Crunch Hype

If you’ve ever wanted to add creepy, 3D-printed hands to your creepy robot dog, YouBionic has you covered. This odd company is offering an entirely 3D-printed arm solution for the Boston Dynamics SpotMini, the doglike robot that already has an arm of its own. YouBionic is selling the $179 3D models for the product that […]

At its re:Invent developer conference in Las Vegas, Amazon’s AWS today announced a new storage service that is meant for deep archival data that is only needed very infrequently but can’t be deleted. That makes Glacier Deep Archive an extension to the existing AWS Glacier service, but at a far lower price. Indeed, at $0.00099 […]

Facebook has a new area of its app it will have to police for fake news and biased sensationalism. Facebook is launching “Today In”, its local news aggregator it began testing in January, in 400 small to medium-sized US cities. It’s also now testing it in its first overseas spot in Australia. iOS and Android […]

YouTube is preparing to move its original programming out from behind its paywall. According to reports from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety on Monday, which the company confirmed, Google’s video site will change its strategy around originals starting next year. Instead of requiring a monthly subscription, YouTube Originals will become free and ad-supported, like most […]

Google is making a major move to expand the availability of its Fi wireless service. It’s been a few years since Google launched Project Fi with the promise of doing things a bit differently than the large carriers. Because it could switch between the cell networks of multiple providers to give you the best signal, […]

Google’s controversial plan to launch products custom made for China has been panned by politicians, free speech advocates, ex-staff and many others, but there appears to be some support within Google from employees who actually favor the strategy. Under a project code-named “Dragonfly,” Google is reportedly planning to introduce a censored search product and a […]

U.S. federal prosecutors have indicted two Iranian nationals for creating and deploying the notorious SamSam ransomware. Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah, 27, were indicted by a federal grand jury in New Jersey on Monday on several counts of computer hacking and fraud charges. The case was unsealed Wednesday, shortly before a press […]

Steemit, a distributed app designed to reward content creators, has laid off 70 percent of its staff citing “the weakness of the cryptocurrency market, the fiat returns on our automated selling of STEEM diminishing, and the growing costs of running full Steem nodes.” The remaining team will focus on reducing server costs by shrinking the size […]

One of the year’s largest fintech investments in Southeast Asia has closed after Philippines-based Voyager announced it raised $215 million. The bulk of the deal comes via a previously announced investment from Tencent which, alongside PE firm KKR, agreed to invest $175 million. Added to that, Voyager has pulled in a further $40 million from International Finance […]

In September, Amazon launched its Alexa Gadgets Toolkit into beta, allowing hardware makers to build accessories that pair with Amazon Echo over Bluetooth. Today, one of the most memorable (and quite ridiculous) examples of that technology is going live. Yes, I’m talking about the Alexa-enabled Big Mouth Billy Bass, of course. You know, the talking fish […]

The legal bill for Uber’s 2016 data breach, which affected some 57 million customers, revealing names, email address and phone numbers, has increased by more than a million dollars. Two months ago the ride-hailing giant agreed to pay $148M to resolve legal inquiries pertaining to the breach in the U.S., with that settlement covering all 50 states and […]

Google may have dodged a raised right hand moment on the Hill this year as top executives from Twitter and Facebook faced Congress, but the company will now have its own time in the hot seat. First reported by the Washington Post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai will appear before the House Judiciary Committee on December 5, […]

Augmented reality is a very buzzy space, but the fundamental technologies underpinning it are pushing boundaries across a lot of other verticals. Tech like machine learning, object recognition and visual mapping tech are the pillars of plenty of new ventures, enabling there to be companies that thrive in the overlap. Phiar (pronounced fire) is building […]

More than a year after patches were released to thwart powerful NSA exploits that leaked online, hundreds of thousands of computers are unpatched and vulnerable. First they were used to spread ransomware. Then it was cryptocurrency mining attacks. Now, researchers say that hackers are using the leaked tools to create an even bigger malicious proxy […]

LearnLux offers businesses access to its financial wellness platform, a digital product that helps employees make important financial decisions.

Deputy, an under the radar Australian company, has 90,000 customers in 80 countries.

The Boring Company’s big dig plans hit a snag this week, as the Elon Musk-led project announced that it would abandon plans to dig a massive tunnel beneath Los Angeles’ 405 freeway and Sepulveda Boulevard. Musk and co. debuted the plan to drill on L.A.’s Westside last year, but ultimately reversed course after local lawsuits […]

Didi Chuxing, China’s largest ride-hailing company by number of users, has been struggling to recover from a major setback following the deaths of two passengers earlier this year. On Wednesday, its founder and CEO Cheng Wei released a letter detailing the company’s moves to step up safety oversight and meet new government rules, including a training […]

Mission impossible: a new executive at LG is charged with fixing the company’s long-time loss-making smartphone division following a leadership change. Hwang Jeong-hwan took the job as president of LG Mobile Communications last October, and this week he LG announced that he will be replaced by Brian Kwon, who is head of LG’s hugely profitable home […]

Second Home, the “creative workspace” company co-founded by Rohan Silva, a former tech and startup policy advisor for then British Prime Minister David Cameron, is closing in on a new funding round, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, the London startup, which is also co-founded by Sam Aldenton, has secured £20 million in investment from […]

Disrupt Berlin approaches with just a few days until things kick things off. We have an all-star lineup that only TechCrunch can assemble, and we’re expecting our largest number of attendees yet. Check out our star-packed agenda here. Here are all the deets you need to make for a stellar conference experience. Location TechCrunch Disrupt […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor Africa’s agtech wave gets $10 million richer as Twiga Foods raises more capital Nigerian data analytics company Terragon acquires Asian mobile ad firm Bizense Forging another link between Africa […]

Disrupt Berlin 2018’s two program-packed days of startup mania kicks into high gear tomorrow, 29 November. And that, dear readers, can mean only one thing. This is your absolute last chance to buy a pass and attend Europe’s top tech conference for early-stage startups. We’re looking at all of you last-minute decision makers, put-off procrastinators, […]

Electric vehicle charging network ChargePoint has raised $240 million in a Series H funding round that attracted a diverse group of investors from the automotive, energy, financial, venture capital, utilities, and even oil and gas industries. New investors in the round include American Electric Power, Chevron Technology Ventures, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Daimler Trucks […]

Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 takes place in less than two weeks, and we have a classic good news/bad news situation to share with all you startup fans. First up, the bad news. We are completely sold out of our $10 tickets. And now for the good news (drum roll, please). We have a very limited […]

In the lead up to China’s 40th anniversary of reforms and opening up, People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party, published a list on Monday commending 100 extraordinary contributors to the country’s economic development. Familiar names like Jack Ma of ecommerce operator Alibaba as well as Pony Ma of gaming and social networking […]

Amazon has launched a new service that uses machine learning to extract key data from patient records and can potentially help healthcare providers and researchers save money, make treatment decisions, and manage clinical trials. The company announced the service, called Amazon Comprehend Medical, on Tuesday, shortly after the Wall Street Journal reported on it. The […]

Thirty European tech CEOs of big startups signed a letter about stock options in Europe. Other tech CEOs can join the group and sign the letter before it is sent to policymakers on January 7. As you can read in the letter below, these CEOs think Silicon Valley isn’t the only region suffering from talent […]

Germany automaker Audi, Airbus and Italdesign presented Tuesday a scaled-down version of its vision of the future: a drone that can pluck the cab off of an autonomous electric vehicle and then fly off to its intended destination. The companies showed off the flying taxi concept Tuesday during Drone Week in Amsterdam. You can watch […]

Rivian has kept a relatively low profile since the automotive startup with Midwestern roots launched in 2009. Those days are over. CEO and founder RJ Scaringe unveiled two all-electric vehicles this week at the LA Auto Show that boast some eye-popping battery ranges as well as some noteworthy performance and capability features. Rivian kicked off […]

A new app called Playlist aims to make music a more social experience than what’s offered today by the major music platforms like Apple Music, Pandora or Spotify, for example. In Playlist, you can find others who share your musical tastes and join group chats where you listen to playlists together in real time. You […]

Realizing the true potential of any idea takes time and requires input from diverse cultures and perspectives. Technological innovation is no exception.

Ben Ling, a Khosla general partner until next month, is closing in on $60 million for his debut fund.

Turo, the peer-to-peer car-sharing company described as the “Airbnb of cars,” is rolling out a new product that will let users locate and unlock cars right from the app. The new product, called Turo Go, is a dongle and an accompanying service that aims to bolster the number of cars and users on its platform. […]

Today at AWS re:Invent in Las Vegas, AWS announced a new service for satellite providers with the launch of AWS Ground Station, the first fully managed ground station as a service. With this new service, AWS will provide ground antennas through their existing network of worldwide availability zones, as well as data processing services to […]

Bird wants to help you start your own electric scooter business.

Seattle-based launch coordinator Spaceflight is gearing up for its biggest operation yet: Smallsat Express, deploying a staggering 64 separate satellites from 34 different clients — all from a single Falcon 9 rocket. It’s quite an endeavor, but the company believes that this kind of jam-packed “space bus” is the best way to make satellite deployment […]

Facebook “has a black people problem,” according to Mark Luckie, a now-former manager of partnerships at Facebook. Luckie, whose last day at Facebook was earlier this month, just posted an internal memo he sent to his colleagues that argues Facebook is failing its black employees, as well as its black users. At Facebook, Luckie served as strategic […]

Urban Massage, a popular massage startup that bills itself as providing “wellness that comes to you,” has leaked its entire customer database. The London, U.K.-based startup — now known as just Urban — left its Google-hosted ElasticSearch database online without a password, allowing anyone to read hundreds of thousands of customer and staff records. Anyone […]

Netflix and The Roald Dahl Story Company announced today that they’ve signed a deal for the streaming service to create a slate of animated “event series” based on a long list of titles by the classic children’s author, including “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Matilda” and “The BFG.” All of those books have already been […]

Google’s last major piece of hardware for the year is finally shipping this week. A number of pre-orders have already begun receiving shipping notifications for the Pixel Slate, and the company just popped up a blog post noting that the device will officially be available at retail starting this Thursday (11/29). The detachable tablet, which […]

First, a dirty little secret about product reviews: You’d love to integrate every product into your daily use, but it just isn’t possible. Especially when you’re dealing with the volumes we deal with here. Every so often, however, the stars align. You find yourself days from a two-week trip through Asia, when Google overnights you […]

The mainstream will never adopt blockchain-powered decentralized apps (dApps) if it’s a struggle to log in. They’re either forced to manage complex security keys themselves, or rely on a clunky wallet-equipped browser like MetaMask. What users need is for signing in to blockchain apps to be as easy as Login with Facebook. So that’s what […]

Robinhood, the zero-fee stock trading app and cryptocurrency exchange, is bringing on a former Amazon finance exec to help the company prepare for an eventual public debut. The startup has hired Jason Warnick, a former exec at Amazon who was with the company for nearly 20 years, most recently serving as the commerce giant’s VP of […]

A grand committee of international parliamentarians empty-chaired Mark Zuckerberg at a hearing earlier today, after the Facebook founder snubbed repeat invitations to face questions about malicious, abusive and improper uses of his social media platform — including the democracy-denting impacts of so-called “fake news.” The U.K.’s DCMS committee has been leading the charge to hold Facebook […]

Red Hat is in the process of being acquired by IBM for a massive $34 billion, but that deal hasn’t closed yet and, in the meantime, Red Hat is still running independently and making its own acquisitions, too. As the company today announced, it has acquired Tel Aviv-based NooBaa, an early-stage startup that helps enterprises manage […]

Higher education is a mess. College students spend years learning arcana and quaint academic theories, only to be thrust into the harsh light of the workplace where they are ill-equipped to handle even the most mundane task. A crisis, a moral failure or perhaps simply an expensive mistake, college is clearly in need of a […]

Amazon said on Tuesday it just had its biggest shopping day in the company’s history on Cyber Monday (Monday, November 26), based on the number of products sold worldwide. That means the shopping event topped Black Friday and even Amazon’s own sales event known as Prime Day, which this July had become the biggest sales […]

Some consolidation is afoot in the world of business software. TechCrunch has learned that Parallels, the virtualization specialist with millions of users, is getting acquired by Corel, the Canadian company behind design apps like CorelDraw and other productivity apps like WordPerfect. Some employees at Parallels have already been briefed on the acquisition, which is expected […]

A group of European consumer watchdogs has filed a privacy complaint against Google — arguing the company uses manipulative tactics in order to keep tracking web users’ location, for ad-targeting purposes. The consumer organizations are making the complaint under the EU’s new data protection framework, GDPR, which regulators can use to levy major fines for […]