January 2019
The week following CES is probably as good a time as any to launch a Kickstarter campaign for your strange new smartphone. After all, a company like Doogee is going…
Blue Apron is confident it will achieve profitability this quarter
Meal kit company Blue Apron expects to achieve profitability this quarter, the company said ahead of its Q4 2018 and fiscal year 2018 financial results. Blue Apron will release its…
Daily Crunch: Netflix hikes prices for US subscribers
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you…
We’re looking for the best lawyers who are working with startups today, and we’d like your recommendations. Right now, it’s hard to find the sort of attorney who can help…
Former King Digital CFO Hope Cochran becomes Madrona’s first female managing director
Madrona Venture Group has long been one of the premier early-stage venture firms in the Pacific Northwest, and, in recent years, it has done a good job of recruiting former…
DuckDuckGo has a new, unlikely partner in search: Apple. The privacy-focused search engine that promises to never track its users said Tuesday it’s now using data provided by Apple Maps to…
New tickets available for TechCrunch Winter Party at Galvanize
If you haven’t snagged a ticket to the 2nd Annual TechCrunch Winter Party on February 8, listen up and listen good. We just released the third round of our first-come-first-serve tickets,…
Amazon upgrades its Fire TV Stick with the new Alexa Voice Remote
Amazon is giving its Fire TV Stick an upgrade. The company announced today it will now ship the Fire TV Stick with the new version of the Alexa Voice Remote…
23andMe updates its ancestry reports, but they’re still not perfect
23andMe, co-founded by CEO Anne Wojcicki, has deployed its latest update, featuring interactive ancestry details, cultural insights about food, art and language, and the option to order a physical ancestry book.…
Bringg, a delivery logistics platform used by Walmart, McD’s and more, raises $25M
To compete in a world of on-demand everything right to your door led by the likes of Amazon and Uber, traditional physical retailers and those working with them have been…
Nielsen: 16M U.S. homes now get TV over-the-air, a 48% increase over past 8 years
The number of U.S. households without a traditional cable or satellite TV subscription that instead receive broadcast stations using a digital antenna has jumped by nearly 50 percent over the…
Spider-Man’s European vacation gets cut short in ‘Far From Home’ trailer
Even your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man needs a vacation. Between all of the mild-mannered studenting and Avenger-style world saving (not to mention what transpired during Infinity War), Peter Parker could clearly…
Featured Article
How do you fight an algorithm you cannot see?
That question in the headline was the challenge posed by a group of open knowledge junkies in Germany who wanted to understand how a person’s Schufa was calculated. Schufa is a credit bureau that generates financial scores for potential borrowers in Germany, and it is roughly equivalent to a FICO score in the United States.…
The new TAG Heuer Carrera Calibre Tourbillon Nanograph is a lot of buzzwords in a beautiful package
Almost every word in the name of TAG Heuer’s new watch – the Carrera Calibre Heuer 02T Tourbillon Nanograph – is important. Carrera connects it to TAG’s long history of…
Kano will start releasing Star Wars and other Disney-branded products later this year
Educational computing kit company Kano announced today that it has signed a two-year licensing deal to create Disney-branded products later this year. Details are still pretty scant on how precisely…
Netflix will raise prices for US subscribers, with its most popular plan going up to $13 per month
Netflix is raising fees for U.S. subscribers in its biggest price increase since the company first launched its streaming service 12 years ago. Depending on your plan, the cost will…
CyPhy Works rebrands as drone data collection company Aria Insights
CyPhy Works announced this morning that it is shifting focus and rebranding as Aria Insights. The new company is focused on utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning to help analyze…
Data management startup Rubrik gets $261M at a $3.3B valuation as it moves into security and compliance
There is a growing demand for stronger security at every point in the IT ecosystem, and today, one of the the more successful enterprise startups to emerge in the last…
Smartsheet, the project management and collaboration tool that went public last April, announced the acquisition of Seattle-based TernPro, Inc., makers of Slope, a collaboration tool designed for sharing creative assets.…
The under-the-radar VC firm counts 13 unicorns in its portfolio.
Pandora launches a personalized voice assistant on iOS and Android
Pandora today announced the launch of its own, in-app voice assistant that you can call up at any time by saying “Hey Pandora,” followed by a request to play the…
Flaws in Amadeus’ airline booking system made it easy to change passenger records
You might not know Amadeus by name, but hundreds of millions of travelers use it each year. Whether you’re traveling for work or vacation, most consumers book their flights through…
A new network for powerful women launches today with $3 million in venture capital funding.
German court tosses Qualcomm’s latest iPhone patent suit
Qualcomm has had a patent lawsuit against Apple dismissed by a court in Mannheim, Germany, as groundless (via Reuters). The chipmaker had argued Intel-powered iPhones infringed a transistor switch patent…
It turns out Stride.VC isn’t going to focus exclusively on the U.K. after all. Pia d’Iribarne is leaving Accel to join Stride.VC as a partner. Stride.VC was originally co-founded by…
Quinyx, the cloud-based workforce management solution, has raised a further $25 million in funding. The investment was led by the startup’s existing investors Alfvén & Didrikson, Battery Ventures and Zobito.…
Online tax filing and accounting service Contabilizei has raised $20 million in a new round of financing led by Point72 Ventures, the early-stage investment arm associated with hedge fund guru Steven Cohen’s…
Digital insurance firm Singapore Life raises $33M ahead of Southeast Asia expansion
Digital insurance firm Singapore Life has started 2019 with a bang after it raised $33 million across two investments as it eyes new market expansions in Southeast Asia. The company…
Facebook says it will invest $300M in local news
Facebook plans to make a significant investment in local news over the next three years, with $300 million going to a variety of initiatives and organizations. The company has had…
American Express acquires Japan-based restaurant booking service Pocket Concierge
American Express made an acquisition in Japan by picking up restaurant booking service Pocket Concierge in an undisclosed deal. The acquisition was announced in Japanese and in English by James Riney, the head…
