Crunch Hype

When Gmail launched with its threaded conversation view feature as the default and only option, some people sure didn’t like it and Google quickly allowed users to turn it off. On mobile, though, you were stuck with it. But here’s some good news for you conversation view haters: you can now turn it off on mobile, too. […]

A cheerful video released by YourAnonNews suggests that the murky hacker collective called Anonymous is now after the murky deep state collective called Q. Q, to the uninitiated, is a 4Chan poster who claims to be connected deep inside the US government. Q claims to have high level clearance and posts in furtherance of the […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking about taking the company private, he said in a Tweet this morning. More specifically, he said he may buy back the company for $82 billion (at a share price of $420 plus debt), and already has the funding to do so. Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding […]

MoviePass is getting into the movie production business with 10 Minutes Gone, a film starring Bruce Willis. The movie was announced in Deadline, which says that it will tell the story of a man who loses 10 minutes of his memory after being struck by a bullet during a bank robbery. Production is expected to […]

The artificial intelligence revolution is underway in the world of technology, but as it turns out, some of the most faithful foot soldiers are still humans. A startup called Scale, which works with a team of contractors who examine and categorise visual data to train AI systems in a two-sided marketplace model, announced that it […]

Chinese AI startup Tianrang has raised a $26 million (RMB180 million) funding round from China’s Gaorong Capital and co-lead CMB International Capital. Other investors included Ziniu Fund and Chinese fintech company Wacai. In 2016, the company raised an angel round led by Gaorong Capital and participated in by Shanghai Jindi Investment Management Ltd. Based on […]

Our body is continuously storing and consuming energy to keep us alive — but understanding which fuels are being used and why is the Holy Grail of things like weight loss and body hacking. Today’s weight-loss market is saturated with generic products because — guess what — trying to tailor-make a solution for an individual […]

InVision continues its slow march toward design world domination, today announcing the hire of Mike Davidson who will take over as Head of Partnerships and Community. Davidson was previously the VP of Design at Twitter, where he built a 100-person team that was responsible for every aspect of Twitter’s user experience and branding, including web, […]

It’s been a few years since Google first launched Classroom, its learning management system for teachers and students. Today, ahead of the start of the new year in many school districts, Google is launching a major redesign of Classroom that introduces a refreshed look and a number of new features for the teachers who use […]

Mozilla’s Firefox web browser announced today a new experimental extension called Advance that uses machine learning to help users more contextually and intuitively surf the web. This extension is part of Firefox’s ongoing Test Pilot program (which users can opt into anytime) and is powered by the machine learning backbone of the startup Laserlike to better […]

Cowboy Ventures, the early-stage venture firm launched in 2012 by longtime VC Aileen Lee, has lassoed $95 million in capital commitments for its third fund, up from the $55 million that it raised for its second fund and more than twice what it raised for its $40 million debut fund. That investors are doubling down […]

In June of this year, Chinese hackers managed to install software into the networks of a contractor for the U.S. Navy and steal information on a roughly $300 million top-secret submarine program. Two years ago, hackers infiltrated the networks of a vendor servicing the Australian military and made off with files containing a trove of […]

In Don Burnette and Paz Eshel’s view, trucking is the killer app for self-driving technology. It’s what led Burnette to leave the Google self-driving project and co-found Otto in early 2016, along with Anthony Levandowski, Lior Ron and Claire Delaunay. And it’s what would eventually prompt Burnette to leave Uber — the company that acquired Otto — […]

Palm’s smartphone return appears to still be on track for 2018. Last year, an executive at TCL confirmed that the dearly departed mobile brand would be making a comeback as part of the smartphone conglomerate’s portfolio, and with a little less than five months left in the year, the “PVG100” has hit the FCC and […]

Skype Classic is not being killed off…well, not just yet. In July, Microsoft announced Skype 8.0 was launching on the desktop, and that it would be shutting down version 7.0 (aka Skype Classic) as a result. The older version would no longer function after September 1, 2018, it had said. However, the company has now decided to […]

Health tech continues to make impressive strides forward, but some pieces of the healthcare puzzle are still lagging way behind. Communication is one of those pieces. But a startup called Klara, which just received $11.5 million in Series A, is looking to change that. FirstMark Capital led the round, with participation from existing investors Lerer […]

While this animated fellow looks like something out of NBA 2K18, it’s really an AI that’s learning how to dribble in real time. The AI starts out fumbling the ball a bit and by cycle 95 it is able to do some real Harlem Globetrotters stuff. In short, what you’re watching is a human-like avatar […]

Last month, Instapaper spun out from Pinterest – two years after being acquired – to again become its own independent “read later” service. Today, the new company is announcing a plan that will allow it to sustain itself in the years ahead: yes, its subscription service has returned. The company is relaunching its Instapaper Premium […]

WhoCanFixMyCar, the U.K. online car repair marketplace, has secured £4 million in new funding. Backing the startup is Shell Ventures — the corporate venture arm of Shell — in addition to chairman Sir Trevor Chinn (who previously chaired the boards ofAA, Kwik Fit and RAC), Active Partners, and Venrex Investment Management. Launched in 2011 by […]

Maybe a year and a half after Russian interference was believed to have a key impact on the election of a U.S. president isn’t the best time to be floating new voting technologies. Not if you’re looking to avoid some major skepticism, at least. But West Virginia is going ahead with plans to allow some […]

The number of tech platforms taking action against Alex Jones, the far right InfoWars conspiracy theorist and hate speech preacher, has been rising in recent weeks — with bans or partial bans including from Google, Apple and Facebook. However, as we noted earlier, Twitter is not among them. Although it has banned known hate peddlers […]

Even Financial, a fintech startup that connects the disparate entities of the financial services industry, recently raised a $18.8 million Series A round led by GreatPoint Ventures with participation from Goldman Sachs, Canaan Partners, F-Prime Capital, Lerer Hippeau and others. The close of its Series A comes on the heels of a $3 million investment […]

Evolute, a 3-year old startup out of Mountain View, officially launched the Evolute platform today with the goal of helping large organizations migrate applications to containers and manage those containers at scale. Evolute founder and CEO Kristopher Francisco says he wants to give all Fortune 500 companies access to the same technology that big companies […]

Klook, a Hong Kong-based startup developing a travel activities platform, has pulled in $200 million in new capital to fuel a major expansion into the U.S. and Europe. A spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the round values the company at more than $1 billion, although the company didn’t provide an exact figure. Klook sets out […]

All of the good press the June Intelligent Oven got when it launched in late 2016 was overshadowed by one key thing: that ridiculously high price tag. The startup drew comparisons to the now defunct train wreck that was Juicero, with one review going so far as calling it “everything that’s wrong with Silicon Valley.” […]

Japan-based accounting software company Freee, one of the country’s most-prominent startups, has raised a $60 million Series E funding round as it bids to expand its services into other areas of management for its customers. Freee was founded six years ago — we wrote about the startup when it raised a Series A in 2013 — […]

Flux, the London fintech that has built a software platform to offer merchants digital receipts, loyalty, card-linked offers and analytics, continues to sign new partnerships in a bid to solve its ‘chicken and egg’ problem. That is, it needs bank integrations to sign up merchants and it needs merchant integrations to sign up banks. The […]

Whether by plane, train or autobahn, thousands of early-stage startup founders, investors, tech-heads and entrepreneurs will travel to Germany to attend TechCrunch’s Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. But here’s a question specifically for the founders of pre-Series A startups: Why just attend when you can compete — in Startup Battlefield? You can apply right […]

The UK is getting a new alternative to Uber after India-based ride-hailing company Ola announced plans to expand to the country, which will become its first market in Europe. Ola was founded in 2010 and it covers over 110 cities in India where it offers licensed taxis, private hire cars and rickshaws through a network […]

SpaceX is sending of one of newest Falcon 9 rockets back into space for the second time this early morning U.S. time. The Falcon 9 ‘Block 5’ rocket is designed to be able to go into space and return 100 times, but these are early days. The rocket leaving today is taking Indonesian satellite Merah Putih […]

Amazon said today it is working with the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation into consumer fraud allegedly committed by Sellers Playbook, a Minnesota-based business that claimed to help Amazon sellers make more money. FTC and the state of Minnesota announced today that they have charged Sellers Playbook and its owner Jessie Tieva and CEO Matthew Tieva, […]

Streaming adult video site YouPorn, announced today that it has banned Alex Jones from its platform, following actions against the conspiracy-monger by tech companies including Apple, Facebook, YouTube and Spotify—but notably, not Twitter. Before you go “wtf,” there were indeed (non-porn) videos with Alex Jones in them on YouPorn (people often take advantage of relatively […]

Some numbers published in a report from The Information reveal that very few owners of Alexa-powered devices use them for shopping. Of about 50 million Alexa users, only about 100,000 reportedly bought something via voice interface more than once. It's not exactly surprising, but it may still harm the narrative of of conversational commerce that Amazon and others are trying to advance.

Twilio today reported a positive quarter that brought it to profitability — on an adjusted basis — ahead of schedule for Wall Street, sending the stock soaring 16 percent in extended hours after the release came out. While according to traditional accounting principles Twilio still lost money (this usually includes stock-based compensation, a key component […]

As popular as Pokemon GO is, it has always been missing one major feature: pitting your Pokemon directly against another trainer's. Strange, since that was the entire basis of the franchise to begin with! But the mobile game will at last get this much-requested feature by the end of the year.

The FCC has come clean on the fact that a purported hack of its comment system last year never actually took place, after a report from its Inspector General found a lack of evidence supporting the idea. Chairman Ajit Pai blamed the former Chief Information Officer and the Obama administration for providing "inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people."

Zillow, the publicly traded real estate portal and lead generation service, has acquired Mortgage Lenders of America. This is Zillow’s first move into originating mortgages. Until now, the company’s focus in this space was on providing home buyers with quotes from a variety of third-party lenders. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Mortgage Lenders […]

As of late, Lyft has been doubling down on its messaging that it wants to reduce the amount of car ownership in the U.S. The company’s most recent example of its anti-car ownership efforts is coming in the form of a partnership with car rental company Avis. As part of a multi-year deal, Avis will […]

Google hopes to add a few digital wellness features to its latest desserted update, Pie (out today) but Apple is already on this health track with its latest update for iOS 12. Digital wellness allows users to keep track of time spent on and unplug from your digital device when needed. Google announced the new wellness […]

For all of you time-strapped startup founders hoping to apply to TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield Latin America, we have good news! We’re extending your deadline! You now have an extra week to submit your application to our premier pitch competition taking place in Latin America for the first time ever on November 8, 2018, in São […]

The removal of conspiracy enthusiast content by InfoWars brings us to an interesting and important point in the history of online discourse. The current form of Internet content distribution has made it a broadcast medium akin to television or radio. Apps distribute our cat pics, our workouts, and our YouTube rants to specific audiences of followers, […]

Can a mobile app help to address the opioid crisis in the U.S.? That’s the goal behind FEND, an app that’s taking advantage of technology solutions like machine learning and gamification to increase young people’s understanding of opioids and to change their behaviors. It’s the first large-scale attempt at running a public health campaign in […]

If you have an old Kindle e-reader lying about then you’d best dig it up. This cool hack can turn your dead e-reader into a living clock that scours hundreds of books for exact times and displays the current time in a quote. It updates once a minute. The project, available on Instrucables, requires a […]

Google has acquired GraphicsFuzz, a company that builds a framework for testing the security and reliability of Android graphics drivers. The news, which was first spotted by XDA Developers, comes on the same day Google announced the release of Android 9 Pie. A Google spokesperson confirmed the news to us but declined to provide any […]

Clear, the biometrics company you've probably seen at airports and at a few other prominent queues, is rolling out the capability to simultaneously verify your ID and pay for an alcoholic drink with your fingerprint. It's only at Seattle's CenturyLink and Safeco Fields (and only a handful of concessions stands at those) but if it's successful you can bet we'll be seeing more of it.

Amazon confirmed it’s rolling out a new feature called “Answer Update” to Alexa device users over the next week, which will notify users when Alexa learns the answer to a question the assistant didn’t know when first asked. The idea is to allow people to better take advantage of Alexa’s quickly improving Knowledge Graph – […]

Backlash swelled this morning after Facebook’s aspirations in financial services were blown out of proportion by a Wall Street Journal report that neglected how the social network already works with banks. Facebook spokesperson Elisabeth Diana tells TechCrunch it’s not asking for credit card transaction data from banks and it’s not interested in building a dedicated […]

Another social media domino has fallen for Infowars. After bans this morning from Apple and Facebook, Google followed suit by terminating Alex Jones’ page for “violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines,” according to a bright red bar that now graces the page. The embattled, conspiracy peddling host’s Infowars page, which until recently boasted 2.4 million subscribers, has been […]

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you make a mobile operating system, and somewhere along the line, you decided whimsically to name major updates after alphabetical dessert foods. What a fun idea! Sure, some letters will prove harder than others. “K” and “O” are admittedly tough, but that’s nothing that little bit of clever cross-branding can’t fix. […]

The nickname for Android 9 is “Pie.” It’s not the most inspired of Android names, but it’ll do. What really matters at the end of the day are the new features in Pie — and there are plenty of those. If you are a Pixel owner, you’ll be happy to hear that Pie will start […]