Crunch Hype

Portal founder Jonathan Swerdlin is just the latest media pundit to point to advertising as the root cause of the industry’s problems. But he’s not content to diagnose the illness — he thinks he’s created a cure. “Digital media has become toxic, in part, because of advertising,” Swerdlin said. “The unmet and unarticulated need is […]

Go to Google Maps and zoom out. Halfway out, the map’s perspective changes from a traditional flat map view to an interactive globe. Zoom all the way out and the Earth is presented as a globe with landmasses of the appropriate size. Greenland is no longer the size of Africa and all is right with […]

Epic Games continues to spread the love… to consumers, at least. Following the launches of Fortnite Battle Royale on iOS earlier this year and Fortnite for the Nintendo Switch earlier this summer, Epic Games is now confirming that the Android version of the game will be available exclusively through the Fortnite website. Users can visit […]

Stack Overflow and other various sites and tools have made it easy to Google search for solutions — or code snippets — to the easier parts of putting together an app or program for developers, but Aidan Cunniffe wants to take that one automated step further. That’s the premise behind Optic, which gives developers a way […]

Back in May, reports surfaced that New York Stock Exchange owner Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) was developing a Bitcoin trading platform. This morning, it officially announced the creation of Bakkt, a new company that will help trade and convert the best known cryptocurrency to fiat money — government-backed legal tender. As one might expect from a […]

Walmart is testing a new robotics system that picks customers’ grocery orders. The retailer this morning announced it has partnered with Alert Innovation to deploy Alphabot, a system designed for Walmart, in its Salem, New Hampshire superstore. The automated technology will be installed in a 20,000-square foot extension connected to the store, which will also […]

Airstream has made travel trailers for generations, and the company is ramping up plans to bring connected technology to the product line. Airstream recently announced several new products that will bring new features expected by today’s consumers including less expensive and more capable trailers. The iconic silver bullet trailers are a mainstay on America’s highways […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week TechCrunch’s Matthew Lynley and Crunchbase News’s Alex Wilhelm were joined by Jyoti Bansal, the founder of AppDynamics and a partner at Unusual Ventures, among other startup work. Our own Connie Loizos was off this week. This episode was […]

Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. Reports of trade tensions between China and the US in the past few months have been hard to ignore. In early July, the US imposed $34 billion on Chinese goods, prompting the Shenzhen Component Index, dominated by technology and […]

Teamleader, the SaaS platform that helps SMEs operate in a more digitally savvy way, has closed $22 million in Series C funding. The round was led by London-based Keen Venture Partners, with participation from PMV and existing investors Fortino Capital and Sage Capital. Claiming to serve nearly 10,000 customers in 6 countries — comprised mostly […]

Peloton today announced its Series F funding of $550 million. That brings the total amount raised, according to CrunchBase, to $994.7 million. According to the announcement, this round puts Peloton’s valuation at $4 billion — it was just last May the company hit unicorn status. TCV led the round with other participation in the round […]

How should you feel to know your employer is far, far richer than Croesus? As Apple CEO Tim Cook tells it — in a memo to staff, obtained by BuzzFeed News, re: yesterday’s news that the computer company Steve Jobs founded back in 1976 is now worth more than $1,000,000,000,000 — you should feel A) […]

The official launch promo video for Samsung’s next flagship smartphone in the long-running Galaxy Note line — the Note 9 — appears to have leaked, with links to the video now cropping up on YouTube. And via Twitter… Samsung accidentally posted its Galaxy Note 9 into video to YouTube. Oops. pic.twitter.com/NfzikY4tLG — Tom Warren (@tomwarren) […]

We’re stoked about hosting our first Startup Battlefield in Beirut, where we’ll showcase 15 amazing early-stage startups across the Middle East and North Africa. There’s nothing we love more than learning about, reporting on and supporting creative entrepreneurs in a growing tech startup ecosystem. TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 takes place on October 3, and […]

Who’s ready to compete head-to-head with the best early-stage startups across Europe and beyond? If you think your startup has what it takes to win the day, we want to see you compete in Startup Battlefield at Disrupt Berlin 2018, which takes place on November 29-30. This is your shot to launch your company to […]

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 Harley-Davidson to expand EV lineup, may include scooters, bicycles Sokowatch closes $2 million seed round to modernize Africa’s B2B retail B2B e-commerce company Sokowatch closed a $2 million seed investment led […]

In a statement released today, Juul Labs has responded to FDA moves to increase regulation on flavored tobacco products in order to curb underage use. This comes at a time when Juul Labs is under increasing scrutiny. Here’s the statement from Juul Labs CEO Kevin Burns: We fully support FDA’s efforts to curb underage use […]

I love camping, but there's always an awkward period when you've left the tent but haven't yet created coffee that I hate camping. It's hard not to watch the pot not boil and not want to just go back to bed, but since the warm air escaped when I opened the tent it's pointless! God! Anyway, the Swiss figured out a great way to boil water faster, and I want one of these sweet stoves now.

Google will soon allow ads to run on addiction-related keywords and phrases after a nearly year-long ban instituted to crack down on shady providers cashing in on vulnerable patients. A small group of providers vetted by a third party have been approved by the company to appear in results for searches like "help quitting pills" or "meth addiction."

Some people have postulated that autonomous ridesharing cars will never need to park and cities of the future will not need street parking, parking lots or parking garages. But parking is far from dead. In fact, the $100 billion market may be poised to grow.

Yesterday, Spotify became the third tech platform in just over a week to take a stance on Alex Jones’s controversial far-right and conspiracy theorist content. The streaming service removed several Infowars podcast episodes due to their violation of the policy against hate content that Spotify released in May. This action follows strikes given against Jones by both […]

Say what you will about the success or general usefulness of the Moto Mod line — Motorola keeps plugging away. The company currently offers 17 Mods with an 18th on the way, bringing one of the most interesting use cases yet. Along with the new Moto Z3 handset, Motorola unveiled a Mod that will bring […]

Uproxx Media Group — owner of sites like HitFix, Dime and Uproxx itself — has been acquired. The Uproxx site focuses on entertainment and pop culture news, and was founded back in 2008. It was bought by Woven Digital in 2014, which eventually rebranded as Uproxx. Like many digital media companies, it includes both a […]

Early in 2017, Google added a feature to Google Maps that lets you opt to share your location in (near) real time with your close friends and family. Now they're fleshing out that info with another important little detail: your phone's remaining battery charge.

Amazon has been granted a patent for an audio system that detects the accent of a speaker and changes it to the accent of the listener, perhaps helping eliminate communication barriers in many situations and industries. The patent doesn't mean the company has made it, but there's also no technical reason why it can't do so.

Amazon Rapids, the chat fiction that encourages kids to read by presenting stories in the form of text message conversations, is now going free. Previously, Amazon had been charging $2.99 per month for a subscription that allows unlimited access to its story collection, which now numbers in the hundreds. First launched in November 2016, Amazon […]

Arm, the semiconductor firm you probably still remember as ARM, today announced that it has acquired Treasure Data, a data management platform for large enterprise customers. The companies didn’t announce the financial details of the transaction, but earlier reporting by Bloomberg pegged the price at $600 million. This move strengthens Arm’s IoT nascent play, given that […]

Meet Radar Relay, a cryptocurrency startup that just raised $10 million from Blockchain Capital and other investors. The company is taking advantage of the 0x protocol to change your tokens into other tokens without going through a traditional exchange. Centralized exchanges have been one of the main weaknesses of the cryptocurrency industry for years. A […]

Comcast and Amazon today announced a new partnership that will see Amazon’s Prime Video service integrated into Comcast’s Xfinity TV set-top boxes. This is the first time that Prime Video content would be added to a cable operator’s platform in the U.S.. It’s also a particularly interesting choice on Comcast’s part, given that Amazon is directly […]

Square, the company you know from your favorite coffee shop’s checkout counter, is opening to developers its Reader hardware. Using the new Square Reader SDK, developers will be able to build their own custom checkout and point of sale experiences, no matter whether that’s a self-ordering kiosk, a mobile app for waiters or any other […]

Sonos opened its first day of trading at $15 a share though quickly gained 20% as trading began. As of publication, Sonos, trading under SONO, is around $18.50 a share. Sonos priced its initial shares at $15 a share, below the expected range of $17 to $19. At this price Sonos is valued at just […]

Rent the Runway today announced that it has partnered with Temasek for a $200 million credit facility. Founded in 2009, Rent the Runway lets users rent items of clothing for special events or occasions, bringing runway styles to folks without the cash to purchase the clothing outright. Rent the Runway started out by letting users […]

Stampli, an invoice management platform, announced today the closing of a $6.7 M Series A funding round led by SignalFire, with participation from Bloomberg Beta, Hillsven Capital, and UpWest Labs. If you’ve ever freelanced for a company, you’ll know that the long, instant ramen-filled days between filing an invoice and having it completed can be grueling. […]

Tade Oyerinde is obsessed with communications inside educational institutions. A few years ago, while studying at Leeds University in England, he founded Gleepost, a Craigslist-like service targeting college campuses. The startup flopped, so Oyerinde moved on to build with his college roommate and twin brother Uniroulette, a Chatroulette clone but limited to people with .edu […]

As a result of the larger cord-cutting trend, more consumers are watching TV streamed over the internet. And the size of this streaming TV audience is rapidly growing. According to a new report from Conviva, out this morning, streaming TV content consumption has more than doubled over the last 12 months, and is continuing to […]

On the face of it, Seismic is addressing a big problem with a familiar approach. The San Francisco-based startup develops wearable suits designed to aid movement for people with mobility issues. The company hopes to one day make its product available for all users, but is beginning by targeting elderly users. What sets Seismic apart […]

It happened. Apple won the race to $1 trillion in market capitalization. Following this week’s earnings release, Apple shares (NASDAQ:AAPL) briefly traded at $207.05, which values the company sightly over $1 trillion based on the most recent share count of July 20. While the smartphone market is more or less saturated, Apple managed to increase […]

The cost of childcare is one of the biggest financial burdens American families face. Even dependent care flexible spending accounts, pre-tax benefit accounts meant to reduce caregiving costs, can be an extra stressor because they involve filling out many forms. Kinside, a startup in Y Combinator’s current batch, wants to help by automating the claims process. […]

A look back at the past decade of consumer technology use in the UK has shone a light on changing gadget habits, underlining how Brits have gone from being smartphone dabblers back in 2008 when a top-of-the-range smartphone cost ~£500 to true addicts in today’s £1k+ premium smartphone era. The report also highlights what seems […]

If you’re still working on your submission to the first Virtual Hackathon at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2018 on September 5-7, then you’d best start praying to the caffeine gods and chug another Red Bull. The deadline you need to hit rolls in tonight, August 2 at midnight PST — no second chances on this one, folks. Give […]

Namely, a 400-person, six-and-a-half-year-old company, has mostly had the kind of trajectory that other startups envy. Mostly. The startup’s mobile-first platform — which sells payroll, talent management, and other HR services to mid-size businesses across the U.S. via subscription software — has for years been seen as among New York’s most promising businesses. Investors like […]

Facebook this morning announced the launch of a new set of educational resources focused on helping young people think critically and behave thoughtfully online. The Digital Literacy Library, as the new site is being called, is aimed at educators of children aged 11 to 18, and address topics like privacy, reputation, identity exploration, security, safety, […]

Apple has been performing incredibly well on the stock market for the past few days (NASDAQ:AAPL). While Yahoo Finance says that Apple is now worth over $1 trillion, this hasn’t yet happened. The company sent a filing to the SEC with an updated share count. While everyone thought the magic number was $203.45, it was […]

“I think the mistake everyone made was to think that Stories was a photography product” says Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom. “If you look at all these interactivity features we’ve added, we’ve really made Stories something else. We’ve really innovated and made it our own.” His version of the ephemeral slideshow format turns two years old […]

The Surface Go is an odd thing. Not because of the device itself, so much as how Microsoft ultimately arrived at it. The tablet was reverse-engineered, the low-end addition to the premium Surface line. What the company ultimately arrived at was the closest thing it’s offered to an iPad/iPad Pro competitor, to date. For its […]

Cisco today announced its intention to buy Ann Arbor, MI-based security firm, Duo Security. Under the terms of the agreement, Cisco is paying $2.35 billion in cash and assumed equity awards for Duo. Duo Security was founded in 2010 by Dug Song and Jonathan Oberheide and went on to raise $121.M through several rounds of […]

A national six-day taxi driver strike in Spain has ended after the government agreed to pass regulation that will allow the country’s autonomous communities to cap the number of private hire vehicle permits within their cities. The VTC licenses are used by Uber and local ride-hailing rival Cabify to offer professional driver services in the country. […]

Shedul, an online booking platform for salons and spas, has raised $5 million in funding. The round is led by Berlin’s Target Global, with participation from New York based FJ Labs. A number of individuals also invested personally, including Niklas Östberg (founder and CEO of Delivery Hero), and Hakan Koç (co-founder and co-CEO of Auto1 […]

A mere sprinkling of autonomous vehicles exist in a few dozen cities today. A smattering in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. A dusting in the greater Phoenix area and Pittsburgh. A few drops in Boston, Detroit, Gothenburg, Shenzhen and Singapore. And none of them—at least not yet—have been deployed as a true commercial enterprise. While […]

Musical.ly, the short video app that’s popular among teens and young people, is going away. Kinda. The app and all user data and accounts is being merged with Toktok, a sister app that’s owned by ByteDance, the Chinese company that acquired Musical.ly for around $1 billion last year. The switch-over happens today (Thursday) and it should […]