Raisin, the savings deposit marketplace that lets you shop for a better interest rate across Europe, has picked up backing from PayPal. Described as a…
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Coinbase is investigating claims of insider trading from its Bitcoin Cash launch
Coinbase is investigating whether its employees took advantage of inside knowledge to profit on the launch of bitcoin cash (BCH) when it was added the…
Mobike lands investment from Line to grow its bike-sharing service in Japan
Dock-less bike rental company Mobike is teaming up with messaging app firm Line to boost its presence in Japan. Line, which is Japan’s most popular…
Crunch Report | U.S. Government Blames North Korea for WannaCry
shift, co CEO, used cars, marketplace, government, north korea, wannacry, ransomeware, softbank, lemonade, 120 million, Tech, news, recap, daily, review, hands on, Silicon Valley, Tito,…
Coinbase halts Bitcoin Cash trading as price briefly hits $8,500
After just announcing full support for Bitcoin Cash, buying and selling on Coinbase and GDAX is temporarily disabled. For about an hour Coinbase and GDAX were both…
Coinbase now lets you buy and sell Bitcoin Cash
Coinbase has just added full support for Bitcoin Cash (BCH) – meaning you can now send, receive, buy and sell the cryptocurrency. All users will…
Bio-programming toolkit maker Asimov launches with $4.5M from Andreessen Horowitz
Biotech is one of today’s many hot tech frontiers, but one thing holding it back is that it’s significantly less amenable to traditional computing techniques…
The future of source code security is consensus-based
The security landscape is ever-changing. It is the most non-constant industry on the planet. New threats appear and new solutions are built to squash them.…
Google’s Tacotron 2 simplifies the process of teaching an AI to speak
Creating convincing artificial speech is a hot pursuit right now, with Google arguably in the lead. The company may have leapt ahead again with the…
Stitch Fix is crashing after its first-ever earnings report
Stitch Fix’s first earnings report is not going well for the company, as its shares fell quite a bit after seeing a significant run up…
Is the time finally right for platform-agnostic cloud gaming?
We’ve heard it all before. Gaming in the cloud, the ability to play the most demanding titles, regardless of the limitations of our own hardware.…
White House petition site goes offline prior to late January relaunch
The White House petition portal established by the Obama administration is on pause, at the moment. The site, known as We The People, allows anyone…
Twitch announces reality show for up-and-coming streamers
Twitch is planning to highlight some of its most promising users in a reality show called Stream On. The Amazon-owned video game streaming service says…
Facebook opens up its social VR Spaces platform to HTC Vive
As Facebook looks to keep its VR dream moving, the company is opening up its nascent social VR platform to run on headsets that the…
Gift Guide: The best Nintendo Switch games and gifts
The Switch has had an amazing debut year, defying worries that it would crash and burn like its superficially similar predecessor, the Wii U. Unlike…
Sendbird raises another $16M to help developers add chat functions to a service
If you go to any company’s website these days, you’re probably starting to see some chat functionality more and more often — and for good…
Instagram launches an alpha testing program on iOS and Android
Are you an early adopter? Okay, but are you a really early adopter who likes to test new, experimental things even if it means you’ll…
Microsoft starts testing its long-promised Windows 10 Timeline feature
When Microsoft announced the Windows 10 Fall Creators update, one of the most interesting features the company demoed was Timeline, which lets you find and…
Convercent raises $25M to keep companies out of ethical quandaries
Convercent, a company that provides ethics and compliance software to businesses, today announced that it has raised a $25 million funding round led by Rho…
Gift guide: Playstation 4 Games worth giving
2017 has been a banner year for gaming, and the PS4 in particular has gotten a ridiculous amount of really great games. Whether you or…
Dgraph raises $3M for its open-source distributed graph database, hits 1.0 release
Dgraph is an increasingly popular open-source distributed graph database that uses a version of Facebook’s GraphQL as its default query language. Today, the company announced that it has…
Former Nike CFO Don Blair joins Dropbox’s board of directors
As Dropbox continues its inevitable march toward an IPO, it’s going to look to bring in people with a lot of experience handling the operations…
dYdX is a decentralized protocol for cryptocurrency derivatives
While some financial derivatives like futures trading are slowly coming to Bitcoin, we’re still a long time away from these financial products being widely available…
Musical.ly launches $50 million ‘creator fund’ to build out its community
In November, the popular lip-syncing app Musical.ly announced its acquisition by Chinese social media giant Toutiao, owned by Bytedance, in a deal sources said was…
UPS reserves 125 Tesla Semi fully electric heavy-duty trucks
Tesla has another new high-profile customer – UPS, which has placed the largest order yet for Tesla Semi advance reservations. The shipping giant pre-ordered 125…
Bima raises $97M from Allianz for microinsurance aimed at emerging markets
On the heels of Lemonade raising $120 million from Softbank for its new “peer-to-peer” spin on insurance services, another company aimed at disrupting the insurance…
Amazon’s Echo Buttons get their own version of Trivial Pursuit
Echo Buttons got lost in the deluge of Alexa products announced by Amazon a few months back. Understandably so — they were fun, but weird…
Google will turn on native ad-blocking in Chrome on February 15
Google is going to start blocking certain ads in Chrome, the company announced earlier this year. But now we know exactly when: February 15, 2018…
Softbank leads a $120 million round for insurance startup Lemonade
Softbank’s Vision Fund has finally made a good tech investment around real estate. After investing $4.4 billion in what is essentially a bespoke office space…
Overstock’s CEO launches new trading platform and token, tZero
Few mainstream business leaders have taken to the blockchain quite like Patrick Byrne. The founder of Overstock.com has been accepting Bitcoin since 2014 and has…
Facebook has new tools to prevent unwanted friend requests and messages
Facebook, like every social media platform, has issues with harassment and bullying. In order to prevent certain types of harassment, Facebook is introducing some new…
Used car marketplace Shift appoints a co-CEO alongside George Arison
Toby Russell was one of the first people to get Shift founder George Arison into used cars — and now he’s going to be running…
Facebook’s facial recognition now finds photos you’re untagged in
Facebook wants to make sure you know about and control the photos of you people upload, even if they don’t tag you. So today, Facebook…
Caavo’s over-the-top TV box for over-the-top TV boxes ships February 14
The streaming box that aims to bring sanity to your streaming world by combining all your streaming hardware sources into one will ship on Valentine’s…
Amazon’s Prime Video app becomes the most-downloaded Apple TV app at launch
Apple and Amazon’s decision to bury the hatchet, leading to the return of the Apple TV on Amazon, and the launch of Amazon’s Prime Video…
BMW reaches 100,000 electric vehicle sales target for 2017
BMW set out to sell 100,000 electric cars this year globally, and it has managed to do that, the company revealed today. That includes fully…
Waymo teams with Trov on passenger insurance for self-driving service
Waymo is working with insurance startup Trov on protections for riders using its forthcoming self-driving ride hailing service. Trvo will provide Waymo’s passengers with insurance…
ZTE’s dual-screen phone is a fascinating mess
While the world was focused on bigger names like Apple and Samsung, one of the industry’s great workhorses went ahead and released a dual-screen smartphone.…
Aspect Ventures promotes Lauren Kolodny to partner
Aspect Ventures has another lady atop its female-led venture investment team. Lauren Kolodny has been promoted to partner after spending 3.5 years at Aspect. She joined…
InVision is investing $5 million in design startups with new fund
InVision, the platform for creation and collaboration among designers, has today announced the launch of the InVision Fund. Led by CEO Clark Valberg, the company…
Pinterest beat hiring goals for women in engineering, missed for underrepresented minorities
Pinterest has unveiled its latest diversity report, showing progress in some areas while missing goals in others. Pinterest hit its goals for women in engineering…
France puts Facebook on notice over WhatsApp data transfers
Facebook and WhatsApp have been issued with formal notices by France’s data protection watchdog warning that data transfers being carried out for ‘business intelligence’ purposes…
DigitalGenius raises $14.75 million Series A for AI-based customer service solution
When DigitalGenius participated in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield competition in New York City in 2015, there weren’t a lot of companies working on AI and…
Blink introduces a $99 video doorbell
The best way to stand out from the CES deluge? Announce your product three weeks before everyone else. Last year’s show was big one for…
Nordic VC firm Inventure outs new €110M fund to invest in early-stage tech startups in the region
There’s been a slew of new European VC fund raises over the last few months, including mostly recently Seedcamp, Balderton, and Brighteye Ventures, but now…
Uber rival Ola buys Foodpanda India to get into food deliveries
Ola, the Uber rival in India, is entering the food delivery space after it announced a deal to acquire Foodpanda’s India business from its parent…
New AWS Paris region makes it easier for customers to follow France’s data privacy rules
Amazon Web Services launched a new region in Paris today to serve customers in the European Union. This is AWS’ fourth region in the EU…
US government says North Korea was behind massive WannaCry cyber attack
The U.S. government has officially blamed North Korea for WannaCry, the massive ransomware attacked that spread across the world disrupting more than 200,0000 businesses from 35…
NBCUniversal will start streaming Sunday Night Football on mobile devices next month
NBCUniversal announced today that it has acquired rights from the NFL to stream “Sunday Night Football” through its TV Everywhere app starting with the 2018…
Government requests for Facebook user data continue to increase worldwide
Facebook continues to see increased requests for user data from governments worldwide, according to its latest transparency report. The social network first introduced the reports,…
The FCC disproved its own claim that net neutrality was an Obama plot
Among the many incorrect claims made by the FCC in promotion of its order eliminating 2015’s net neutrality rule was the idea that the Obama…
Partnering with Techstars and Ecolab, ag giant Cargill returns to tech investing
The world’s largest private agricultural company, Cargill, is returning to tech investment alongside the environmental treatment company Ecolab and Techstars to launch a new accelerator…
30 years of Final Fantasy
December 18, 1987 marked the establishment of a video game franchise that would come to define role-playing games for millions over the next 30 years…
Tovala, which sells ‘smart’ ovens for $399, just raised fresh funding from local VCs
The track record for smart kitchen devices is fairly uneven. On the one hand, you have Juicero, which was widely ridiculed for selling a $400…
Arizona residents are getting refunds on Theranos tests
Theranos is issuing refund checks to all Arizona residents who used the company’s blood-testing services, thanks to a recent settlement by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich.…
NASA engineers stare at the sun to see shockwaves from supersonic flight
Before the eclipse this summer, NASA warned us over and over again not to stare directly at the sun — but now they’re doing just…
Fyusion is bringing 3D vision technologies to a device near you
More than 15 million users a week launch the Fyuse app to take and share the 3D interactive pictures the technology enables. But what these users may…
Good luck getting Apple AirPods before the holidays
Apple’s wireless earbuds have been on the market for just over a year now, but they’re shaping up to be one of the biggest tech…
Adidas shifts away from making its own wearable tech
Wearables are hard. Some of the biggest names in technology have tried and failed to find success in the space, and even those that have…
World View’s high-altitude Stratollite balloons capture some great images
Pioneering near-space company World View is showing off what its so-called ‘stratollite’ balloons can do with a simple, off-the-shelf imaging sensor and a view of…
Plexamp, Plex’s spin on the classic Winamp player, is the first project from new incubator Plex Labs
Media software maker Plex, which has been enjoying a bit of growth following its newer focus on DIY cord-cutters, today announced a new incubator and…
The startup that facilitates deliveries for HelloFresh in SF and LA raises $4.3 million
AxleHire, a last-mile logistics startup that facilitates deliveries for companies like HelloFresh, Freshly, Sunbasket, La Boulangerie and others, has raised $4.3 million from Acorn Pacific,…
Fiit secures $3.2M seed investment to let you work out with your friends, live
Want to work out with your friends but you’re all busy and in different parts of the city or even country? Surely you could do…
As Kubernetes surged in popularity in 2017, it created a vibrant ecosystem
For a technology that the average person has probably never heard of, Kubernetes surged in popularity in 2017 with a particular group of IT pros…
Reddit launches new mobile apps with support for real-time comments, chat, mod tools and more
Reddit today is giving its mobile apps a major upgrade – the first since their launch last year, when the company decided to take back…
The Echo Spot is my new favorite Alexa device
I got excited when the Echo Spot debuted. At the time, I tentatively declared it the best Echo at the time, and after living with…
An hard look at token sale mania by an true insider
Moshe Hogeg is a fixture in the Valley mythos. This Israeli founder of Yo (yes, that Yo) and Mobli, he recently became one of the…
Amazon’s latest Echos show the smart home space hitting its stride
Amazon’s Echo lineup got a refresh earlier this year that included a brand new version of its basic Echo, well as an Echo Plus with…
Springboard raises $9.5M to offer an online alternative to the master’s degree
Springboard is a platform that helps people advance their tech skills, and ultimately career. Today it took a step further to realizing its own potential…
Open Garden wants to give you tokens for sharing your Internet connection
Open Garden launched its mesh networking platform at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012. Since then, the company has gone through a few iterations and found unexpected…
More dead commenters appear to come out against Net Neutrality
Two more dead commenters have been spotted commenting on the FCCs foregone Net Neutrality vote, a small but not insignificant discovery considering that, while public…
Battery Ventures backs workforce management software company Quinyx in new $12M round
Quinyx, a Stockholm-headquartered company that offers cloud-based software to help businesses manage things like employee scheduling, communication, task-management and payroll integration, has raised a further…
Carnegie Mellon’s ‘Superhuman AI’ bests leading Texas Hold’em poker pros
A new paper published by Science today details how Libratus, an AI developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon’s computer science department, managed to take on…
Netflix arranged a surprise proposal for two streaming superfans
Netflix is to dating what going to the movies once was, so it makes a lot of sense that couples would remember the streaming service…
NIO launches its ES8 all-electric SUV in China
Electric vehicle startup NIO has launched its first production car, the ES8 – a fully electric SUV with 220 miles of range, fast charging that…
BMW teams up with Solid Power to develop solid-state batteries for cars
Automaker BMW is chasing that solid-state battery tech carrot, same as most everyone else in the industry. Today, it’s announcing a new partnership with battery…
Virgin Hyperloop One said to add Richard Branson as Chair and raise $50M
It’s probably no surprise that billionaire Richard Branson is going to be taking a more active role in Virgin Hyperloop One, considering the company adopted…
Toyota will electrify entire vehicle lineup by 2025
Toyota is finally revealing the details of its plan to catch up with some of its rivals on electrification; the automaker has focused primarily on…
Facebook is clamping down on posts that shamelessly beg for your engagement
A lot of crap gets shared on Facebook, but coming soon the volume may be a little less after Facebook made a move to penalize…
France files supplier contract complaint against Amazon
The French government has filed a complaint against ecommerce giant Amazon alleging abuse of a dominant position with some of its suppliers, according to Reuters citing a…
FarmCrowdy raises $1M round to bring Nigerian farmers online and to market
Bringing small scale Nigerian farmers to a broader market has netted the new startup Farmcrowdy $1 million from investors including Techstars, Cox Ventures and Social…
WheelStreet is bringing dock-less motorbikes to India’s cities
By now the world is familiar with the rise of on-demand bicycle services, which started out with Mobike and Ofo in China, but one startup…
Horizons Ventures backs AI startup Fano Labs in first Hong Kong investment
Horizons Ventures, the VC firm founded by Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-Shing, has made a rare early-stage investment after it backed AI startup Fano…
Oracle to buy construction collaboration software maker Aconex for $1.2B in cash
Oracle will pay $1.2 billion in cash to buy construction software developer Aconex, the companies announced today. Based in Melbourne, Aconex’s cloud-based software allow teams…
Uber ride-hailing comes to BBM — because some people in the world still use BBM
It’s been some time since Uber made its full service available inside messaging apps — most notably Facebook Messenger — but now it is rolling…
Tencent and JD.com invest $863M into e-commerce firm Vipshop to battle Alibaba
Tencent, the internet giant that recently became Asia’s first $500 billion company, is continuing its investment spree after it agreed to buy $604 million in shares…
Learning to embrace conflict as a part of startup culture
Most team leaders will agree on the majority of decisions that need to be made and good startup teams seem telepathic at times, but there…
ICO-lateral damage
The ICO regulators are here, and they’re carrying big sticks. (PDF) “Coins or other digital assets issued on a blockchain may be securities under the…
Thales agrees to buy Gemalto in digital security deal worth ~$5.43BN
Digital security solutions provider Gemalto has agreed to a €51 per share acquisition offer from French aerospace and defense group Thales — in a deal worth…
To ICO or not to ICO?
Sorry… I had to. For some actual wise words about crypto, read this. Read More
The technology industry needs to think more seriously about device addiction
As we grow as a culture, especially for newer generations, we need to start asking important questions: ‘how as a species do we begin the…
Do good companies ICO?
There has been a veritable explosion in the use of initial coin offerings (abbreviated ICO, sometimes also referred to as a token generating event or…
Apple has a history of choosing cash over startups
Apple has more cash than any other tech company on the planet. Yet, that hasn’t translated into spending on acquisitions. Over the past five years,…
Gillmor Gang: Golden Goose
The Gillmor Gang — Doc Searls, Frank Radice, Denis Pombriant, Keith Teare, and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live Friday, December 15, 2017. G3: Last Hope —…
Welcome to CTRL+T, TechCrunch’s podcast about tech and culture
Without further ado, it brings us great pleasure to introduce you to CTRL+T, a new podcast hosted by TechCrunch Reporter Megan Rose Dickey and Editorial…
Netflix will look for a repeat play in 2018 after a strong year
Netflix had a pretty good year by very Netflix-y standards: it added a ton of subscribers; its international growth plans seem to be playing out…
Uber accused of espionage, bribery and hacking by former employee
The $1.86 billion legal battle between ride-hailing giant Uber and Alphabet’s self-driving unit Waymo reached a pivotal moment today as the judge in the case…
Crunch Report | Go-Jek Buys Three Startups
Go-Jek buys three startups, the California Department of Public Health warns against being on your phone for too long and AOL Instant Messenger is officially…
Celebrity hologram startup 8i to lay off half its staff
8i, the New Zealand and Los Angeles-based augmented reality startup bringing celebrity personalities into immersive experiences, is laying off about half of its 70-person staff, according…
Feds look to cash in seized bitcoins at record prices
Federal prosecutors are looking to unload 513 bitoins seized as part of a drug case in Salt Lake City. Worth about $500,000 when they were…
Google kills its Tango augmented reality platform, shifting focus to ARCore
Google announced today that it’s shutting down its high-end smartphone augmented reality platform, Tango, in order to focus more on the more mass market ARCore…
Broadband business Casa Systems up 11%, following downsized IPO
Andover, Massachusetts-based Casa Systems had a tough time pulling off its IPO this week. The broadband solutions company initially wanted to debut Thursday, but pushed…
Cities do want to rethink regulations and avoid tech clashes, and here’s some proof
In Jakarta, Indonesia, only 50 percent of the population has access to the piped sewerage system. More than 500,000 residents practice open defecation, and more…
Mozilla’s Mr. Robot promo backfires after it installs a Firefox extension without permission
If you’re a Firefox user, then you may have noticed a weird new extension that suddenly showed up in your browser this week. The extension…
Don’t keep cell phones next to your body, California Health Department warns
The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) issued a warning against the hazards of cellphone radiation this week. Yes, the thing we are all addicted…
Apple picks up a new space drama from the creator of ‘Battlestar Galactica’
What the frak is this? According to a report from Deadline, Apple may have actually gotten its hand on a good show – a new…
Erik Huggers is stepping down as CEO of Vevo
Vevo, the music video service backed by major record labels, just announced that its CEO Erik Huggers is departing. Huggers previously worked at the BBC,…
Finnish autonomous car goes for a leisurely cruise in the driving snow
It’s one thing for an autonomous car to strut its stuff on smooth, warm California tarmac, and quite another to do so on the frozen…
UPS bets on blockchain as the future of the trillion-dollar shipping industry
Freight and logistics in the U.S. alone account for nearly $1.5 trillion annually. As the world’s economies scale up, that number is only expected to…
Alexa skills top 25,000 in the U.S. as new launches slow
Amazon this week officially launched the first skills for Alexa offering premium content that customers can purchase while using the voice apps – a move…
Dog-walking app Wag may be raising a huge round of funding
It looks like Wag may get another huge injection of cash following a big financing round earlier this year, according to a report by Recode,…
EyeEm’s new products aim to understand brand aesthetics
EyeEm is unveiling new tools to help the brands and marketers using the site to source their images. Underlying these tools is a technology called…
Live-streaming app Spotlite raises $10 million from Sequoia Capital to help singers make money
Described to me as “American Idol meets musical.ly,” startup Spotlite recently raised more than $10 million from Sequoia Capital and BlueRun Ventures. The plan is…
Fitbit is having a bad day
Fitbit is, once again, not having a good day after spending the year in mostly middling status as it looks to prove there’s a market…
Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘Mudbound’ offers a somber look at Mississippi in the 1940s
Mudbound, a Dee Rees-directed film currently streaming on Netflix, is both epic and intimate, telling the intertwined stories of two families (one black, one white)…
With $10M in new funding, Huddly launches its smart GO camera for video conferencing
Huddly has built a smart camera that only has one mission: make your video meetings more productive. Now for the most part, you probably don’t…
Facebook adds a Snooze button for muting people, groups and Pages for 30 days
Facebook today is launching a new feature designed to give users more control over what content they see in their News Feed: a “Snooze” button.…
SpaceX launches a reused Dragon atop a reused Falcon 9 for the first time
SpaceX has moved one step closer to its dream of affordable, efficient reusable space flight: Today for its CRS-13 resupply mission for the International Space…
Adobe had a record quarter, but still has substantial untapped potential
Adobe announced a record quarter yesterday with $2.01 billion in revenue for Q42017. That represents a healthy 25 percent year over year increase for the…
Alexa can now play the top songs in a city and similar tracks
Amazon Alexa can now play music that’s popular in a given city through a new feature called “Local Popularity.” That means you can ask Alexa…
AIM is officially dead
Say “goodbye” (in the AIM voice, if possible) to Aol Instant Messenger. Back in October, Oath (the combined entity of Yahoo and Aol) announced that…
Equity podcast: Apple’s $400M deals, Target buys a startup and uh-oh net neutrality
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Katie Roof, Matthew Lynley and myself — Alex Wilhelm —…
Watch SpaceX launch its first re-flown capsule and rocket combo live here
SpaceX is taking another shot at a historic launch today, should everything go as planned. It’s targeting a launch window of 10:36 AM EST (7:36…
Let’s meet in New York to talk token sales
I’ve been holding a few micro meet ups over the past few years and thought I’d start it up again in honor of token/ICO mania.…
Pied Piper’s decentralized internet is planned for Dubai, courtesy of startup Moeco
We’re slowly moving from the Big Data era to the “OMG HOW MUCH DATA?!,” to use the technical term. But, all joking aside, it’s getting…
Uber Eats couriers in Europe to be offered free accident and sickness insurance
Uber has announced it’s launching a free insurance package for independent couriers delivering food for its Uber Eats business in nine European markets. It says…
Australia’s Airwallex raises $6M to grow its cross-border payment business
Airwallex, an Australia-based fintech startup that helps banks and businesses handle cross-border transactions at scale, has closed a $6 million investment ahead of a planned…