the footprint of JUMP bikes, it’s aiming to make the fleet of bikes smarter and easier to unlock, ride and charge. At Uber’s Pier 70 offices in San Francisco, JUMP Head of Product Nick Foley showed off the new bikes, which are aesthetically similar but should improve unit economics thanks to […]

SpaceX is raising $500 million at a valuation of $30.5 billion, according to a WSJ report citing people familiar with the matter. The company is said to be raising the capital in part to help fund its ambitious Starlink internet service project. According to the announced plan, SpaceX intends to launch 11,000 satellites to plaster […]

Sphero’s on-going deals are about more than just priming the pump for the holidays. The Colorado robotic toy startup is also in the process of cleaning out inventory of what are now be marked “legacy” products on its site. All of the Disney licensed products now carry a “THIS IS A LEGACY PRODUCT AND NO […]

A little taste of 5G is coming early, courtesy of AT&T’s new mobile hotspot. The carrier announced this morning that it will be firing up limited 5G service in a dozen cities across the U.S. this Friday, currently only accessible via the Netgear Nighthawk 5G Mobile Hotspot. Those who pick the router up will be […]

Facebook’s ongoing efforts to repair its image as a greedy, neglectful accessory to the spread of misinformation and other nefarious practices has taken a turn to civil rights and specifically how it serves non-white users, which proportionately account for the social network’s most active members. Today — the first day of #LogOutFacebook, a week-long boycott of […]

As networks get put under increasing pressure from ever-growing amounts of data, network equipment manufacturers are facing huge challenges to increase data transmissions speeds over further distances. As a premiere networking equipment company, Cisco wants to be prepared to meet that demand. Today, it opened up its checkbook and announced its intent to acquire Luxtera […]

Shopping for someone who prefers hiking and camping to the great indoors can be tricky. Not only are outdoor enthusiasts usually less impressed by traditional gifts (clothes, games, etc.) but their preferred realm of technical gear is vast and confusing. If you’d rather not go deep on the research yourself, we’ve got some solid touchpoints […]

A security researcher found a bug in Twitter’s support form two years ago that exposed the country codes of phone numbers attached to user’s accounts. At the time, his bug report was closed as it did “not appear to present a significant security risk.” Twitter now says that the bug may have been abused by […]

Seismic has been helping companies create and manage their sales and marketing collateral since 2010. Today the company announced a $100 million Series E investment on a $1 billion valuation. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and T Rowe Price. Existing investors General Atlantic, JMI Equity and Jackson Square Ventures also participated in […]

Ada is on a mission to build chatbots powered by artificial intelligence. The company today is announcing a $19 million Series A that will go far in helping it reach that goal. The company sees the capital fueling international expansion and launching products into new verticals as well as doubling down on employees. Chatbots were […]

UK AI chip startup Graphcore has announced a $200 million Series D round today that’s jointly led by an existing investor, European VC Atomico, along with new investor Sofina, an investment holding firm. Graphcore says the Series D values the company at $1.7BN. We’ve confirmed the valuation is $1.5BN before including the new capital raised. We’re also […]

Clearbanc is disrupting startup funding by providing companies cash to buy ads in exchange for a revenue share so they don’t have to sell as much equity to venture capitalists. That idea has proven so appealing that 1000 companies seeking up to $1 billion total hit up Clearbanc since we reported it raised $70 million […]

360 Finance, an online consumer loan platform that spun off from China’s anti-virus service giant 360 Group, has joined a raft of Chinese fintech companies to go public in the U.S. over the last two years. The company priced its initial public offering at $16.50 per share last Friday, raising $51 million by selling 3.1 […]

We hear a lot about India’s e-commerce battle between Walmart, which bought Flipkart for $17 billion, and Amazon. But over in the B2B space, Moglix — an e-commerce service for buying manufacturing products that’s been making strides — today it announced a $23 million Series C round ahead of a bigger round and impending global […]

Animoca Brands will produce and publish blockchain-based versions of RollerCoaster Tycoon and Goon Squad worldwide (excluding China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Macau); the new titles will feature the integration of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The term of the Agreement extends through to 31 March 2022. In honor of this exciting announcement I’d like to propose the […]

Tonsser, the Copenhagen-based startup that offers a “football performance app” aimed at youth soccer players who want to build their own online profile and potentially get discovered by a bigger club, has raised €5.5 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Alven Capital, with participation from existing investors SEED Capital and Wellington […]

YouGov, the international data and analytics group, has acquired ‘social analytics’ startup Portent.IO, a company that it had previously invested in. Terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I understand the acquisition includes Portent.IO‘s technology, clients and its team, including its data scientists. “We’re all staying on and the entire team including myself have 3-year […]

We’re familiar with Uber cozying up to scooter startups — it has bought one and invested in another — but over in India, the U.S. firm’s key rival is hatching a major alliance of its own it invested $100 million in scooter rental startup Vogo. Ola first invested back in August when Vogo raised an undisclosed Series […]

Dogs have a much wider range of hearing than humans do and noises that don’t bother us can give them a very ruff time. Fireworks are especially tough on many pups and also hard on owners who have to calm their panicking pets. To potentially help them, Ford has developed a noise-cancelling kennel prototype that […]

Soon it will be easier for people without Google accounts to collaborate on G Suite documents. Currently in beta, a new feature will enable G Suite users to invite people without G Suite subscriptions or Google accounts to work on files by sending them a pin code. Using the pin code to gain access allows […]

New York’s attorney general has settled with five tech and financial giants, requiring each company to implement basic security on their mobile apps. The settlements force Credit Sesame, Equifax (yes, that Equifax), Priceline, Spark Networks and Western Union to ensure data sent between the app and their servers are encrypted. Specifically, the attorney general said […]

Having a package stolen off your front porch sucks. No matter what’s inside the box, it just feels… violating. Someone came into your space and took your stuff just because they could probably get away with it. And even if you go to the cops with license plates and high-res face photos, they’ll often respond […]

Let’s talk about the grown-up stuff — the adult content that Tumblr says it’s banning starting today. The wording of the company’s initial plans was admittedly confusing, upsetting both artists and sex workers who have begun to rely on the platform as a kind of safe place for self-expression. The site issued a blog post […]

For the crypto market to become attractive to institutional investors, companies and their investors need to ensure that tokenized securities — digital assets subject to federal security regulations — can be as easily tracked and traded and exchanged as traditional stock shares. Abacus, a young company that passed through Y Combinator this past summer, thinks […]

Russian efforts to influence U.S. politics and sway public opinion were consistent and, as far as engaging with target audiences, largely successful, according to a report from Oxford's Computational Propaganda Project published today. Based on data provided to Congress by Facebook, Instagram, Google, and Twitter, the study paints a portrait of the years-long campaign that's less than flattering to the companies.

Every year I teach an MBA course at Stanford about the exciting opportunities for tech investors and entrepreneurs in developing economies.

The entertainment business was founded by former Disney and Paramount executives.

Lightspeed China Partners has filed to raise $360 million for its fourth venture fund.

In a letter addressed to the FCC, Senator Ron Wyden urged commissioners to create a three-digit, 911-style suicide hotline number. The Oregon senator cites the CDC’s report that more than 40,000 Americans died by suicide in 2017. “I write on behalf of those struggling with mental health issues, our veterans struggling with PTSD and for […]

Twitter accidentally exposed the ability to pull an account’s phone number country code and whether the account had been locked by Twitter. The concern here is that malicious actors could have used the security flaw to figure out in which countries accounts were based, which could have ramifications for whistleblowers or political dissidents. The issue […]

Since launching Getaround at TechCrunch Disrupt New York in 2011, the car-sharing startup has expanded to more than 90 cities and, more recently, raised a massive $325 million round of funding led by SoftBank. With the company in a good place and its co-founder and CMO Jessica Scorpio “really happy with where things are,” she […]

Security researchers said they’ve found a new kind of malware that takes its instructions from code hidden in memes posted to Twitter. The malware itself is relatively underwhelming: like most primitive remote access trojans (RATs), the malware quietly infects a vulnerable computer, takes screenshots and pulls other data from the affected system and sends it […]

If you’re an experienced traveler, you know that plenty of your delays are due to your plane being stuck somewhere else or because the weather at your local or arrival airport isn’t ideal (I’m looking at you, fogged-in SFO in the morning). So you also know to check on your incoming flight, even when the […]