Crunch Hype

Nintendo is nearing its 130th birthday, and the company is once again in the midst of major changes as it embraces mobile platforms and online services. But Nintendo of America's president Reggie Fils-Aime says that should come as no surprise: "We reinvent ourselves every 5 or 10 years. We have to. It's in our DNA."

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the working group that has long offered such euphonious, IEEE-defined names for Wi-Fi protocols such as 802.11ab and 802.11n, has finally decided enough was enough with the numbers and letters and such. Their decision? The next Wi-Fi version will be Wi-Fi 6 — and sucks to your ass-mar if you don’t like […]

Scientists interested in cannabis as a subject for pharmaceutical studies may find an unlikely new home for their research into the plant, its byproducts and biochemistry aboard the International Space Station. Yes, weed is going to space thanks to the work of a small Lexington, Ky.-based startup called Space Tango. The company makes a “clean […]

Nearly a year after German fintech startup N26 announced that it would launch its service in the U.K., the company is launching in the U.K. N26 is already quite popular in the Eurozone, with more than 1.5 million customers. In this new market, it will face tough competition from existing players, such as Revolut, Monzo, […]

Kobo's latest e-reader is a complete about-face from its anonymous, cheap, and highly practical Clara HD; the Forma is big, expensive, and features a bold — not to say original — design. It's clearly meant to take on the Kindle Oasis and e-reader fans for whom price is no object.

Over the years, Hadoop, the once high-flying open-source platform, gave rise to many companies and an ecosystem of vendors emerged. It was long believed that some major companies would emerge from the pack, and, sure enough, Hortonworks went public in 2014. Cloudera followed three years later, but the market slowed down and the two companies […]

Suppose the next time you go to a new doctor’s office, you wouldn’t have to balance a clipboard on your knee, write down your whole medical history, remember the five-syllable name of every medication you’re taking and list all your allergies.

That’s two on the front and three on the rear. LG’s already teased the upcoming flagship quite a bit in the lead up to today’s announcement. Understandably so. It’s hard for a company like this to stand out in a world full of Apples and Samsungs — even with all of those lenses. The South […]

Along with the new V40 ThinQ, LG showed off this odd little addition. It’s true that hybrid smartwatches are no longer a novelty in and of themselves at this point, but the Watch W7 takes a bizarre approach to the category. In fact, when the company first discussed the product at a briefing this week, […]

We’ve got some new faces around TechCrunch, some of them real fresh and some who you might know. Though you might have seen some of their bylines around the site I thought it would be nice to officially welcome them to the site. First up is Kirsten Korosec, who leads our transportation and mobility reporting. […]

A beloved regional burger chain in the Pacific Northwest is the latest fast food company to suffer a major data breach. Burgerville, headquartered in Vancouver, Wash., disclosed today that any customers who used a credit or debit card from September 2017 to September 2018 at any of its locations may have had their card details […]

KZen, a company run by former TC editor Ouriel Ohayon, has raised $4 million in seed to build a “better wallet,” obviously the elusive Holy Grail in the crypto world. Benson Oak Ventures, Samsung Next, Elron Ventures invested. Ohayon, who has worked at Internet Lab and founded TechCrunch France and Appsfire, wanted to create an […]

Helping friends meet up offline has been a massive missed opportunity for Facebook . Whether because the brand is too creepy or the politely opt-in 2015 rollout of its location sharing feature wasn’t creepy enough, Facebook Nearby Friends never quite took off. Only 103 of my 1120 friends in San Francisco have it turned on. […]

An updated version of the Twitter mobile app will allow users to gain more control over their data usage – similar to how the Twitter Lite app designed for emerging markets works. Now, instead of having to download a separate app in order to limit data consumption or manually adjust various settings, users will be […]

In 2015, the San Francisco-based education platform MasterClass was founded to provide everyone access to “genius,” whether it be in filmmaking, directing, book writing, cooking, tennis, basketball, comedy, acting, screenwriting, photography — even producing electronic music. Toward that end, MasterClass, which is now selling a $180 all-you-can-eat yearly subscription, currently offers hours of instructional insights […]

On the heels of Tinder’s launch of a Bumble-like feature in India, which allows women to initiative the conversations, Bumble is today formally announcing its plans for an expansion into India. The company says it has been building up a local team in the region over the past nine months and defining its strategy. The […]

Talkdesk, the provider of cloud-based contact center software, has raised $100 million in new funding from Viking Global Investors and DFJ.

Google today is launching a major visual redesign of its Assistant experience on phones. While the original vision of the Assistant focused mostly on voice, half of all interactions with the Assistant actually include touch. So with this redesign, Google acknowledges that and brings more and larger visuals to the Assistant experience. If you’ve used […]

Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has today been announced as the keynote speaker at a European data protection conference taking place in Brussels later this month — at a time when US lawmakers are asking tech giants outright if they’ll support “EU-like” privacy rules to shield US consumers from platform power. For a week this month Europe’s data […]

We’ve just wrapped up Startup Battlefield MENA in Beirut, Lebanon. Throughout the day, 15 companies pitched their ideas, demonstrated their technology and answered questions. We took the feedback from all our expert judges and chose five teams to compete in the finals. Then after another round of pitches and Q&A, our finals judges selected a […]

Though some of the biggest names in tech are wholly focused on getting consumers to strap into VR, there has been an increasing amount of movement in companies adopting virtual reality to help train employees. STRIVR, one of the VR training startups leading this movement, announced today that they’ve pulled in $16 million in a […]

The patent system is broken — there are too many ways to list here, really. The problems surrounding prior art are certainly among them, and a team of high profile companies and organizations are joining forces to address some of the these with the Prior Art Archive. The database is a collaboration between MIT’s Media […]

I haven’t seen a virtual reality glove system that also includes a suitcase-sized pneumatic box accessory before, but then again there aren’t too many VR peripherals that have delivered quite the depth of immersion that the HaptX system did. Today, HaptX announced the release of their Gloves development kit that will allow its users to […]

Upwork, the rebranded merger of oDesk and Elance, debuted on Nasdaq this morning, after dropping its S-1 about four weeks ago. Shares opened at $23.00, which represents a 53% jump — shares were priced at $15 before the opening bell by investors, a significant uptick from the company’s revised projection of $12 to $14, which […]

Accel has hired Maya Noeth to lead its consumer growth investing efforts. The firm typically promotes from within; Noeth is its first outside hire in over two years.

For the last two and a half years, Iron Ox has been working on perfecting its agricultural robots to tend its indoor farms. After first testing its systems on a small scale, the company is opening its first fully autonomous production farm, with plans to start selling its produce soon. The farm is currently growing […]

In a few hours, millions of Americans will get a test emergency “Presidential Alert” message sent to their phone — a simulation in case the president ever needs to reach to entire country in a national emergency. At 2:18pm ET, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will send a short alert, saying: “THIS IS A TEST […]

Ryan Hoover Contributor Share on Twitter Ryan Hoover is the founder of Product Hunt and host of Product Hunt Radio. More posts by this contributor Product Hunt Radio: Finding the world’s lost Einsteins and putting an end to aging Product Hunt Radio: Online communities and the dark side of the web In this episode of […]

Facebook is celebrating the two-year anniversary of its Craigslist competitor, Facebook Marketplace, with the launch of new features powered by A.I. Specifically, the social network says it’s adding price range suggestions and auto-categorization features to make selling easier, and it says it’s testing camera features that would use A.I. to make product recommendations. Automating price […]

Palo Alto Networks launched in 2005 in the age of firewalls. As we all know by now, the enterprise expanded beyond the cozy confines of a firewall long ago and vendors like Palo Alto have moved to securing data in the cloud now too. To that end, the company announced its intent to pay $173 […]

At CES, media software maker Plex said it would this year add support for podcasts, web series and other digital media to its platform. It then rolled out podcasts this May, and now it’s introducing its own curated collection of web series. The company today is launching Plex Web Shows in beta, which will offer […]

Brandless is only a little over a year old, but the ecommerce platform is already working on IRL channels to market to and connect with its customers. From October 24 to November 4, Brandless will be hosting a pop-up shop within the Milk Building in NYC, at 459 W. 14th Street. This is Brandless’ second […]

GoodTime, the algorithmically enhanced interview process management platform, has raised $5 million in a new round of funding led by Bullpen Capital. The company uses natural language processing to link interview candidates with the right interviewers inside an organization. The idea is to make the hiring process run more smoothly for large organizations and give […]

Honda will commit $2.75 billion as part of an agreement with GM and its self-driving technology subsidiary Cruise to develop and produce a new kind of autonomous vehicle. As part of the agreement, Honda will invest $2 billion over the next 12 years into the effort. Honda is also making a direct equity investment of $750 […]

You’d be forgiven if you thought Amazon was finished announcing new hardware after last month’s massive Echo event. The retail giant has at least a few more announcements up its sleeve, starting with updates to the Fire TV line. The new TV Stick 4K and refreshed Alexa Voice Remote are up for pre-order today. At […]

Jigsaw, the division owned by Google parent Alphabet, has revealed Intra, a new app aimed at protecting users from state-sponsored censorship. Intra is a new app that aims to prevent DNS manipulation attacks. Whenever you visit a website, the easy-to-remember web address is converted to a less-than-memorable IP address — often over an unsecured connection. […]

Today in lovely Beirut, Lebanon TechCrunch held its first Startup Battlefield in the country. Over 700 people watched the show on site, which featured speakers from throughout the Middle East and 15 startups competing in Startup Battlefield. A winner will be chosen at the end of the day and they will walk away with a […]

It’s been just over four months since Europe’s tough new privacy framework came into force. You might believe that little of substance has changed for big tech’s data-hungry smooth operators since then — beyond firing out a wave of privacy policy update spam, and putting up a fresh cluster of consent pop-ups that are just […]

Truecaller, the app that helps screen spam calls and messages, is becoming a chat app as it continues to develop into a social service. The company announced today that it is introducing a chat feature to its Android and iOS apps, although it is already live for Android beta users. The move follows Truecaller’s recent foray […]

Hopper — a mobile-only travel booking app cofounded by a former Expedia executive in Montreal, Canada that uses artificial intelligence to help you search for and book hotels and flights — has gained a little elevation of its own today. The startup has raised another $100 million in funding, money that it plans to use to […]

Indonesia’s ride-sharing startup Go-Jek plans to land in Singapore, its arch-rival Grab’s HQ, as soon as this month as its regional expansion program gains speed, TechCrunch has come to understand. Go-Jek has grown to become a $5 billion business that’s backed by the likes of Google and Tencent without venturing out of Indonesia, where its […]

Instagram just got a new CEO this week after the fairly controversial exit of its founding duo and it is underfire for a major security issue. The last thing it needed is an outage — but that’s exactly what happened today. Between the hours of midnight and 1am at Facebook HQ, issues preventing the service from working […]

Everybody has a say when it comes to helping refugees and asylum seekers in Europe. That’s why Anne Kjær Riechert co-founded the ReDI School of Digital Integration to harness the expertise of the tech community and help migrants. Riechert is coming to TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin to tell us the story behind this school. As a […]

French startup Alan is expanding beyond health insurance by offering telemedicine appointments directly from Alan . The company is partnering with Livi, Kry’s French subsidiary. While a handful of European countries already let you talk to a doctor using video calls, France’s national health system just started allowing remote appointments. If you need to renew […]

This year has seen a number of tech companies that are majority or substantially owned by Chinese giant going public in the U.S. Baidu’s iQiyi service, Xiaomi-backed Huami and Viomi are a few examples, and now Tencent Music — the music division of Tencent, as you can guess — is making its run after plenty of […]

We’re kicking off Startup Battlefield MENA here in Beirut, where 15 startups will be taking the stage, along with speakers from Facebook (our partner on the event through its FB Start program), Instabug, Eventus, Wuzzuf, Careem and Myki. For those of you who can’t be here in person, check back on TechCrunch later today, where […]

(Updated below with Tesla’s statement.) A federal judge denied Tesla’s motion to dismiss charges in a lawsuit claiming that it mistreated foreign workers. This means the automaker will have to defend itself at trial against allegations that foreign workers at its Fremont factory worked shifts that violated forced labor laws and were threatened with deportation […]

This year has been a breakout one for micro-financing startups in Southeast Asia, which are becoming among the most funded within the region’s fintech space. Next in line to raise capital is First Circle, an SME-lending service that’s based in the Philippines which has pulled in $26 million as it begins to consider regional expansion […]

Following approval from the city of Santa Monica, Uber is deploying bikes and its first set of scooters via JUMP, the bikeshare startup it acquired earlier this year. Although these are Xiaomi Ninebot scooters, Uber says it’s branding them with JUMP for the sake of consistency when it comes to its personal electric vehicle services. “JUMP […]

David Byttow, co-founder of Secret, the defunct anonymous social network that once gained notoriety for serving as the tech industry’s burn book, announced today that he will join Snap. The hire is noteworthy because before Secret shut down in 2015, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel tried to acqui-hire its team but decided the asking price was […]