Crunch Hype

The sharing economy ends up sharing a ton of labor’s earnings with middlemen like Uber and Airbnb, and $38 million-funded Origin wants the next great two-sided marketplace to be decentralized on the blockchain so drivers and riders or hosts and guests can connect directly and avoid paying steep fees that can range up to 20 percent […]

Square’s CFO Sarah Friar is stepping down to become the CEO of Nextdoor, according to the payment company’s CEO, Jack Dorsey. In a statement issued a bit ago, he says of Friar that she “steered us through an IPO and helped build a growing ecosystem of businesses that will scale into the future.” Friar “leaves […]

Microsoft announced today that it’s joined open-source patent group Open Invention Network in an effort to help shield Linux and other open-source software from patent-related suits. As part of the deal, the software giant is opening a library of 60,000 patents to OIN members. Access to the massive portfolio is unlimited and royalty free. It […]

On October 18 — just one week away — some of the most brilliant and innovative minds in reality creation will gather at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles to attend TC Sessions AR/VR 2018. Whether you’re an early startup founder, an investor, a developer or a student, if you’re focused on AR/VR, you don’t […]

AT&T will launch a new direct-to-consumer streaming service next year, the company announced today. Yes, another one. AT&T currently already operates cord cutter-friendly streaming services DirecTV Now and the low-cost WatchTV, but its new service will be focused on WarnerMedia properties, including HBO. The move follows AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, which completed this past […]

Called Quibi, short for quick bites, the company is creating content with notable filmmakers Sam Raimi, Guillermo del Toro and Antoine Fuqua.

Shasta has hired former Symantec GM Balaji Yelamanchili, former Salesforce CISO Izak Mutlu and longtime enterprise software exec Drew Harman to focus on security.

Target is no stranger to running startup accelerators. The company today operates its Target + Techstars program, the beauty-focused Target Takeoff, and the India-based Target Accelerator Program. Now it’s adding a fourth business accelerator to the mix with the launch of Target Incubator. The new program is aimed at Gen Z entrepreneurs and its only real […]

Nintendo has set a strange new precedent with the release of Legend of Zelda SP on the Switch: it's essentially the original NES game but Link starts loaded up with good gear and cash. In a way it's no different from a cheat code, but the way it's executed feels like a missed opportunity.

French startup Skello just raised a $6.9 million funding round (€6 million) from Aglaé Ventures, XAnge, Jean-Baptiste Rudelle and existing investors Thomas Landais, Guillaume le Dieu de Ville and Gilles Blanchard. The startup is helping bar, restaurant and hotel managers keep track of all the shifts and staffing issues. Skello uses a software-as-a-service approach to […]

Alphabet’s self-driving car company Waymo has spent years testing its autonomous vehicles on public roads. What started as a trickle of miles driven each day has exploded in the past few years. And now, the company has hit a new milestone as it prepares to launch a commercial ride-hailing service with fleets of self-driving vehicles. Waymo […]

School’s back in session and a startup that’s building games to help students learn has moved to the top of the class. Kahoot — the educational gaming startup out of Norway that has been a quick hit with schools in the US and elsewhere — today announced that it has raised 126.5 million Norwegian krone […]

Connie Loizos Contributor More posts by this contributor Divvy, an interesting new fractional home ownership startup, just raised a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz Forerunner Ventures just closed a $360 million fund, tripling the size of its last effort Yesterday, a Saudi news outlet broke the news that such Silicon Valley big wheels […]

We’re excited to head to São Paulo, Brazil on November 8 for TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Latin America. Yes, we’re bringing our premier startup pitch competition to Latin America and launching 15 of the hottest startups in the region onstage for the first time. We’ll also be joined by some leading lights of the scene. Tickets […]

We’ve been chronicling how LinkedIn, now owned by Microsoft, has built out tools and services it provides on its platform to capitalise on the fact that it now has nearly 600 million registered professional profiles and is a go-to for people looking to network and look for work in the white-collar world (these have included […]

Google just one-upped Apple in a significant way by addressing a problem that’s plaguing U.S. cellphone owners: spam calls. The company’s new Pixel 3 flagship Android smartphone is first to introduce a new call screening feature that leverages the built-in Google Assistant. The screening service transcribes the caller’s request in real-time, allowing you to decide […]

For a few, Luna Display feels like a game changer. I certainly got that feeling testing the tiny red dongle this week. The device’s promise is similar to Duet, but accomplishes the task wirelessly and with higher fidelity than its chief competitor. Launched as a Kickstarter project last year, Luna is now available to everyone, […]

Now that “utility” tokens have become a popular and international way to fund major blockchain projects, a pair of investors are creating a new way to turn tokens into true equities. The investors, Jonathan Nelson and Laura Nelson, have created Hack Fund, an early stage investment vehicle that allows startups to launch what amounts to […]

Shujinko is emerging from stealth today with $2.8 million in seed funding from Unusual Ventures, Defy, Vulcan Capital, PSL Ventures and Vas Ventures.

Waze Carpool, the app designed to connect drivers and commuters, is now available throughout the U.S. with a special focus on connecting Amazon employees. As part of the nationwide rollout announced Wednesday, Waze said the carpool app will be available at 50 Amazon Fulfillment Centers. The company said it’s partnering with cities, businesses, transit agencies and […]

Amazon is debuting a new feature that will allow businesses to use Alexa for booking conference rooms. The addition is part of the Alexa for Business platform, and works with linked calendars from either Google’s G Suite or Microsoft Exchange, as well as over an API, arriving soon. The feature is part of Amazon’s broader […]

Moving air — that’s the through line across most of Dyson’s products. The vacuums, fans, hand dryers, hair driers — at their heart, they all the do the same thing. Same goes for the new Dyson Airwrap, which has figured out a way to leverage vacuum power into hair curling. Here’s how Dyson describes it, […]

French watchmaker Unitam and 3D printing company Stainless teamed up to build a unique 3D printed watch, essentially the first of its kind. The team created the watch case using laser sintering to melt stainless steel 316L powder on a Renishaw AM250 printer. The watch, which uses French-made hands and a Miyota movement, isn’t completely […]

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, I'm in Los Angeles talking to Brian Norgard and Jeff Morris Jr., both of whom may be indirectly responsible for a generation of “Tinder babies.”

Warby Parker is introducing a new collaboration as part of the Pupils Project. In participation with a number of famous New Yorkers, including Rosario Dawson, Lena Dunham, Nikolai Fraiture, Iman, Fran Lebowitz, Humberto Leon, Mary-Louise Parker, Chloë Sevigny, Gloria Steinem, and Michael K. Williams, the company is releasing ten new pairs of frames. All the […]

Front is launching a major revamp today. And it starts with a brand new design. Front is now powered by React for the web and desktop app, which should make it easier to add new features down the road. Front hasn’t pivoted to become something else. At heart, it remains a multiplayer email client. You […]

Parker Conrad likes to save time, even though it’s gotten him in trouble. The former CEO of Zenefits was pushed out of the $4.5 billion human resources startup because he built a hack that let him and employees get faster insurance certifications. But 2.5 years later, he’s back to take the busy work out of […]

As zero-commission stock trading app Robinhood starts preparing to IPO, an engineering investment two years in the making could accelerate its quest for profitability. Most stock broker services have to pay an external clearing house to reconcile trades between buyers and sellers. Now with 6 million accounts up from 4 million just 5 months ago, that […]

Egnyte launched in 2007 just two years after Box, but unlike its enterprise counterpart, which went all-cloud and raised hundreds of millions of dollars, Egnyte saw a different path with a slow and steady growth strategy and a hybrid niche, recognizing that companies were going to keep some content in the cloud and some on […]

If any aliens or technology ingenues were trying to understand what on earth a ‘smart home’ is yesterday, via Google’s latest own-brand hardware launch event, they’d have come away with a pretty confused and incoherent picture. The company’s presenters attempted to sketch a vision of gadget-enabled domestic bliss but the effect was rather closer to […]

Founders Factory out of London is a startup accelerator and incubator which has taken the older US-inspired startup acceleration model and put a European slant on it by going in deep with corporates, who often flounder in the space. After some success out of the UK you would expect them to expand to big markets […]

Accion Systems, the startup aiming to reinvent satellite propulsion with an innovative and tiny new thruster, has attracted significant investment from Boeing's HorizonX Ventures. The $3 million round should give the company a bit of breathing room while it continues to prove and improve its technology.

Nvidia, together with partners like IBM, HPE, Oracle, Databricks and others, is launching a new open-source platform for data science and machine learning today. Rapids, as the company is calling it, is all about making it easier for large businesses to use the power of GPUs to quickly analyze massive amounts of data and then […]

Snapchat needs reasons for teens to come back every day as it struggles to grow amidst competition from Instagram, so it’s capitalizing on its Los Angeles roots. Today Snapchat unveiled its fall slate of a dozen “Original” video shows including its first scripted programs from top producers like Keeping Up With The Kardashians creator Bunim/Murray and […]

Co-working today is a global game that’s played by many more than just WeWork, despite the company’s valuation surging to $20 billion. But, as WeWork increasingly globalizes its focus, the U.S. firm is coming into contact with smaller players who are highly localized in markets with the potential to grow significantly. One such market is […]

Google has lodged its legal appeal against the European Commission’s €4.34 billion (~$5BN) antitrust ruling against its Android mobile OS, according to Reuters — the first step in a process that could keep its lawyers busy for years to come. “We have now filed our appeal of the EC’s Android decision at the General Court of the […]

You thought TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin was all about SaaS, fintech, social, blockchain and all the traditional tech topics? Of course not! I’m excited to announce that Mike Collett from Promus Ventures is going to tell you why you should care about space beyond SpaceX. Arguably, SpaceX is the reason why many people are interested in […]

Not too long ago, the Cloud Foundry Foundation was all about Cloud Foundry, the open source platform as a service (PaaS) project that’s now in use by most of the Fortune 500 enterprises. This project is the Cloud Foundry Application Runtime. A year ago, the Foundation also announced the Cloud Foundry Container Runtime that helps businesses […]

An analysis of the impact of Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, on the adtech industry suggests the regulation has reduced the numbers of ad trackers that websites are hooking into EU visitors. But it also implies that Google may have slightly increased its marketshare in the region — indicating the adtech giant could be winning […]

After years of speculation, some mockery, and more than a little befuddlement, the Magic Leap augmented headset is arriving in the hands of developers and users — and its first product is a somewhat janky piece of magic. After officially announcing the availability of the product for pre-orders last month, the company is pulling back […]

SoftBank is reportedly considering an investment of up to $20 billion in WeWork using capital from its Vision Fund.

Tech startups have found all kinds of ways to lend money to those hampered by either too little or not very good credit. The approach of a nearly two-year-old, 15-person San Francisco-based startup called Divvy Homes is among the more creative we’ve seen, even while we question (for now) whether it’s good over the long […]

Google hardware launches are never spec-fests. The search giant would rather just sit on the sideline while companies like Apple and Samsung battle it out on that front. In fact, numbers like screen resolution, processor speed and battery capacity were conspicuously absent from today’s presentation. Instead, the company seems more content to have hardware serve […]

Once Upon a Farm's business has grown 10x since actress Jennifer Garner signed on as chief brand officer last year.

Like recent Brazilian investment booms focused on fintech innovation and new on-demand business models, there’s been a recent explosion in healthtech startups in Brazil.

Stardew Valley, the hit indie farming game made by one guy in his spare time, is coming to mobile. I've dropped dozens of hours into this charming little spiritual successor to Harvest Moon, and now I know how I'm going to spend my next few plane rides.

If you’re considering making the jump to Google’s newly announced Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL, you’re in the right place. Whether you’re a Pixel 2 owner eyeing greener pastures or a bargain type hunting for a last-gen smartphone that’s still top of the line, comparing new and old is often useful. On specs alone, […]

Baillie Gifford & Co., the second-biggest shareholder of Tesla stock, has taken an interest in Nio, the Chinese electric vehicle automaker that recently became a publicly traded company. Baillie Gifford now owns an 11.44 percent stake in Nio, according to a regulatory filing posted Tuesday. The company disclosed that it had purchased 85.3 million shares, […]

Google unveiled a new lineup of devices today, including the Pixel Slate, a tablet that the company described as the next evolution of Chrome OS — but could also be seen as the company’s answer to both Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Surface. After the presentation, I had a chance to try the Pixel Slate for […]

Enterprise Dropbox users have a useful new feature that some would say is long overdue for the cloud storage company: optical character recognition that automatically transcribes all their images and PDFs. No more rummaging around in your saved photos for a receipt or opening dozens of mysteriously named documents to find the right one. Just search and ye shall find.