Crunch Hype

Mobile commerce is where it’s at, and rising investment in so-called conversational commerce startups underscores the opportunity. Via, a two-year-old, Bay Area-based startup, is among those riding the wave, having identified some trends that are becoming clearer by the month. First, more e-commerce sales will be on mobile phones this year than desktops (as much […]

Facebook’s efforts to bring advertising to the Oculus virtual reality platform it has spent billions of dollars building out doesn’t seem to be off to a great start. The company announced last week that they were planning to roll out their first in-game ads inside the title “Blaston” from the prolific VR game developer Resolution […]

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Couchbase could double its valuation provided that investors are more interested in its faster-than-Red-Hat growth than they are worried about its history of cash consumption and growing net losses.

Popular Twitch streamers Amouranth and Indiefoxx are the two latest casualties of Twitch’s ongoing battle to enforce its own confusing rules around sexually suggestive content. Both creators were suspended following ASMR streams that pushed the bounds of Twitch’s community guidelines forbidding content that isn’t quite sexual in nature but is still too risqué for a […]

Ubco, the New Zealand-based electric utility bike startup, has raised $10 million to fund a global expansion focused on the U.S. market and scale up its commercial subscription service business. Ubco’s hero product, the Ubco 2X2, is an all-wheel drive electric motorbike that looks like a dirt bike but rides like a moped. What began […]

In something of an about-face, Amblin Partners, Steven Spielberg’s long-running film production company, will produce several films per year for Netflix. The deal reflects Netflix’s rising star and arguably acceptance by the legendary director of a new order to the cinematic world where home viewing is a first-class citizen. The deal was announced in a […]

Collectibles boomed during the pandemic and while NFT outfits like NBA Top Shot exploded as consumers flirted with newer efforts, the sneaker world grew even more mature with enthusiasts digging deeper into communities dedicated to the hobby/passion/obsession/alternative asset class. Vancouver’s SoleSavy, a sneaker community dedicated to giving fans a curated place to navigate the world […]

Google search is not what it used to be. We all want to be #1 on the search results page, but getting there isn’t enough. It might be worth it to instead go for the top featured snippet position.

TikTok announced today the launch of its Jump program, which expands the app’s potential for third-party integrations. TikTok began beta-testing this feature in February with Whisk, a recipe-sharing app, though only select creators could use the feature. Now, Jump will start rolling out to all users with an expanded slate of partners. Jumps can only […]

India proposed on Monday banning flash sales on e-commerce platforms and preventing their affiliate entities from being listed as sellers as the South Asian market looks to further tighten rules that could hurt the future prospects of Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart in the world’s second-largest market. The proposal (PDF), unveiled by India’s Ministry of Consumer […]

Following this morning’s announcement that Hyundai has closed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, another automotive company has posted some robotics news. The Toyota Research Institute announcement is decidedly less earthshaking than that big deal — if anything, it’s more of a progress check on what the division has been working on. Of course, incremental updates […]

Uber has reached a deal to become the sole owner of Latin American delivery startup Cornershop, just one year after acquiring a majority stake in the company. The ride-hailing giant said in a regulatory filing Monday that it will purchase the remaining 47% interest in Cornershop in exchange for 29 million shares. The transaction is […]

Soldier-entrepreneurs are unfortunately still a rare breed in Silicon Valley, despite the region’s origins in Cold War defense spending. While the courage and perseverance required to fight in an overseas battlefield (or the office bureaucracy on base) would seem a perfect fit for the travails of the founder, the reality is that the journey from […]

Neobanking has yet to show that it can generate positive, growing free cash flows over a multiyear period. But their results at least indicate that such incomes could occur in time.

Luxury sports car manufacturer Porsche AG is going into the battery business. The automaker said Monday it plans to open a new factory that will produce high-performance cells through a joint venture with lithium-ion battery developer Customcells. Porsche invested in “the high double-digit millions” in the new joint venture, dubbed Cellforce Group GmbH, executive board […]

The cyber executive order, alongside sanctions on Russia, are strong indications the Biden administration intends to take a far more proactive approach to cybersecurity. But it's not quite enough.

Most Series A investors today look for around $2 million in annual recurring revenues (ARR) before they lean in, but getting to that figure is a very long and thorny path.

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Hyundai this morning announced that it has completed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics. The deal, which values the innovative robotics company at $1.1 billion, was announced in late-2020. The companies have not disclosed any future financial details. The South Korean automotive giant now owns a controlling interest in Boston Dynamics, previously belonging to SoftBank. The […]

Music licensing marketplace Songtradr this morning announced a $50 million Series D. The oversubscribed round — which features Regal, Aware Super, Perennial, Argo and Greencape — follows a $30 million raise last August, bringing the Los Angeles company’s total funding to north of $100 million. The platform licenses music to high-profile names for advertising, films, […]

Kredivo announced today it has secured another $100 million debt facility from Victory Park Capital (VPC). This doubles the Indonesian digital lending and credit platform’s total warehouse financing facility from VPC to $200 million. The first round was closed in July 2020. Kredivo is operated by Singapore-based fintech FinAccel. This is the largest loan facility […]

As podcasting continues to gain ground among mainstream consumers as a digital media platform alongside music, video, and the printed word, a startup that made a name for itself through building content for the medium has closed a round of funding to help it explore what comes next. WaitWhat, co-founded by two of the people […]

There have been further calls from EU institutions to outlaw biometric surveillance in public. In a joint opinion published today, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) and the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS), Wojciech Wiewiórowski, have called for draft EU regulations on the use of artificial intelligence technologies to go further than the Commission’s proposal […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from Point A to […]

As enterprise startups continue to target interesting gaps in the market, we’re seeing increasingly sophisticated tools getting built for small and medium businesses — traditionally a tricky segment to sell to, too small for large enterprise tools, and too advanced in their needs for consumer products. In the latest development of that trend, an Israeli […]

Fintech startup Revolut has filed some financial results and is sharing details with the press. In 2020, the company reported $361 million in revenue (£261 million) — that’s a 57% increase compared to 2019 revenue of $229 million (£166 million). Interestingly, those revenue figures have been adjusted to include fair value gains on cryptocurrency assets […]

In April, Facebook announced a series of planned investments in new audio products, including a Clubhouse live audio competitor as well as new support for podcasts. Today, Facebook is officially rolling these products with the launch of Live Audio Rooms in the U.S. on iOS, starting with public figures and select Facebook Groups, and the […]

Germany’s competition authority, the FCO, has completed its Big Tech GAFA ‘bingo’ card by opening a proceeding against Apple. As with similar investigations already opened this year — into Amazon, Facebook and Google — the proceeding will determine whether or not the iPhone maker meets the threshold of Germany’s updated competition law. The 10th amendment […]

MFast, a mobile app that lets Vietnamese users in remote areas access financial services, announced today it has raised a $1.5 million pre-Series A. The round was led by Do Ventures, with participation from JAFCO Asia. Launched in 2019 by fintech company Digipay, MFast says it has been used by 600,000 people to date. It […]

Sari-sari stores are neighborhood stores in the Philippines that usually sell daily necessities and sometimes serve as community hubs, too. Today GrowSari, a startup that is digitizing sari-sari stores with features like pricing tools, inventory management and working capital loans, announced it has raised a Series B from several notable investors that brings its total […]

More mainstream venture capital firms are jumping on the crypto bandwagon as investors increasingly consider bitcoin an investable asset, despite the recent massive price drops of a few major cryptocurrencies. Amber Group, a Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency trading startup, said on Monday it has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round at a pre-money […]

Today, on Juneteenth, we recognize the efforts this nation still needs to put toward addressing structural racism and disparities, including in the world of tech. This week, HBCUvc, a nonprofit that aims to diversify the world of venture capital, launched a million-dollar fund. Founder Hadiyah Mujhid told me that the capital would provide nondilutive financing […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

Our survey respondents said Eindhoven might not immediately spring to mind as a high-tech hub, but the Netherlands city is keen to position itself as a center for deep tech in Europe.

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

We're off today to celebrate the Juneteenth holiday in the United States. I hope you have a safe and relaxing weekend.

The need for markets-focused competition watchdogs and consumer-centric privacy regulators to think outside their respective ‘legal silos’ and find creative ways to work together to tackle the challenge of big tech market power was the impetus for a couple of fascinating panel discussions organized by the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), which were livestreamed […]

Meet Mediflash, a new French startup that wants to improve temp staffing in healthcare facilities, such as nursing homes, clinics and mental health facilities. The company positions itself as an alternative to traditional temp staffing agencies. They claim to offer better terms for both caregivers and institutions. “It costs a small fortune to health facilities […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week, Natasha and Danny, otherwise known as your two new favorite Book influencers (inside joke, you’ll get if you listen to the show), hopped on the mics to take everyone through the news, with Grace and […]

Indian fintech startup BharatPe is in advanced stages of talks to raise about $250 million in a new financing round led by Tiger Global, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The new round, a Series E, is giving the three-year-old New Delhi-headquartered firm a pre-money valuation of $2.5 billion, sources said, requesting anonymity […]

The UK’s chief data protection regulator has warned over reckless and inappropriate use of live facial recognition (LFR) in public places. Publishing an opinion today on the use of this biometric surveillance in public — to set out what is dubbed as the “rules of engagement” — the information commissioner, Elizabeth Denham, also noted that […]

Ford has two electric vehicles in the pipeline — the E-Transit cargo van and F-150 Lighting Pro —aimed at commercial customers. Now, the automaker is rounding out its future EV commercial business with the acquisition of battery management and fleet monitoring software startup Electriphi. Terms of the acquisition weren’t disclosed. Ford is betting that the […]

On-demand goods, food and alcohol delivery service Gopuff has acquired fleet management platform rideOS for $115 million, sources familiar with the deal say. This acquisition comes just a few months after the Philadelphia-based startup announced a $1.15 billion funding round at a $8.9 billion valuation, up from $3.9 billion in October. Last fall, the company […]

Podcasts are all the rage, but podcast discovery is a challenge. Today, Spotify announced its acquisition of Podz, a startup that’s trying to solve the problem of podcast discovery. “At Spotify, we are investing to build and scale the world’s best (and most personalized) podcast discovery experience,” the company said. “We believe that Podz’ technology […]

KeepTruckin, a hardware and software developer that helps trucking fleets manage vehicle, cargo and driver safety, has just raised $190 million in a Series E funding round, which puts the company’s valuation at over $2 billion, according to CEO Shoaib Makani. G2 Venture Partners, which just raised a $500 million fund to help modernize existing […]

Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Electric vehicle startup Canoo detailed some of the features that may be on its app on Thursday, foremost of which is a one-stop shop functionality that customers could use for their Canoo vehicles — and all their other cars, as well. This unusual approach to its branded vehicle app could potentially pay off big-time for […]

This past year, three sheep in Canada have been wearing their kidneys on their sleeves. Or more aptly, in jackets on their fluffy backs. These three sheep are part of an ongoing animal study run by the Buffalo, New York-based startup Qidni Labs, a company pursuing waterless and mobile blood purification systems. Qidni Labs was […]

CEO Shishir Mehrotra and Madrona partner S. Somasegar joined Extra Crunch Live to discuss Coda's pitch doc -- and give live feedback on pitches from the audience.