Crunch Hype

Bonobo AI, an AI-based platform that helps companies get insights from customer support calls, texts, and other interactions, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding led by G20 Ventures and Capri Ventures. Founded in 2016 and led by co-founder and CEO Efrat Rapoport, the Tel Aviv-based startup claims that its technology […]

Spotify’s artist dashboard already allows musicians and their managers a way to track the success of their tracks and album releases, as well as view other data about their fans. Now, the streaming music service is debuting its first analytics tool aimed at music publishers. The new tool is launching into beta this morning, and […]

“Who am I going to be worried about? Oh Facebook seeing? No, I’m not worried about Facebook seeing. They’re going to look at my great art collection and say they want to come steal it? No, I never really thought about it.” That’s my 72-year-old mother Sally Constine’s response to whether she’s worried about her […]

It took about six months for popular consumer drone maker DJI to fix a security vulnerability across its website and apps, which if exploited could have given an attacker unfettered access to a drone owner’s account. The vulnerability, revealed Thursday by researchers at security firm Check Point, would have given an attacker complete access to […]

The Portal is a head scratcher. It’s a chat app that manifested itself into a hardware through sheer force of will. The first commercially available product from Building 8 isn’t as instantly iconic a piece of hardware as Snap’s Spectacles. In fact, at first glance, the device seems like little more than an Echo Show/Google […]

Taiwan’s KKday, a startup in the increasingly competitive travel activities space, has pulled in an undisclosed funding round that adds two strategic investors to its business: Chinese e-commerce firm Alibaba and Japanese chat app company Line. KKday was founded in 2015 to help people who travel overseas to find and book activities, ranging from tours […]

Lilium, the developer of a new, electric, vertical take-off and landing vehicle for a novel flying taxi service, has poached some pretty big former executives from Airbus and Audi as it builds out its technology and gets ready to bring its service to market. Mirko Reuter, the former head of automated driving at Audi, has […]

Lime has launched its e-scooters and e-bikes in Melbourne and Sydney.

Buoyed by international attention from U.S. and Chinese investors and technology companies, new financing keeps flowing into the coffers of Latin American venture capital firms. One day after the Brazilian-based pan-Latin American announced the close of its $150 million latest fund comes word from our sources that ALL VP, the Mexico City-based, early stage technology […]

Read this slowly: The White House’s press secretary has tweeted a manipulated video shared by the editor-at-large of conspiracy theorist outlet Infowars to attempt to justify its decision to suspend the press credentials of CNN’s chief white house correspondent. CNN’s Jim Acosta had his press pass pulled by the White House earlier today after press secretary […]

Southeast Asia ride-hailing firm Grab is continuing to add strategic investors to its ongoing Series H round — which is targeted at over $3 billion — after it revealed Thai bank Kasikorn put in $50 million as part of a strategic partnership to advance its financial services strategy. Kasikorn joins Hyundai ($250 million), Microsoft (undisclosed) […]

RealtimeBoard, a visual collaboration tool particularly suited to distributed teams, has picked up $25 million in Series A funding. Accel led the round, with participation from existing investor AltaIR Capital. The 150 person-strong company — which itself is distributed across offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Perm — says it will use the […]

Co-founders Ariel Cohen and Ilan Twig wow'd investors with TripActions 700% annual growth rate.

In just a half hour, we’ll be starting Startup Battlefield LATAM in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Along with interviews with Nubank, Movile, Yellow, and a keynote from Facebook (TC’s partner for the event through FB Start), 15 startups from all across Latin America will be pitching their innovative companies on the TechCrunch stag for the first […]

In just about three weeks, on 29-30 November, literally thousands of startup fans will flock to Deutschland’s edgiest city to experience Disrupt Berlin 2018 — Europe’s premier tech conference focused on early-stage startups. Attendees tell us time and again that networking and building relationships with the right people is one of the most essential and […]

Infarm, the Berlin-based startup that has developed vertical farming tech for grocery stores, restaurants and local distribution centres to bring fresh and artisan produce much closer to the consumer, is expanding to Paris. Once again, the company is partnering with Metro in a move that will see Infarm’s “in-store farming” platform installed in the retailer’s […]

A few years ago, nobody would have bet that space exploration would become so exciting again. But everybody is talking about space again, from Mars to satellites, launchers and observation. That’s why we invited Frank Salzgeber from the European Space Agency to talk at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin. The European Space Agency needs little introduction. It […]

Elon Musk’s replacement as the chair of Tesla has been named and it is Robyn Denholm, an Australian executive who has been a director with the electric vehicle firm since 2014. Denholm is currently CFO of Australia-based telco Telstra and she’ll step into the breach once a six-month notice period is served, Tesla said in […]

Planning to get in early on the Portal phenomenon? Facebook announced today that it’s starting to ship the video chat device. The company’s first true piece of devoted hardware comes in two configurations: the Echo Show-like Portal and the larger Portal+ . Which run $199 and $349, respectively. There’s also a two-fer $298 bundle on […]

Despite a strong third-quarter earnings report, Square’s forecast for the final quarter of this year gave investors pause, sending its share price down 6 percent in after hours trading before it gradually climbed up again. Square’s adjusted revenue grew 68 percent year-over-year to $431 million, beating expectations from analysts polled by Refinitiv (formerly the financial […]

A robot that can clean your house, a blockchain-powered social network and 18 other startups presented to investors at SkyDeck's 8th demo day.

The Muse, a New York-based, content-rich recruitment site that matches job seekers and all kinds of information about different career paths, as well as with companies that are hiring, has made it second acquisition, picking up TalentShare, a year-old, HR software-as-a service company. TalentShare has been focused on enabling companies to share high-quality candidates that they […]

Obtaining a banking license and then launching an actual new retail bank requires capital. A lot of capital. Enter Zopa, the U.K. peer-to-peer lending company that wants to become a bank, which today is announcing that it has closed £60 million in further funding. Only £16 million is actually new new money, having already disclosed […]

Georgia’s secretary of state and candidate for state governor in the midterm election, Brian Kemp, has taken the unusual, if not unprecedented step of posting the personal details of 291,164 absentee voters online for anyone to download. Kemp’s office posted an Excel file on its website within hours of the results of the general election, exposing the names […]

Let me just say that I love the idea of a folding phone/tablet device. I was a Courier fanboy when Microsoft floated that intriguing but abortive concept device, and I'm all for unique form factors and things that bend. But Samsung's first real shot at a folding device is inexplicable and probably dead on arrival. I'd like to congratulate the company for trying something new, but this one needed a little more time in the oven.

As rumored, Samsung showed off a prototype of a folding display today. Folded, it’s a smartphone. Unfolded, it’s a tablet. Neat! Less neat: The company sort of went out of its way to not really show very much. A prototype was onstage for about 45 seconds, and it was deliberately backlit to be intensely silhouetted. […]

Ford is buying electric scooter startup Spin, Axios reports. The deal, according to a source close to the matter, “the total consideration in the deal was close to $100m.” Axios had previously reported the price tag was around $40 million. Spin currently operates its scooters in Coral Gables, Fla., Washington, D.C., Charlotte, N.C., Durham, N.C., Lexington, […]

After hyping its unveil of its long-rumored folding smartphone, Samsung kind of delivered an announcement, revealing a dual-screen folding phone prototype. “How can we make the screen bigger without actually increasing the size of the device itself?” a Samsung exec posited onstage. The company showcased a prototype of its “Infinity Flex Display,” a device that […]

Netflix’s internal hackathons have consistently produced fun and often silly hacks, from that “Netflixtendo” hack a few years ago that let you run Netflix on the original NES to the more recent “audiobook mode” that turned Netflix series into old-school radio shows by way of Audio Descriptions. This year’s hackathon doesn’t disappoint either, with new […]

It’s been a four-year wait since Harley-Davidson first showed off a concept electric motorcycle. Now, the production-ready bike — called the Harley-Davidson LiveWire — is finally here. Well, almost. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company unveiled the production-ready electric motorcycle Tuesday at the EICMA motorcycle show in Italy. It won’t be available, though, until next year. Harley […]

Pitching customers a new, all-inclusive service for buying and installing hair, Mayvenn is looking to significantly expand its haircare business and just raised $23 million in a new round of funding to do it. The new financing was led by Essence Ventures — and it represents the first outside investment by the holding company owned […]

Big day for developer events. As Samsung was onstage getting ready to talk about its upcoming foldable phone, Google spilled the beans a bit at its own Android Developer Summit. The company briefly detailed plans to bake support for folding phones into the mobile operating system. Support for the nascent technology is going to be […]

Samsung has been suffering through a lot of catch-up in the voice assistant race, but at its annual developer conference the company placed a major emphasis on how it’s expanding the scale and effectiveness of its Bixby assistant. The company announced that Bixby would be coming to more devices and more languages with third-party developers […]

At its Android Dev Summit, Google today announced a number of new tools and features for developers that write apps for its mobile operating system. Some of those are no surprise, including support for the latest release of the Kotlin language, which is becoming increasingly popular in the Android developer ecosystem, as well as new […]

Flickr will spare both the Flickr Commons and Creative Commons photos from deletion, the now SmugMug-owned company announced today. However, its new storage limitations on free accounts may impact its use as a home for photos with a Creative Commons license in the future. When the company unveiled its big revamp last week, one of […]

DevOps platform CircleCI today announced a new partner program that will open up its platform and allow third-party tools to integrate with it. In addition, the company is launching Orbs, which it describes as “the world’s first package manager designed specifically for configuration of software delivery automation.” Fresh off its $31 million funding round earlier […]

TwelveSouth is one of the most innovative Mac accessory companies out there. From its PlugBug adapter to the AirFly Bluetooth headphone receiver, the company makes clever, well-produced products. But the PowerPic — I dunno, man. I’m sure the build quality is there, as with its other offerings. New Zealand pine sounds nice. At its heart, […]

One. More. Day. That’s how long you have until the region’s very best early-stage startup founders compete head-to-head in the first Startup Battlefield Latin America 2018. Those founders have been honing their pitches to perfection, and they’re ready to launch their dream to the world — tomorrow, 8 November — at the Tomie Ohtake Institute […]

Tinder has never really shaken its reputation among consumers as a “hook up” app, instead of one designed for more serious dating. Now, it seems Tinder is planning to embrace its status as the default app for younger users who aren’t ready to settle down. According to Match Group CEO Mandy Ginsberg, speaking to investors on […]

Chris Hays and Mark Jeffrey wanted to create a way for everyone to be able to tell their loved ones if they were in trouble. Their first product, Guardian Circle, did just that, netting a mention a few years ago. Now the same team is truly decentralizing alerts with a new token called, obviously, Guardium. The […]

The UK’s privacy watchdog has asked Facebook’s lead EU regulator to look into ongoing data protection concerns about its ad platform — including how its platform is being used to target and spread fake adverts to try to manipulate voters. Facebook’s international HQ is in Ireland so the regulator in play here is the Irish […]

Alexa’s path to AI global domination continues apace with the addition of Mexico to its growing list of markets. Amazon today opened up pre-orders for the Echo, Dot, Plus, Spot and Smart Plug. The devices are set to start shipping next week. Of course, bringing such devices to new markets is more complicated than just supply […]

Disrupt Berlin 2018 (29-30 November) will be here before you know it and we’re excited to announce a few of the participants in the Q&A Sessions at the event. If you’ve been to a Disrupt before, you know that the Q&A Sessions are one of the most engaging parts of the event. During Q&A Sessions, […]

Spotify’s ad-supported tier has long been one of the service’s differentiators. Naturally, the model’s not nearly as feature-rich as its paid counterpart, though the company’s removing one of those key distinctions as of this morning. In a press release, the company notes that free users will soon be able to stream music through Spotify Connect-sporting speakers. […]

It appears Dish’s live TV streaming service, Sling TV, has been impacted by the increased competition from rivals like YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, AT&T’s DirecTV Now and others. Sling TV still leads the market with 2.37 million subscribers for its TV service aimed at cord cutters, Dish reported in its Q3 2018 earnings, […]

We are experimenting with new content forms at TechCrunch. This is a rough draft of something new – provide your feedback directly to the authors: Danny at danny@techcrunch.com or Arman at Arman.Tabatabai@techcrunch.com if you like or hate something here. Ignoring the midterm hysteria, we continue our obsession with SoftBank today by looking at the group’s […]

Since solar and wind power are now cheaper to produce than energy from fossil fuels, the only obstacle that remains to the mass adoption of renewable power is the amount of money utilities need to spend to store the energy those systems produce. Right now, storing 100 megawatts of renewable energy (enough to power roughly 600,000 […]

Online grocery delivery service Instacart has expanded the availability of a ‘click and collect’ pickup service it’s been trialing for a few months in the U.S. — now offering it in stores across the nation. It says the collect in person Instacart Pickup option is now available in nearly 200 stores — across 25 “key […]

Tiny houses are all the rage but once you put more than a few people in one you have a problem: Where can you go from there? Nowhere. Exactly. What you do is, if you need that extra push over the cliff, you know what you do? Talk to Brian Gaudio. Gaudio is the founder […]

Brooklinen, the direct-to-consumer bed linens brand, has today announced the opening of a four-month pop-up shop in NYC. The company has been around for four years thus far, and recently hit $100 million in revenue after raising just $10 million in funding. Part of the company’s success comes down to its attention to detail. The […]