Crunch Hype

Go-Jek, the Indonesia-based ride-sharing company valued at $5 billion, has begun its ambitious plan to increase its rivalry with Grab by expanding into three new markets after it opened shop in Vietnam. The service — which is known as Go-Viet — covers an initial 12 districts in Ho Chi Minh City with a motorbike on-demand service. Rival […]

We dedicate this post to all the wafflers, the procrastinators, the vacillators and the chronically undecided. You have less than 24 hours to save money on your tickets to Disrupt Berlin 2018 on November 29-30. How much money? Up to €700. The door slams shut on super early-bird savings on Wednesday August 1 at 11:59 p.m. CEST. […]

Google is adding a third data center to its presence in Singapore in response to continued internet growth in Southeast Asia. It’s been three years since it added a second center in Singapore, and during that time the company estimates that something in the region of 70 million people across Southeast Asia have come online […]

One of the fascinating things about watching an emerging startup ecosystem is that it isn’t just companies that are scaling, the very VC firms that feed them are growing themselves, too. That’s perhaps best embodied by Golden Gate Ventures, a Singapore-based firm founded by three Silicon Valley entrepreneurs in 2011 which is about to close a […]

Electric scooter startup Bird, the one worth $2 billion, is going international. This does not come as a surprise given TechCrunch’s June report that Bird was looking to expand to Europe. Today, Bird is launching a pilot program in Paris to see how the electric scooter service operates in a city with more than two […]

Uber is making calls to some of its customers in New York City, offering to connect them to local council members to express their opposition to the proposed legislation that would cap the number of ride-hailing drivers in the city, BuzzFeed first reported. Meanwhile, Lyft is also reaching out to its NYC-based riders, asking them to […]

For the past few years, Apple has made early versions of its operating systems available to those willing to brave the bugs. Through its beta software program, anyone willing to deal with spotty battery life or a crash or three could load up pre-release builds of iOS, macOS, watchOS or tvOS. Ever wonder how many […]

Longtime Apple Pay holdout CVS will finally be adding support for Apple’s mobile payments platform this fall, along with 7-Eleven, Apple CEO Tim Cook said this afternoon on the company’s earnings call. The news is particularly notable because CVS was one of the first major retailers to snub Apple Pay, choosing instead to launch its […]

Spotify has been experimenting with incorporating non-musical formats over the last couple of years, including videos and multimedia podcasts. Next up: Motion comics based on new Archie stories. For those of you who haven’t been keeping track of the comics incarnations of Archie and his friends, the title was recently rebooted by writer Mark Waid (Kingdom […]

Among the many things the current administration has been criticized for is its lack of a unified strategy to combat cyber threats, especially in light of ongoing election interference and psy ops perpetrated by Russia. The Department of Homeland Security is advancing the ball with the creation of the National Risk Management Center, intended on protecting critical infrastructure from attacks and subversion by online adversaries.

Apple is inching closer and closer to becoming a $1 trillion company today after posting third-quarter results that beat what analysts were expecting and bumping the stock another few percentage points — which, by Apple standards, is tens of billions of dollars. The company’s stock is up around 2.5 percent this afternoon after the report, […]

TV Time, the consumer app that helps bingers keep track of where they are with favorite shows and socialize with fellow viewers, is today expanding its business with the launch of an analytics platform called TVLytics. The new service will allow creators and distributors to tap into real-time data from across more than 60,000 TV shows. It […]

Unknown midterm election attackers that Facebook has removed were hosting a political rally next month that they pinned on Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other organizations, according to third-party event websites that scraped the now-removed Facebook events. Facebook provided an image of the deleted “No Unite The Right 2 – DC” event as part of […]

It would be hard to argue that digital products have a net-positive impact on our health. Most are designed to provide the same dopamine hit as a slot machine. But this habit-forming power of digital products can be used for therapeutic benefit too, often by changing the behavior that causes disease or ill health.

Virtual reality is an isolating experience. You power it up, strap the headset on and just sort of drift off into your own world. But maybe that doesn’t have to be the case. Maybe there’s a way to slip into a virtual world and still interact with your surroundings. Electronauts presents an interesting example. Survios […]

For developers, the process of determining whether every new update is going to botch some core functionality can take up a lot of time and resources, and things get far more complicated when you’re managing a multitude of apps. Test.ai is building a comprehensive system for app testing that relies on bots, not human labor, […]

Gusto, which sells payroll, benefits and human resources management and monitoring services to small businesses, has raised $140 million in its latest round of funding. The company said it will use the money to add new services to increase payment flexibility for employees. The company launched a new service called Flexible Pay, which gives employees […]

According to COO Sheryl Sandberg, getting ahead of an event called “No Unite the Right 2, DC” is the reason behind Facebook’s decision to disclose new platform behavior that closely resembles previous Russian state-sponsored activity meant to sow political discord in the U.S. “We’re sharing this today because the connection between these actors and the […]

Google today announced that it is working with a number of news organizations to surface more data from their data journalism projects in its search results. The idea here is to make it easier to discover the data that a lot of these organizations produce and then surface it in an easy to read format […]

Waymo, the former Google self-driving project that spun out to become a business under Alphabet, is launching a program in Phoenix next month that will focus on delivering people to bus stops and train and light-rail stations. The pilot program announced Tuesday is in partnership with Valley Metro, the Phoenix area’s regional public transportation authority. […]

A lot can happen in 24 hours. Just ask Jack Bauer, the hard-charging protagonist from the TV drama series 24. Seriously, he had to save the world every dang episode. All you have to do is buy your pass to Disrupt San Francisco 2018 before the prices go up in — you guessed it — […]

In a newsroom post Tuesday, Facebook revealed that it has detected evidence of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” designed to influence U.S. politics on its platform. According to Facebook’s head of Cybersecurity, Policy Nathaniel Gleicher, the company first identified the activity two weeks ago. So far, the activity encompasses eight Facebook Pages, 17 profiles and seven accounts […]

Istio, the service mesh for microservices from Google, IBM, Lyft, Red Hat and many other players in the open-source community, launched version 1.0 of its tools today. If you’re not into service meshes, that’s understandable. Few people are. But Istio is probably one of the most important new open-source projects out there right now. It […]

The dream of a startup founder can often be summarized by the following well-intentioned, and mostly delusional, quote: “We’ll raise a few rounds and in a few years we’ll IPO on Nasdaq.”

Marc Piette had a revelation as he buzzed in and out of the Palo Alto Airport in pursuit of his pilot’s license. Instead of freedom, he saw restraint. He also saw potential. “It became pretty apparent that there were major issues with the general aviation industry with smaller aircraft,” Piette said in a recent interview […]

It is unclear where the UkuRobot came from and where it will go once it is done with humanity but I fear that it is up to no good. Look at this robot: small, compact, infinitely complex. Its fretting system stares at us, gimlet -eyed, while the plucking system continues its dark work on the […]

Real estate developers and their properties are getting an opportunity to cash in on power management and surplus energy production thanks to a new company called Blueprint Power. It’s a new twist on an old idea dating back to the first clean tech boom based on ideas of demand response and power management. Companies like […]

If there’s one truth that applies to early-stage startup founders, it’s that there never seems to be enough time to get it all done. We feel your struggle. That’s why we’re extending the application deadline to compete in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield MENA 2018 in Beirut, Lebanon on October 3. We’re looking for the best pre-Series A […]

Mammoth Biosciences, the biotech company that grew out of a close relationship with CRISPR legend Jennifer Doudna, has raised $23 million in a sturdy Series A. Mammoth previously raised $120,000 from NFX and the company continued quietly picking up funding as it built toward its exit from stealth mode in April 2018. Its current round […]

Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange based on volume, has made its first acquisition after it snapped up mobile wallet company Trust Wallet. The deal is undisclosed, but Binance confirmed to TechCrunch that the compensation is a mixture of cash, Binance stock and a portion of its BNB token. U.S.-based Trust Wallet will remain independent following the […]

If you’ve been wondering why every major media platform has been doubling down on its video efforts in recent months, Nielsen’s new report has the answer. According to the firm’s research, U.S. adults are now spending almost 6 hours per day on video, on average. That includes time spent watching both live and time-shifted TV, […]

You probably never think about the Google Clock app on your Android phone. And unless you are one of those happy early risers, it’s not exactly an app that brings you joy. But every day, it wakes you right on time, with either some annoying chirps or other sounds that, over time, will stress you […]

Poland-based CallPage offers something other customer interaction apps don’t: the ability to call your website visitors as soon as they click on your page. In a world where the difference between a sale and a click past your site onto Facebook, this is a pretty cool little feature. CallPage began in 2015 when the founders, […]

You’ll soon be able to get your battery running and head out on the highway on a variety of Harley Davidson EVs.That according to news the Milwaukee based motorcycle manufacture will offer “an exciting portfolio of two-wheeled electric vehicles” in the near future, including a possible e-scooter and bicycle.

Renovo is licensing its technology to yet another self-driving startup—this time aiPod—in its bid to sell a platform that will enable companies to deploy commercial fleets of fully automated vehicles. Fleets of autonomous vehicles that can safely pick up and drop off people and packages will require more than an AI system that can brake, […]

Last month, the U.S. government reached a settlement that makes it legal to post plans for 3D printing fire arms.This morning, the President tweeted an objection to the ruling, a day before it’s enacted. “I am looking into 3-D [Printed] Plastic Guns being sold to the public,” Trump wrote. “Already spoke to NRA, doesn’t seem […]

The latest trailer for Sony’s Venom delivers the most extensive look yet at the superpowered title character played by Tom Hardy. The film’s first teaser focused on Hardy and the other human cast members, with no footage of the actual alien “symbiote” (basically, it’s a sentient costume with a bad attitude). When we actually got to […]

Yesterday, MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe reportedly called an all-hands in which he informed employees of plans to further limit access to blockbuster boys. The policy, which started with Mission: Impossible — Fallout this weekend, was set to extend to upcoming big releases, Christopher Robin and The Meg. The report arrived as the service was experiencing yet […]

Scalar Capital is a San Francisco-based hedge fund company specializing in crypto assets. In fact, it is one of roughly 300 crypto-focused funds that have sprung up in the last year or so. That kind of market zaniness makes it difficult to carve out a niche, but Scalar has a bit an edge on this front, […]

Facebook’s plan to take on Musical.ly may involve more than just its own take on a lip syncing feature. It appears to also be working on something called “Talent Show,” which would allow users to compete by singing popular songs then submitting their audition for review. The feature isn’t live, but was rather uncovered in the […]

Facebook has been given the go ahead to appeal to Ireland’s Supreme Court against an earlier High Court decision to refer key questions relating to the validity of EU-US data flows to Europe’s top court, the Irish Times reports. The eventual outcome of what is already years of legal to-ing and fro-ing — in a […]

A mere four months after coming out of stealth mode with $3 million in seed funding, real estate investment startup Skyline AI announced that it has raised an $18 million Series A. The round was led by Sequoia Capital, a returning investor, and TLV Partners, with participation from JLL Spark, a division of real estate […]

I worked Circuit City when the PlayStation 2 launched. For weeks, we were sold out, and there was always a crowd around the blue demo unit in the gaming department. It’s easy to see why the PlayStation 2 was a hit looking back. It was powerful, inventive and excelled at local gaming. It was the […]

For those of us unlucky enough to be forced to accommodate mother nature’s whims on a monthly basis, you know that — in addition to cramps, headaches and mood swings — it can be a challenge to find time in your schedule to buy the period products you need. Desperate trips to the pharmacy when […]

Freshworks, a company that offers a variety of business software tools ranging from IT management to CRM for sales and customer support software, today announced that it has raised a $100 million funding round co-led by Sequoia and Accel Partners, with participation from CaptialG. The company’s last funding round came in the form of a […]

“Happy to spend 10 minutes on our vision and the journey we’re on, but then, really, 15 minutes on what we’ve got today, what it is we’ve achieved, what it is our AI does,” says Tractable co-founder and CEO Alexandre Dalyac when I video called him a couple of weeks ago. “You can probably speed […]

Startups in Latin America, your time is running out. You have just one week to apply for the inaugural TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Latin America on November 8, 2018, in São Paulo, Brazil. The application page can be found here, and the deadline to fill out an application is Monday, August 6 at 5 p.m. PST. Just last week […]

Video game company EA is slowly switching its business model to recurring subscriptions. The company just launched Origin Access Premier for $15 per month or $100 per year. This subscription is only available on PC. This isn’t EA’s first subscription. The company first launched EA Access on the Xbox One. For $5 per month or […]

WhatsApp has added a much-requested new feature after it began to allow users to make group voice and video calls. It’s been just over three years since the company, which is owned by Facebook, introduced voice calls and later a video option one year later. Today, WhatsApp counts over 1.5 billion monthly users and it says […]

Nintendo released its latest earnings report today and the headline is that the company has now sold nearly 20 million Switch consoles. The actual number is 19.67 million as of the end of June, so add July sales and the 20 million milestone is likely to have already been hit. Either way, it has easily […]