Crunch Hype

In the very near future, robots are going to be picking the vegetables that appear on grocery store shelves across America. The automation revolution that’s arrived on the factory floor will make its way to the ag industry in the U.S. and its first stop will likely be the indoor farms that are now dotting […]

Snapchat has largely escaped scrutiny about fake news and election interference because its content quickly disappears and its publisher hub, Discover, is a closed platform. But now the Infowars mess that’s plagued Facebook and YouTube has landed at Snap’s feet, as conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has begun tweeting to promote an augmented reality Snapchat Lens […]

Roku is today bringing its free, streaming entertainment destination, The Roku Channel, to non-Roku devices for the first time, with a launch on both the web and on select Samsung smart TVs, ahead of a wider cross-platform rollout. The channel, which offers free, ad-supported movies and TV shows, will be available across PCs, mobile phones […]

An Oxford University study of remote gig economy work conducted on digital platforms has highlighted poor-quality working conditions with implications for employees’ well-being. The research comes at a time when political scrutiny is increasingly falling on algorithmically controlled platforms and their societal impacts. Policymakers are also paying greater attention to the precarious reality for workers […]

If you're a fan of retro games, chances are you have a few emulators installed to let you play Mega Drive or Atari 800 titles. And if you have a few emulators installed, you probably have some ROMs. And if you have some ROMs, it's likely that sometime since the year 2000 you visited EmuParadise, a stalwart provider of these ambiguously legal files. Well, EmuParadise is no more — at least the site we knew and loved.

Techcrunch’s super-sized Disrupt San Francisco 2018 — the only Disrupt event in North America this year — takes place September 5-7. We’re not kidding when we say brace yourself for three unprecedented, program-packed days. In addition to Startup Battlefield — with a special $100,000 prize — the Virtual Hackathon, Startup Alley and a battalion of headlining speakers, we’ve […]

Over the past two-and-a-half weeks, tech platforms have taken a (if sometimes meek) stance against the far-right and conspiracy theorist content of Alex Jones by removing, banning or penalizing Jones and his podcast Infowars for breaking their community and hate speech policies. These removals signify an important moment in the history of the internet’s tug-of-war with […]

I’m not immune to compliments, and Spencer Gerrol, founder and CEO of Spark Neuro, offered a real winner as he demonstrated his technology. “I love your brain,” he told me. This was after the startup’s vice president of research Ryan McGarry had strapped sensors to my fingers and head, then showed me an intense movie […]

At Disrupt SF 2018, Facebook’s soon-to-be-former chief security officer Alex Stamos will join us to chat about his tenure in the top security role for the world’s biggest social network, how it feels to have weathered some of the biggest security and privacy scandals to ever hit the tech industry and securing U.S. elections in […]

After a largely successful IPO, Dropbox is adding another couple of hires today as it looks to continue its consumer-slash-enterprise growth playbook: bringing on a new VP of product in former CEO and president of Wealthfront Adam Nash; and a new VP of product marketing and global campaigns in Naman Khan. Both have extensive experience […]

Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new mobile video startup NewTV, now headed by CEO Meg Whitman, has closed on a billion in new funding in round led by Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the company has confirmed. WndrCo, Katzenberg’s tech and media holding company, officially announced the round’s close on Tuesday, following last month’s report from CNN which had first leaked […]

Audius wants to cut the middlemen out of music streaming so artists get paid their fair share. Coming out of stealth today led by serial entrepreneur and DJ Ranidu Lankage, Audius is building a blockchain-based alternative to Spotify or SoundCloud. Users will pay for Audius tokens or earn them by listening to ads. Their wallet […]

TechCrunch invites NGO’s and nonprofit organizations to exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco on September 7th. Organizations can apply here. Founded in 2014, the TechCrunch Include Program aims to facilitate opportunities in tech for underserved and underrepresented communities. The TC Nonprofit Program is one initiative of this program. Through an application, TechCrunch will select 10 […]

LetGo, the app-based marketplace for people to sell each other second-hand goods, has nabbed a great deal of its own. Today, the startup announced that it has picked up an extra $500 million in funding from Naspers, the South African e-commerce and media giant, which it plans to use to double down on growth, both […]

Patreon is forming a patronage empire. Today it acquired white-labeled subscription membership platform Memberful, which lets creators sell exclusive access to content through their own site instead of a centralized platform like Patreon. Rather than being folded into a Patreon feature, Memberful will run as an independent brand, maintaining its tiered pricing structure, though new […]

Yesterday Oracle announced a new online transaction processing database service, finally bringing its key database technology into the cloud. The company, which has been around for over four decades made its mark selling databases to the biggest companies in the world, but as the world has changed, large enterprise customers have been moving increasingly to […]

H1Z1 has spent a couple months on PS4 in an open beta. But today, the Battle Royale game is officially making its debut on the PlayStation platform. Much like Fortnite Battle Royale, which has swept the gaming world unlike almost any title before it, H1Z1 drops 100 players into a map where they must loot […]

IDC’s latest tablet numbers tell a familiar story. Shipments are down yet again, a trend that shows no sign of abating. There is, however, one clear bright spot in all of this, bucking the trend. Quarter after quarter, convertibles have continued to grow, as users have demanded more productivity than is traditionally possible with slates. […]

Facebook is diving deeper into in-house game development with the launch of its own version of Snapchat’s multiplayer augmented reality video chat games. Today, Facebook Messenger globally launches its first two AR video chat games that you can play with up to six people. “Don’t Smile” is like a staring contest that detects if you […]

It’s been a long and trip-filled wait but mixed reality headgear maker Magic Leap will finally, finally be shipping its first piece of hardware this summer. We were still waiting on the price-tag — but it’s just been officially revealed: The developer-focused Magic Leap One ‘creator edition’ headset will set you back at least $2,295. […]

Founders for Change, an initiative from All Raise, is hosting its first-ever meetup for its group of founders focused on diversity and inclusion in tech. Since launching in March, Founders for Change has grown to more than 800 founders from companies like Pandora, Patreon, Shippo, PagerDuty, Udacity and others. “It’s one of those things where […]

When Anki invited us by the office last week to check out their latest creation, we weren’t sure what to expect. In the eight years since the company was founded by a trio of Carnegie Mellon graduates, it’s offered up a handful of distinctly different smart toys, from its Drive smart cars to 2016’s Cozmo […]

We caught wind pretty early on that Anki’s Cozmo was selling briskly when the adorable little robot temporarily sold out around Christmas 2016. Along with the announcement of the company’s latest robot, the startup released Cozmo sales figures for the first time, and things are, indeed, looking pretty good for the Wall-E-inspired ‘bot. Turns out […]

While some of the largest technology companies in the world are racing to figure out the next generation of machine learning-focused chips that will support devices — whether that’s data centers or edge devices — there’s a whole class of startups that are racing to get there first. That includes Cerebras Systems, one of the […]

Fast-growing Chinese media startup ByteDance is looking to raise as much as $3 billion to continue growth for its empire of mobile-based entertainment apps, which include news aggregator Toutiao and video platform Tiktok. The Beijing-based startup is in early-stage talks with investors to raise $2.5 billion to $3 billion, according to a source with knowledge […]

Analysis of open source information carried out by the investigative website Bellingcat suggests drones that had been repurposed as flying bombs were indeed used in an attack on the president of Venezuela at the weekend. The Venezuelan government claimed three days ago that an attempt had been made to assassination president Maduro using two drones loaded with […]

The tech startup community across Africa is developing rapidly, and we’re beyond happy to return a second time to host TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa 2018 in Lagos, Nigeria on December 11. More than 300 tech hubs across Africa connect and mentor entrepreneurs, and we can’t wait to showcase 15 of the continent’s best innovators, makers […]

SenseTime may be best known as the world’s highest-valued AI company — having raised $620 million at a valuation of over $4.5 billion — but it is also an investor, too. The Chinese firm this week led a 1.36 billion RMB ($199 million) Series D funding round for Moviebook, a Beijing-based startup that develops technology to […]

Handiscover, a startup that lets you find and book accessible travel accommodation, has raised $700,000 in new funding. The round is backed by Howzat Partners, which has previously invested in a number of successful travel companies, such as publicly-listed Trivago and more recently Lodgify. Tranquility Capital, a Swedish family fund with a background in accessibility, […]

Hansel, an India-based startup that enables more agile product development inside companies, has pulled in $4 million as it seeks to expand its business to the U.S.. The startup was founded in 2015 and it operates a real-time mobile app development platform that simplifies the process of product iteration inside companies. That’s to say that […]

Amazon today is continuing to make good on its Whole Foods acquisition by introducing a new grocery pickup service at select Whole Foods locations in the U.S. The service, which is available only to Prime members, will initially be available at stores in Sacramento and Virginia Beach, but will expand to more cities through the […]

Slack — the app that lets coworkers and others in professional circles chat with each other and call in data from hundreds of integrated apps in the name of getting more work done (or at least procrastinating in an entertaining way) — has been on a growth tear in the last few years, most recently […]

[Heavy sigh] Twitter is doing that thing again. That thing where it stands by an incoherent policy choice that is only consistent with its long historical record of inconsistency. Late Tuesday, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey took to the platform to defend his company’s choice to keep manic conspiracy theorist and hatemonger Alex Jones and his Infowars […]

Salesforce is moving to a two CEO model after it promoted executive Keith Block, who was most recently COO, to the position of co-CEO. Block will work alongside Salesforce’s flamboyant founder, chairman and CEO (now co-CEO) Marc Benioff, with both reporting directly to the company’s board. Block joined Salesforce five years ago after spending 25 […]

It's not infrequent these days if you're a big tech company to receive a brusquely worded letter from a group of Senators or Representatives asking you to explain yourself on some topic or another. One recent such letter sent to Apple and Alphabet asks specifically about practices meant to track users or their interactions with the phone without their knowledge or consent. Luckily Apple has much to be proud of on that front.

Otter Media is no longer a joint venture between AT&T and The Chernin Group — AT&T announced today that it has acquired The Chernin Group’s controlling interest in the digital media company. Otter Media was founded in 2014 and owns Ellation (which in turn owns anime streamer Crunchyroll and subscription video service Vrv) and Fullscreen (which […]

Lior Ron, the co-founder of the controversial self-driving technology company Otto, is returning to Uber to head up its trucking logistics company, Uber Freight, TechCrunch has confirmed. Both Ron and his co-founder and ex-Googler Anthony Levandowski went to Uber after it acquired Otto in August of 2016. However, Levandowski was fired from Uber after pleading […]

The world of VR may have already sort of figured out the basics of how VR gaming will work, but when it comes to studios building the next generation of narrative “movie” content, there are plenty of questions up in the air. Baobab Studios CEO and co-founder Maureen Fan has more answers than most. Fan’s […]

Bird strikes on aircraft may be rare, but not so rare that airports shouldn't take precautions against them. But keeping birds away is a difficult proposition: how do you control the behavior of flocks of dozens or hundreds of birds? Perhaps with a drone that autonomously picks the best path to do so, like this one developed by CalTech researchers.

Do you worry about the so-called "kill zones" of big tech companies? The theory basically suggests that if your product or service is anyway threatening or accretive to one of the huge incumbents, they will either force-buy your company or clone it and destroy your market.

Snap Inc got a fresh infusion of cash from the Saudi royal family to help it survive despite losing $353 million this quarter. Prince Al-Waleed Talal tweeted a video of him and Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, noting that he’s invested $250 million in exchange for a 2.3 percent stake in Snap Inc. The investment raises […]

Coinbase just announced two new perks that should please regular cryptocurrency traders. Starting on Tuesday, new Coinbase users will no longer have to wait for five days to trade after signing up for the exchange. As the company explained in a blog post: … When someone makes the decision to sign up, they don’t want […]

The Stories War has officially killed Snapchat’s growth, leading to its first user count decline ever. In Q2 2018 earnings today, Snapchat’s daily active users number shrank 1.5 percent to 188 million this quarter, down from 191 million and positive 2.9 percent user growth last quarter. Snapchat did beat earnings expectations with $262.3 million in […]

Oracle executive chairman and CTO, Larry Ellison, first introduced the company’s autonomous database at Oracle Open World last year. The company later launched an autonomous data warehouse. Today, it announced the next step with the launch of the Oracle Autonomous Transaction Processing (ATP) service. This latest autonomous database tool promises the same level of autonomy — […]

Earlier today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted about how he’s considering taking Tesla private. Now, Tesla has published an email Musk sent to employees today that describes his rationale. However, no decision has been made yet, Musk wrote in the email. Musk says it’s “the best path forward” because taking Tesla private would help minimize […]

An unprecedented flood of citizens concerned about net neutrality is what took down the FCC's comment system last May, not a coordinated attack, a report from the agency's Office of the Inspector General concluded. The report unambiguously describes the "voluminous viral traffic" resulting from John Oliver's Last Week Tonight piece on the topic as the cause of the system's collapse.

Apple appears to be working on another personalized playlist for Apple Music subscribers – this time, one that shows you what your friends are listening to on its service, as opposed to a personalized playlist filled with editorial or algorithmic recommendations. The new “Friends Mix” playlist includes 25 songs and is updated on Mondays, according […]

Holy smokes! Disrupt San Francisco 2018, which takes place September 5-7, is less than one month away. We have important news for anyone who purchased Startup Alley, Founder, Investor or Insider passes: CrunchMatch — your gateway to efficient networking — is officially open! If you haven’t yet grabbed a pass to Disrupt SF 2018, it’s not […]

Another tech platform has closed the door on InfoWars’ Alex Jones . Mail messaging platform MailChimp first confirmed the move in a statement to US media watchdog Media Matters which said the accounts had been closed for “hateful conduct”. A MailChimp spokeswoman also confirmed it to TechCrunch via email. In a statement MailChimp said it had terminated […]