Crunch Hype

Google wants to help you take a closer look at the art world. The company’s Arts & Culture app has long been one of the company’s cooler niche apps and one that I often feel guilty about overlooking every time I rediscover it. Today, the company has added another experience into the mix focused on […]

Just in time for holiday shopping, Apple announced the launch of an online store offering a 10 percent discount off all products for active military and veterans. “At Apple we are deeply grateful to the men and women of our armed forces,” the company said in a statement offered to TechCrunch. “We’re proud to offer […]

Tumblr, a microblogging service that’s impact on internet culture has been massive and unique, is preparing for a massive change that’s sure to upset many of its millions of users. On December 17, Tumblr will be banning porn, errr “adult content,” from its site and encouraging users to flag that content for removal. Existing adult […]

Chewse, a food catering and company culture startup, just announced a $19 million fundraising round as it gears up to expand its operations in the Silicon Valley area. This brings Chewse’s total funding to more than $30 million. Chewse’s investors include Foundry Group, 500 Startups and Gingerbread Capital. Instead of plopping down meals in the […]

Oura Health, a sleep-tracking and sleep-improvement platform, just raised $20 million in a funding round led by MSD Capital with participation from YouTube co-founder Steve Chen, Twitch co-founder Kevin Lin, Sunrise founder Dave Morin, JUMP founder Ryan Rzepecki and others. This round comes a couple of years after the Finnish company raised €5 million from MIT […]

Alongside news that PowerPoint is getting real-time captions and subtitles in 2019, Microsoft announced similar technology is now available in Skype. Launching today to coincide with the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities, the new feature allows those who are deaf or hard of hearing to read the words that are spoken during audio […]

Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology is now being tested for use in larger stores, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Sunday. The system, which involves an array of cameras to track shoppers’ purchases alongside weight sensors on shelves, has been rolling out this year to smaller convenience stores across the U.S. in […]

This weekend, Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to something of a détente around American tariffs on Chinese goods. Stocks across Asia swooned, for reasons that make no sense to me. Plus, Bloomberg’s spy story redux and Berlin airport fun. We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft […]

Valve announced new Steam rules over the weekend. It might sound like a small change, but it’s the first time the company is changing revenue-sharing tiers. Before the change, Valve would keep 30 percent of all revenue on Steam, including full games, DLCs, etc. Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo also take similar cuts on their own […]

In Amazon’s year-end wrap-up released on Monday, the retailer offered details about its best-selling products of 2018, as well as a few new metrics related to its delivery business. The company said that Prime members worldwide this year ordered more than 2 billion products for one-day or faster delivery — the first time it’s shared […]

Samsung tipped its hand yet again, revealing another key piece of its 2019 road map. As it did with the foldable phone a few weeks back, the company will be revealing a proof of concept this week at the annual Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit in Maui. Details around things like specs are likely to be pretty […]

Matterport, a provider of 3D image capture technology, has named former eBay chief product officer RJ Pittman as its new chief executive. Pittman will take the reins from former chief executive Bill Brown, who will continue to advise Matterport as the company looks to capitalize on its library of three dimensional scans. The company currently […]

Earlier this year, we reported that Trackr, a startup that makes a small Bluetooth device that you attached to items like keys to locate them when lost, would be rebranding as Adero and pivoting the business amid an increasingly commoditized market for its basic hardware product. Now, that is just what is happening. Today, Adero is […]

I’ll be heading back to Europe on December 18th to run a pitch-off in Wroclaw, Poland. It’s a bit out of the way but well worth a visit if only for the sausages. The event called In-Ference is happening on December 17 and you can submit to pitch here. The team will notify you if […]

Longtime NEA general partner Ravi Viswanathan has launched a new fund and brought 31 of NEA's portfolio companies with him.

Google -owned AI specialist, DeepMind, has claimed a “significant milestone” in being able to demonstrate the usefulness of artificial intelligence to help with the complex task of predicting 3D structures of proteins based solely on their genetic sequence. Understanding protein structures is important in disease diagnosis and treatment, and could improve scientists’ understanding of the human […]

We’re entering the final days leading up to Startup Battlefield Africa 2018, which takes place on 11 December. We have our passports, we’re packing our bags and we can’t wait to arrive in Lagos, Nigeria to watch 15 of the continent’s best startups launch to the world. Will you be there cheering the competitors and […]

AWS, once a nice little side hustle for Amazon’s eCommerce business, has grown over the years into a behemoth that’s on a $27 billion run rate, one that’s still growing at around 45 percent a year. That’s a highly successful business by any measure, but as I listened to AWS executives last week at their […]

Floom, the online marketplace and SaaS for independent florists, has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding. The round was round led by Firstminute Capital, and will be used by the London headquartered startup to continue to expand to the U.S., where it already operates in New York and L.A., and to further develop its […]

Scooter startup Lime has sought to back peddle on an explanation given by its VP of global expansion late last week when asked why it had hired the controversial PR firm, Definers Public Affairs. The opposition research firm, which has ties to the Republican Party, has been at the center of a reputation storm for Facebook, […]

Virtual Reality is in a public relations slump. Two years ago the public’s expectations for virtual reality’s potential was at its peak. Many believed (and still continue to believe) that VR would transform the way we connect, interact, and communicate in our personal and professional lives. It’s easy to understand why this excitement exists once […]

In 1990, Kleiner Perkins rejected 99.4% of the proposals it received, while investing in 12 new companies a year. Those investees made Kleiner Perkins “the most successful financial institution in the history of the world,” boasting “returns of about 40 percent per year, compounded, for coming up on thirty years.” Nowadays, the Valley’s VC poster […]

Facebook is still dealing with the fallout from a New York Times report outlining the company’s strategy to fight back against criticism, particularly its work with Definers Public Affairs, an opposition research firm with ties to the Republican Party. That work included a document that Definers sent to reporters suggesting ties between George Soros and […]

There’s quite a bit wrong with real estate in Brazil, according to QuintoAndar founder and CEO Gabriel Braga. Those seeking long term rentals in big Brazilian cities like São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are throttled by bureaucratic policies that enforce outrageously expensive deposits, the requirement of local cosigners and sky-high insurance fees. On the […]

Much of the last couple of decades of innovation has centered around finding ways to get what we want without leaving the sofa. But there’s a catch: We can't lie around ordering pizzas if someone still has to deliver them.

When Alexis Ohanian approached the members-only spirits subscription club Flaviar about bringing an Armenian brandy to market, he saw it as a unique opportunity to honor his paternal heritage.

In order to have innovative smart city applications, cities first need to build out the connected infrastructure, which can be a costly, lengthy, and politicized process. Third-parties are helping build infrastructure at no cost to cities by paying for projects entirely through advertising placements on the new equipment. I try to dig into the economics […]

Lou Shipley Contributor More posts by this contributor Why The Future Of Digital Security Is Open Sirius XM’s recent all-stock $3.5-billion purchase of the music-streaming service Pandora raised a lot of eyebrows. A big question was why Sirius paid so much. Is Pandora’s music library and customer base really worth that amount? The answer is […]

E Ink — a name synonymous with e-reader screens — just debuted a new writing display technology called JustWrite. The tech offers the company’s familiar monochrome aesthetic — albeit in negative this time, with white on black. The key here, as with most of E Ink’s technology, is minimal power consumption and low cost, the […]

Facebook hasn’t had a hit show yet for its long-form video hub Watch, so it’s got a new plan: digging up some deceased cult favorites from television. First up, Facebook is making all episodes of Joss Whedon’s Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly free on Facebook Watch. There’ll be simultaneous viewing Watch Parties where […]

Black Friday broke records in terms of sales made from mobile devices, according to reports last week from Adobe. This week, PayPal said it saw a similar trend during the Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday shopping event. PayPal saw a record-breaking $1 billion+ in mobile payment volume for the first time ever on Black Friday — a […]

Meet Cimon. The 3D-printed floating robot head was developed by Airbus for the German Space Agency. He’s been a crew member of the International Space Station since June, though as Gizmodo notes, this is the first time we’re seeing him in action. Really the floating, Watson-powered robot face is like an extremely expensive Amazon Echo […]

Two and a half years after the launch of Pokémon GO, it’s still missing one major staple of the main series games: player versus player battling. That’s about to change. In a series of teaser tweets this morning, the company confirmed that the battle system is on the way, noting only that it’s “coming soon.” […]

The Arlo line was something of a surprise hit for Netgear, causing the networking company to spin it off into its own business earlier this year. The Arlo ecosystem is one of the most robust in the smart security camera space, and now it’s getting something it had never had before: 4K. The new Arlo […]

AT&T may be ready to sell its stake in Hulu, the company revealed in an analyst presentation on Thursday. The company currently owns a 10 percent stake in the service by way of WarnerMedia, as a result of its Time Warner acquisition. But AT&T today is running its own streaming services, including live TV service […]

Toyota introduced T-HR3 to the world right around this time last year. The humanoid robot is capable of mimicking the motions of a plugged-in human, à la “Pacific Rim” and countless other sci-fi franchises. The ‘bot has learned a few new tricks in the intervening year, including, notably, untethered control via 5G. Using the next-gen wireless […]

Startups participating in the Startup Battlefield have all been hand-picked to participate in our highly competitive startup competition. They all presented in front of multiple groups of VCs and tech leaders serving as judges for a chance to win $50,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. After hours of deliberations, TechCrunch editors pored over the judges’ […]

Black Friday wasn’t just a boon for e-commerce retailers, it helped the mobile app stores break new records, too. According to a new report from Sensor Tower, the combined consumer spending across the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play on Black Friday 2018 reached $75.9 million — a record for the most ever spent in […]

Amazon has “failed to provide sufficient answers” about its controversial facial recognition software, Rekognition — and lawmakers won’t take the company’s usual silent treatment for an answer. The letter, signed by eight lawmakers — including Sen. Edward Markey and Reps. John Lewis and Judy Chu — called on Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos to explain […]

U.K. entrepreneur turned billionaire investor Mike Lynch has been charged with fraud in the U.S. over the 2011 sale of his enterprise software company. Lynch sold Autonomy, the big data company he founded back in 1996, to computer giant HP for around $11 billion some seven years ago. But within a year around three-quarters of […]

Longtime Accel partners Philippe Botteri, Sonali De Rycker, Luciana Lixandru and Harry Nelis took the stage at Disrupt Berlin earlier today, and unlike many London-based investors, who have downplayed how much Brexit could hurt their local economy, the team was frank about their sundry concerns over what happens if the U.K. leaves the European Union […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week as TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin came to life, Kate Clark and I snagged some mics and dug through the biggest news of the week (a $50 million check), and talked through who may go public next year […]

Via, a shuttle-based carpooling service and platform that partners with cities in the U.S. and Europe, could soon add scooters to its business. Via CEO and co-founder Daniel Ramot said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin that the company is experimenting with the idea of adding scooters as a complement to its shuttle business. “We’re also adding scooters […]

Salad startup Sweetgreen is expanding on a pilot program with WeWork that provides free delivery to WeWork members. Though, it’s more accurate to describe it as an order-ahead service that lets you pick up your food from your WeWork of choice. Geared toward WeWork employees and members, Sweetgreen at WeWork outposts are live in seven […]

Starting mid-December, Amazon Echo devices will be able to stream songs from Apple Music. A bit of a surprise, perhaps, given that Apple’s been a competitor in the space since launching the HomePod back in 2017. Amazon’s had its own music service for some time as well, but the company appears to have given up […]

Facebook is still reeling from the revelation that it hired an opposition research firm with close ties to the Republican party, but its relationship with Definers Public Affairs isn’t the company’s only recent contract work with deeply GOP-linked strategy firms. According to sources familiar with the project, Facebook also contracted with Targeted Victory, described as […]

UrbanClap, a four-year-old startup that offers home services across in India, has closed a $50 million Series D round for expansion. The round was led by Steadview Capital, a hedge fund with over $1 billion under management, and existing investor Vy Capital. It takes UrbanClap to $110 million raised to date, according to data from Crunchbase. […]

Silicon Valley companies that operate in the gray might be heaving a small sigh of relief today. Yesterday, afternoon, the Securities & Exchange Commission announced that Jina Choi, the head of its San Francisco office, is retiring after 16 years with the agency. The release about Choi’s move is glowing, though it doesn’t offer an […]

N26 announced today that it now has more than 2 million customers — up from 1.5 million in October. The German fintech startup’s CEO Valentin Stalf was interviewed onstage at Disrupt Berlin with Tandem CEO Ricky Knox, where they discussed the growth of what are sometimes called challenger banks or neobanks — new banks that […]