Crunch Hype

When the pandemic hit last year, Punchbowl, an online party planning service was left in the lurch with gatherings all but shut down, but instead of lamenting the situation, founder and CEO Matt Douglas went to work to rethink the company’s approach. He started by expanding the company’s online greeting card business, which until that […]

Just over three months after its last funding round, European fintech giant Klarna is announcing today that it has raised another $639 million at a staggering post-money valuation of $45.6 billion. Rumors swirled in recent weeks that Klarna had raised more money at a valuation north of $40 billion. But the Swedish buy now, pay […]

Microsoft will soon launch a dedicated device for game streaming, the company announced today. It’s also working with a number of TV manufacturers to build the Xbox experience right into their internet-connected screens and Microsoft plans to bring build cloud gaming to the PC Xbox app later this year, too, with a focus on play-before-you-buy […]

The world seems to move faster every year, and yet, nothing feels slower than the speed by which paychecks get distributed. In the United States, work conducted the day after a pay period will take two weeks just to process, with a check or direct deposit coming another week or two later. For the tens […]

On the heels of acquiring sales tax specialist TaxJar in April, today Stripe is making another big move in the area of tax. The $95 billion payments behemoth is launching a new product called Stripe Tax, which will provide automatic, updated sales tax calculations (covering sales tax, VAT, and GST) and related accounting services to […]

For the early detection and treatment of health conditions, easy access to primary healthcare is crucial. Primary healthcare is best delivered by teams of primary care clinicians coordinating care between them. However, ubiquitous access to such care is scant across Sub-Saharan Africa. There is a real opportunity for digital healthcare platforms to scale access to […]

Eightfold AI, a startup which uses deep learning and artificial intelligence to help companies find, recruit and retain workers, said on Thursday it has raised $220 million in a new round as it looks to accelerate its growth. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the Series E round of the five-year-old startup, which is now valued […]

Osome, a startup that combines multiple corporate services for SMEs into one “super app,” has raised a $16 million Series A. The round included returning investors Target Global, AltaIR Capital and Phystech Ventures, and new backers S16VC and venture capitalist Peng T. Ong, who joined as an angel investor. The Singapore-based startup’s last funding round […]

Two profound problems face the higher education sector globally — affordability and relevance. Whether you live in Africa, Europe, or the U.S., a major reason why people don’t go to university or college or even drop out because they cannot afford tuition fees. On the other hand, relevance shows the huge gap between what traditional […]

French startup Yousign has raised a $36.6 million Series A funding round (€30 million). Lead Edge Capital is leading the round and eFounders is investing once again in the company. Yousign, as the name suggests, is an e-signature provider that complies with European regulation on digital signatures. While the company was originally founded in 2013, […]

Tata Digital, the subsidiary of Tata Sons, said on Thursday it is acquiring a majority stake in digital health startup 1mg, the latest in a series of investments as the salt-to-steel Indian conglomerate enters the digital consumer space. The firms didn’t share the financial details of the deal, but a person familiar with the matter […]

Internet of Things devices are proliferating, making daily tasks more convenient for many people—but that comes at cost. The United Nations expects the amount of e-waste created globally to reach 52.2 million metric tons this year, and a sizable portion of that are dead batteries. Dracula Technologies, a French startup that is currently exhibiting virtually […]

BukuWarung, a fintech focused on Indonesia’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), announced today it has raised a $60 million Series A. The oversubscribed round was led by Valar Ventures, marking the firm’s first investment in Indonesia, and Goodwater Capital. The Jakarta-based startup claims this is the largest Series A round ever raised by a […]

Motional, the $4 billion joint venture between Aptiv and Hyundai, is exploring the company’s potential involvement in autonomous trucking or logistics, its CEO said today during a live session at TechCrunch’s 2021 Mobility Event. “The beauty of what’s on the other side of the coin is that the same core technology can of course apply […]

Community has never felt louder in startupland. Bringing people together over a shared interest is innate to human nature, and coming out of a lonely, draining pandemic, every startup is looking to cultivate community, conversation and camaraderie. Last week, though, the outside world got a look at how Y Combinator, one of Silicon Valley’s most […]

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The U.S. healthcare industry is amidst one of the biggest transformations any industry has seen since the dot-com boom of the late 1990s.

Many of the highest-profile English tutoring platforms focus on children, including VIPKID and Magic Ears. Ringle created a niche for itself by focusing on adults first, with courses like business English and interview preparation. The South Korea-based startup announced today it has raised an $18 million Series A led by returning investor Must Asset Management, […]

Tremendous technological innovation and transformative power are possible for the future if we re-energize the spirit of collaboration between the open-standards and open-source communities.

On Monday, a 17-year drought in the world of Alzheimer’s drugs ended with the FDA approval of Biogen’s Aduhlem (aducanumab). The controversy behind the FDA’s decision was considerable, but it doesn’t seem to be spooking drug developers who are now narrowing in on the degenerative brain disease. In a nutshell, the approval of Aduhelm came […]

While electric vertical take-off and landing passenger aircraft startup Joby Aviation is targeting North America for its initial commercial launch, founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt expects the company to have an early presence in Asia and Europe as well. Bevirt, who joined the TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 on June 9, didn’t give away the first […]

With the upcoming release of iOS 15 for Apple mobile devices, Apple’s built-in search feature known as Spotlight will become a lot more functional. In what may be one of its bigger updates since it introduced Siri Suggestions, the new version of Spotlight is becoming an alternative to Google for several key queries, including web […]

Machine learning models have already mastered Chess, Go, Atari games and more, but in order for it to ascend to the next level, researchers at Facebook intend for AI to take on a different kind of game: the notoriously difficult and infinitely complex NetHack. “We wanted to construct what we think is the most accessible ‘grand […]

After making investments in 57 startups together, Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra and Eventjoy founder Todd Goldberg are back at it with a new $24 million fund and big ambitions amid a venture capital renaissance with fast-moving deals aplenty. “Todd and Rahul’s Angel Fund” announced their first $7.3 million fund just weeks before the pandemic hit […]

The logistics of setting up a startup should be simple, because over the long run, complicated equity setups and cap tables cost more money in legal fees and administration time.

Every time there is a rumor of a Google algorithm update, a general panic ripples through the SEO community. All this angst is entirely misplaced.

Keeping up with the latest problems and solutions in growth is literally a full-time job, but TechCrunch is here to help.

Google today launched the second beta of Android 12. The first beta, which launched at Google’s I/O conference in May, introduced us to the first glimpses of Google’s new “Material You” design system, though many of the promised new features and design tweaks weren’t part of this first beta yet. With this new beta, Google […]

I'd love to get a green card and expand my tech company in the U.S. Someone mentioned that I should apply for a diversity green card. Would you provide me with more details about it and how to apply?

German electric air mobility company Lilium has partnered with aerospace manufacturer Honeywell to develop the electronics and mechanical systems for the 7-seater Lilium Jet, the company’s debut eVTOL. Honeywell will supply its compact fly-by-wire system, a flight control component that will be responsible for controlling all of the Jet’s moving parts, and the aircraft’s avionics […]

Even as NFT sales dip below their most speculative highs, startups aiming to tap into their potential are still scoring big funding rounds from investors who believe there’s much more to crypto collectibles than the past few months of hype. Mythical Games, an NFT games startup based out of Los Angeles, has banked a $75 […]

After co-founding Insomnia Consulting, Stacey Abrams and Lara O’Connor Hodgson started Nourish to address a personal problem. “We were at a meeting, I think for one of my campaigns,” explains Abrams, the Georgia-based lawyer and politician whose voting rights work became a focal point for the country in 2020. “[O’Connor Hodgson] needed to put together […]

TechCrunch Disrupt has a long history of bringing leading venture capitalists to the stage to yammer about their industry. Our impending TC Disrupt conference happening on September 21-23 is no different. This time around one of our investor guests is Arun Mathew of Accel, a venture capitalist that you might recall from his recent participation […]

Virgin Orbit is getting great to launch its next mission to space, with a target window at the end of this month. This will be the first time Virgin Orbit is flying after its first successful orbital launch in January, and it’s carrying seven small satellites on behalf of clients including the U.S. Department of […]

AI rounds are particularly hot or at least as hot as the larger SaaS market, which is itself enjoying historically rich multiples as more capital pours into the aggregate startup world.

As Apple hosts their annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Instagram and Facebook chose this moment to pilot their first-ever Creator Week. This three-day event is geared toward aspiring and emerging digital creators, complete with 9:45 AM virtual DJ sets and panels on “Algorithm Mythbusting” and raising “zillions for a nonprofit you care about.” During the first […]

Twilio Segment announced a tool, which is available starting today, to help marketers create fine-grained customer journeys. Until now the company has enabled marketers to build buyer personas and broader audiences, but this enables users to have much greater control of their interactions with a customer. Company co-founder and CEO Peter Reinhardt says that marketers […]

Swedish battery developer and manufacturer Northvolt AB has raised $2.75 billion in capital as it prepares to ramp up to an annual production capacity of 150 GWh in Europe by 2030. The funding round — Northvolt’s largest thus far — was co-led by existing investors Goldman Sachs and Volkswagen, and new investors including the Swedish […]

President Joe Biden is reducing some uncertainty faced by Chinese tech companies in the United States, erasing parts of the Trump-era legacy. The president signed an executive order revoking actions targeting TikTok and WeChat put forward by former President Donald Trump, according to a statement released by the White House on Wednesday. Instead, President Biden […]

Branch Insurance, a startup offering bundled home and auto insurance, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Anthemis Group. Acrew, Cherry Creek Holdings and existing backers Greycroft, HSCM Bermuda, American Family Ventures, SignalFire, SCOR P&C Ventures, Foundation Capital and Tower IV also participated in the round. With this latest financing, […]

Two years ago, Lillian Cartwright teamed up with some fellow Harvard Business School students to launch a new spiked seltzer brand called Astrid. Despite all the tools that make launching a D2C brand easier than it’s ever been, the team ran into complications when it came to securing raw materials. This piece of the supply […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, Alex, Natasha, and Chris dug into the world of hormonal health, a sub-sector within the massive (and booming) world of digital health. The show was inspired by Natasha’s latest Extra Crunch piece: […]

The European Union has been digging into the competition implications of AI-powered voice assistants and other Internet of Things (IoT) connected technologies for almost a year. Today it’s put out a first report discussing potential concerns that EU lawmakers say will help inform their wider digital policymaking in the coming years. A major piece of […]

Commit, a Vancouver, Canada-based startup that has a unique approach to matching up engineers looking for a new job to early-stage startups that want to hire them, today announced that it has raised a $6 million seed round. Accomplice led the round, with participation from Kensington Capital Partners, Inovia and Garage Capital. The company, which […]

Rachel Blank has a history with hormones. The entrepreneur left her investment job at General Catalyst to join a portfolio company they had been backing since its seed round: Ro. Blank was tasked with growing Rory, a product line for menopausal women. But Blank left her director position at the health tech unicorn, last valued […]

It’s game day for mobility tech mavens around the world. Well, at least for the ones who made the savvy decision to attend TC Sessions: Mobility 2021. Are you ready for a day packed with potential, overflowing with opportunity and focused on the future of transportation? Yeah, you are, and so are we! No FOMO […]

This morning Terra, a recent Y Combinator graduate building an API for fitness and health data, announced that it has closed a $2.8 million round. The investment includes capital from General Catalyst, Samsung Next, and NEXT VENTURES. The company intends to hire with its new capital, from a team of four today — the co-founders […]

Google today announced its plans to build a new subsea cable that will connect the East Coast of the U.S. and Las Toninas, Argentina — with additional landings in Brazil and Uruguay. The idea here is to provide users in South America with improved low-latency access to Google’s portfolio of consumer and cloud services. The […]

Human resources is generally a salient cornerstone of any organization, but digitization has democratized a lot of the work that goes into HR, and that’s meant more people in businesses interested in, and using, the kind of data that HR people build and typically manage. Today, a startup called ChartHop that’s built a platform to […]

Remote work was the order of the day for the past 16 months, but as we (fingers crossed) move out of the pandemic, it’s looking like a lot of people may move into a new era of hybrid work: less focus being present in offices to feel like you are getting things done, less time […]