Crunch Hype

Chime might call itself the “fastest-growing fintech in the U.S.,” but it has agreed to stop referring to itself as a “bank,” per a new report out of American Banker. Evidently, the eight-year-old, San Francisco-based outfit was the target of an investigation by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation after Chime used “chimebank” […]

Facebook’s controversial policy-setting supergroup issued its verdict on Trump’s fate Wednesday, and it wasn’t quite what most of us were expecting. We’ll dig into the decision to tease out what it really means, not just for Trump, but also for Facebook’s broader experiment in outsourcing difficult content moderation decisions and for just how independent the […]

GM CEO Mary Barra sees the automaker selling personal autonomous vehicles by the end of the decade by leveraging technology from its self-driving subsidiary Cruise, according to comments made during the company’s Wednesday earnings call. Barra wasn’t providing any specifics just yet, but instead laid out a vision for the automaker’s future and how its […]

Early-stage startups — now is your time to shine at the TechCrunch Early Stage event on July 8 and 9. This is part two of the highly successful event from April where top experts train and teach founders how to build, launch and scale their companies. In April we hosted the inaugural TC Early Stage Pitch-Off […]

Metacore, a Finnish mobile games company, seems to have an amazing “relationship” with Supercell, another (quite successful) Finnish mobile games company. Back in September 2020, Metacore raised $17.7 million in equity from Supercell and another $11.8 million line of credit, sometimes also called a debt round. That amazing relationship appears to be ongoing. Because Metacore […]

Can SPACs still solve the funding problem for capital-intensive, deep tech startups? And will they become a permanent financing option?

GM might be best known for the millions of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC-branded vehicles it designs, produces, finances and sells each year. But it also has a burgeoning incubator, where a team of 600 employees are working to develop 20 new businesses with a total addressable market of about $1.3 trillion. A few of […]

Outside attorneys are experts in M&A or IPOs, but your in-house lawyers are experts in your company. Here are actionable tips on how to use that team to your advantage.

Facebook is launching a new section of its app designed to connect neighbors and curate neighborhood-level news. The new feature, predictably called Neighborhoods, is available now in Canada and will be rolling out soon for U.S. users to test. As we reported previously, Neighborhoods has technically been around since at least October of last year, […]

A year ago, Twitter began testing a feature that would prompt users to pause and reconsider before they replied to a tweet using “harmful” language — meaning language that was abusive, trolling or otherwise offensive in nature. Today, the company says it’s rolling improved versions of these prompts to English-language users on iOS and soon, […]

Each of the big cloud platforms has its own methodology for passing on security information to logging and security platforms, leaving it to the vendors to find proprietary ways to translate that into a format that works for their tool. The Cloud Security Notification Framework (CSNF), a new working group that includes Microsoft, Google and […]

There’s no excuse for the slow pace of improvement toward greater equity in the venture capital/startup game. And we’re tired of writing dispiriting posts about it.

Text Blaze, which was a part of the recent Winter 2021 Y Combinator accelerator batch, announced that it has closed a $3.3 million seed round. The company’s investment was led by Two Sigma Ventures’s Villi Iltchev and Susa Ventures’s Leo Polovets. The company’s product hybridizes two trends that TechCrunch has been tracking in recent years, […]

Today’s marketing executives must bring functions and teams together. From sales and marketing alignment to product and everything in between, CMOs are the connective tissue between every function.

On the heels of strong first quarter earnings, dating app giant Match announced its plan to introduce a new live event experience to its flagship app, Tinder. Dubbed “Vibes,” the new feature combines aspects from earlier Tinder events, Swipe Surge and Swipe Night, to create a new kind of in-app experience that’s both time sensitive […]

We’re looking for motivated early-stage founders who want to take advantage of every possible opportunity to launch their startups to new levels of success. Historically, one of the most effective ways to do that is to exhibit in Startup Alley, at TechCrunch Disrupt. This year at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 (September 21-23) we’re shaking up history […]

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin is offering up one seat on the inaugural flight of its sub-orbital rocket New Shepard, set to take place July 20 – but instead of a fixed price ticket sale, the seat will go to the highest bidder. It’ll work like this: from May 5-19, bidders will be able to bid […]

In just slightly more than a month, the mobility industry’s visionary movers, makers, shakers, innovators and investors from around the world will gather on June 9 for the virtual mind meld that is TC Sessions: Mobility 2021. If you’re a mobility maven listen up: you have just two days — a mere 48 hours — […]

Shares of home-exercise giant Peloton are falling today, off some 13.6% as of the time of writing. This comes after the company announced a recall of its treadmill product, and TechCrunch reported that the company failed to fix a security issue regarding user data. The value of Peloton shares soared during the pandemic, as the […]

Emergence, the 18-year-old, San Mateo, Ca.-based venture firm focused on enterprise tech startups, has rounded up nearly a billion dollars in capital commitments across two funds. It closed its sixth early-stage fund with $575 million; the outfit also raised a so-called opportunity fund for the first time, closing it with $375 million in capital commitments. […]

EngineEars today announced a $1 million raise. The company’s first round of funding features investments from Kendrick Lamar, DJ Mustard, Roddy Rich and Slauson and Co. “Quality of sound is still important in music,” Lamar said in a quote provided to TechCrunch. “Ali has always been a progressive thinker. Engineers will transcend the culture.” The […]

Once the design, manufacturing and certification of electric aircraft is complete, urban air mobility companies face a cascade of logistical issues, including building an app that connect customers to rides and finding dedicated take-off and landing areas. A new partnership between autonomous air taxi developer Wisk Aero and air mobility ride platform Blade Urban Air […]

As the oldest of 12 children, Bunim Laskin spent much of his teen years looking for ways to help keep his siblings entertained. Noticing that a neighbor’s pool was often empty, Laskin reached out to ask if his family could use her pool. To make it worth her while, he suggested that they could help […]

At the same time as it’s cracking down on the advertising businesses run by rivals, Apple is introducing a new way for developers to advertise on the App Store. Previously, developers could promote their apps after users initiated a search on the App Store by targeting specific keywords. For example, if you typed in “taxi,” […]

Peloton today announced that it will be cooperating with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), agreeing to two voluntary treadmill recalls for the Tread+ and Tread versions of its home treadmill system. Those who have purchased the systems can contact the connected fitness company for a refund. The company has also agreed to stop […]

TechCrunch is known for its pitch-offs. We’ve had them in cities all over the world, and heard from hundreds of startups who have shared the story of their company on our stages. We’re excited to be bringing the pitch-off to Extra Crunch Live. Anyone in the audience on an episode of Extra Crunch Live can […]

The influx of capital to healthcare shouldn't be surprising; the pandemic made it clear that digital health is the future. But building a healthcare unicorn requires founders who are long on vision.

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 Natasha and Alex and Chris dug into the world of the IPO. Not just the numbers and the metrics and the calculations of valuations at diluted, and non-diluted share counts. No. We wanted to talk about the […]

I’d like to establish my own company while maintaining my current, secure job. Can I keep working on the H-1B, found my own company, and then have my startup sponsor me for an H-1B or another visa?

Timescale, makers of the open source TimescaleDB time series database, announced a $40 million Series B financing round today. The investment comes just over two years after it got a $15 million Series A. Redpoint Ventures led today’s round with help from existing investors Benchmark, New Enterprise Associates, Icon Ventures and Two Sigma Ventures. The […]

Facebook’s content decision review body, a quasi-external panel that’s been likened to a ‘Supreme Court of Facebook’ but isn’t staffed by sitting judges, can’t be truly independent of the tech giant which funds it, has no legal legitimacy or democratic accountability, and goes by the much duller official title ‘Oversight Board’ (aka the FOB) — […]

Lynk announced today that its “knowledge-as-a-service” platform will be integrated into UBS’ investment process. The collaboration means the banking giant’s research analysts and institutional clients, including hedge funds, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds, will have access to Lynk’s database of 840,000 experts around the world. Founded in 2015, Lynk has raised a total […]

About 180 million people globally suffer from infertility. In the United States, one in eight families have trouble conceiving. The statistics are only getting worse, as male infertility and miscarriages continue to increase. Alife Health, a San Francisco-based startup founded by Paxton Maeder-York, thinks it can help. The startup wants to use artificial intelligence to […]

Bitso, a regulated crypto exchange in Latin America, announced today it has raised $250 million in a Series C round of funding that values the company at $2.2 billion. Tiger Global and Coatue co-led the round, which also included participation from Paradigm, BOND & Valor Capital Group and existing backers QED, Pantera Capital and Kaszek. […]

Halfway through my Monday afternoon workout last week, I got a message from a security researcher with a screenshot of my Peloton account data. My Peloton profile is set to private and my friend’s list is deliberately zero, so nobody can view my profile, age, city, or workout history. But a bug allowed anyone to […]

Disqus, a commenting plugin that’s used by a number of news websites and which can share user data for ad targeting purposes, has got into hot water in Norway for tracking users without their consent. The local data protection agency said today it has notified the U.S.-based company of an intent to fine it €2.5 […]

With cybercrime on course to be a $6 trillion problem this year, organizations are throwing ever more resources at the issue to avoid being a target. Now, a startup that’s built a platform to help them stress-test the investments that they have made into their security IT is announcing some funding on the back of […]

It was way back in 2018 that Omni:us appeared to disrupt the insurance market by applying AI to this most legacy of all industries. It has now gone on to raise $44.1 million. In a similar vein, Shift Technology in France has raised $100 million. Now a UK startup aims to do something similar, but […]

Lucid Motors is beefing up its executive and technical leadership team, hiring people from Waymo, Intel and Xperi as it prepares to become a publicly listed company. The automaker said Wednesday that Sherry House, who formerly worked at Waymo, will be its new chief financial officer. House was at Waymo for four years, most recently […]

Flextock, one of the 10 African startups from the recent Y Combinator winter batch, has bagged an impressive pre-seed round just two months after graduation. The five-month-old company, which helps consumers and businesses manage e-commerce and fulfillment operations — from warehousing and logistics to delivery and cash collection — has closed a $3.25 million pre-seed […]

More money for the edtech boom: Munich-based StudySmarter, which makes digital tools to help learners of all ages swat up — styling itself as a ‘lifelong learning platform’ — has closed a $15 million Series A. The round is led by sector-focused VC fund, Owl Ventures. New York-based Left Lane Capital is co-investing, along with […]

Africa’s insurance market stands at a 3% penetration rate, per a McKinsey study in 2018 comparing six insurance regions on the continent. If the South African market is excluded, this number drops to a measly 1.12%. Unlike other parts of the world, most African insurance providers neglect the importance of tailored and affordable insurance products […]

Many publishers are focused on converting visitors to subscribers, but there’s another important bracket: people who want to view a premium article or video, but not enough to sign up for a subscription. Fewcents, a Singapore-based fintech startup that enables publishers to take “micropayments” for individual pieces of content, announced today it has raised $1.6 […]

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell by more than 2%. Cloud stocks endured twice the damage. What happened? The U.S. government said that it might raise interest rates. So what? Well, when rates were low, lots of money that might have been invested elsewhere was instead funneled into tech stocks and VC funds that invest in startups.

Earlier today recent dog-parent Alex Konrad and fellow Forbes staffer Eliza Haverstock broke the news that Divvy, a Utah-based corporate spend unicorn, is considering selling itself to Bill.com for a price that could top $2 billion. For the fintech sector, it’s big news. Corporate spend startups including Ramp and Brex are raising rapid-fired rounds at […]

Revel's founder and CEO discusses what he learned from building the company, how its business strategy has evolved, and what lies ahead.

Investors gave Lyft’s value a small bump Tuesday after the American ride-hailing company reported results that weren’t quite as bad as the company, and Wall Street, had expected. Shares of the Uber competitor rose as much as 4.5% in after-hours trading following the disclosure of its financial performance from the first three months of the […]

SpaceX has launched 60 more of its Starlink internet broadband satellites — on “Star Wars Day,” no less, and only five days after it launched the last batch. The company has now delivered 420 Starlink satellites since the beginning of March, a sum that the SpaceX CEO and founder must not be aware of because […]

Facebook unceremoniously confiscated Trump’s biggest social media megaphone months ago, but the former president might be poised to snatch it back. Facebook’s Oversight Board, an external Supreme Court-like policy decision making group, will either restore Trump’s Facebook privileges or banish him forever on Wednesday. Whatever happens, it’s a huge moment for Facebook’s nascent experiment in […]

YouTube today gave advertisers a sneak peek at its plans to make its video platform more shoppable. The company will soon be introducing a new interactive feature aimed at advertisers, called brand extensions, which will allow YouTube viewers to learn more about a product they see on the screen with a click of a button. […]