Crunch Hype

Aserto, a new startup from a couple of tech industry vets who want to build an Authorization as a Service solution, announced a $5.1 million seed round today from Costanoa Ventures, Heavybit Industries and several industry luminaries. The company’s two founders, Omri Gazitt, CEO and Gert Drapers, CTO, have decades of experience building some of […]

Contentstack, a startup that offers a headless content management system (or a ‘content experience platform’ in marketing speak), today announced that it has raised a $57.5 million Series B round. The round, which the company says was oversubscribed, was led by Insight Partners, which also led its Series A round. New investor Georgian and existing […]

End-to-end encrypted email service ProtonMail has refreshed its design, updating with a cleaner look and a more customizable user interface — including the ability to pick from a bunch of themes (dark and contrasting versions are both in the mix). Last month the Swiss company officially announced passing 50M users globally, as it turned seven […]

Sinch — the Swedish company that provides a suite of services for companies to build communications and specifically “customer engagement” into their services by way of APIs — has made yet another acquisition in its global march to scale up its business and compete more squarely with Twilio. The company today announced that it has […]

According to research, 85% of African SMBs have zero access to financing, and each day, African SMBs have billions locked up in receivables due to long payment cycles. This leads to cash flow problems that cause businesses to be late on important expenses and fulfilment of new orders. Jesse Ghansah and his co-founder Barima Effah […]

French startup Pennylane has raised a new $18.3 million funding round (€15 million). Interestingly, this is Sequoia Capital’s first investment in France after they announced ambitious expansion plans in Europe. If you’re not familiar with Pennylane, the startup has been developing an accounting platform that improves accounting for both clients and their accountants. Focused on […]

Vivaldi has always been one of the more interesting of the Chromium-based browsers, in no small part thanks to its emphasis on building tools for power users in a privacy-centric package, but also because of its pedigree, with Opera’s outspoken former CEO Jon von Tetzchner as its co-founder and CEO. Today, the Vivaldi team is […]

Neobrokers — startups that are disrupting the investment industry by providing a platform for a wider range of consumers to partake in the stock market by offering them more incremental investment options and modern and easy mobile-based interfaces to manage their money — continue to see a huge amount of interest, and today comes the […]

Every startup is trying to fix something but Terraformation is tackling the only problem that must matter to all of us: Climate change. This is why it’s in such a big huge hurry. Its mission — as a ‘forest tech’ startup — is to accelerate tree planting by applying a startup-y operational philosophy of scalability […]

A young Indian startup that is betting that earned wage access solutions will take off in the South Asian nation said on Wednesday it has closed a new round from high-profile investors. Bangalore-based Refyne said on Wednesday that it has raised $16 million in Series A from partners of DST Global and RTP Global. The […]

“It’s not a nail polish company.” It’s almost the first thing out of the mouth of Fenton Jagdeo of Faculty, the startup he cofounded in 2019 with Umar ElBably. Though their Toronto-based company currently sells just three shades of nail polish along with some nail stickers — that’s it — the products are a wedge […]

Earned wage access (EWA) platforms that allow workers to withdraw their earnings on demand instead of waiting until payday are proliferating around the world. Today, Indonesian EWA startup wagely announced it has raised $5.6 million in strategic funding, led by Integra Partners (formerly known as Dymon Asia Ventures). Other investors included the Asian Development Bank […]

Today, former President Donald Trump issued a statement supporting the Nigerian government’s decision to suspend Twitter activities in the West African country. “Congratulations to the country of Nigeria, who just banned Twitter because they banned their President,” he said in the statement. The ex-President also encouraged other countries to follow in Nigeria’s footsteps and ban […]

News broke this morning that Bain Capital Private Equity and Crosspoint Capital Partners are purchasing Seattle-based network security startup ExtraHop.

The corporate philanthropy organization Pledge 1% has, since its launch in 2014, asked founders to donate 1% of their companies’ equity, product or employees’ time starting on their first day of business. While the Bay Area-based outfit has found meaningful support from companies like DocuSign, Box, Twilio Okta and PagerDuty that pledged their resources ahead […]

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Trucks Venture Capital, a fund that focuses on early-stage entrepreneurs in transportation, is launching two new funds that it says will help build the future of transportation. Its new core fund, Trucks Venture Fund 2 (TVF2), was raised over the last year and recently closed on $52,525,252. The fund is backed by three auto OEMs […]

The continuing saga of Lordstown Motor’s struggles as a public company took a new turn today as the electric truck manufacturer made yet more news. Bad news. Shares of Lordstown are down sharply today after the company reported in an SEC filing that it does not have enough capital to build and launch its electric […]

Ring gets a lot of criticism, not just for its massive surveillance network of home video doorbells and its problematic privacy and security practices, but also for giving that doorbell footage to law enforcement. While Ring is making moves towards transparency, the company refuses to disclose how many users had their data given to police. […]

It’s rare that a truly new way to make coffee is invented, and nearly all of them have one thing in common: heat. After all, it’s hot water that quickly extracts flavor and body from grounds. But Osma, a new device using an entirely novel coffeemaking technique, makes a rich, strong espresso-like drink at any […]

Electric vehicle startup Fisker Inc. has set a moonshot goal of creating its first climate-neutral car by 2027. Fisker has yet to bring a vehicle to market — climate neutral or not — making this an ambitious target. The all-electric Fisker Ocean SUV, which is still on track to go into production in November 2022, […]

Apple in 2018 closed its $400 million acquisition of music recognition app Shazam. Now, it’s bringing Shazam’s audio recognition capabilities to app developers in the form of the new ShazamKit. The new framework will allow app developers — including those on both Apple platforms and Android — to build apps that can identify music from Shazam’s […]

Playdate, app and game designer Panic’s first shot at hardware, finally has a firm price and ship date, as well as a bunch of surprise features cooked up since its announcement in 2019. The tiny handheld gaming console will cost $179, ship later this year and come with a 24-game “season” doled out over 12 […]

Toast has raised more than $900 billion and is reportedly valued at over $5 billion. But back in 2011, no one knew this startup would see such meteoric success.

With increased demand from the pandemic, Canalys reports that U.S. PC shipments were up 73% over the same period last year. That added up to a total of 34 million units sold. While Apple had a good quarter with sales up 36%, it was surpassed by HP, which sold 11 million units in total with […]

It’s only been nine months since Dispo rebranded from David’s Disposable. But the vintage-inspired photo sharing app has experienced a whiplash of ups and downs, mostly due to the brand’s original namesake, YouTuber David Dobrik. Like Clubhouse, Dispo was one of this year’s most hyped up new social apps, requiring an invite from an existing […]

You’d be forgiven for being confused. I’ve been following this story and am currently writing it and I’m still fairly confused. But Turntable (or tt.fm), not to be confused with Turntable.fm (the name of both the original and recently re-released social music app) today just announced that it has launched iOS, Android and desktop versions […]

As the company is expected to price tomorrow and trade Thursday, we're looking at data that could prove final, unless Monday.com manages to push its IPO price range higher, or prices above estimates.

Even without regulation as a stick, consumer demand is now serving as a carrot to increase sustainability’s impact on public companies’ agendas.

Honeywell, which only recently announced its entry into the quantum computing race, and Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQ), which focuses on building software for quantum computers, today announced that they are combining Honeywell’s Quantum Solutions (HQS) business with Cambridge Quantum in the form of a new joint venture. Honeywell has long partnered with CQ and invested […]

TechCrunch is thrilled to announce Carnegie Mellon University President Farnam Jahanian is speaking at our Pittsburgh event on June 29. You can register here. It’s free to participate and hear President Farnam’s interview. President Jahanian is an outspoken advocate for science and innovation, making him perfect to headline our event focused on startup activity in […]

At its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple announced a significant update to RealityKit, its suite of technologies that allow developers to get started building AR (augmented reality) experiences. With the launch of RealityKit 2, Apple says developers will have more visual, audio, and animation control when working on their AR experiences. But the most notable part […]

Maryland and Montana have become the first U.S. states to pass laws that make it tougher for law enforcement to access DNA databases. The new laws, which aim to safeguard the genetic privacy of millions of Americans, focus on consumer DNA databases, such as 23andMe, Ancestry, GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA, all of which let people upload […]

The buy now, pay later frenzy isn’t going anywhere as more consumers seek alternatives to credit cards to fund purchases. And those purchases aren’t exclusive to luxuries such as Pelotons (ahem, Affirm) or jewelry someone might be treating themselves to online. A new fintech company is out to help consumers finance big-ticket items that are […]

Robotaxis may still be a few years out, but there are other industries that can be transformed by autonomous vehicles as they are today. MIT spin-off ISEE has identified one in the common shipping yard, where containers are sorted and stored — today by a dwindling supply of human drivers, but tomorrow perhaps by the […]

Bain Capital Private Equity and Crosspoint Capital Partners are buying a security solution that could be useful as more companies find themselves with some assets on-site and some in the cloud.

It’s been two years since Sony raised the bar for wireless earbuds. Six months before Apple upped its own game with the AirPods Pro, the WF-1000XM3 set a new standard for sound and active noise cancelation. Since then, few companies have been able to match – let alone surpass – their performance. After several weeks’ […]

Tomorrow, June 9 is the big day, mobility fans! Get ready to rub virtual elbows with the brightest minds and makers, movers and shakers at TC Sessions: Mobility 2021. You, along thousands of other attendees from around the world, will find insight, inspiration and, most of all, opportunity to help you make your mobility startup […]

Few things have captured Silicon Valley-based investors’ attention in recent years quite like the quest to back the successor[s] to Google Docs. The estimable and entrenched productivity suite has been unbundled and repackaged into products that a number of multi-billion dollar tech startups have been built around. All the while, entrepreneurs are continuing to poke […]

Many companies talk the talk when it comes to diversity, but it’s harder to know if a firm is actually going the extra mile to hire more qualified people from underrepresented groups, or if they just make noise about it. Blendoor, a six-year-old startup, wants to put data to work on the problem by giving […]

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has launched a vulnerability disclosure program allowing ethical hackers to report security flaws to federal agencies. The platform, launched with the help of cybersecurity companies Bugcrowd and Endyna, will allow civilian federal agencies to receive, triage and fix security vulnerabilities from the wider security community. The move to launch […]

Last month, Apple announced it would soon add lossless audio streaming and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos to its Apple Music subscription at no extra charge. That upgrade has now gone live, Apple announced this morning — though many noticed the additions actually rolled out yesterday, following the WWDC keynote. The entire Apple […]

You'd expect an expense management company to have a large sales department and advertise heavily. But like we’ve seen over and over, Expensify just doesn’t do what you think it should.

Google is ditching a massively unpopular auction format that underpins an choice screen it offers in the European Union, it said today. Eligible search providers will be able to freely participate. The auction model was Google’s ‘remedy’ of choice — following the 2018 EU $5BN antitrust enforcement against Android — but rivals have always maintained […]

What’s the top-rated hotel in New York City? According to Tripadvisor users, it’s Mint House at 70 Pine, and it’s easy to see why as you click through the photos. Throughout NYC, hotel rooms are essentially bento boxes, carefully constructed to contain all the necessary bits. But not Mint House rooms. Mint House rooms are […]

When it comes to sustainable livestock production and agriculture, measurement is the first, and sometimes most elusive, step in the process of turning our food system from a carbon emitter into a carbon sink.

Proving that Central and Eastern Europe remains a powerhouse of hardware engineering matched with software, Gideon Brothers (GB), a Zagreb, Croatia-based robotics and AI startup, has raised a $31 million Series A round led by Koch Disruptive Technologies (KDT), the venture and growth arm of Koch Industries Inc., with participation from DB Schenker, Prologis Ventures, […]

Compose.ai, which built its own language model to help folks write faster, landed a $2.1 million seed round led by Craft Ventures.

As people live longer and longer and have long-term health issues like cancer and dementia, caring for elderly relatives is becoming a huge societal and political issue. Right now this care is antiquated and run by incumbents, many of which still run off paper and Excel. We are now seeing a new wave of startups […]

Liteboxer, the Peloton for boxing, has announced the close of a $20 million Series A funding round led by Nimble Ventures. B. Riley Venture Capital participated, alongside existing investors Raptor Group and Will Ventures. Liteboxer launched publicly to the world in July of 2020, announcing an in-home device that brings gamification, hit music, and a […]