Crunch Hype

End-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail has named one of the attackers behind a sustained distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) it suffered earlier this summer. The attack took its email service offline for up to several minute long stretches at a time, even with mitigation measures in place. It says the UK’s National Crime Agency […]

British Airways has confirmed a data breach. The London-based airline, the largest in the UK, did not disclose much about the breach, only that hackers stole customer data from its website, ba.com. In a statement, BA said that the “personal and financial details” of customers who made bookings on BA’s site or app between August […]

GreyOrange, a Singapore-headquartered firm that develops robots for warehouses, has pulled in a $140 million Series C funding round as it targets more expansion and growth. The company was started in 2011. Today it has five regional offices across the world — covering India, Singapore, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. — three R&D centers and more than 60 […]

As the shadow of SoftBank (and its $100 billion fund) looms large over the investment landscape, Sequoia Capital is pushing the upper limits of the checks it’s willing to write to global growth-stage companies up to $1 billion. With a B. That’s the word from Sequoia’s global managing partner Doug Leone speaking onstage at Disrupt […]

You may remember how Uber laid out its ambitions to become a multi-modal transportation company back in April with the announcement of Uber Rent, preceded by a $200 million acquisition of bike-share startup JUMP. Now, Uber is making it easier to access those modalities with the addition of Mode Switch, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced […]

PagerDuty, the popular service that helps businesses monitor their tech stacks, manage incidents and alert engineers when things go sideways, today announced that it has raised a $90 million Series D round at a valuation of $1.3 billion. With this, PagerDuty, which was founded in 2009, has now raised well over $170 million. The round […]

It’s been a slow year for Apple hardware. The company has traditionally done a good job spreading announcements throughout the calendar, but aside from an iPad event in Chicago and a MacBook refresh a few months back, there’s been little news out of the company. Even this summer’s WWDC was utterly devoid of hardware news. […]

In a fascinating study by researchers at Cardiff University and MIT, we learn that robots can develop prejudices when working together. The robots, which ran inside a teamwork simulator, expressed prejudice against other robots not on their team. In short, write the researchers, “groups of autonomous machines could demonstrate prejudice by simply identifying, copying and […]

MasterClass, the website that brings celebrity-taught classes to the public, like tennis lessons from Serena Williams and photography instruction from Annie Leibovitz, has raised $80 million to expand internationally. The Series D funding, led by IVP, will also be used to bring more celebrities to MasterClass. The company currently offers 39 classes, with plans to […]

For parents who grew-up with dial-up connections and tape players, the high-speed, digital social lives of their teens can be a mystery. Today, both the good and destructive aspects of social interactions are taking place behind screens on apps like Instagram . To help parents navigate these online environments Instagram released Thursday a parents guide […]

Bumble doesn’t want you to delete your account when you get into a relationship, go on vacation, or just need a break from your phone. So today it’s launching a Snooze button that lets you stop showing up to people swiping through potential matches for a day, three, a week, or indefinitely. You’ll also get […]

Future Family, the startup offering more affordable plans for fertility services like IVF and egg freezing, is switching its model from small loans for these services to subscriptions. Fertility treatments are out of reach for most middle-income people in the U.S. The typical costs range from $12,000 to $20,000 for IVF, plus another few thousand […]

Ford released the first image of a Mustang-inspired electric crossover that it plans to bring to market in 2020. The teaser image doesn’t offer a lot of detail. The image is just a sketch of the vehicle’s backside, which shows at least a leaning toward the Mustang profile. But it’s important because it marks the […]

Good news if you’re into hacking your car, you probably won’t void your warranty. The electric car giant confirmed the move in a tweet this week. Tesla’s product security policy now says that if, through “good-faith security research” you brick your car, the company will reflash the software over-the-air or at a service center. It’s […]

Amazon’s Fire tablets have been doing the Alexa thing for a while now, slowly improving the experience update by update. A new version of the Fire HD 8 tablet takes everything a step further with the addition of an always-on, fully hands-free assistant experience. When the setting is enabled, you can summon Alexa, even with […]

The U.S. government has issued sanctions against a North Korean individual and an entity over historical cyberattacks, which wreaked billions of dollars in damages. In a statement, the U.S. Treasury named North Korean programmer Park Jin Jyok for working on behalf of Pyongyang for his involvement in carrying out several cyberattacks against U.S. and global […]

At TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2018, BMW today premiered its digital personal assistant for its cars, the aptly named BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant. But you won’t have to say “Hey, BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant” to wake it up. You can give it any name you want. The announcement comes only a few weeks after BMW also […]

Yesterday was a blast, but there’s no reason to rest on our laurels. Disrupt SF 2018 Day 2 holds plenty in store for us. We’ll hear from Priscilla Chan, Dara Khosrowshahi, Reid Hoffman, Doug Leone and many more. First up, Dieter May from BMW with a global product announcement. Then, this afternoon, we’ll check out […]

You can now control the Xbox from Alexa and Cortana. Microsoft announced his morning it’s introducing a new way to interact with Xbox One using voice commands, by way of an Xbox Skill that works with both Alexa and Cortana, across platforms. The skill will allow users to launch games, adjust the volume, start and […]

In a move aimed at upping standards across biometric user verification systems, the industry consortium, Fido Alliance, has launched a certification program for biometrics systems. “The goal of the Biometric Certification Component Program is to provide a framework for the certification of biometric subsystems that can in turn be integrated into FIDO Certified authenticators,” it writes on its […]

Microsoft wants to make life easier for enterprise customers. Starting today, it is committing to fix any custom applications that may break as a result of updates to Windows 10 or the Office 365 product suite. Most large companies have a series of custom applications that play a crucial role inside their organizations. When you […]

Walmart announced on Wednesday a new last-mile delivery pilot program, called Spark Delivery, which focuses on fulfilling customers’ online grocery orders. The retailer is working with delivery logistics platform Bringg, a company that offers an Uber-like or Amazon-like level of visibility to retailers’ delivery operations. Also similar to Uber, Walmart’s Spark delivery program relies on […]

Over the past 20 years, China has now grown into one of the largest consumer technology markets, with thousands of startups and funding rivaling Silicon Valley.

Lyft launched its scooter business in Denver on Thursday, the first market for the company as it expands beyond ride-hailing and into other means of transportation. Lyft is one of a handful of companies to receive permits from city officials to operate a dockless scooter or bike-share business. Lyft has 250 scooters available for customers […]

European regulators have given the green light to Apple’s December 2017 acquisition of music and image recognition discovery firm Shazam. Apple Music is the second largest music streaming service in Europe, after Spotify . While Shazam offers what has been described as “a leading music recognition app” in the region (and globally). TechCrunch broke the […]

Another tech IPO is coming around the corner in what has been a strong year for startups taking the plunge and going public. Upwork — a marketplace connecting 375,000 freelance developers, writers, marketers and others with close to half a million clients — announced a plan to list on the Nasdaq exchange to trade under the […]

Skydio launched their self-flying R1 drone a few months back, now the startup is launching a developer platform that will allow users to design and share their own skills for the device, potentially opening it up to a lot of new use cases. Alongside the platform launch, Skydio has also shared that they sold out […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor South Africa’s Yoco raises $16 million to boost digital services to small businesses African tech leaders Fope Adelowo, Ken Njoroge, Tayo Oviosu to speak at Disrupt SF Nigerian digital […]

Episerver, the Irvine, California-based company which provides services for marketers to manage content, was bought by Insight Venture Partners for a cool $1.1 billion from the private equity firm Accel-KKR. The company said it would use the money to fuel its plans for global expansion “Episerver is at the center of a global digital transformation […]

Dreamforce, Salesforce’s massive customer conference is coming later this month to San Francisco, but the news is starting already well ahead of the event. Today, the company announced updates to its core Sales Cloud with an emphasis toward automation and integration. For starters, the company wants to simplify inside phone sales, giving the team not […]

Imagine Peloton-style courses streamed to a smart mirror, and you’ve got a pretty close approximation of what Mirror is bringing to market today. The New York-based startup came out of stealth onstage today at TechCrunch Disrupt to show its self-titled flagship product to the world. It’s an intriguing product that turns the Peloton concept on […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor South Africa’s Yoco raises $16 million to boost digital services to small businesses African tech leaders Fope Adelowo, Ken Njoroge, Tayo Oviosu to speak at Disrupt SF South African […]

Chinese Internet giant Tencent has announced it’s bringing in a new system of age checks to its video games which will be linked to a national public security database — in an effort to reliably identify minors so it can limit how long children can play its games. The new real name-based registration system will […]

ShipBob has raised a $40 million Series C to assist small direct-to-consumer e-commerce businesses with streamlining the fulfillment process, so it's possible for them to maintain a well-managed inventory while getting orders out as quickly as possible.

So you thought group-buying was dead?! Not in Southeast Asia where Fave, a company that aims to connect local merchants with customers using discount sales, has closed a $20 million Series B round as it explores expansion opportunities. The startup began as fitness subscription service KFit, but it pivoted group-buying and coupons after it acquired Groupon’s […]

Berlin-based location marketing startup Uberall has raised a further $25 million in funding — adding to a $25 million Series B raised earlier this year — and acquired competitor Navads. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, with Uberall claiming that the deal makes it the second biggest location marketing platform behind U.S. rival Yext. Navads […]

Facebook is opening its first data center in Asia. The company announced today that it is planning an 11-story building in Singapore that will help its services run faster and more efficiently. The development will cost SG$1.4 billion, or around US$1 billion, the company confirmed. The social networking firm said that it anticipates that the […]

Perhaps the one downside to building a venture capital firm filled with operational experience is that you can’t always keep an operator out of the action for too long. Or so it seems, if the latest VC move at London-based Atomico is anything to go by. Atomico Partner Yann de Vries — who led investments […]

The large amounts of cash that is being invested in challenger banks in the U.K., whether that be startups with a fully fledged banking license or those using the less burdensome e-money regulations, shows no signs of abating. The latest banking fintech to raise a substantial new round is Monese. The London and Tallinn-based company, […]

The Roomba i7+ looks like, well, it looks like a Roomba. There are few factors distinguishing the product from the last several generations. The rollers are bright green, along with a large Automatic Dirt Disposal section just below. Beyond that, however, it’s nearly identical to what you’ll already find on store shelves. For iRobot co-founder […]

South Korean home cleaning service Miso wants to leave its competition in the dust after raising an $8 million Series A. Led by AddVenture, with participation from returning investors Y Combinator, FundersClub and Strong Ventures, and new backer Social Capital, the funding will be used on marketing and entering new Asian countries. The Y Combinator […]

Estonian ride-hailing company Taxify will compete with Bird and Lime in Europe with its new brand of e-scooters, called Bolt, launching in Paris on Thursday.The company has rolled the scooter sharing service into its mobile app, which has attracted 10 million users in 25 countries since it launched in August 2013.

Livongo Health, a consumer digital health company is focused on the treatment of chronic diseases, is integrating its service with Abbott Labs’ continuous glucose monitoring system. Livongo is about empowering people with chronic conditions live better and healthier lives, CEO Glen Tullman said on stage at Disrupt SF. Livongo started with a connected blood glucose monitor […]

Origami Labs wants to bring voice assistants right to your ear without requiring you to wear a device like a Bluetooth headset or Apple AirPods. Instead, the startup is using a ring on your finger combined with bone conduction technology to allow you to use your smartphone’s built-in assistant – whether that’s Google Assistant or […]

Groq has raised $52.3 million of a $60 million round, per an SEC filing. Social Capital co-founder and former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya, who’s listed on the filing, has participated in the funding. Palihapitiya confirmed Social Capital’s participation in the round to TechCrunch and said a few other undisclosed investors participated as well. Social Capital, […]

Vitamins are proving to be a lucrative industry in the United States. Just last year vitamin sales pulled in roughly $37 billion for the U.S. economy. That’s up from $28 billion in 2010. To cash in on this growing market, several startups have popped up in the last few years — including Nutrigene, a startup combining […]

Earlier today, we took the stage at TechCrunch’s Disrupt event with top VCs Megan Quinn of Spark Capital, Sarah Tavel of Benchmark Capital, and Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures to explore some of the trends rippling through the startup investing ecosystem. Think megafunds, SoftBank’s $93 billion Vision Fund — even whether Silicon Valley is losing […]

Most of us won't ever have to present to the U.S. Congress, and that's probably for the best. It might be more advisable to hit the gym if you want to give your heart a good work out, as opposed to having to answer politicians who ask why your company is enabling foreign entities to influence domestic elections.

Forethought, a 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant, has a modern vision for enterprise search that uses AI to surface the content that matters most in the context of work. Its first use case involves customer service, but it has a broader ambition to work across the enterprise. The startup takes a bit of an unusual […]