Crunch Hype

Mary Meeker is leaving Kleiner Perkins to build a new fund and she's taking the firm's growth team with her, as first reported by Recode. Meeker, widely known for her annual Internet Trends Report, joined the firm in 2010 after two decades as a managing director at Morgan Stanley. She was well-established as a tech analyst on Wall Street. In Silicon Valley, she quickly built a reputation as one of the best.

It’s been over a year since highly classified exploits built by the National Security Agency were stolen and published online. One of the tools, dubbed EternalBlue, can covertly break into almost any Windows machine around the world. It didn’t take long for hackers to start using the exploits to run ransomware on thousands of computers, […]

Elvie, a Berlin-based startup known best for its connected Kegel trainer, is jumping into the breast pump business with a new $480 hands-free system you can slip into your bra. Even with all the innovation in baby gear, breast pumps have mostly sucked (pun intended) for new moms for the past half a century. My […]

Lyft is on a bit of a Tesla poaching spree while Tesla employees are exiting in droves. The latest ex-Tesla employee to join Lyft is Cal Lankton, who most recently led the development of Tesla’s electric vehicle charging network up until May. At Lyft, Lankton will serve as VP of infrastructure operations where he will […]

TechCrunch is heading to UCLA on October 18 and we’ve assembled some of the AR/VR industry’s most prescient founders, investors and executives to chat about the startups and trends driving virtual and augmented reality in 2018. The world’s top tech companies have heavily invested in AR/VR and are persistent in broadcasting the technologies’ potential to blur […]

Things have been pretty quiet on the Amazon HQ2 front. Earlier this year, the online retail giant announced that it had whittled the list of potential host cities for a second headquarters down to 20, but beyond that, the company hasn’t shared much. Looks like we’ll be getting an answer before end of year, however. […]

3D Hubs, like MakeXYZ, was a community-based 3D printing service that let anyone with a printer sell their prints online. Founded in the heyday of the 3D printing revolution, the service let thousands of makers gather a little cash for making and mailing prints on their home 3D printers. Now, however, the company has moved […]

CBS All Access, the network’s over-the-top streaming service for cord cutters, will now let subscribers save shows for offline viewing. The feature, “Download & Play,” is only available to those on CBS’s Commercial Free plan, not those on the cheaper, ad-supported tier. It also supports a range of programming, including CBS All Access Originals, reality […]

Drivers of new Mercedes-Benz A-Class vehicles will soon be able to talk to their cars. And the cars will respond. Ask the car to turn on the heads-up display or for sports scores. Say you’re hungry and it will suggest restaurants. The new in-vehicle assistant utilizes local and cloud data to provide drivers plenty to […]

The DelFly is a super light, super agile robot that flies like a real insect. By using a quad-wing flapping system, this odd little bot can flit, hover, and land like a fruit fly. Part of a research project at the Delft University of Technology, this is the latest version of the DelFly and it […]

Netflix on Thursday announced a new program aimed at helping Netflix Originals artists and producers select the right tools for delivering their content to its streaming service. With the launch of the Netflix Post Technology Alliance, as the program is called, Netflix will now identify products from vendors that meet technical and delivery specifications today, and […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. After a long run of having guests climb aboard each week, we took a pause on that front, bringing together three of our regular hosts instead: Connie Loizos, Danny Chrichton, and myself. Despite the fact that there were […]

Remember 3D Touch? Unless you’re a power iOS user you probably don’t. Or, well, you’d rather not. It’s been clear for some time now that the technology Apple lauded at its 2015 unveiling as the “next generation of multi-touch” most certainly wasn’t. For the mainstream iPhone user it’s just that annoying thing that gets in […]

In the realm of rapidly evolving technologies, mobility is without doubt one of the fastest-moving. And that’s why we’re searching for up to five of the most promising early-stage mobile tech startups to apply as a TechCrunch Top Pick at Disrupt Berlin 2018 on 29-30 November. Whether you’re focused on drones, autonomous vehicles, sensors, apps, […]

Singapore’s Golden Gate Ventures has announced the close of its newest (and third) fund for Southeast Asia at a total of $100 million. The fund hit a first close in the summer, as TechCrunch reported at the time, and now it has reached full capacity. Seven-year-old Golden Gate said its LPs include existing backers Singapore […]

Last week, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt, regulator Jina Choi, who heads the SEC’s wide-reaching San Francisco unit, declined to confirm or deny that the SEC is investigating Tesla CEO Elon Musk for possible fraud. Said Choi, “I can’t tell you about any particular investigation in our office. And I can’t confirm or deny the existence […]

Nintendo is at last (at last!) bringing some new content to the Switch! Yes! In a Nintendo Direct, the company let fly a number of games and a couple of original titles. The biggest Nintendo-produced titles we had glimpses of are a new Animal Crossing in development for the Switch and Luigi’s Mansion 3. We […]

The news that Nintendo would be adding NES games to the Switch as part of its paid online service had a mixed reception, but the company has completely made up for this controversial decision by releasing wireless NES controllers with which to play those games. At $60 they’re a bit steep, but come on. You […]

The iPhone XR arrived like an afterthought. No surprise, really. Apple’s always been one to lead with its best foot forward — the latest, greatest and, quite literally, the largest. Projecting the life on the bleeding edge is a cornerstone of the company’s image, market share and stock price. The iPhone XR isn’t that. In […]

A nasty legal battle is set to play out between two former Uber executives. Eric Alexander, the ride-hailing company’s former president of business in Asia-Pacific, has filed suit against former Uber PR chief Rachel Whetstone . Alexander blames Whetstone for his firing from Uber in June 2017, claiming her “grossly misleading statements” both internally at Uber and […]

Twitch, the Amazon-owned streaming platform, has brought on its first head of diversity and inclusion, as well as a new chief financial officer and chief human resources officer. Katrina Jones, who will start next month as Twitch’s head of diversity and inclusion, is the former head of diversity at Vimeo. At Vimeo, Jones created the […]

The last few months haven’t been easy for crypto investors. Following the dizzying highs of crypto trading late last year, which saw Bitcoin reach a peak of $19,276 and a market cap of $323 billion and Ether reach $1,152 with a market cap of more than $112 billion, prices have crashed. Today, Bitcoin trades at […]

Looking for funding as a startup in Latin America is a lot like looking for a watering hole in the middle of the desert. You know it’s out there, but finding it in time is a life or death situation.

Watching the current price madness is scary. Bitcoin is falling and rising in $500 increments with regularity and Ethereum and its attendant ICOs are in a seeming freefall with a few “dead cat bounces” to keep things lively. What this signals is not that crypto is dead, however. It signals that the early, elated period […]

Microsoft today announced that is has acquired Lobe, a startup that lets you build machine learning models with the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface. Microsoft plans to use Lobe, which only launched into beta earlier this year, to build upon its own efforts to make building AI models easier, though, for the time being, […]

The incredible agility of the common house or fruit fly puts every drone and robot to shame, but devices inspired by them are beginning to catch up. A new four-winged flapping robot not only successfully imitates the fruit fly's hyper-agile flying method, but can travel for up to a kilometer before running out of juice.

If you’re looking for a smart display that’s powered by the Google Assistant, you now have two choices: the Lenovo Smart Display and the JBL Link View. Lenovo was first out of the gate with its surprisingly stylish gadget, but it also left room for improvement. JBL, given its heritage as an audio company, is putting […]

Adobe could be shopping for another piece of the digital marketing puzzle, as reports surfaced today that the company might be in talks with Vista Equity Partners to buy Marketo, a company the private equity firm purchased in May 2016 for $1.8 billion in cash. Reuters was first to report the rumor. While the report […]

Facebook has quietly built and deployed an artificial intelligence programming tool called SapFix that scans code, automatically identifies bugs, tests different patches and suggests the best ones that engineers can choose to implement. Revealed today at Facebook’s @Scale engineering conference, SapFix is already running on Facebook’s massive code base and the company plans to eventually […]

Shift Technologies, an online marketplace for used cars, has closed a Series D financing round of more than $140 million in equity and debt. The round, which consists of about $70 million in debt and $71 million in equity, was led by automotive retailer Lithia Motors. Bryan DeBoer, CEO and president of Lithia, will join Shift’s […]

What once sounded like science fiction is now a reality: creating almost-perfectly faked videos of people saying things they never did. Surprise: Now they’re a reality, thanks to modern computing power and the power to instantly share it on the world’s social stage. But U.S. lawmakers are worried that these faked videos could be used […]

Welp. After making a show of keeping the headphone jack around for a few extra generations, OnePlus is finally succumbing to the inevitable. The company tweeted an image of USB-C headphones and confirmed that the port will bite the dust on the upcoming 6T. “You’ve got to make decisions that optimize the user experience, and […]

Months after an Uber self-driving vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, the ride-hailing giant has announced it's adding a new engineering hub in Toronto and expanding its autonomous research team as it refocuses its self-driving car efforts.

Almost exactly one year after announcing its Series A, website building platform Strikingly said today that it has raised a $10 million Series A+. The new round was led by Cathay Capital, with participation from CAS Holding, the lead investor in Strikingly’s Series A. This brings Strikingly’s total funding so far to $17.5 million. Co-founder and […]

YouTube Kids’ latest update is giving parents more control over what their kids watch. Following a change earlier this year that allowed parents to limit viewing options to human-reviewed channels, YouTube today is adding another feature that will give parents the ability to explicitly whitelist every channel or video they want to be available to […]

Tyler Cowen, who I interviewed here, is a fascinating economist. Part pragmatist and part dreamer, he has been researching and writing about the future for a long time in books and his blog, Marginal Revolution. Now he and his university, George Mason, are putting some money where his mouth is. Cowen and the team at […]

In a tweet this morning, Amazon founder (and the world’s richest man) Jeff Bezos announced that he and his wife were creating a $2 billion fund to finance a network of nonprofit preschools and donate funds to organizations helping homeless families. “The Day 1 Families Fund will issue annual leadership awards to organizations and civic […]

Following reports that Amazon is preparing to launch a new device that would allow Fire TV owners to record live TV, Dish’s AirTV has just done the same. The company announced the launch of a “Local Channels DVR” feature for AirTV customers that lets users watch and record live TV both in and outside the […]

iHeartMedia has agreed to acquire Stuff Media, the company that owns the HowStuffWorks podcasting business. The companies did not disclose the financial terms of the deal, but both the Wall Street Journal and Variety are reporting that the acquisition price was $55 million. According to the announcement, Stuff Media podcasts will retain their branding and […]

The Danish Supreme Court has upheld large fines issued to several Uber drivers for operating without a taxi license, at a time when the ride-hailing giant was still running its non-licensed p2p driver UberPop service in the market. The decision could mean more than a thousand additional Uber drivers who sold rides in Denmark could […]

Cloud services — where our data, apps and computing power are all being managed in servers owned by others, many miles from where we are sitting — have taken off like a rocket in the decade with the rise of smaller devices, but in the business world, hybrid solutions — mixing cloud with on-premise architectures […]

In the 1990s when the web was young, companies like Yahoo, created directories of web pages to help make them more discoverable. Hacera wants to bring that same idea to blockchain, and today it announced the launch of the Hacera Network Registry. CEO Jonathan Levi says that blockchains being established today risk being isolated because people […]

Sometimes fake news lives inside of Facebook as photos and videos designed to propel misinformation campaigns, instead of off-site on news articles that can generate their own ad revenue. To combat these politically rather than financially-motivated meddlers, Facebook has to be able to detect fake news inside of images and the audio that accompanies video […]

Walmart is ramping up its grocery delivery business on the international stage with today’s announcement that it has acquired the crowdsourced, on-demand delivery marketplace Cornershop for $225 million. The rapidly growing service offers on-demand delivery from supermarkets, pharmacies and specialty food retailers in Mexico and Chile, which will continue following the deal’s close, Walmart says. […]

If you are a woman who has used the internet to buy something, particularly if you are a woman who has used the internet to buy something in the Bay Area, there’s a very high likelihood you have seen ads for Rothy’s everywhere you go on social media, particularly Facebook. In fact, they’ve likely been following […]

Mapillary, the Swedish startup that wants to take on Google and others in mapping the world by way of a crowdsourced database of street-level imagery, is taking an interesting step in the development of its platform. The company is now working with Amazon, and specifically its Rekognition API, to detect and read text in Mapillary’s […]

PlayVS, the startup bringing an e-sports infrastructure to the high school level, has today announced that it will partner with Riot’s League of Legends for its beta season. High school students across five states, including Connecticut, Georgia, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, will be able to sign up to play for their school in Season […]

Jet.com, the e-commerce site Walmart acquired in 2016 for $3 billion, is relaunching itself today with an upgraded look and assortment, as well as a stronger focus on serving the needs of shoppers in urban metros. The site’s updated catalog now features an assortment that’s more relevant to city shoppers’ interests across categories like grocery, […]

Themed collections of user generated content chosen by news publishers for viewing on and off Snapchat are the teen social network’s next great hope for relevance. Today Snap launches Curated Our Stories with the help of 20 partners like CNN, Cosmopolitan, Lad Bible, and NowThis. Instead of sifting through and selecting submissions to Our Story […]

After selling their ridesharing startup, 99, to Didi Chuxing for $1 billion last year, Ariel Lambrecht and Renato Freitas didn’t waste any time throwing their hats back in the ring. Months after their big exit, the pair joined forces with Eduardo Musa, who spent two decades in the bicycle industry, to start another São Paulo-based mobility startup. […]