Crunch Hype

If you live and work in the Microsoft Office ecosystem but often use a Mac, here is some good news: OneDrive Files On-Demand is now available in public preview for MacOS. Files-On Demand was one of the marquee features of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update. The general idea here is you can store your […]

The Surface Hub 2, the successor to Microsoft’s first set of giant Windows 10 touchscreen displays for collaboration, will launch in Q2 2019, the company announced today. Previously, the company had only said that it was targeting 2019 for the launch. The company also today provided a roadmap beyond that, though. First, it will launch […]

There’s a changing of the guard, and a new strategic partnership, over at Tile, the startup that helps you keep tabs on the location of your things by way of small tracking devices. Today, the company is announcing that CJ Prober — a longtime exec at GoPro who had most recently been the COO, and […]

SiriusXM and Pandora have announced acquisition plans before the stock market opens. SiriusXM is offering to acquire Pandora for $3.5 billion in stock, or $10.14 per share. Pandora would continue to exist as an independent service. For Pandora shareholders, this offer represents a 13.8 percent premium over the volume-weighted average share price of the past […]

Following widespread criticism of the way its service is used to spread false information and news in India, WhatsApp has hired a “grievance officer” for the country. U.S-based Komal Lahiri is the lead who handles complaints about the service from users, law enforcement and other government officials, according to Mint. WhatsApp did not respond to a […]

Yubico, the company behind the popular Yubikey security keys, today announced the launch of its 5 Series keys. The company argues that these new keys, which start at $45, are the first multi-protocol securities keys that supports the FIDO2 standard. With this, Yubico argues, the company will be able to replace password-based authentication, which is […]

Hosting an old-fashioned game night is a welcome break from everyone’s tech dependent lives. Whether you could use party-friendly gear recommendations or ideas for interactive games, we’ve pulled together a combination of some of our favorite picks that will help you show guests a great time.

Uber and Grab have been hit with combined fines of $9.5 million after their merger deal was found to have violated Singapore’s anti-competition laws. Grab acquired (and then merged/closed) Uber’s Southeast Asia business in March, but the Competition Commission of Singapore today declared the deal is “anti-competitive” following a months-long investigation into its impact on […]

Last year, an investor projected that Apple would be spending up to $4.2 billion on original content by 2022, but if the reports coming out now about what that content will look like are correct, the company may want its money back. A new Wall Street Journal article highlights some of the tensions that Apple faces as it looks to […]

Uber may be global but it is very much the alternative in some parts of the world. One such place is Bangladesh — the South Asian country that’s home to 160 million people — where local rival Pathao is backed by Go-Jek and recently raised $10 million. Now Pathao’s closest rival, Shohoz, has also pulled in […]

Celebrated former ProPublica investigative journalists Julia Angwin and Jeff Larson are launching their newest venture, the investigative nonprofit news organization called The Markup, with help from some big donors including Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark. The Markup co-founders Angwin, Larson and executive director Sue Gardner (the former head of the Wikimedia Foundation), are backed by a $20 […]

I’ve long theorized that one’s moral character is inversely proportional to the number of syllables in one’s Starbucks order. (Yes, this is a tech column. We’ll get to that. Have faith.) To which a friend pointed out that what Starbucks offers is control — your drink, exactly how you want it — and the smaller […]

It’s been 10 years since Google took the wraps off the G1, the first Android phone. Since that time the OS has grown from buggy, nerdy iPhone alternative to arguably the most popular (or at least populous) computing platform in the world. But it sure as heck didn’t get there without hitting a few bumps […]

The ongoing saga over the FCC’s handling of public comments to its net neutrality proposal continues after The New York Times sued the organization for withholding of information that it believes could prove there was Russian interference. The Times has filed multiple Freedom of Information Act requests for data on the comments since July 2017, […]

Beau Willimon, the screenwriter and playwright who created Netflix’s “House of Cards”, has turned his attention from Washington, D.C. to outer space in his latest series “The First”. The shows have more in common than I expected. Sure, “The First” is about a future expedition to Mars, not present day political machinations. And instead of […]

Airbnb wants to give the homeowners who power its service the opportunity to own a piece of its business. That’s why, as Axios reports, the $31-billion-valued company has written to the SEC to ask if its rules around security ownership can be revised. Specifically, Airbnb is seeking a change to the SEC’s Rule 701 — which […]

Hard to believe, but Startup Battlefield MENA is just over a week away. We’ve got some of the top founders and investors in the region speaking, including Magnus Olsson of Careem, Imad Kreidieh of Ogero, Mai Medhat of Eventtus, Konstantinos Papamiltiadis of Facebook and Henri Asseily of Leap Ventures, and many more! As we told […]

Sextech entrepreneur and advocate Bryony Cole is planning for a future when entire relationships exist in virtual reality.

A draft executive order circulating around the White House “is not the result of an official White House policymaking process,” according to deputy White House press secretary, Lindsay Walters. According to a report in The Washington Post, Walters denied that White House staff had worked on a draft executive order that would require every federal agency to […]

The Room has been ranked with Plan 9 From Outer Space as a strong contender for the “best” worst movie ever made — and it’s now available in its entirety on YouTube. Written, directed, and starring Tommy Wiseau, The Room belongs in the same category as Plan 9, and Coven (which was immortalized in the 1999 documentary American […]

Comcast has outbid Twenty-First Century Fox for the UK's Sky, a final step in what's been a years-long takeover battle between the two media conglomerates.

Many corporations are pinning their futures on their venture investment portfolios. If you can’t beat startups at the innovation game, go into business with them as financial partners.Though many technology companies have robust venture investment initiatives—Alphabet’s venture funding universe and Intel Capital’s prolific approach to startup investment come to mind—other corporations are just now doubling down on venture investments.

Singapore Blockchain Week happened this past week. While there have been a few announcements from companies, some of the most interesting updates have come from regulators, and specifically, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS). The financial regulator openly discussed its views on cryptocurrency and plans to develop blockchain technology locally. For those who are unfamiliar, Singapore historically […]

Fintech promises to be one of the hottest topics at Disrupt Berlin 2018, and you can take that to the bank — see what we did there? On 29-30 November thousands of attendees will descend on Berlin, and what better way to get your fintech business in front of them than to exhibit in Startup Alley? Oh […]

This week Facebook has launched a major new product play, slotting an algorithmic dating service inside its walled garden as if that’s perfectly normal behavior for an ageing social network. Insert your [dad dancing GIF of choice] right here. Facebook getting into dating looks very much like a mid-life crisis — as a veteran social […]

Renaud Laplanche spent ten years building LendingClub. In the process, he created an industry from scratch. Circumventing conventional banking channels for consumer credit began in 1996 when Chris Larsen started E-LOAN, which ultimately led to Prosper Marketplace. But LendingClub, which Laplanche founded in 2007, was and remains the poster child for the business of marketplace […]

Lime, the 18-month-old, San Francisco-based company whose bright green bicycles and scooters now dot cities throughout the U.S., launched a pilot program in Tacoma, Washington, today, but that tiny victory might have felt short-lived. The reason: on the opposite side of the country, a Lime rider was killed today by an SUV while tooling around Washington […]

The coolest mission you haven't heard of just hit a major milestone: the Japanese Hayabusa 2 probe has reached its destination, the asteroid Ryugu, and just deployed a pair of landers to its surface. Soon it will touch down itself and bring a sample of Ryugu back to Earth! Are you kidding me? That's amazing!

From its glass-lined offices in San Francisco’s leafy Presidio national park, six-year-old Mithril Capital Management has happily flown under the radar. Now it’s leaving altogether and relocating its team to Austin, a spot that, among others the firm had considered, has “enough critical mass of a technical culture, an artisanal culture, an artistic culture, and […]

In the days leading up to TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, The Economist published the cover story, ‘Why Startups Are Leaving Silicon Valley.’ The author outlined reasons why the Valley has “peaked.” Venture capital investors are deploying capital outside the Bay Area more than ever before. High-profile entrepreneurs and investors, Peter Thiel, for example, have left. Rising […]

Polestar debuted its first production EV and previewed its electric car line in New York with the CEO squarely taking aim at Tesla.The Volvo subsidiary pulled the cover off its Polestar 1, which it positioned less as a hybrid and more as a fully electric (gas optional) car to attract fence sitters to EVs.

Twitter said that a “bug” sent user’s private direct messages to third-party developers “who were not authorized to receive them.” The social media giant began warning users Friday of the possible exposure with a message in the app. “The issue has persisted since May 2017, but we resolved it immediately upon discovering it,” the message […]

Instagram tells me Regramming, or the ability to instantly repost someone else’s feed post to your followers like a retweet, is “not happening”, not being built, and not being tested. And that’s good news for all Instagrammers. The denial comes after it initially issued a “no comment” to The Verge’s Casey Newton, who published that […]

TC Sessions: AR/VR on October 18 at UCLA is gearing up to be a great show. Early-bird sales end after today, September 21. Don’t miss out on the biggest savings for this event — book your $99 tickets here before prices go up by $100. The stage will feature some of the industry’s most groundbreaking […]

Back in April we saw that eporta, a London-based B2B interiors marketplace startup, had raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by US investor Canvas Ventures. Eport has digitized the catalogues of furnishing manufacturers and allowed businesses to order direct, cutting out the middle-men. Now London is continuing its obsession with interior […]

It’s been a strong year for tech IPOs so far, and it looks like today’s debut of Farfetch — a UK-based shopping site for luxury fashion — is on trend, so to speak. The company opened trading today — on NYSE under the ticker FTCH — at $27, making for a decent pop of 35 […]

CapitalG, the growth equity arm of Alphabet, has led the $185 million round in Convoy, its first investment in the Seattle-based, tech-enabled trucking network. The round brings Convoy’s total raised to $265 million and values the company at $1 billion. New investors T. Rowe Price and Lone Pine Capital participated in the financing alongside existing […]

The Trump administration’s new cyber strategy out this week isn’t much more than a stringing together of previously considered ideas. In the 40-page document, the government set out its plans to improve cybersecurity, incentivizing change, and reforming computer hacking laws. Election security about a quarter of a page, second only to “space cybersecurity.” The difference […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we worked with an (excellent) skeleton crew. Our own Connie Loizos held down the fort with a guest that knew quite a lot: March Capital’s Jamie Montgomery. There was a healthy blizzard of news to get through, […]

23andMe, IBM and now uBiome is the next tech company to jump into the lucrative multi-billion dollar drug discovery market. The company started out with a consumer gut health test to check whether your intestines carry the right kind of bacteria for healthy digestion but has since expanded to include over 250,000 samples for everything […]

Eight Roads Ventures, the investment arm of financial giant Fidelity International, is moving into Southeast Asia where it sees the potential to plug the later stage investment gap. The firm has funds across the world including the U.S, China and Europe, and it has invested nearly $6 billion in deals over the past decade. The firm […]

Amazon unleashed a flurry of new products this week at a U.S. press event, but halfway across the world, it is getting deeper into physical retail in the Indian market. The U.S. e-commerce giant is buying up 49 percent of More in a deal that sees Amazon partner and PE firm Samara Capital pick up the […]

Popular ad-blocker AdGuard has forcibly reset all of its users’ passwords after it detected hackers trying to break into accounts. The company said it “detected continuous attempts to login to AdGuard accounts from suspicious IP addresses which belong to various servers across the globe,” in what appeared to be a credential stuffing attack. That’s when […]

When Cleo, the London-based “digital assistant” that wants to replace your banking apps, quietly entered the U.S., the company couldn’t have expected to be an instant hit. Many better-funded British startups have failed to “break America.” However, just four months later, the fintech upstart counts 350,000 users across the pond — claiming more than 600,000 […]

The Tesla Model 3 has had its share of struggles, from CEO Elon Musk’s well-documented production hell to more recent logistic “nightmares” that have slowed deliveries to customers. There’s one area where the Tesla shines: crash safety tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. And the Tesla Model 3 is no exception. Check out the videos […]

Didn’t get your fill of Amazon news among the 70 or so announcements at today’s Alexa event? Good news, Audible’s got something to add to the deluge. The Amazon-owned audiobook site just announced the availability of its Apple Watch app. The offering brings pretty much what you’d expect. You can listen to audiobooks and manage […]

Researchers at the prestigious Salk Institute are reporting that they have managed to map the molecular structure of a CRISPR enzyme that could allow scientists to more precisely manipulate functions within cells. Over the past several years, CRISPR-Cas9 has seized the public imagination for its ability to edit genetic code in a way that may correct defects inside […]

After repeatedly missing self-imposed deadlines for progress on its wireless charging-at-a-distance phone case, uBeam’s CEO Meredith Perry has decided to shift out of the CEO position and into a board member and senior advisor role. She’d founded the company in 2011 from her dorm room and brought in over $40 million in funding by selling […]

One of the bigger surprises at today’s big Amazon event was something the company didn’t announce. After a couple of years of speculation that the company was working on its own version of the HomePod and Google Max, we still don’t have a truly premium Echo. That’s due, in part, to the fact that Amazon […]

Along with the launch of the all-new Echo Show, the Alexa-powered device with a screen, Amazon also introduced a new design language for developers who want to build voice skills that include multimedia experiences. Called Alexa Presentation Language, or APL, developers will be able to build voice-based apps that also include things like images, graphics, […]