October 2019
From the NBA to Sequoia to TikTok and more, a week of national security concerns with China
It has been a tough week for China-U.S. relations. Vice President Mike Pence ratcheted up the administration’s rhetoric yesterday, calling the NBA “a wholly owned subsidiary of the authoritarian regime”…
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover rests on its own six wheels for the first time
NASA’s Mars 2020 rover will have to operate on its own in a harsh environment, hundreds of millions of miles from the nearest mechanic. But for now, it’s still in…
Airstream’s new Astrovan II is ready to move the first Boeing commercial crew astronauts
NASA and its commercial astronaut program partners are laser-focused on getting crew into space. But to get to space you first have to get to the rocket, and that’s where…
SpaceX wants to land Starship on the Moon before 2022, then do cargo runs for 2024 human landing
Speaking at a quick series of interviews with commercial space companies at this year’s annual International Astronautical Congress, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell shed a little more light on…
Facebook starts testing News, its new section for journalism
Facebook’s news section, which was previously reported to be imminent, is here: The company is rolling out Facebook News in a limited test in the U.S. as a home screen tab…
HowNow, the workforce learning platform, has raised $3 million (£2.4 million) in a “pre-series A” funding round. The round is led by Mark Pearson’s Fuel Ventures and brings the total…
StepLadder, the collaborative deposit saving platform for first-time buyers, raises £1.5M
StepLadder, another London-based startup aiming to help so-called “generation rent” get onto the housing ladder, has raised £1.5 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Spanish banking giant BBVA…
Featured Article
Pixelbook Go review: A Chromebook in search of meaning
Few, if any, saw coming the Chromebook’s utter dominance of the K-8 category. In hindsight, it’s easy to see why the systems have been such a success story, of course: low prices, coupled with ease of wide-scale deployment and lockdown make them a perfect fit for the classroom. Fifteen million Chromebooks were sold in 2018…
Featured Article
Why the Facebook News tab shouldn’t be trusted
Are we really doing this again? After the pivot to video. After Instant Articles. After news was deleted from the News Feed. Once more, Facebook dangles extra traffic, and journalism outlets leap through its hoop and into its cage. Tomorrow, Facebook will unveil its News tab [Update: Here’s the announcement and our coverage]. About 200…
Ford’s electric Mustang-inspired SUV will finally get its debut
Ford provided its first peek of a Mustang-inspired electric crossover nearly 14 months ago. Now, it’s ready to show the world what “Mustang-inspired” means. The automaker said Thursday it will…
SpaceX intends to offer Starlink satellite broadband service starting in 2020
SpaceX will look to launch its Starlink service for consumers sometime next year, SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell confirmed at a media roundtable meeting at the company’s offices in…
Featured Article
The SaaS gold rush will become the ‘Hunger Games’
SaaS has been the motherlode of enterprise software investing for two decades now. Venture investors, entrepreneurs, and Wall Street have all learned to pile on, leading to a shared consensus that cloud investing is “a sure thing.”
After its first earnings miss in two years, Amazon shares get walloped in after-hours trading
Amazon shares fell by nearly 7%, or $118.38, in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported its first earnings miss in two years. Financial analysts had predicted that the…
Lotame unveils Cartographer, its new approach to tracking user identity
Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.” In…
GameClub offers mobile gaming’s greatest hits for $5 per month
Apple Arcade introduced the idea of all-you-can-eat subscription-based mobile gaming to the mainstream. Google Play Pass soon followed as a way to subscribe to a sizable collection of both apps…
YC grad Taskade raises $5M to take on Notion with a more collaborative productivity platform
Enterprise software tool startups are so often birthed to either un-bundle or re-bundle what came before them. In an age where “consumerization of the enterprise” is a trendy phrase for…
Stewart Butterfield says Microsoft sees Slack as existential threat
In a wide ranging interview with The Wall Street Journal’s global technology editor Jason Dean yesterday, Slack CEO and co-founder Stewart Butterfield had some strong words regarding Microsoft, saying the…
Featured Article
Why per-seat pricing needs to die in the age of AI
In the past, founders could get away with giving pricing short shrift under the mantra, “the best product will ultimately win.” No more.
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine explains how startups can help with Artemis Moon missions
At this week’s International Astronautical Congress, where the space industry, international space agencies and researchers from around the world convene to discuss the state of space technology and business, I…
Fair, the SoftBank-backed car subscription startup, lays off 40% of staff, sacks CFO
As the market continues to turn against the wave of highly valued venture-backed startups operating with little end in sight to their huge losses — Uber and WeWork being two…
SoftBank says it has now invested $18.5 billion in WeWork, ‘more than the GDP’ of Bolivia, which has 11.5 million people
Yesterday, in addressing nervous WeWork employees at an all-hands, the company’s new chairman, SoftBank executive Marcelo Claure, told those gathered that their days of worrying are over, says Recode, which…
Lawmakers ask US intelligence chief to investigate if TikTok is a national security threat
Two lawmakers have asked the government’s most senior U.S. intelligence official to assess if video-sharing app TikTok could pose “national security risks” to the United States. In a letter by…
Swiftmile will become the ‘gas station’ for electric bikes and scooters in Austin
Anyone who has tried to ride an electric scooter knows the likelihood of finding one with a charged battery is quite low. Swiftmile, which just landed a contract with the…
I’ve been tearing my gadgets apart for as long as I can remember. Consoles, phones, printers, whatever — I’ve always needed to see what makes it all work. Sometimes they…
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…
Caffeine signs streaming deal with rapper Offset
Caffeine, the live streaming service founded by former Apple designers Ben Keighran and Sam Roberts, has signed an exclusive streaming deal with Offset. The startup has been relatively quiet since…
Modern Animal raises $13.5 million to make going to the vet suck less
Modern Animal just raised a $13.5 million seed round of funding to fuel its mission of offering pets, humans and veterinarians a better experience. Led by Founders Fund, with participation…
To scale subscription startups, obsess over what your customer wants next
The crowded world of subscription businesses offers ongoing opportunities to screw up your relationship with subscribers. At Disrupt San Francisco 2019, I spoke with Forerunner Ventures’ Eurie Kim, Lola CEO…
Looking to become the central hub for logistics management, Shipwell raises $35 million
Shipwell, the software platform for managing trucking logistics, has raised $35 million and is expanding its suite of services to become a full-service hub for logistics management. The new round…
Spotify now lets artists buy a full-screen ‘recommendation’ promoting their new album
Spotify recently added a feature that will occasionally pop up a full-screen recommendation of a new album the service thinks you’ll like, based on a combination of your listening taste…
