2018
Lightspeed China Partners has filed to raise $360 million for its fourth venture fund.
Lawmakers push to create a three-digit suicide hotline number
In a letter addressed to the FCC, Senator Ron Wyden urged commissioners to create a three-digit, 911-style suicide hotline number. The Oregon senator cites the CDC’s report that more than…
Twitter accidentally exposed the ability to pull an account’s phone number country code and whether the account had been locked by Twitter. The concern here is that malicious actors could…
Getaround co-founder Jessica Scorpio leaves day-to-day role
Since launching Getaround at TechCrunch Disrupt New York in 2011, the car-sharing startup has expanded to more than 90 cities and, more recently, raised a massive $325 million round of…
New malware pulls its instructions from code hidden in memes posted to Twitter
Security researchers said they’ve found a new kind of malware that takes its instructions from code hidden in memes posted to Twitter. The malware itself is relatively underwhelming: like most…
The Google Assistant can now alert you of potential flight delays
If you’re an experienced traveler, you know that plenty of your delays are due to your plane being stuck somewhere else or because the weather at your local or arrival…
It’s the end of an era. Earlier this month, Tumblr announced that it would delete all adult content from its platform on December 17. That day, friends, is today. The…
France doesn’t want to wait for European tax reform to tax tech giants
France’s Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire held a press conference earlier today to announce that France will tax big tech companies starting on January 1st, 2019. This has been a…
The Mom Project, a job site for moms returning to work, nabs $8M from Initialized and more
If you are a mother who has taken a break from full-time employment to raise kids, you may have also experienced the challenge that is jumping back into the working…
Fintech startup N26 recently launched in the U.K. with a single product offering. You could sign up to a free account that gives you free payments around the world, but…
RightHand Robotics announced a $23 million Series B this week. That brings the pick and place robotic arm manufacturer’s total funding up to around $34 million, including last year’s $8…
Late last week, onlookers captured video and images of a Kiwi delivery robot moments after catching fire on the U.C. Berkeley campus. The startup has been piloting the robots on…
Intel’s loss, it seems, is North’s game. As first noted by The Verge, the startup has picked up the “technology portfolio” behind Vaunt, the AR glasses shuttered by the chipmaker…
AWS signs on to defend itself in Oracle’s JEDI RFP lawsuit against US government
Just when you didn’t think there could be any more drama over the Pentagon’s decade-long, $10 billion JEDI contract RFP, the plot thickened again last week when Amazon Web Services…
I’ve been living for the past few years in a limbo between journalist and entrepreneur, trying to build startups the way I saw them being built onstage at Disrupt and…
B-Social raises £3.2M seed round to begin building a ‘social’ bank
B-Social, a London fintech that currently offers a “social finance” app and beta debit Mastercard, has raised £3.2 million in seed-round funding from undisclosed high-net-worth individuals. However, the fundraise is…
Careem launches delivery service as it nears closing a massive round
The ride-hailing giant Careem is now in the delivery business as the company seeks new verticals in its ever-increasing fight against other services in the Middle East, including Uber. Starting…
K Health raises $25M for its AI-powered primary care platform
K Health, the startup providing consumers with an AI-powered primary care platform, has raised $25 million in Series B funding. The round was led by 14W, Comcast Ventures and Mangrove…
UK workplace rights reform doesn’t look disruptive to gig economy giants
The UK government has set out a labor market reform package it bills as a major upgrade to workplace rights in the era of disruptive gig economy platforms. The reforms, which include…
Google is spending $1 billion to build a massive new campus in New York
Days after Apple announced a major expansion to its operations in the U.S. — including a new $1 billion campus in Austin — fellow tech giant Google has announced that it too…
Starling’s Chief Platform Officer Megan Caywood has been recruited by Barclays
They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, but in the increasingly competitive world of banking, perhaps poaching your best people also counts. In a move that is bound…
Featured Article
Byju’s targets global expansion for its digital education service after raising $540M
India-based educational startup Byju’s was widely reported to have raised a massive $400 million round, and now the company is making things official. The 10-year-old company revealed today it has pulled in a total of $540 million from investors to go after international opportunities. The round is led by Naspers, the investment firm famous for…
Meeshkan raises €370K for its ‘ChatOps’ bot for training machine learning models
Meeshkan, a Finnish startup that made quite a splash at the recent Slush conference, has quietly raised €370,000 in pre-seed funding to continue developing its “ChatOps” product for machine learning…
BMW’s premium ride-hailing service is now live in China
BMW has joined a handful of automakers to compete with transportation upstart Didi Chuxing, which bought Uber’s Chinese business in 2016. Last Friday, the German luxury carmaker launched a premium…
What if getting into flow state could be as easy as playing a video game?
Original Content podcast: Netflix’s ‘Mowgli’ offers a darker take on Kipling’s ‘Jungle Book’
At first, “Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” might seem like an afterthought — or maybe a failed exercise in franchise-building. This new take on the story of Rudyard Kipling’s “Jungle…
HQ Trivia and Vine co-founder Colin Kroll found dead of suspected overdose
Colin Kroll, the 34-year-old co-founder and CEO of the HQ Trivia app, has been found dead of an apparent drug overdose in his apartment, TechCrunch has confirmed. A spokesman for…
3D-printed heads let hackers – and cops – unlock your phone
There’s a lot you can make with a 3D printer: prosthetics, corneas, firearms — even an Olympic-standard luge. You can even 3D-print a life-size replica of a human head — and not…
Ten pieces of friendly VC advice for when someone wants to buy your company
I’ve been fortunate to have been part of half a dozen exits this year. Here are 10 bits of advice I’ve distilled from these experiences in the event someone makes…
In the winds of crypto winter
Well, it was surreal while it lasted, by which I mean the 2017-18 cryptocurrency bubble. For a while there, Coinbase was #1 in the App Store, Bitcoin was above $10K,…
