SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, its most powerful reusable rocket to date, might have its first launch before the end of the year after all — and…
digital marketing
COMB+ announces a $77M fund to help AI startups enter China
Artificial intelligence is a hot topic in the tech industry with China — alongside the U.S. — emerging as a key market for talent, innovation…
Three Uber security managers reportedly resigned today
Three senior-level security managers resigned from Uber today, Reuters reported earlier today. One of the three who resigned, Pooja Ashok, was chief of staff to…
A prescription for healing the healthcare industry
The year is 1900. Life expectancy is 47 years. Almost all hospitals in the U.S. are nonprofit institutions founded by religious organizations. Fast-forward to today.…
Netflix has officially renewed ‘Stranger Things’ for a third season
What pleasant news to end the week on. Netflix announced today its plans to renew the hit Stranger Things for a third season. The announcement…
Mapbox acquires augmented reality activity tracking app Fitness AR
Mapbox has acquired activity tracking app Fitness AR, which allows users to view runs, hikes or cycling routes from Strava superimposed on a 3D map…
A look through TransferWise’s early pitch deck
Nearly seven years ago, TransferWise was readying the launch of its international money transfer service with bated breath. Co-founder Taavet Hinrikus would later tell me…
Tencent CEO joins Breakthrough Prize as founding sponsor
Tencent founder and CEO Ma Huateng (Pony Ma) is joining the Breakthrough Prize, sometimes referred to as “the Oscars of Science,” as a founding sponsor.…
BlackBerry will pay Nokia $137 million over a contract dispute
It’s been a while since Nokia and BlackBerry were bitter smartphone rivals, but there’s plenty of bad blood left between the two companies. This morning,…
Apple’s hand is down and its $1 trillion dream now rests with consumers
As we head into the end of 2017, it’s pretty safe to say that Apple’s fate — barring any major issue with its phones —…
Flowspace is AWS for warehouses
Got too much Internet traffic? Get servers on-demand from Amazon Web Services. Got too many pallets of physical goods? Well now you can get on-demand…
Uber’s Indian rival Ola begins offering a bicycle-sharing service
Ola, the company battling Uber in India, has turned to pedal power after it introduced a bike-sharing service. China’s Didi Chuxing and Grab in Southeast…
Periscope expands virtual tipping via Super Hearts beyond the U.S.
Twitter’s big push to draw in more live video stars to its Periscope streaming service is now expanding beyond the U.S. The company announced today…
Amazon’s Treasure Truck is hitting the road in the U.K.
After slowly rolling out across the U.S. over the past two years, Amazon’s Treasure Truck is ready for a bit of international expansion. As with…
Tinder tests a new feature that uses A.I. to suggest who to ‘Super Like’
If you’ve ever quickly swiped through Tinder, you know that sometimes your fingers can get away from you – and, all of a sudden, you’ve…
Equity podcast: Uber’s big discount, more money for Pokémon, and Jeff Bezos is worth how much?
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-themed podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Katie Roof and Alex Wilhelm were…
How to Reclaim an Unproductive Day in 6 Steps
Click. Click. Click. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. That’s the sound of an unproductive day passing by.
How to Create an Invoicing Process That Fits Your Business
Invoicing. Seems pretty straightforward, right?
Alibaba is buying Israeli startup Visualead’s tech to establish a Tel Aviv R&D center
Alibaba announced a massive $15 billion research ‘DAMO Academy’ project focused on R&D last month, and it is laying the groundwork for an office in…
Create the unholy DIY union of Alexa and Furby this weekend
As we approach the End Times there will be great signs and portents. They say the dead will rise and walk the earth. Great fire…
Economist Tyler Cowen talks about the value of despair
In this episode of Technotopia I talk to Tyler Cowen, a professor of Economics at George Mason University and an editor at one of my…
Spot.IM raises $25 million for a better comments section
Social media has become critical to the online publishers. It drives a lot of traffic and helps brands build a following. But it also means…
Graphic India raises $5M to build a Marvel-like digital comic brand for India
It’s been some time since we wrote about Graphic India, a new media startup that believes India should have its own home-grown answer to cartoon…
Yext sees 39% revenue growth in latest quarter
Yext, the company that powers search results for retail locations, reported third-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday. The New York-based company said it brought…
Be On Alert for Charity Check Scams This Season via AARP Money
Dec 5, 2017 … When you took your copy of AARP The Magazine out of your mailbox this month, there were probably lots of letters and packages from charities alongside it, each asking for a donation. Hey, it’s the season, right? Well, chances are good that one or more of them are scams. Blame your good nature.
Ski Resorts That Offer Free Season Passes to Older Skiers via AARP Money
by Austin O’Connor, AARP, November 30, 2017. Seniors Ski Free. iStockphoto/ Getty Images. Many ski resorts across the country offer free or discounted season passes for older skiers. Don’t let this week’s mild weather across much of the country fool you. Ski season isn’t just right around the corner — it’s actually well …
Pinterest business lead Tim Kendall is leaving the company
Pinterest president Tim Kendall, who has since joining in 2012 overseen the growth of the startup’s advertising business and launch of a wide array of…
Twitter Lite with lower data usage becomes available in 24 new countries
Twitter is rolling out its “Lite” version, after a successful trial in the Philippines. The Android app will become available in two dozen countries across Africa,…
Lyft gained from Uber’s scandals, sees revenue triple
Lyft appears to have benefited from Uber’s tough year. The U.S. rival has seen its revenue growth more than triple, according to a report from…
Episode 1 rolls out new $81m seed-to-Series A fund, despite Brexit headwinds
Episode 1 has been a stalwart of the early stage funding scene in London for the last few years, investing in successful startups like Carwow,…
There’s an implosion of early-stage VC funding, and no one’s talking about it
Amid record amounts of capital raised by VCs worldwide, and a sharp rise in the number of private “unicorns,” there has been a quiet, barely…
Qualcomm alleges that Apple’s iPhone infringes on Palm Pre patents
Shortly after the announcement of the iPhone X in September, my colleague Natasha Lomas noted the similarities between the phone and how WebOS operated on…
Google Home learns how to multitask
Google’s smart speaker got a little smarter this week, with the addition of a multitasking feature. The new capability make it possible for the device…
Apple marks World AIDS Day with in-store and in-app donations
After raising $160 million for the Global fund as part of its partnership with (RED), Apple is marking tomorrow’s World AIDS Day by offering up…
Blue Apron loses its CEO
Blue Apron founder Matt Salzberg is stepping aside as the company’s CEO, the company announced Thursday. CFO Brad Dickerson has been promoted to take his place.…
SpaceX’s first Falcon Heavy launch will now take place in 2018
SpaceX had been planning to launch its huge Falcon Heavy rocket for the first time this year, with a time frame set most recently for…
Wearable numbers get a bump, as consumers shift focus to smarter devices
The wearable space seems to still be figuring itself out — though in spite of some reports about the death of the category, overall growth…
Fire TV owners can now control Hulu, NBC, CBS and other video apps via their voice
Amazon Fire TV owners will now be able to control more video apps using Alexa and their voice, the company announced today. This feature lets…
Google Cloud brings in former Intel exec Diane Bryant as COO
There are now two Dianes running the show at Google Cloud. The company announced that Diane Bryant has been hired as the COO of the…
Super Mario takes a sugar odyssey with a new breakfast cereal
The last time Mario had a breakfast cereal, he had to split the billing with Link. I bet that’s what it felt like being in…
GoFundMe drops 5% Platform Fee for U.S. personal campaigns, adds tips
GoFundMe, the popular fundraising juggernaut that now has 50 million users and has raised over $5 billion in funding for causes to date, is making…
FCC Commissioner Clyburn takes down Chairman’s net neutrality doom and gloom
Back in 2015, then-Commissioner of the FCC Ajit Pai submitted a lengthy paper detailing his reasons for voting against the incoming net neutrality rules. He…
Google Assistant can now help you find a plumber and other local services
Google Assistant is about to get a bit more home-savvy. The voice assistant will be gaining local discovery skills that will help you locate home…
9 smart home gifts for a smarter smart home
Welcome to the 2017 TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide! We check out a lot of really cool stuff here at TechCrunch, so we figured we ought…
Dropbox acquires publishing platform Verst, will shut it down on Dec. 21
The team behind Verst is joining Dropbox, in an acquisition that marks the end of the Verst publishing platform. The startup actually started life as…
Google might bring Nest back into its own hardware business
Google might fold Nest back into the Google, well, fold. The company is considering integrating Nest, which is a separate company under mutual parent Alphabet…
GM and Cruise on track to field a self-driving ride hailing service by 2019
GM and Cruise have articulated more specifically when they want to put their self-driving service on the roads, at today’s investor call for the company…
AT&T’s LTE-M Button is basically a programmable 4G Amazon Dash Button for businesses
Alexa’s not the only Amazon property that’s getting a workplace component at this week at AWS Re:Invent. The LTE-M Button isn’t branded as a Dash…
Amazon launches AWS Cloud9, a browser-based IDE for cloud developers
AWS today launched a new browser-based IDE, AWS Cloud9, at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Cloud9 is actually an IDE the company acquired last…
Apple launched a study to look for irregular heart rhythms on the Apple Watch
Apple and Stanford have teamed up for a new heart health study. Using a new Apple Watch app and the Apple Watch’s built-in sensor, researchers…
Microsoft’s Edge browser is now available for Android and iOS
Last month, Microsoft announced its intentions to bring its Edge Browser to iOS and Android, as it works to broaden its reach on third-party mobile…
H20.AI’s snares $40M Series C investment led by Wells Fargo and Nvidia
H20.AI started almost 6 years ago with a mission to simplify and democratize artificial intelligence. Today the company announced a $40M Series C round. Nvidia…
Google expands its 3D objects pipeline for AR/VR with the Poly API
Though Google’s early efforts in VR and AR may not have reached the average Android user, as the company scales its vision for what augmented…
LG shakes up its struggling mobile division with new top executives
If you’ve stopped paying attention to LG in the last couple of years, you’ll learn everything you need to know from the first paragraph of…
WeWork has big plans for Alexa for Business
Amazon is soon to announce Alexa for Business, and WeWork is one of the first partners to have hopped on the platform. WeWork’s vision is…
Farmers Business Network just raked in a whopping $110 million in Series D funding
Farmers Business Network has raised $110 million in new venture funding to support a business that may sound boring to some Silicon Valley technologists but which…
Volvo’s car subscription service sounds like good way to get the new XC40
Volvo has a subscription car service, whereby you can get a new vehicle for a flat monthly fee, including insurance, maintenance and service. It’s not…
There are now 25M active business profiles on Instagram
Instagram announced this morning that it now has 25 million active business profiles, up from 15 million in July. The company throws out a lot…
New Destiny 2 Alexa skills let you ask Ghost to do stuff in-game
Destiny 2 fans will know that you get your own virtual assistant of source in the game world – Ghost, who sort of floats around…
Innovid acquires Taykey to provide more data to video advertisers
Video advertising company Innovid has acquired another advertising startup, Taykey. We’ve written about Taykey as a tool that companies can use to target their ads based…
10 of the Best Ads from November: Elves, Llamas, and a Business Cat
If you think November is too early to be dreaming of sugarplum fairies and hanging the stockings with care, then consider this your official warning:…
Uptake nabs $117M at $2.3B valuation for industrial predictive analytics
A company that is seizing the opportunity to provide predictive analytics to the industrial world — regardless of whether a business has made the (often…
Fractyl Labs raises $44 million in Series D to develop a treatment for type 2 diabetes
Fractyl Labs, a Lexington, Massachusetts-based startup developing treatments for diabetes, has raised $44 million in Series D financing from a slew of VC firms, including…
Here’s what you missed at TechCrunch Shanghai 2017
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. This week saw TechCrunch land in Shanghai for yet…
Final round of Disrupt Berlin hackathon & spectator tickets now available plus sponsor prizes
The countdown for the Berlin TechCrunch Disrupt Hack is getting lower, with only 2 days to go! We’ve released the last batch of hacker tickets…
Atomico just released its third ‘state of European tech’ report and it holds some surprises
Atomico, the 11-year-old European venture firm, has released the third edition of its State of European Tech report in an effort to shine a light…
Google’s newest app stops you burning through your data package
Google’s newest app for emerging markets is a service that helps control data usage on a smartphone and get more for your top-up credit. Datally,…
FDA clears AliveCor’s Kardiaband as the first medical device accessory for the Apple Watch
The Food and Drug Administration has just cleared AliveCor’s Kardiaband EKG reader as the first medical device accessory for the Apple Watch. Europe has been…
Arianna Huffington’s Thrive Global raises $30M so you can work less and sleep more
Arianna Huffington wants you to work smarter, not harder. She believes a corporate mentality that rewards burning the midnight oil is actually reducing productivity, by…
Elon Musk’s Boring Company to bid for Chicago airport link project
Elon Musk’s Boring Company, a project that plans to use futuristic underground pods to transport cars across long distances without traffic congestion, is starting to take…
Amazon is putting Alexa in the office
The interface is evolving. What has long been dominated by screens of all shapes and sizes is now being encroached upon by the voice. And…
Alexa is arriving in Australia and New Zealand early next year
One more bit of news out of tonight’s Alexa State of the Union Keynote at AWS Re:Invent in Vegas. Amazon is finally bringing its voice…
Amazon adds in-skill purchases to Alexa
There was clearly a lot of ground to cover at tonight’s AWS re:Invent Alexa State of the Union — but lets be real, the most…
We’re hitting rock bottom in cyber — let’s do something
When it comes to the cybersecurity problem, where is rock bottom? Internet security is in a state of crisis. With their shocking scope and targeting…
Coinbase ordered to give the IRS data on users trading more than $20,000
Most digital currencies exist in a sort of twilight state just beyond the grasp of federal regulators, but the U.S. tax authority is starting to…
NASA is gearing up a new rover for a mission to find evidence of life on Mars
NASA is gearing up for its next mission to Mars with a more tricked-out, updated version of the Curiosity Mars rover, the agency announced recently.…
Box is cash flow positive again, with 26% revenue growth
Box posted its third-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday. The cloud management business reported $129.3 million in revenue, up 26 percent from last year.…
12 of the best baby tech gifts for the little ones in your life
Welcome to the 2017 TechCrunch Holiday Gift Guide! We check out a lot of really cool stuff here at TechCrunch, so we figured we ought…
AWS in Vegas
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Don’t expect AWS to launch a blockchain service anytime soon
Bitcoin may be reaching for new heights, but don’t expect AWS to launch a service that’s based on the underlying blockchain technology anytime soon. During…
New York’s Attorney General sets up a page to report fraudulent FCC comments
It’s no secret that among the millions of comments filed with the FCC regarding its plan to roll back net neutrality are a great deal…
Andy Rubin takes leave from Essential, as reports of an improper relationship at Google surface
Andy Rubin has taken a leave of absence from Essential. The phone maker’s founder and CEO will be taking time off from the company to…
Amazon is previewing an IOT security service
As one of its last announcement on a day chock-full with new tools and features, Amazon previewed a new security device for the internet of…
AWS adds dedicated analytics service for IoT data
It wouldn’t be a conference without some discussion of Internet of Things, one of the hot up and coming technologies. The thing about IoT is…
YouTube is launching its own take Stories with a new video format called ‘Reels’
Even YouTube is adding Stories. The popular format introduced by Snapchat, then adopted by Instagram, Skype, Facebook, Messenger and even some dating apps, is now…
Amazon FreeRTOS is a new operating system for microcontroller-based IoT devices
Amazon FreeRTOS is, as the name implies, essentially an extension of the FreeRTOS operating system that adds libraries for local and cloud connectivity. Over time,…
AWS launches translation services
Taking the battle with Google, Apple and Microsoft for dominance in speech recognition and natural language processing to yet another front, Amazon announced a new translation service…
AWS releases SageMaker to make it easier to build and deploy machine learning models
Cloud services are designed to take away a lot of the complexity associated with managing a particular process, whether that’s software or infrastructure. Today, machine…
Amazon Transcribe is a sophisticated transcribing service for AWS
Amazon is hosting AWS Re:INVENT today, its developer conference for all things AWS. And the company just announced a promising new service called Amazon Transcribe.…
Facebook drops fee on donations, will match $50M/year, adds Mentor feature
Facebook has always been about friends, but now it’s seeking a broader purpose. So today, Facebook is lending a hand with what it does best:…
Amazon Rekognition Video gives developers access to real-time video analysis
Amazon’s AWS division today expanded its line-up of pre-trained machine learning tools with the launch of Amazon Rekognition Video. This new service works for both…
Simon wants to help startups establish a retail presence in malls
It’s a strange time for e-commerce startups. While most of the retail world is trying to figure out how to make the shift from brick…
European investor NordicEye wins big with Proofpoint’s $60 million offer for Weblife
Cybersecurity company Proofpoint is buying the Los Angeles-based security company Weblife.io in a $60 million all-cash deal. Backed by a slew of investors led by the…
YouTube is not for kids
I’ve been thinking a lot about this important if long Medium post by James Bridle regarding the nonsensical and potentially damaging kids content on YouTube.…
Amazon’s AWS DeepLens is an AI camera for developers
Here’s a little surprise from today’s AWS re:Invent keynote. In an event peppered with talk of containers and bizarre musical interludes, Amazon introduced its AWS…
AWS adds Global Tables feature to share data across multiple geographies
Customers using AWS’ Amazon DynamoDB to store data have two new services to help make their applications work better and more quickly in more regions around the…
AWS makes it easier and faster to query data stored in its S3 and Glacier storage services
At its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas, AWS today announced a small but significant update to its S3 cloud storage and Glacier cold storage service…
Former Warriors basketball player David Lee is reportedly in talks to join VC firm Social Capital
David Lee, who retired from the world of basketball just last week, is in talks to join venture firm Social Capital, Axios reports. Social Capital, founded…
Amazon introduces an AWS graph database service called Amazon Neptune
Amazon is in the middle of its AWS Re:invent keynote right now, and the company just announced a brand new database service. Amazon Neptune has…
AWS Fargate lets you run containers without managing infrastructure
At the AWS re:Invent conference today in Las Vegas, the company introduced AWS Fargate, a new service that lets you run containers without having to…
AWS announces a serverless database service
Amazon’s AWS cloud computing division today announced a new database service that will make it easier and cheaper to quickly launch relational databases that don’t…
Prime’s newest perk is early movie tickets for ‘Jumanji’
Amazon is adding to its slew of perks for Prime members by offering subscribers the chance to purchase early tickets to an upcoming movie for…
AWS’s container service gets support for Kubernetes
AWS today announced its long-awaited support for the Kubernetes container orchestration system on top of its Elastic Container Service (ECS). Kubernetes has, of course, become…
AWS announces two new EC2 instance types
At the re:Invent customer conference in Las Vegas today, AWS announced two new instance types designed for specific kinds of applications. The first is a…
Apple releases a macOS security update to fix huge login security flaw
Apple has just released a security update for macOS High Sierra and you should update right now (Apple will automatically push the security patch later…
Stationhead allows anyone to become a streaming radio DJ, with live listener calls
Streaming services like Spotify have turned playlists into one of the main ways to discover new music, but I’d argue that they’re missing some of…
Uber says 2.7M UK users affected by 2016 data breach
Uber’s October 2016 data breach affected some 2.7 million UK users, it has now been revealed. Read More
Amazon adds its Silk web browser to Fire TV
With little fanfare, Amazon launched its Silk web browser for Fire TV, allowing users with Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, and Fire TV Edition televisions…
Netflix is slowly teasing Black Mirror Season 4 with another trailer
Netflix has been tight-lipped about the release date for Season 4 of Black Mirror. However, the streaming giant continues to tease with trailers for each…
Samsung hired ‘The Piano’ composer to write a score for a movie about a washing machine
Maybe it’s crass consumerism — or a comment on how far we’ve sunk as society. Or maybe it’s some kind of 21st century homage to…
Cyber Monday topped Prime Day to become Amazon’s biggest shopping day ever
On the heels of record holiday sales over the Black Friday through Cyber Monday timeframe, Amazon announced this morning that Cyber Monday was the biggest shopping…
All of Marvel’s heroes come together in the first trailer for ‘Avengers: Infinity War’
If you were wondering whether Marvel could make a super team-up bigger than The Avengers, the new trailer for Avengers: Infinity War suggests that the…
NFL teams with AWS on statistics package driven by machine learning
The NFL is joining Major League Baseball as an AWS customer, announcing a deal today to provide real-time statistics running on AWS. The tool is…
Snapchat starts algorithm-personalized redesign splitting social and media
By putting best friends first and dividing them from professional publishers, Snapchat hopes to conquer Instagram and revive its own growth with a big redesign…
Shopify’s new Arrive app is your package tracking pal
I’m not sure the team at Shopify’s experimental Garage product development group knows this, but their latest app is basically made for me: It’s a…
Cruise’s self-driving launch plan doesn’t include small-scale pilots like Waymo’s
Cruise spent some time this week detailing its plans for self-driving deployment, and one of the key features of its approach is how it differs…
Expect GM Cruise self-driving vehicles to arrive in ‘quarters, not years’
GM and Cruise are still reluctant to put any specific timeframes on their plans for self-driving vehicle deployment, but the company is getting a bit…
Taking a ride through SF in Cruise’s self-driving Bolt EV
GM’s Cruise has a fleet of self-driving cars pretty much continually roving the streets of San Francisco, gathering data and improving their autonomous driving performance…
Waze gains support for HOV lanes, motorcycles and voice activation
Waze is getting a few new features today that are either firsts for any navigation app, or just functionally super convenient, including an option to…
Why the YouTube of AR won’t be YouTube
A couple of years ago when I was working at Samsung, around the time the GearVR was being launched, there were lots of ideas flying…
GE Ventures unveils new blood collection startup Drawbridge Health
Drawbridge Health wants to make it easier for doctor’s offices and clinics to collect small samples of your blood for testing on site with a…
Chinese electric vehicle maker NIO more concerned with user experience than rival Tesla
Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on TechNode, an editorial partner of TechCrunch based in China. Visitors to the TechCrunch Shanghai even this week were greeted with…
Pixelmator Pro wants to be the Photoshop killer on macOS
The team behind Pixelmator is releasing a brand new app today called Pixelmator Pro. As the name suggests, it is a more powerful, refreshed version…
InsurTech Gateway is a new insurance tech accelerator backed by Hambro Perks
In what appears to be a first, at least in the U.K., InsurTech Gateway is an FCA-authorised insurance broker in its own right. This, it…
Uber’s losses grew to $1.5 billion last quarter
Uber has given its shareholders an update on the company’s performance and it’s definitely in the red. The global ridesharing company lost $1.46 billion in…
Will Interswitch still be the company that brings Sub-Saharan Africa its big tech windfall?
Nearly two years later, neither Interswitch nor any other VC backed African tech company that began in startup phase gone public. What happened? Read More
Microsoft announces huge expansion to ‘modernize’ its Redmond HQ
Microsoft has announced a massive expansion plan aimed at modernizing its headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Unlike fellow Washington-based tech giant Amazon, which is seeking a…