2019
India’s HomeLane raises $30M to expand its one-stop shop for interior design
HomeLane, a Bangalore-based startup that helps people manage home renovations and interior design, today announced it has raised $30 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand…
In a world where people access their financial services through one universal hub, which companies are the best-positioned to win?
Fintechs are heavily verticalized, recreating the offline branches of financial services by bringing them online and introducing efficiencies, but the next decade will look very different.
China Roundup: Ant Financial’s new boss and Tencent’s army of new apps
Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world.…
Whatever happened to the Next Big Things?
In tech, this was the smartphone decade. In 2009, Symbian was still the dominant “smartphone” OS, but 2010 saw the launch of the iPhone 4, the Samsung Galaxy S and…
Boeing’s Starliner crew spacecraft nails desert landing, a first for a US-made, human-rated capsule
The Boeing Starliner CST-100 spacecraft, which will be one of the first new human-rated spacecraft to carry U.S. astronauts to space, has successfully returned from orbit and landed at its…
Boeing’s Starliner crew spacecraft will attempt a landing on Sunday
Boeing launched its Starliner CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) for the first time on Friday morning in an uncrewed test, and while an error with…
Featured Article
Luminance and Omnius are bringing AI to legacy industries
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool, but it’s not a magic wand. Applying the technology requires thought and dedication, especially with legacy industries like law and insurance, which are being taken on in this way by Luminance and Omnius respectively. The companies’ founders, Emily Foges and Sofie Quidenus-Wahlforss, spoke with great insight on this on…
Should you pay $50K for your pitch deck? Yes, why the hell not?
Every once in a while on VC Twitter, a comment or statement seems so outlandish, so completely outrageous, that it must be — certainly has to be — false. Such…
Original Content podcast: ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ makes some questionable choices
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” opened Friday to mediocre reviews, though it’s not clear whether those reviews will put any real damper on audience enthusiasm. In the meantime, all…
This Week in Apps: The year and decade in review, gaming acquisitions and a Facebook OS
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. The…
TikTok’s national security scrutiny tightens as US Navy reportedly bans popular social app
TikTok may be the fastest-growing social network in the history of the internet, but it is also quickly becoming the fastest-growing security threat and thorn in the side of U.S.…
Tesla nears land deal for German gigafactory outside of Berlin
Tesla is making progress on its plan to build its European gigafactory in Berlin, Bloomberg reports. The Elon Musk-run automaker is working with state officials in Brandenburg on the contract…
A highly subjective list of some of this year’s notable young startups
I’m not a venture capitalist. I don’t play one on TV, either (though I might if anyone asked!). Still, after many years of covering startups, including as an editor with…
Featured Article
Will audio livestreaming take off in America?
For many podcast listeners, following their favorite shows is a solitary experience. A recent survey of 2,000 users by the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications found they listened to podcasts most often at home, during commutes or while exercising. Over the past couple of years, however, a new trend, audio livestreaming, has…
Vape lung is on the decline as CDC report fixes blame on oily additive
The CDC has issued a set of reports showing that the lung disease associated with vaping seems to be declining from peak rates, and that Vitamin E acetate seems —…
Every year, the tech industry experiences moments that serve as guideposts for future entrepreneurs and investors looking to profit from the wisdom of the past. In 2017, Susan Fowler published…
Giving voluntary compliance the appearance of additional trust or altruism harms consumers because our current system doesn’t permit effective or timely oversight.
Now that the final technology IPOs of 2019 have touched down, it’s a good time to start looking back at what happened during the year. We’re hunting for trends as…
F5 got an expensive holiday present today, snagging startup Shape Security for approximately $1 billion. What the networking company gets with a shiny red ribbon is a security product that…
Coral is a company that wants to “simplify the personal care space through smart automation,” and they’ve raised $4.3 million to get it done. Their first goal? An at-home, fully…
Snopes rolls its own crowdfunding infrastructure to prepare for 2020’s disinformation warfare
2020 will likely be one of the most bitter and hard-fought elections in decades, not just on pulpits and stages, but on the true battleground of modern politics: the internet.…
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the grey space in between. Today, we’re weighing a standard bit of startup wisdom that…
Six months after warning that the real-time bidding (RTB) component of programmatic online advertising is wildly out of control — i.e. in a breaking the law sense — the U.K.’s…
Even when Apple telegraphs its hardware strategy, it’s proving to be nearly impossible for startups to beat them. The company’s executives have been motioning interest in following their runaway success…
Healthcare startup Lyfebin exposed thousands of medical imaging files, such as X-rays, MRI scans and ultrasounds. The Los Angeles-based healthcare startup allows doctors and medical staff to store medical images…
Ripple has raised a $200 million Series C funding round. Tetragon is leading the round, with SBI Holdings and Route 66 Ventures also participating. According to Fortune, the company is…
Burst adds a super high-tech dental floss to its dental care offerings
Burst, the subscription dental care service, with the pretty, pretty toothbrushes, has now added a sleek dental floss product to its monthly kits. The Los Angeles-based dental hygiene company, which…
Boeing’s Starliner crew spacecraft won’t dock with Space Station as planned after missing target orbit
Boeing’s Starliner CST-100 crew spacecraft got off to a great start on its first-ever launch to the International Space Station this morning — but despite the rocket and launch vehicle…
St. Louis-based Summersalt raises $17.3 million for its direct-to-consumer clothing line
The Midwest may not be known as the fashion capital of the world (or even the U.S.), but its place in the consumer retail firmament is secure through L Brands…
