Crunch Hype

Part of the complex process that turns raw materials into finished products like detergents, cosmetics and flavors relies on enzymes, which facilitate chemical transformations. But finding the right enzyme for a new or proposed drug or additive is a drawn out and almost random process — which Allozymes aims to change with a remarkable new […]

Here’s the theory: Instead of linking carbon and biodiversity credits to the sale of raw materials such as forests, which cause CO2, what if you linked them to crypto tokens, and thus kept these CO2-producing materials in the ground? That’s the theory behind Single.Earth, which has now raised a $7.9 million seed funding round led […]

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. It’s a space race of the most indulgent kind, plus there’s a new commercial launch enterprise in the games and another is prepping for production at a massive scale. Also, Starlink aims […]

The war between Box’s current leadership and activist shareholder Starboard took a new turn today with a detailed timeline outlining the two groups’ relationship, thanks to an SEC filing and companion press release. Box is pushing back against a slate of board candidates put forth by Starboard, which wants to shake up the company’s leadership and sell […]

Super.mx, an insurtech startup based in Mexico City, has raised $7.2 million in a Series A round led by ALLVP. Co-founded in 2019 by a trio of former insurance industry executives, Super.mx’s self-proclaimed mission is to design insurance for “the emerging Latin American middle class,” according to CEO Sebastian Villarreal. “That means insurance that is […]

If Facebook’s privacy policy is as hard to comprehend as German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason,” we have a problem.

Bentley Motors, the 102-year-old ultraluxury automaker under Volkswagen Group, revealed its newest hybrid model on Tuesday. The company says this latest iteration of the Flying Spur Hybrid is its most environmentally friendly vehicle yet. This new model is part of Bentley’s Beyond100 plan to become a carbon-neutral organization with an entirely electrified range by 2023 […]

For China-based companies hoping to list in the United States, the market likely just got much, much colder.

Amazon announced this morning it would begin to sell its own brand of COVID-19 at-home tests to Amazon shoppers in the U.S. The test retails for $39.99 on the Amazon.com website and is available to any U.S. customer without a prescription. The COVID-19 PCR collection kit is shipped to the customer’s home via Amazon Prime, […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday Tuesday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You […]

Video game platform Roblox announced this morning it has partnered with Sony Music Entertainment on a deal that will allow the two companies to work together to create music experiences for the Roblox community, including opportunities that would give Sony Music artists a way to reach new audiences and generate revenue. The announcement follows last month’s […]

The pet care industry has boomed over the past several years. From Chewy’s IPO to the various veterinarian startups that have sprung up, VC money (and consumer cash) is flowing into the space. Wagmo is no different. The pet insurance and perks startup has closed on a $12.5 million Series A financing, led by Revolution […]

The long holiday weekend may be over here in the states, but you still have a few hours left to take advantage of our two-for-one sale on passes to all four TechCrunch 2021 events. Don’t miss out — the sale ends tonight, July 6, at 11:59 pm (PT). All four TechCrunch events take place in […]

To compete with the myriad venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, iFly.vc has a unique vantage point. Its founder Han Shen has straddled the United States and China for several decades. He was the first hire on the investment team of Formation 8, the VC firm co-founded by Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale. After iFly.vc backed Weee! […]

https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/30/pittsburghs-locomation-puts-a-convoy-twist-on-autonomous-trucking/Pittsburgh is known as the Steel City, but these days, the city is turning to startups rather than steel. Mayor Bill Peduto lead this charge since taking office in 2014. He recently spoke at TechCrunch’s City Spotlight: Pittsburgh event, where he outlined the opportunity and challenges for entrepreneurs considering founding and running their companies in […]

The space SPAC frenzy might’ve died down, but it isn’t over: Earth observation startup Satellogic is the latest to go public via a merger with CF Acquisition Corp. V, a special purpose acquisition company set up by Cantor Fitzgerald. Satellogic already has 17 satellites in orbit, and aims to scale its constellation to over 300 […]

So much for the big E3 reveal. Weeks after the big gaming show, Nintendo has finally taking the wraps off the latest iteration of its wildly popular hybrid gaming console. The Nintendo Switch (OLED model) [parentheses theirs] will arrive on October 8, priced at $350. That is, the company’s quick to note, the same day […]

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has always liked to motivate his employees by saying every day is Day 1. Well, it is actually Day 1 for his successor Andy Jassy, who officially moves into the corner office at Amazon today. Bezos announced that he would be stepping down as CEO in February to focus […]

Algorithmic management of gig workers has landed Glovo-owned on-demand delivery firm Foodinho in trouble in Italy where the country’s data protection authority issued a €2.6 million penalty (~$3M) yesterday after an investigation found a laundry list of problems. The delivery company has been ordered to make a number of changes to how it operates in […]

It’s not often that you hear DNA described as a wafer – but that’s the analogy that Grant Aarons, the founder of FabricNano, a cell-free biomanufacturing company uses to describe his company’s major product. That DNA, the company hopes, will make a dent in a growing global petrochemical industry that currently relies on fossil fuels […]

Influential entrepreneurs like Paul Graham and Naval Ravikant always preach the need for startups to have founders-turned-investors on their cap table. As Ravikant puts it, “founders want to know that the people they are taking money from have first-hand experience.” His platform AngelList has helped individual founders-cum-investors source and participate in deals via collectives. However, […]

Fittingly, we don’t know a lot about Nothing. The young hardware startup has, however, done a stellar job building hype around precisely that fact. In the lead up to the July 27 launch of the company’s first product, the Ear (1), the Nothing marketing machine has released information in drabs and drabs. Ahead of the […]

"If we take a take a step back and think about it from a consumer perspective, we feel like, as a whole consumer, tech is quite, quite boring.">

The upside of the Open Banking regulations which have swept jurisdictions like the UK and the EU is that many more challenger banks have appeared. The headache for either incumbent banks or for upstart startups is the very proliferation of these new banks and financial tech products. But as we know, in gold rushes, the […]

E-commerce in Europe is set to grow 30% percent this year, with the online shopping surge that started at the rise of Covid-19 showing little sign of abating. Today, a startup that’s building infrastructure in the region to help merchants fill and deliver those orders — and present an alternative to using Amazon for fulfillment […]

TechCrunch Early Stage is coming up soon, and all attendees can get 3 months of free access to Extra Crunch as a part of a ticket purchase. Extra Crunch is our members-only community focused on founders and startup teams. Head here to buy your ticket to TC Early Stage. Extra Crunch unlocks access to our […]

Twitter no longer enjoys the liability protection against user-generated content in India, the government said in a court filing this week as tension escalates between the two over the South Asian nation’s new IT rules. In a court filing on Monday, New Delhi said Twitter has lost its immunity in India after the American social […]

Business trip booking platform TravelPerk has bagged another rival — picking up UK-based Click Travel. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed but we’re told it’s the third — and largest — acquisition for TravelPerk to date. The Barcelona-based startup has been on a bit of a shopping spree since the pandemic crisis hit […]

Pine Labs said on Tuesday it has closed a $600 million financing round as the Asian merchant commerce platform sets the goal to explore the public markets within two years. Fidelity Management & Research Company, BlackRock, Ishana, as well as a fund advised by Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers, and IIFL and Kotak invested in the round, […]

Whether you are part of the accounting department, or just any employee at an organization, managing expenses can be a time-consuming and error-filled, yet also quite mundane, part of your job. Today, a startup called Pleo — which has built a platform that can help some of that work more smoothly, by way of a […]

On Friday, a flood of ransomware hit hundreds of companies around the world. A grocery store chain, a public broadcaster, schools, and a national railway system were all hit by the file-encrypting malware, causing disruption and forcing hundreds of businesses to close. The victims had something in common: a key piece of network management and […]

Volvo Group, Daimler Truck and Volkswagon’s AG heavy-truck business the Traton Group announced on Monday a non-binding agreement to build a network of high-performance public charging stations for electric heavy-duty long-haul trucks and buses around Europe. The news was first reported by Reuters. The three major European automakers will invest €500 million (~$593 million USD) […]

Croatian electric supercar startup Rimac Automobili is taking over Bugatti. Rimac will own a controlling 55% share in the new company, Bugatti-Rimac, with VW’s Porsche owning the remaining 45%, according to reports by the Financial Times. “Rimac and Bugatti are a perfect match in terms of what we each bring to the table,” said founder […]

French startup ManoMano has raised a Series F funding round of $355 million led by Dragoneer Investment Group. The company operates an e-commerce platform focused on DIY, home improvement and gardening products. It is currently available in six European countries. Following today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of $2.6 billion. In addition […]

Following on from mid-June when first-time buyer mortgage lending startup Generation Home raised a $30.4m Series A round and a £300m loan facility from NatWest, it’s now adding to its board. Although known for becoming an Angel investor since leaving Monzo, the challenger bank startup he co-founded, Tom Blomfield hasn’t joined any startup boards. That […]

This year, TechCrunch is proudly hosting the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals on July 22. The event is among the world’s largest purpose-driven startup competitions that are aiming to solve global challenges based on the United Nations’ 17 sustainability goals. If you want to catch an array of innovative startups across a range of categories, […]

Nirman Dave’s two startups are very different, but both have a DIY spirit. The first, called CircuiTricks and founded during his gap year after high school, created kits to teach students about electronics and physics. Now Dave is chief executive officer of Obviously AI, a no code AI/ML platform that enables people without technical backgrounds […]

As firework volleys launched out of New York City harbor last night, a very different celebration was likely taking place just a few blocks down the street at Verizon’s official headquarters in Midtown. The telco, which owns TechCrunch for hopefully just a few more weeks pending the close of the Apollo acquisition of our parent […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Happy 4th of July! For those of you who are actually checking your emails today while getting some sun at an overcrowded beach or diligently grilling hot dogs, […]

Min Wanli had a career path much coveted by those pursuing a career in computer science. A prodigy, Min was accepted to a top research university in China at the age of 14. He subsequently obtained Ph.D. degrees in physics and statistics from the University of Chicago before spending nearly a combined decade at IBM […]

E-commerce is booming in Southeast Asia, but in many markets, the fragmented logistics industry is struggling to catch up. This means sellers run into roadblocks when shipping to buyers, especially outside of major metropolitan areas, and managing their supply chains. Locad, a startup that wants to help with what it describes as an “end-to-end solution” […]

Meet Tinybird, a new startup that helps developers build data products at scale without having to worry about infrastructure, query time and all those annoying issues that come up once you deal with huge data sets. The company ingests data at scale, lets you transform it using SQL and then exposes that data through API […]

Globally, food and grocery delivery startups have been raising mega-rounds of late, especially those in Europe as the pandemic has given rise to more people ordering online more than ever. This growth has translated to an increase in volume across e-commerce platforms all over the world. While there has relatively been no action in Africa […]

Furlenco, a Bangalore-based startup that operates an eponymous furniture and appliance rental service, said today it has raised $140 million in a financing round as it looks to scale its operations in the South Asian market and explore international market expansion. The new $140 million financing round, a Series D, comprises $120 million debt raise […]

China has ordered app-store operators to remove the app of Didi from their stores, the latest as tension escalates between the nation’s largest ride-hailing giant and local regulators. The app has disappeared from several stores including Apple’s App Store in China, TechCrunch can confirm. The nation’s cyberspace administration, which unveiled the order on Sunday, said […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

Wow, that headline worked? A recent board fight at a digital health unicorn is a reminder to entrepreneurs that it’s important to set boundaries, even amid the dizzying volume and velocity of this summer’s deal frenzy. This week I published a scoop about how Bessemer Venture Partners replaced a board member at Hinge Health, after […]

For the first time, researchers have mapped all the known targets, including journalists, activists, and human rights defenders, whose phones were hacked by Pegasus, a spyware developed by NSO Group. Forensic Architecture, an academic unit at Goldsmiths, University of London that investigates human rights abuses, scoured dozens of reports from human rights groups, carried out […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter for your weekend enjoyment.

Until children reach a certain age, enrichment programs are somewhat limited to school, sports, and camps, while money-making opportunities are largely non-existent. Now, a year-old, L.A.-based startup called Mighty, a kind of Shopify that invites younger kids to open a store online, aims to partly fill the void. In fact, Mighty — led by founders […]