European VCs are getting tired, and who can blame them. Europe’s startup industry has boomed in the last ten years, and no-one can say it…
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Nintendo’s Animal Crossing mobile title hits 15 million downloads less than a week after wide release
There are now 15 million people doing Tom Nook’s grunt work. Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp marked Nintendo’s most significant mobile title launch since Mario Run…
The Pixel 2’s dormant Visual Core chip gets activated in the latest Android developer preview
Sadly, not all of the Pixel 2’s surprises have been the good sort since Google’s latest flagship launched. Visual Core is one of the more…
Imgur says 1.7M emails and passwords were breached in 2014 hack
Image-hosting site turned meme social network, Imgur, is the latest tech service to ‘fess up to a security breach. In a blog post Friday it revealed…
Amazon debuts Elemental-based AWS Media Services for video app creation
Video is what consumers are paying attention to these days, and Amazon’s AWS is hoping to capitalise on that with one of its latest launches.…
The Nordic Web launches an Angel fund to find the region’s under-the-radar startups
The Nordic Web, a research and analysis company which specialises in covering data on tech companies emerging out of the Nordic region, has started a…
UK to give police new powers to ground drones
The UK government has announced it will introduce draft legislation in the spring aimed at preventing unsafe or criminal use of drones. Read More
AWS launches Amazon Sumerian to build AR, VR and 3D apps quickly
We’d heard months ago that Amazon would be using its Re:Invent AWS event to roll out some a new service related to building in mixed…
TechCrunch Include Office Hours with Cavalry Ventures
TechCrunch December Include Office Hours will be hosted in Berlin, Germany on December 1st. We’re partnering with Calvary Ventures. From 2-3pm, Founding and Managing Partner Rouven Dresselhaus…
Here’s the schedule of our incredible breakout sessions at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin
At Disrupt Berlin, we have a special treat for attendees who want to engage with our main stage speakers and other experts on the big…
Cyber Monday Special – Get a free gift when you buy a Disrupt Berlin ticket
Whether you celebrate a specific holiday or just love to celebrate giving gifts, you’re gonna love our Cyber Monday special. Today only, when you buy…
Flitto’s language data helps machine translation systems get more accurate
Artificial intelligence-powered translation is becoming an increasingly crowded category, with Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook all working on their own services. But tech still isn’t…
Predicting success in startup consumer brands
As Amazon replaces brick-and-mortar store shelves and social influencers replace television stars, newer brands are not only taking advantage of these channels, but also are…
Find your red-eyed fans
I’ve been thinking about token sale marketing lately mostly because it’s been so bad. I’ve gotten hundreds of emails asking me to be an ICO…
Balderton Capital closes new $375M fund to invest in Series A-stage European startups
More VC money sloshing around Europe: In what was probably one of the worst kept secrets in European VC, London-based Balderton Capital is announcing a…
Fighting fake news online wins these three projects accolades
There are few greater threats to democracy in the world today than the proliferation of fake news and propaganda. So it was no surprise that…
The time I was turned away from China
Yesterday, Sunday November 26 2017, I was turned away from immigration at Shanghai’s Hongqiao airport by Chinese officials. Alongside a number of other visitors, I…
Snap’s Evan Spiegel is clinging to billionaire status by his fingernails
It’s hard to fault someone for being barely a billionaire — a self-made one at that, who happens to be just 27 years old. Still,…
Makers or breakers?
The weight of problems being demonstrably attached to heavily used tech services has acquired such a gravitational and political pull that it’s becoming harder and…
The top 10 tech companies with the best fertility benefits
Thinking of starting a family but need a little help from science? IVF costs alone can be exorbitant, ranging from $12,000 to $20,000 per cycle, depending…
Bitcoin is over $9,000
Well, it’s over $9,000. Even as you recoup from attempting to explain Bitcoin to your family over the Thanksgiving dinner table, the value of the…
Black Friday pushes Jeff Bezos’ net worth to $100 billion
Being the richest man in the world wasn’t enough. After Amazon shares climbed on Black Friday, founder and CEO Jeff Bezos saw his net worth…
OnePlus 5T makes the best deal in smartphones even better
Three years and seven phones later, it’s hard to argue with OnePlus’s methods. That’s not to say it hasn’t made its share of missteps along…
FCC doubles down on its dead-wrong definition of how the internet works
In May, when the FCC released an early draft of its plan to undo 2015’s strong net neutrality rules, I pointed out that its case…
Do VC woes extend to portfolio companies? For Rothenberg, probably not
As VC brands go, Rothenberg Ventures has seen better days. The firm built up a reputation as an up-and-coming early-stage investor. But Silicon Valley soured on Rothenberg Ventures last…
‘Substitute Phone’ artfully satisfies your compulsion to swipe and scroll
Smartphones are inarguably an addictive class of devices, and not just because they put an endless font of information at your fingertips. The experience of…
How bad decision making could undermine good innovation
Here’s a scary thought for decision makers inside large organizations grappling with digital transformation. You can actually be innovative and have mechanisms in place to…
13 great board games to play with family and friends
Board games are a blast. They’re cheap to buy, fun to give, and amazing to play. We’ve chosen twelve of our favorites that you can…
Macy’s credit card processors stop working on Black Friday
It’s one of the biggest shopping days of the year, but retail giant Macy’s can’t get its credit card processors to work. Customers have been…
11 bragworthy gifts for the 20-somethings in your life
It’s me, TechCrunch’s resident 20-something back for a third year to help you figure out what to get the millennials in your life. Here’s a…
Pokémon Go creator raises $200 million ahead of Harry Potter game launch
Pokémon Go creator Niantic has raised a new $200 million in funding, reports The Wall Street Journal. The Series B raise was led by Spark…
Black Friday deals net $640M in sales so far, mobile 60% of all traffic
With Thanksgiving hitting a record $2.87 billion in online sales in the U.S., Black Friday is shaping up to be an even bigger haul for…
Approaching e-commerce investments in the age of Amazon
With Amazon as the 800-pound gorilla, many of my fellow investors choose to ignore e-commerce altogether. In fact, the industry hit recent lows in a number…
Snapchat seeks salvation in long-form and “hands-on” AR ads
Snap Inc’s stock tanked after missing revenue expectations by $30 million last quarter, so Snapchat is looking to win over businesses with immersive new ads…
Black Eyed Peas’ graphic novel, ‘Masters of the Sun,’ gets the AR treatment
Black Eyed Peas frontman will.i.am took heed of Steve Jobs’ “think different” but perhaps more so, he has kept it all the way 100 by…
Mattress startup Purple launches in 13 Mattress Firm store locations
A number of bed-in-a-box startups have taken different approaches to selling their mattresses and bed ware in the last year. Casper and Tuft and Needle,…
Original Content podcast: ‘The Punisher’ arrives with a bang
Marvel and Netflix’s latest show The Punisher stars Jon Bernthal as the bloodthirsty superhero. Bernthal first took on the role in the second season of…
OK Go lets printers do the dancing in new music video
The band OK Go is known for its insanely creative music videos. From scooters, to cars, to planes, to treadmills, these guys have perfected the…
Amazon German, Italian workers protest on Black Friday, dubbed ‘Strike Friday’
Amazon has been one of the strongest driving forces behind the surge of e-commerce holiday sales around Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the rest of the…
Shopify’s live streaming the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales frenzy
Ever wonder what Black Friday’s consumerist rush looks like in real time? Now you can see it visualized in the stream above, which is a…
Equity podcast: Stitch Fix and Sailpoint get their IPOs done
AUDIO Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we assembled the full crew…
Twitter testing a feature that shows how many are ‘talking about’ tweets
Twitter is experimenting with a new feature that will show how many people are “talking about” individual, popular tweets. The metric shows up under some…
Uber data breach includes UK users — but it’s still not clear how many
The UK’s digital minister has said the October 2016 data breach that Uber disclosed this week does affect UK users — though it’s still unclear…
Black Friday sale – Disrupt Berlin tickets are buy-one-get-one free for one day only
We here at TechCrunch love a good holiday sale as much as the next person — maybe even more. So, we’re jumping on the Black…
Revolut now has a million customers for its banking alternative
Fintech startup Revolut has reached a big milestone. The company now has over a million customers across Europe two years and a half after launch.…
The Moto Z’s Alexa Smart Speaker is mostly useless
The Moto Z is a phone built around a strong gimmick, but it’s a gimmick nonetheless. A little over a year after release, the company…
Thanksgiving e-commerce sales up 18% year-on-year, average order value $114
Black Friday, the day after a quiet Thanksgiving Thursday, traditionally has been thought of as the start of the holiday sales season, but the rise…
Co-founder of unicorn InMobi is launching a bike-sharing startup in India
Over in India, there are a handful of startups working to get the country’s billion-person population on bikes. One of them is Yulu, co-founded by…
Tesla’s electric Semi truck starts at $150,000, reservations now live
The Tesla Semi, the automaker’s all-electric transport truck, will retail starting at $150,000 for a version with 300 miles of range, and will also be…
Putting the “AI” in ThAInksgiving
Welcome to Thanksgiving table talk circa 2017. It’s true that AI and machine learning are changing the world, and in a few years, it will…
In Israel, a blockchain and crypto hyper-cluster is just getting started
The lunch took place just after well-known tech investor Moshe Hogeg announced he would invest in every Israeli blockchain that approached him. That investor group,…
Lyft raising additional $500 million on top of recent $1 billion round
Lyft is seeking to raise an additional $500 million, over and above the $1 billion it raised in a round led by Alphabet venture arm…
ProtonMail bolts on an encrypted contacts manager and digital signing for contacts
Another neat addition to end-to-end encrypted email client ProtonMail: It’s added a zero-access encrypted contacts manager that also digitally signs the contact info you store…
Twitter is testing Bookmarks, a feature to privately flag Tweets for later
Last month, Twitter started work on a new “save for later” feature for Tweets in your timeline that you wanted to flag to refer back…
Tesla completes the world’s largest battery for Australian wind farm
Tesla has managed to deliver something on time, even if it ’s falling behind its projections for the Model 3 electric car: It has completed…
Let’s talk about commercial drones at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin
Everyone loves drones, including companies with very specific needs. Drones once were the hot new thing and the perfect birthday gift. But drone makers are…
FTC evaluating “serious issues” raised by Uber breach
The FTC has now put out a statement regarding the Uber data breach which the company concealed for the best part of a year before…
Mobile payment and loyalty platform Yoyo Wallet integrates with Starling Bank
In another example of Starling Bank jumping on the Open Banking/PSD2 train before legislation in the U.K. and Europe next year will force banks to…
Indian home healthcare platform Portea Medical raises $26M Series C
Portea Medical, one of India’s biggest platforms for home healthcare visits, has raised $26 million in Series C funding to expand its service range. The…
Crunch Report | Uber’s data breach and Apple’s self-driving cars
Today’s stories: Uber’s big data breach, Facebook to single out election trolls, Apple’s self-driving car research and FCC issues final draft of plan to kill…
AWS ramps up in AI with new consultancy services and Rekognition features
Ahead of Amazon’s AWS division big Re:invent conference next week, the company has announced two developments in the area of artificial intelligence. AWS is opening…
The rise of SPACs
Every few years efforts to redefine the IPO emerge, and as night follows day, investors get hurt and calls for tighter regulatory reform echo in…
YouTube tightens rules on kid-related content
YouTube, that strange stew of the best and worst content on the web, is cracking down on abuse and error relating to kid-focused video. Jokers…
Apple’s Thanksgiving ad is mostly about the AirPods
Every year, Apple airs a new ad in the U.S. for Thanksgiving. Compared to other Apple ads, this is less about showing product features and…
AltSchool wants to change how kids learn, but fears that it’s failing students are surfacing
Earlier this week, Business Insider reported that numerous families have grown frustrated with the education their children are receiving at AltSchool, an ambitious San Francisco-based…
Snips lets you build your own voice assistant to embed into your devices
French startup Snips is now helping you build a custom voice assistant for your device. Snips doesn’t use Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service or Google Assistant…
Net Neutrality advocates plan protests for December 7 at Verizon stores
On December 14, the FCC will vote on whether or not to roll back Obama-era policies protecting a free and open internet. In fact, during…
FCC releases final draft of ‘Restoring Internet Freedom,’ which would not do that
The FCC yesterday announced a December 14 vote on “Restoring Internet Freedom,” an order that, far from restoring freedom to the internet, would allow it…
Apple could use machine learning to shore up LiDAR limitations in self-driving
Apple has a new paper published in Cornell’s arXiv open directory of scientific research, describing a method for using machine learning to translate the raw…
Minted rolls out an on-demand photography service for around $100 per session
When you go through a big life event — say a milestone birthday for a parent or a wedding — there are probably going to…
Salesforce keeps rolling with another monster quarter, as it sets $20 billion revenue goal
Ho hum, Salesforce announced its quarterly earnings yesterday and the news was all good once again with revenue up 25 percent to $2.68 billion. The…
With Ethereum wallets under constant attack, Jibrel Network decided to build their own
Since blockchain technologies appeared people have been trying to figure out how to put traditional assets like currencies, bonds and other financial instruments on to…
UK Budget courts tech sector with $663M in investments in AI, 5G networks and more
With the UK government continuing to face down criticism over how it is handling plans to remove the UK from the European Union, today the…
Senator Schatz on net neutrality: “This has to be a real political movement”
Following the news yesterday morning that the FCC will be voting on the proposal to kill net neutrality come December 14, officials and advocacy organizations…
Early-bird ticket pricing for Disrupt Berlin ends at midnight tonight
All good things, as they say, must come to an end. That definitely holds true for early-bird pricing on Disrupt Berlin tickets. In just a…
Lyft gets approval to test self-driving cars on public roads in California
Lyft is the latest company to be added to the ever-growing list of those permitted to test their self-driving technology on California state public roads.…
PacketZoom lands $5M Series A investment to speed up mobile apps
PacketZoom, a startup that helps app developers speed up and optimize app delivery on mobile devices, announced a $5M Series A today. The round was…
Uber data breach “raises huge concerns”, says UK watchdog
The fallout from Uber’s disclosure yesterday of a massive data breach affecting 57 million users and drivers that it concealed for a year continues: The…
Facebook’s ad system shown failing to enforce its own anti-discriminatory policy
Results from a new ProPublica investigation suggest the tech giant is failing at even simple self-policing. Read More
Announcing our Disrupt Berlin Hackathon judges and the third release of free hack tickets
The third time could be the charm if you haven’t yet scored your free tickets to the Disrupt Berlin Hackathon. Today, we’ve released a third batch of…
Ten years on: Seedcamp outs new £41M seed fund and says it’s ready to invest in tokens
The London-based VC firm recently sold its first two funds to Draper Esprit, and today is announcing the first close of a new £41 million…
New York attorney general slams the FCC for ignoring net neutrality comments investigation
If the FCC’s refusal to acknowledge the vast public outcry against its plan to gut net neutrality isn’t enough of an outrage, its total disinterest in…
AppLovin scraps acquisition and takes debt financing instead
The story of AppLovin‘s acquisition has taken another turn. We first reported that the mobile ad startup was in acquisition talks in August of last…
Crunch Report | The FCC sets vote to kill net neutrality and Bitcoin hits $8,000
Today’s stories: FCC highlights plan to kill net neutrality, Android secretly sending location data, Bitcoin just passed $8,000 and Toyota’s new robot can be controlled…
New York Attorney General launches investigation of Uber’s $100,000 hack cover-up
The revelation that Uber concealed a 2016 data breach affecting 57 million users and paid hackers to destroy the evidence is yet another PR nightmare for…
Divergent 3D taps a Chinese-led investment syndicate for up to $107 million in new funding
On a lonely stretch of road just off the highway in Torrance, Calif. employees at Divergent 3D are hard at work plotting a revolution in…
Lightform raises $5M to turn old projectors into augmented reality machines
In Blade Runner 2049, one of the more interesting stylistic choices was how the film imagined futuristic augmented reality. While the Microsoft and Googles of…
Apple acquired augmented reality headset startup Vrvana for $30M
As Apple reportedly ramps up work to ship an augmented reality headset in 2020, it has acquired a startup from Montreal, Canada that could help it get…
You can now request to join someone’s Instagram live stream
Instagram just rolled out a neat feature for its live product. Users can now request to join a live stream that they’re watching and, if…
Google Lens in the Assistant starts rolling out to all Pixel users
We knew this was only a matter of time, but Google today confirmed that Google Lens as part of the Google Assistant is now rolling…
Uber data breach from 2016 affected 57 million riders and drivers
Uber faced a data breach in 2016 that affected some 57 million customers, including both riders and drivers, revealing their names, email address and phone…
Salesforce appoints Bret Taylor as chief product officer
Salesforce has named Bret Taylor, the former chief technology officer at Facebook and founder of Quip, as president and chief product officer. Taylor first joined…
10 excellent battery pack gifts for your friend whose phone always dies
After putting our favorite battery packs in various gift guides over the years, we decided to go all out this year and do a gift…
Pixar’s John Lasseter taking a six-month leave of absence amid reports of inappropriate behavior
John Lasseter, the chief creative officer of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, is the latest media executive to face allegations of inappropriate behavior.…
Meg Whitman out as CEO of HPE early next year
Six years after taking the helm as head of HP, Meg Whitman will step down from her role as CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise in…
U.S. charges Iranian hacker for stealing unaired episodes of hit HBO shows
While it didn’t dampen enthusiasm for everyone’s favorite dragon-oriented political drama, HBO certainly wasn’t happy when the major twists from the seventh season of its…
The Boring Co.’s ‘Initial Hat Offering’ raises $300K for digging in hat sales
Do you like hats? If you do, maybe you already contributed to The Boring Company’s ability to dig a network of underground tunnels. Since Elon…
With Dispatch, Here Be Dragons pushes narrative VR storytelling in bold new directions
As virtual reality takes its trip through the hype cycle of technology adoption, I keep returning to the early days of film as a corollary…
The US-based tech company that just went public in London
Boku, a U.S.-based carrier billing company, listed on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market recently, selling £45 million in stock. Only about one-third of those shares were…
This DIY project lets you catch a falling muon
Physicists at MIT have developed and released a $100 muon detector that you can build at home, allowing you to sense deep space bombardment on…
ADAY aims to simplify your wardrobe with $2M in funding
ADAY, a fresh entrant in the highly competitive world of direct-to-consumer fashion, has raised $2 million in new funding for its mission to simplify wardrobes…
Raden is betting sticker mania will stick in the physical world
While smart suitcase startup Raden is unarguably a hardware company, they’ve decided to test the social waters by diving headfirst into the world of stickers.…
The FCC’s craven net neutrality vote announcement makes no mention of the 22 million comments filed
For someone who claims to be working for the American people, Ajit Pai sure doesn’t seem to care what they have to say. In his…
Overclock Labs bets on Kubernetes to help companies automate their cloud infrastructure
Overclock Labs wants to make it easier for developers to deploy and manage their applications across clouds. To do so, the company is building tools…
Shadow upgrades its cloud computer for gamers and opens signups to everyone
French startup Blade, the company behind Shadow, announced at a press conference that it is launching new offers, updating specifications and the ability to become…
YouTube returns to the Amazon Echo Show
When the Amazon Echo Show first debuted, it included a YouTube feature, as is right and proper for a device with a screen capable of…
Teeth straightening startup Candid raises $15 million from Greycroft, Bessemer and others
Candid, the dental startup that aims to straighten your teeth for less than the cost of braces and Invisalign, recently raised a $15 million Series…
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp just hit iOS and Android a day early
No doubt hoping to get a jump on that holiday traffic, Nintendo’s latest mobile opus, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp has hit iOS and Android a…
You can now control the DJI Spark with Gamevice’s controller accessory
Gamevice is a bit like way to turn your iPhone or iPad into a Switch, at least in terms of adding physical controls to your…
FCC officially moves to unwind net neutrality rules
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai today made good on his long-standing pledge to tackle regulations established in the last administration designed to protect the…
YouTube TV gets picture-in-picture support
Google’s YouTube TV app has received a recent update that allows for picture-in-picture on Android phones running Nougat or Oreo. Google first announced YouTube TV…
Company raises $347K ICO, vanishes
A company called Confido raised a small ICO by selling special CFD designed to allow “safe and trustless cryptocurrency payments. According to ICODrops they raised…
Google’s non-profit arm donates another $7.5 million to advance racial justice
Google.org is donating $7.5 million to racial justice organizations Vera Institute for Justice, LatinoJustice, The Leadership Conference and R Street’s Justice for Work Coalition. This…
Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom has backed the U.K. challenger bank Monzo
Monzo, one of a number of “challenger” banks in the U.K. aiming to re-invent the current account, is assembling quite an array of backers, many…
Sonos One users can now ask Alexa to play Spotify music
In October, Sonos launched the Sonos One, raising the bar on what is already the gold standard in wireless whole-home audio. The big new feature?…
Grindr updates its app to be more inclusive of transgender and non-binary users
Grindr is updating its popular queer dating app to be more inclusive of transgender and non-binary users. In an announcement timed to mark the end…
Android devices seen covertly sending location data to Google
An investigation by Quartz has revealed that Android devices send cell tower location data to Google even if the user has disabled location services for apps…
With Dabbl, you can earn gift cards for interacting with ads
Dabbl is giving users a straightforward reason to interact with ads — the ads earn them money in the form of gift cards. For example,…
Hear about the future of space propulsion at Disrupt Berlin
If hardware is hard, rockets must be even harder. Natalya Bailey should know. She’s the co-founder and CEO of Accion Systems, a startup spun out…
Sellers can now invoice buyers through PayPal’s new chat extension for Messenger
PayPal and Facebook are expanding their integrations today with the launch of an extension for Messenger that allows PayPal sellers to invoice buyers directly through…
Misfit’s new hybrid smartwatch offers a better notification system
Hybrid smartwatches are a weird category right now. No one’s really mastered the perfect balance between the smart and dumb, though a handful of products…
Capital One begins journey as a software vendor with the release of Critical Stack Beta
If every company is truly a software company, Capital One is out to the prove it. It was one of the early users of Critical…
You can virtually inhabit Toyota’s new humanoid robot
Toyota has a new, third-generation humanoid robot bears the charming name “T-HR3” and is designed to be a helpful and safe assistant to humans. It…
Investors, find Disrupt Berlin Startup Alley companies here
Listen up, investors at Disrupt Berlin 2017. This one’s for you. We’re thrilled to announce that you can now peruse the companies that will be…
Baidu and electric vehicle startup NIO lead $195M investment in Chinese limo booking app
Chinese internet giant Baidu is continuing its push into the automotive space after it led a RMB 1.3 billion ($195 million) Series B investment in Shouqi…
HPE adds recommendations to AI tech from Nimble acquisition
When HPE acquired Nimble Storage in March for a cool billion dollars, it knew it was getting some nifty flash storage technology. But it also…
Home decorating gets a new AR toolkit thanks to Intellectual Ventures’ new incubator
Taking another step toward shedding its reputation as the tech industry’s most notorious patent troll, Intellectual Ventures is launching the first company from its incubator.…