Buying furniture sucks. Getting rid of it later is worse. Aalo, part of the Y Combinator Winter 2018 class, is trying to fix both sides of that equation. They want you to design and build your own furniture… and when you’re done with it, turn it into something else. They’ve built a system of interlocking, […]

There’s no shortage of ideas being backed when it comes to direct-to-consumer e-commerce companies that are cultivating their own brands. We’ve seen everything from slippers to toothbrushes to, perhaps most famously, razor blades. Among the newer frontiers being funded right now: ingredient-conscious perfumes. The New York-based, venture-backed cosmetics company Glossier began marketing a proprietary perfume called […]

The American South may not be the first region that comes to mind when you hear the phrase “hotbed of tech entrepreneurship,” but, slightly misguided perceptions aside, it’s home to a diverse and growing collection of startups. Here, we’re going to take a deep dive into the startup funding data for the region. What is […]

So-called ‘EdTech’ has seen many false dawns over the years. After being lauded as the teaching platforms of the future, most MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course platforms) have not quite lived up to the superlatives made for them, and the sector has had trouble coming up with more innovative ideas for a while. But that […]

Sunny Dhillon Contributor More posts by this contributor Mixed reality arcades are the next big market opportunity — but not for VCs Virtual reality in Japan “$43 million and the only thing you can buy in it is a coffee.” So said Samsung’s Senior Director of Store Development Michael Koch about the company’s flagship Manhattan […]

Sibjeet Mahapatra Contributor Compelling virtual reality shipped to developers and consumers nearly two years ago. The first flagship headsets arrived from Oculus and HTC back in the spring of 2016, offering enough resolution, frame rate, field of view, latency mitigation and position-tracking to produce believable visual immersion. But no one seems to know what to […]

Joanna Glasner Contributor More posts by this contributor What does it take to be a startup that raises huge sums quickly? Not a minimalist? Startups will gladly store, manage and deliver your items It seems like startup news is full of overnight success stories and sudden failures, like the scooter rental company that went from […]

Enthusiasts will talk your ear off about the potential for drones to take over many of our dirtiest, dullest and most dangerous tasks. But most of the jobs we’ve actually seen drones perform are focused on the camera — from wildlife surveying to monitoring cracks on power plant smokestack. Aerones is working on something much […]

When we wrote about gaming startup Kahoot passing significant milestones of 70 million users on 51 million educational quizzes in January, we mentioned that the Oslo, Norway-based startup was closing another round of funding. Now, that has come to pass: Kahoot has announced that it has raised $17 million, at a valuation that sources close to […]

Zuora, which helps businesses handle subscription billing and forecasting, filed for an initial public offering this afternoon following on the heels of Dropbox’s filing earlier this month. Zuora’s IPO may signal that Dropbox going public, and seeing a price range that while under its previous valuation seems relatively reasonable, may open the door for coming […]

It was a big debut for enterprise cloud security company Zscaler, which saw its shares skyrocket 106% on its first day of trading. After pricing at $16, shares opened at $27.50, and closed at $34. This was also well above the original expected price range for its IPO of $10 to $12. The company ultimately raised […]

The FTC has announced that they’ve issued temporary restraining orders and frozen the assets of a team of three defendants who pitched investment advice as the Bitcoin Funding Team and My7Network. The FTC claims that the defendants “promised big rewards for a small payment of bitcoin or Litecoin.” From the report: According to the FTC, […]

[embedded content] Watch out all you well-paid, fat-and-sassy jazz marimba players: Shimon, the marimba playing robot is after your jobs. Shimon is the brainchild of the Robotic Musicianship Group at Georgia Tech and I’ve been following his career for a few years now. In this video, taken at the Ferst Center Presents as part of […]

GrokStyle’s simple concept of “point your camera at a chair (or lamp, or table…) and find others like it for sale” attracted $2 million in funding last year, and the company has been putting that cash to work. And remarkably for a company trying to break into the home furnishing market, it landed furniture goliath […]

Planning a mars mission, a global telecommunications network for inexpensive internet service, and creating an interplanetary hedge against world war three isn’t cheap, so it’s no wonder that SpaceX is closing on $500 million in new cash through a financing round led by Fidelity, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the round. Responding to clamoring […]

Anker is a devie maker that’s rapidly become a go-to brand for affordable, quality accessories include cables, chargers and backup batteries. More recently, it’s started to branch out into additional areas, including projectors through its Nebula brand. The Nebula Capsule is the latest product from that line, a super portable projector with an Android-based OS, […]

It takes a village to grow a startup, so Village Global is offering access to a deep network of top tech execs to lure founders to its seed fund. Today, Village Global announced it’s raised $100 million for that fund that was first unveiled in September. In exchange for equity, portfolio companies get investment plus […]

Developer bootcamps — several-month training programs that are designed to help people get up to speed with the technical skills they need to become a developer — exploded in popularity in the early part of the decade, but there’s been a bit of a shakedown on the space recently. And that could be a product […]

Gusto, formerly ZenPayroll, is the rare startup unicorn that has stayed relatively mum on its product and growth — it’s last press release, for instance, was more than a year ago. The company’s core offering remains payroll for small businesses, and it has been working to expand its customer base across the nation, including have […]

Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of trivia applications like HQ Trivia, dating app maker Zoosk has just released an experimental app that combines trivia with the potential for meeting someone new. The app is a relaunch and complete makeover of Zoosk’s Lively, which first debuted in July 2016 as a dating app that used […]

Tokyoflashis one of my favorite watchmakers. Unabashedly analog, the watches pay homage giant robots and old tech, looking like a cross between something that you could find in the hatch in Lost and a Shinjuku fever dream. Now the company has launched the Radar LED watch, a clever piece that shows the time with sweeping […]

The first big tech IPO of the year has opened with a bang. Zscaler, a security startup that confidentially filed for an IPO last year, started trading this morning as ZS on Nasdaq at a price of $27.50/share. This was a pop of 71.9  percent on its opening price of $16, and speaks to a […]

On the heels of last week’s rollout on Android, Google’s new AI-powered technology, Google Lens, is now arriving on iOS. The feature is available within the Google Photos iOS application, where it can do things like identify objects, buildings, and landmarks, and tell you more information about them, including helpful details like their phone number, […]

A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay is closing a deal with Warner Brothers to direct a movie based DC’s New Gods comics. The news was first reported in Deadline, and DuVernay seemed to confirm it by subsequently tweeting a tribute to New Gods creator Jack Kirby. While beloved by many comics fans, The New […]

[embedded content] The new trailer for Avengers: Infinity War is here, and it gives us a look at Thanos with a helmet on, and provides some signet into what he hopes to accomplish by invading Earth (kill half the people on it). Also, there are still a ton of characters in this movie, and it […]

Alexa is rolling out an optional “Brief Mode” that lets users configure their Echo devices to use chimes and sounds for confirmations, instead of having Alexa respond with her voice. For example, if you ask Alexa to turn on your lights today, she will respond “okay” as she does so. But with Brief Mode enabled, […]

Apple has a long legacy of providing services to schools and teachers, but the industry has changed in recent years as the Chromebook has completely changed the way classrooms work. The company is no doubt looking to take back some of that mindshare. This morning, it sent out invites for an event, asking attendees to […]

A significant changing of the guard is underway in the world of telecoms and tech out of Asia. CK Hutchison, a Hong Kong conglomerate that owns the European mobile carrier 3 among other mobile and tech holdings, has announced that Li Ka-Shing is stepping down as the company’s chairman and executive director, after 46 years […]

Sweden-based Detectify, which offers a website vulnerability scanner that is in part powered by the crowd, has raised €5 million in new funding. The round was led by New York-based venture capital and private equity firm, Insight Venture Partners. Existing investors, Paua Ventures and Inventure, also participated. Founded in late 2013 by a self-described group […]

AirAsia, the low-cost airline in Southeast Asia, is considering an initial coin offering (ICO) as part of a push into financial services. Tony Fernandes, CEO of the $3 billion Malaysia-based company, told TechCrunch that he is analyzing the potential to hold an ICO that would raise money by introducing its own cryptocurrency. “We have two […]

Lyft is testing a monthly subscription plan for people who tend to take a lot of rides, The Verge first reported. This is no surprise, given Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green said earlier this week Lyft would like to achieve in transportation what Netflix achieved in streaming media with subscriptions. There seems to be […]

Google Maps has a pretty solid set of data for taking transit from here to there, but anyone with a physical disability knows it isn’t quite that simple. Some stations may be wheelchair-unfriendly, have out-of-service elevators, that kind of thing. A new update to the service adds an option for you to specify a wheelchair-accessible […]

When the Spectre and Meltdown bugs hit, it became clear that they wouldn’t be fixed with a few quick patches — the problem runs deeper than that. Fortunately, Intel has had plenty of time to work on it, and new chips coming out later this year will include improvements at the hardware/architecture level that protect […]

Fitness-oriented New Yorkers aren’t facing a shortage of classes that they can sign up for, but the prices can add up — Clément Benoit, founder of a new startup called FitHouse, said boutique classes cost an average of $35 per session. FitHouse, on the other hand, is charging $99 per month for unlimited classes. Contrast […]

Abra, a global currency wallet that was the belle of the early Bitcoin ball, has just added twenty cryptocurrencies and fifty fiat currencies, a feature that allows you to top up and send cash and cryptocurrencies from inside the wallet. “Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum Classic, Dash, Zcash, Bitcoin Gold, Stellar Lumens, DigiByte, […]

Seven million women (and men) love TheSkimm.  With its daily newsletters designed to keep you in the loop on the latest news and pop culture, TheSkimm has developed a loyal following, and even recruits fans called “Skimm’bassadors” to help spread the word. That word-of-mouth hype is helping and the startup has seen enough growth to […]

Lightning Labs, a young, Bay Area-based startup, is trying to make it easier for users to send bitcoin and litecoin to each other without the costly and time consuming process of settling their transactions on the blockchain. It has investors excited about its work, too. The company is announcing today that it has raised $2.5 […]

The rapid consumer adoption of smart speakers like Amazon Echo and Google Home has opened opportunities for developers creating voice apps, too. At least that’s true in the case of Volley, a young company building voice-controlled entertainment experiences for Amazon Alexa and Google Home. In less than a year, Volley has amassed an audience north […]

Google says there are currently no ‘statistically significant’ pay gaps at the company across race and gender. This is based on the company’s most recent pay analysis, where it looked at unexplained pay discrepancies based on gender and race and then made adjustments where necessary, Google wrote in a blog post today. In total, Google […]

Rihanna is not happy with Snap for the tone-deaf ad the company let run on Snapchat. A couple of days ago, an advertisement on Snap appeared that alluded to Chris Brown’s violent assault on Rihanna back in 2009. The advertisement, which was for a game called “Would You Rather,” asked if people would “rather slap […]

Facebook wants you to pay it for Internet. This week TechCrunch was tipped off that Facebook had quietly launched an Express Wi-Fi Android app in the Google Play store that lets users buy data packs and find nearby hotspots as part of Facebook’s distributed Wi-Fi network. The company’s Express Wi-Fi program is live in five developing […]

Ford is a 115 year old company and has changed much over the years. The car maker seems ready to change again. Today, Ford gathered several hundred journalists in a theater deep in its Dearborn, MI development center. The building is surrounded by engineering labs and test facilities. A Ford proving ground is across the […]

Ford is committed to electric vehicles and today revealed more details about its upcoming performance electric SUV. Jim Farley, President of Ford Global Markets, speaking a media event today, called the upcoming vehicle low-slung like a Mustang. The company is targeting 2020 release and Farley promised that it will be famous without having to shoot […]

Ford detailed a bunch of its roadmap for the next few years at a special media event today, and one of the key takeaways is that it’s going all-in on hybrids with its SUV lineup. Ford estimates that SUVs could make up as much as half the entire U.S. industry retail market by 2020, and […]

No matter whether you are a seasoned programmer or you simply want to take your first steps in writing code, Repl.it wants to help you get from idea to result as fast as possible — without complicated installs and setup procedures getting in your way. The Y Combinator-funded project, which released version 1.0 of its service […]

Airbnb has made some changes to its platform in order to make it easier for people with disabilities to find accommodations that suit their needs. The 21 new accessibility filters Airbnb has added enable people to find homes and apartments that have step-free entry to rooms, entryways wide enough to accommodate a wheelchair, elevators, roll-in […]

Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds, the ‘battle royale’ style game where everyone tries to be the last player standing while scrounging for supplies to keep them alive, has launched on Android in Canada MobileSyrup reports, which could presage a future release in the U.S. The arrival of the mobile version of the game more generally known as […]

Spotify explained why it’s ditching the traditional IPO for a direct listing on the NYSE on April 3rd today during its Investor Day presentation. Spotify described the rationale for using a direct listing to go public with five points: List Without Selling Shares  – Spotify has plent of money with $1.3 billion in cash and securities, […]

Disrupt San Francisco 2018 promises to be our biggest Disrupt event ever — with three times the convention floor space and more than 10,000 attendees. That’s incredibly exciting, and it also presents a challenge for startup founders and tech investors eager to network and connect. Who wants to waste valuable time talking to the wrong […]

Blue Apron announced today it will bring its meal kits to stores. The news arrives at a time when the meal kit subscription company is struggling to grow and retain its users, who are often put off by the expense of the direct-shipped meal kits and the need to commit to an ongoing subscription. In […]

Android Wear has exactly been the rocket ship of success Google was no doubt banking on when it was launched four years ago this week. After a slow start, the company issued a 2.0 refresh of the wearable operating system in early 2017 — but the update was fairly minimal and didn’t appear to move […]

GM revealed today that it’s going to be starting proper production of its Cruise autonomous vehicle at its Orion township assembly plant in Michigan, with the roof modules for the vehicles assembled nearby at its Brownstown battery assembly plant. Alongside the Cruise AV, Orion will also continue to build the Bolt EV, as well as […]

Back in 2016, Microsoft bought the popular SwiftKey keyboard for Android and iOS for $250 million. It’s still one of the most popular third-party keyboard on both platforms and today, the company is launching one of its biggest updates since the acquisition. With SwiftKey 7.0,  which is out now, the company is adding stickers — because […]

As you might have heard, last year’s TC Robotics event in Boston was such a hit we’ve decided to do it again — only on the West Coast, this time. On Friday, May 11, we’ll be holding TC Sessions: Robotics on the U.C. Berkeley campus. We’ve got a lot of big industry luminaries lined up […]

Facebook’s Instant Games are now open to all developers, Facebook announced this week in advance of the Game Developers Conference. First launched in 2016, the platform lets developers build mobile-friendly games using HTML5 that work on both Facebook and Messenger, instead of requiring users to download native apps from Apple or Google’s app stores. The […]

Elon Musk has been one of the few Silicon Valley luminaries to place intense attention on the potential dangers of AI, raising a billion dollars with Y Combinator’s Sam Altman to found OpenAI. Musk has continued the drumbeat on AI’s dangers, telling a crowd at SXSW this week that “A.I. is far more dangerous than […]

Another massive financing round for an AI chip company is coming in today, this time for SambaNova Systems — a startup founded by a pair of Stanford professors and a longtime chip company executive — to build out the next generation of hardware to supercharge AI-centric operations. SambaNova joins an already quite large class of […]

In a keynote speech at SXSW, YouTube’s Global Head of Music Lyor Cohen spoke briefly of YouTube’s plans for a music subscription service, amid a longer discussion of the changes he’s witnessed throughout his career in the industry, as well as those still in the horizon. YouTube’s new music subscription service had been expected to launch […]

Amazon’s original content efforts are paying off, at least in terms of driving new sign-ups for Prime, which is ostensibly their main value to the commerce giant. Documents obtained by Reuters show that the top Prime video original programming, including 19 shows covered within, were accountable for as many as a quarter of the total […]

We had all but forgotten about Tamagotchis. But those attention-starved little creatures are coming back. Today, My Tamagotchi Forever launches on Google Play and the App Store. For those of you who didn’t ride the wave of handheld digital pets in the late 90s and early aughts, or those of you who are too young […]

Startup pitches invariably involve futures where the skies are thick with drones — delivery, transportation, emergency response. In that seemingly inevitable scenario, tracking and hunting down out of control and malicious unmanned vehicles will likely be a pretty lucrative field. It’s something Fortem’s been working on for a few years now. In May of 2016, […]

Seattle-based Strix Leviathan, an enterprise trading and management platform for crypto assets founded by startup vet Jesse Proudman, today announced that it has raised a $1.625 million seed round led by Joe Montana’s Liquid 2 Ventures (yes, that Joe Montana). Other investors include Founders’ Co-op, FuturePerfect Ventures and 9Mile Labs, as well as angel investors like Chris […]

BlackBerry today announced it reached an agreement to keep CEO John Chen in his current position through 2023. Chen joined the company in 2013 and is responsible for leading the company’s recovery as it left smartphones and embraced services. When Chen took over the company, the company was struggling on all fronts. Its time as […]

While credit-scoring behemoth Equifax continues to work through the fallout from its massive security breach, one of its big competitors is snapping up a startup in the UK to diversify its business. Experian today announced that it is acquiring ClearScore, which has built a platform that — like Experian — offers you a credit score, […]

The U.S. Air Force wants to maintain its options: It awarded a total of $640 million in satellite launch contracts to both SpaceX and the United Launch Alliance (Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s joint space launch venture), with the goal of making sure it has access to at least two options for launching its payloads to […]

A massive company probably has plenty of engineers on staff and the resources to build a complex backbone of interconnected information that can contain tons of data and make acting on it easy — but for smaller companies, and for those that aren’t technical, those tools aren’t very accessible. That’s what convinced Howie Liu to […]

More VC money sloshing around Europe, this time with the launch of a new early-stage fund targeting food and agriculture technology. Backed by the likes of European Investment Fund, Nestlé, Fondo Italiano d’Investimento, and Bpifrance, Five Seasons Ventures is announcing the first closing of its fund with commitments “in excess of €60 million” to invest […]

Fintech startup Revolut is slowly making traditional bank accounts irrelevant. The company is adding direct debits in EUR to make it easier to pay for utilities and subscription services. While Revolut is currently applying for a banking license, the company has already been adding everything you need to replace your bank account with a Revolut […]

What do Drake, Ninja the professional esports player, Kim Dotcom, Travis Scott and NFL player JuJu Smith-Schuster have in common? They’re all playing Fortnight together right now and live-streaming it on Twitch. Yes, seriously. You can tune in to Ninja’s channel here to check out the action. Right now the amount of live viewers is […]

If you’re a real Star Wars Star Trek fan, chances are you’ve always dreamt of learning Klingon. It’s one of the most lovely and melodic tongues in the pantheon of fake languages, after all. Well, here is your chance: Duolingo today announced the launch of the official Klingon course on its service. “Many Star Trek fans become curious about […]

Back in September of last year, Nest announced its first smart doorbell. When it would actually ship, however, was left sort of up in the air; all the company said at the time was to expect it sometime in Q1 of 2018. Turns out, that means today. The Nest doorbell — or the Nest Hello, […]

If you want to see how a proposed drug affects human physiology, your options are limited — and usually you end up using mice, which are in many ways poor analogues. What’s a pharmacologist to do? MIT researchers have a solution: a “body on a chip” that simulates up to 10 interconnected human organs at […]

Now Spotify listens to you instead of the other way around. Spotify has a new voice search interface that lets you say “Play my Discover Weekly”, “Show Calvin Harris”, or “Play some upbeat pop” to pull up music. A Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that this is “Just a test for now”, as only a […]

Lyft is partnering with Magna, one of the largest tier one automotive industry suppliers in the world, on autonomous vehicle technology. Lyft CEO and co-founder Logan Green explained that this will help them get their self-driving tech into various automaker vehicles around the world. Lyft will be working directly with Magna on “co-developing” an autonomous driving […]

Naeem Ishaq is leaving his role as chief financial officer of bulk e-commerce company Boxed. Ishaq joined Boxed in 2016, following a stint as head of finance, strategy and risk at Square. A Boxed spokesperson confirmed Ishaq’s departure, and sent the following statement from CEO Chieh Huang: Naeem is a world-class financial talent. Over the […]

YouTube has a plan to combat the abundant conspiracy theories that feature in credulous videos on its platform; not a very good plan, but a plan just the same. It’s using information drawn from Wikipedia relevant to some of the more popular conspiracy theories, and putting that info front and center on videos that dabble in… […]

Advancements in A.I. technology has paved the way for breakthroughs in speech recognition, natural language processing, and machine translation. A new startup called Voicery now wants to leverage those same advancements to improve speech synthesis, too. The result is a fast, flexible speech engine that sounds more human – and less like a robot. Its […]

For how massive Reddit is in terms of user base, it’s really gotten by for a long time having a product that advanced about as quickly as Drudge Report. That’s been changing lately, as the company has looked to mature their platform with user-centric features that make surfing content easier and keep everything a bit […]

Former Equifax exec Jun Ying has been charged with insider trading, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. He allegedly knew that Equifax had been hacked and sold his company shares before the public was notified. Ying, who was “next in line to the be company’s global CIO, allegedly used confidential information entrusted to him by […]

Lighting can make or break the right photo, when it comes to static environments inside virtual reality that users can move around in, this becomes exponentially more true. Today, Google released a new app for VR devices focused on helping users make sense of “light fields.” They’ve also got a blog post running down some […]

Procrastinateurs se réjouissent! If you haven’t applied yet to compete in TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Europe at VivaTech in Paris on May 24-25, then rejoice indeed, because we have great news for you. We’re extending the application deadline by one full week to March 22, at 9 a.m. PST. Startup Battlefield is the premier startup pitch […]

Circle is launching Circle Invest in the U.S. except in NY, MN, HI and WY. The app is now available in the App Store and Play Store and lets you instantly trade the most popular cryptocurrencies without any fee. Circle Invest isn’t exactly an exchange as the app hides most of the complexities that you […]

Zero-fee stock trading app Robinhood is getting some product firepower as it dives into cryptocurrency and weighs platform aspirations. Investor Josh Elman will join Robinhood as its VP of product while remaining a partner at Greylock. With 4 million registered users, $176 million raised and a $1.3 billion valuation, the five-year-old fintech startup is shifting […]

Google just banned cryptocurrency and ICO ads, a move that follows Facebook decision to do the same. The language is stark: you are no longer allowed to advertise “Cryptocurrencies and related content (including but not limited to initial coin offerings, cryptocurrency exchanges, cryptocurrency wallets, and cryptocurrency trading advice).” This is good news. In the Wild […]

If you can believe anything Elon Musk tweets, then ‘Thud!’ is the name of the media venture that the multi-CEO and space person is starting up, staffed by former Onion writers he’s poached and doing something with comedy. Musk apparently wanted to buy The Onion initially, but I guess that fell through and instead he […]

Apple’s retail footprint gives the company all sorts of advantages when it comes to consumer outreach. As frustrating as the Genius Bar experience can be, quick repairs are pretty high on that list. Without the same kind of brick and mortar presence, Samsung’s looking to outside partners to offer up quick turnaround for users with […]

Glasses have been en vogue for several years and with celebrities donning them on the Oscar’s red carpet, it doesn’t seem like the trend is about to fade away. One company that’s benefitted from and also contributed to the glasses craze is Warby Parker, which is getting another $75 million, led by T. Rowe Price, to […]

Disney this morning announced a strategic reorganization of its business in order to better reflect its current priorities in the areas of technological innovation, global expansion, the creation of high-quality content, and direct-to-consumer distribution – meaning its upcoming Netflix competitor. Under the new structure, Disney’s business will be reorganized into four segments: a new Direct-to-Consumer […]

ClassPass has today announced the launch of ClassPass Live, an at-home workout platform that connects users with fitness teachers via live video. ClassPass Live was first announced in December of last year. The company purchased a studio in Industry City, along with hiring instructors to develop a proprietary ClassPass workout for users and run classes. […]

Video games are about to look a lot more like the real world. If you’ve enjoyed the thrill of driving through GTA V and spying out Los Angeles landmarks, then that’s a sentiment you’re probably going to start feeling a lot more often while you play video games. Google is making its Maps API play nice […]

I’ll be honest: When I first got the pitch for “the first blockchain-based video game console,” I assumed it must be some kind of gimmick. But Jimmy Chen, co-founder and CEO of Blok.Party, said the Ethereum blockchain is “a critical part of this experience,” allowing his team to create “this seamless bridge between the digital […]

Microsoft today announced its plans for a major expansion of the Microsoft Cloud with the launch of its first cloud regions in the Middle East. These new regions, which are scheduled to go online in 2019, will be located in Abu Dhabi and Dubai and will host the company’s usual Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 […]

A little over a month after Facebook updated its advertising policy to include a blanket ban on  cryptocurrency, Google is following suit. Shortly after reporting that it had removed 3.2 billion “bad ads” in 2017, the search giant issued an update to its advertising policy page, highlighting a ban on: Binary options and synonymous products […]

Concur Labs, the slightly more experimental arm of SAP’s travel booking and expense management service Concur, today announced an integration with Slack that may actually make managing your expenses a bit easier and less annoying. Using the new Concur Slack bot, users will, among other things, be able to submit receipts and enter their basic […]

The first time Waseem Daher, Jessica McKellar, and Jeff Arnold worked together on a startup, they built one that allowed administrators to patch security updates to a system without having to restart it. So it might come as a bit of a surprise that the next big technical challenge the three MIT graduates want to tackle […]

A team of Microsoft researchers announced on Wednesday they’ve created the first machine translation system that’s capable of translating news articles from Chinese to English with the same accuracy as a person. The company says it’s tested the system repeatedly on a sample of around 2,000 sentences from various online newspapers, comparing the result to […]

Pray.com, an interfaith social networking app for members of religious communities, has raised a $14 million Series A led by TPG Growth. Previous investors Science Inc. and Greylock Partners also returned for the round, which brings the Santa Monica-based startup’s total funding, including a seed round announced last June, to $16 million. Founded in 2016, […]

Sahar Saidi has had curly hair her whole life, and spent most of that life straightening and treating her hair to try to conform to the media’s idea of beauty. But with the rise of social media, Saidi noticed a trend. People with curly hair were becoming more and more comfortable wearing their hair naturally […]

Rocket launch startup Rocket Lab is moving from its initial testing phase into proper commercial operations with its next mission. The company’s past two launches, “It’s a Test” and “Still Testing” were (you guessed it) primarily tests of its Electron launch craft vehicle and launch process, but its next mission, dubbed “It’s Business Time” (kudos […]

Algolia had made a tiny acquisition to complement its product offering. The company is acquiring the technology behind SeaUrchin.IO — the team of two behind this product is not joining Algolia. For those not familiar with Algolia, the startup has developed an impressive search engine API. In just a few lines of codes, you can […]

YouTube is taking action on the proliferation of conspiracy videos found on its platform: YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki told an SXSW panel Tuesday that the company would be introducing so-called “information cues” sourced from relevant Wikipedia articles on videos that talk about popular conspiracy theories. These will appear as text boxes that can prevent alternative […]

An interesting development in Europe over how WhatsApp and Facebook will work together, which is also a victory of sorts for data protection and privacy advocates in the region. Today, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) announced that it has closed an investigation into whether WhatsApp and its owner Facebook could legally share user data […]

Over the course of the last few years, Cloudflare built a global network of data center locations and partnerships to expand its DDoS protection, security tools and website acceleration services. That kind of expertise is hard to beat, so maybe it doesn’t come as a surprise that even a global technology juggernaut like IBM today announced […]

Containers are quickly becoming the standard way for deploying new applications in the cloud and that’s even true for the most traditional of enterprises. It’s no surprise then that every major cloud provider is betting on containers — and more specifically on the open source Kubernetes container orchestration service. IBM has long offered its own […]

Oren Etzioni Contributor Oren Etzioni is CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and has been a professor at the University of Washington’s Computer Science department since 1991. He has also founded or co-founded several companies, including Farecast (sold to Microsoft in 2008) and Decide (sold to eBay in 2013), and is the author […]

Calling all European developers! It’s time to show the tech world your crazy-mad skills at the TechCrunch Hackathon in Paris on May 25-26 at VivaTech. It’s one thing to create amazing new apps back in the comfort of your home or office; try doing it while competing against hundreds of top-notch hackers racing against a […]

Tech Will Save Us, the U.K. startup getting kids excited about technology through a range of ‘hackable’ toys, has raised $4.2 million in Series A funding led by Initial Capital. The round also includes Backed VC, SaatchInvest, All Bright, Unltd-inc, and Leaf VC, along with angel investors Chris Lee (co- founder of Media Molecule), Martin […]

It’s March 14, which means it’s Pi Day for math appreciators everywhere (I appreciate math, I just don’t understand it). To mark the occasion, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has a brand new version of its diminutive, affordable computer for DIY computing enthusiasts, the new Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. This latest iteration has the same […]

A new early-stage VC fund targeting tech startups in the Nordics is getting its official launch today. Founded by serial entrepreneur and Slush Chairman Ilkka Kivimäki​, and former F-Secure and startup executive Pirkka Palomäki​, Helsinki-based Maki.vc will invest in nascent and burgeoning companies in the region, both at seed and Series A stage. The VC […]

The will be welcome news for cryptocurrency fans in the U.K. and Europe. Coinbase, one of more popular and accessible cryptocurrency exchanges, has been granted an e-money license by the U.K. regulator the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). From a regulatory standpoint, this means that Coinbase is now able to issue e-money and provide payment services […]

Stephen Hawking, whose work advanced the state of physics as much as the popular understanding of it, has died at the age of 76, his family has said. Hawking’s brilliant intellect and unflinching personality famously contrasted with the wasting disease from which he suffered for most of his life, limiting his movements and speech. Undaunted […]

As the world’s largest search engine and a digital advertising behemoth, Google has a lot to answer for when it comes to misleading or false information being spread using its platforms, both through ads and through content that is monetised by way of those ads. More recently, the company has been on a mission to […]

These are the most comfortable pants of my life. They’re also soft, flattering… And it turns out that some venture capitalists think sweatpants and workout clothes make for a good investment. Outdoor Voices is raising a $34 million Series C round led by GV (formerly Google Ventures). This also includes an investment from Mickey Drexler, […]

Today, we’re very excited to be sharing the latest incarnation of TechCrunch with all of you. We’ve already talked a bit about many of the new features that we’re excited about and what they will mean for us from an editorial standpoint. In the spirit of launching, we’d now like to share a bit about […]

The spotlight on the distributed ledger space to-date is primarily focused on blockchain. Yet, blockchains come with limitations by design. Consensus mechanisms using proof of work (POW) are by their nature slow, so the community can come to agreement and throw away the blocks they don’t agree on. This design also includes inherent inefficiencies such […]

Gemini, run by the Winklevoss twins, is one of the most Wall Street oriented exchanges on the crypto markets. Originally envisioned as “bitcoin in a suit,” it is now leading the way in self regulation with a new Virtual Commodity Association, a self-regulating group that aims to take the guesswork out of crypto in the […]

Google Assistant is about to start doing more without quite as much talking on your part. Long-awaited multi-step routines are just today starting to roll out to users in the U.S., as first spotted by Android Police. In the case of “Good Morning,” which seems to be the first of the multi-step routines to go […]

Despite wave after wave of startups continues vowing to kill email, electronic mail has never been stronger. It seems the best way to live with emails is to let AI steal the job of writing them. EasyEmail, emerging from Y Combinator’s latest batch, is aiming to get inside your inbox and help you navigate future […]