Greg Kumparak
Greg Kumparak is an editor at TechCrunch.
Greg started at TechCrunch in May of 2008. He lead TechCrunch’s sister site MobileCrunch as editor until AOL acquired the company in 2010, at which point the editors of TechCrunch’s four main sites (TechCrunch, CrunchGear, MobileCrunch, TechCrunch UK) merged the sites under one domain.
Best known for his gadget coverage, Kumparak has broken hundreds of stories within the space — unearthing details on everything from abandoned Samsung smartphone prototypes to new Apple devices. He’s also one of the Internet’s most prolific “live bloggers”, having reported from the scene at dozens of international events for live audiences in the hundreds of thousands.
He was one of the earliest writers to highlight and report on a number of companies that have since become “unicorns” (reaching a valuation of $1B or more), including Zenefits and Twilio.
Kumparak is a frequent guest on TechCrunch’s Gadget, Apple, and Android podcasts, and often appears on stage as an interviewer or judge at TechCrunch’s meetups and Disrupt conferences.
In 2012, Greg was featured on the BBC, Wired, Mashable, Engadget and many other outlets for a side project he called the “tARdis”, or the Augmented Reality TARDIS. By combining augmented reality with a handmade physical model, Greg was able to replicate the otherwise physically impossible “bigger on the inside” visual effect that commonly appears on television’s Doctor Who series.
CrunchBase profile →Featured Picks from Greg Kumparak
Latest from Greg Kumparak
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Apple acquires another machine learning company: Tuplejump
Apple is on a machine learning company buying spree. After buying Perceptio at the end of 2015 and Turi just a few months ago, Apple has now acquired an India/US-based machine learning team, Tuplejump. We’d been hearing rumors of another acquisition in this space by Apple for some time. While Apple won’t outright confirm it, when asked about Tuplejump this morning, a… Read More
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Flickr is shutting down Marketplace, its commercial photo licensing program
Two years ago Flickr rolled out Marketplace, a photo licensing service that was meant to help Flickr users get paid by big websites and media properties that wanted to use that user’s photos. As of today, Flickr Marketplace is going away. It’ll take a few months for Flickr to wind things down, and Flickr notes that any royalties due to users will be paid, but the program is… Read More
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Google acquires API.AI, a company helping developers build bots that aren’t awful to talk to
Google has just disclosed that it has snatched up the team behind API.AI. API.AI provides tools to developers to help them build conversational, Siri-esque bots. As humans, we’re pretty good at communication. If someone says “the girl saw a man with the binoculars,” we can generally use contextual clues to figure out if they meant that the girl saw the man by using binoculars… Read More
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These are the six finalists in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2016 Startup Battlefield
Over the last two days, over 5,000 attendees (along with hundreds of thousands of people tuning in online) have watched 25 companies duke it out for the right to call themselves the Startup Battlefield Winner at Disrupt SF 2016. These are the six companies that remain: BlazingDB
BlazingDB lets you run SQL queries on a database, using GPUs to do the heavy lifting for incredible… Read More -
DraftKings Live is a news aggregator that tailors itself to your fantasy football team
Today at Disrupt SF 2016, DraftKings CEO Jason Robins sat down with TechCrunch’s Fitz Tepper to talk about the future of the Fantasy sports site, launching a whole new mobile app from the stage. Robins also confirmed that DraftKings is still in “on and off” talks to merge with FanDuel, its biggest competitor, and has been for “the past year and a half or so.”… Read More
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Live from Apple’s iPhone 7 announcement
It’s become something of a ritual: September comes around, and Apple sends out its ever-mysterious invite to a few dozen outlets. We all head for San Francisco, and a new iPhone is unveiled. It’s September. We’ve got our invite, and we’re live in SF. As we have for nearly a decade now, we’ll be liveblogging the event as it happens, bringing second-by-second… Read More
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Pokemon Go creator John Hanke is coming to Disrupt SF 2016
It’s every founder’s dream: you launch a product, and by the next day it’s a worldwide phenomenon. But it’s never quite that simple. For most people, Pokemon Go came out of nowhere. Seemingly springing forth from the ether, it was a household name overnight. But for John Hanke — CEO of Niantic, the company behind Pokemon Go — it was another step in a… Read More
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Heres the new Star Wars: Rogue One trailer that just dropped during the Olympics
Whoaaa. While most new Star Wars trailers tend to drop in the wee hours of the morning, Disney just blasted one out right as most people on the east coast were prepping for bed. Thanks, Olympics! Here’s the second trailer for Rogue One, the first of Disney’s spinoff/origin movies, which is coming out on December 16th — or a little more than four months from now.
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This is the new “Nearby” tracker in Pokemon Go
A new tracking system rolled out to Pokemon Go players tonight, but most people outside of San Francisco don’t have it yet. Here’s what it looks like in action. Read More
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These guys made a motorcycle look (and sound!) like a Star Wars Speeder Bike
I’ve never been a big motorcycle guy. I have the hand/eye coordination of a sleepy toddler, and I’m pretty sure I’d hurt myself within about two minutes of firing up the engine. This bike wants me to give it a try anyway. Built by Wisconsin-based machining/customization shop Vintage Works, it’s a custom bike modeled after the mostly-impossible ride of every 80’s… Read More
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Apple acquires Turi, a machine learning company
Word just started going around the rumormill that Apple has acquired Turi, a company that describes itself as a “machine learning platform for developers and data scientists.” We reached out to Apple for confirmation, and sure enough — we got the standard reply they give when they’re confirming an acquisition but not saying much else: “Apple buys smaller… Read More
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Niantic acknowledges that Pokemon are way too hard to catch now, promises a fix
About two days ago, Pokemon Go players noticed a change — and it wasn’t one they’d been hoping for. All of a sudden Pokemon were much, much harder to catch. They dodged more, hopped over your ball more often, and worse yet, if you did manage to get one inside your Pokéball, odds were seemingly higher than ever that they’d bust out and immediately run away. Even the… Read More
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Burrow wants to bring Casper’s mattress concept to couches
Buying a couch sucks. Not unlike when buying a mattress, most people find themselves picking one of two* options: heading to a chain couch store and haggling with someone who needs to keep the price up for the sake of commissions, or saying “screw that” and heading for IKEA. Then you’ve gotta deal with getting the thing to — and in — your house. (* or, of… Read More
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With 10,000 smartscooters sold, Gogoro powers up a rental service with Bosch in Berlin
Gogoro’s electric smartscooter is pretty snazzy… but unless you live in Taiwan, chances are you haven’t actually seen one in person. The scooters require a network of battery-swapping terminals to work as intended, so they’re shipping out one country at a time — and so far, “one country at a time” means “one country”: Taiwan. That changes… Read More
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Here’s whats new in the latest Pokémon Go update
Word started spreading early this morning of an update rolling out to Pokemon Go — version 0.31.0, if you’re keeping track. The update is reportedly rolling out now, but it’s only gone out to a handful of Android users thus far. I’d imagine that a comparable iOS update is right around the corner, just making its way through Apple’s approval process. Don’t… Read More
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A glimpse inside Tesla’s super secretive Gigafactory
Even having grown up in California, I’m realizing I’m not built for this heat. We’re 30 minutes or so outside of Reno, but it feels like I’m on the sun. I can feel my sunscreen baking off. Why the hell did I wear black today? It’s okay; it’s worth it. I’m out here for a glimpse inside Tesla’s Gigafactory, days before its official grand opening. Read More
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You can now control Nest’s Thermostat with your Apple Watch
If you own both a Nest thermostat and an Apple Watch, you might’ve figured the two would’ve learned to play friendly by now. I mean, Apple Watch keeps you from having to pull your phone out of your pocket to see who’s bugging you while you’re trying to finish Stranger Things, Nest’s thermostat keeps you from having to pause Stranger Things just because you’re… Read More
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TechShop gets a new CEO
If you’re into building stuff and making things and live near a major city, you might’ve heard of TechShop. Like a gym for DIY-geeks, the idea is that they buy and maintain all sorts of crazy expensive machinery — laser cutters, CNC mills, 3D printers, etc — and you pay them a monthly fee to access it. According to an email sent out to members and investors by… Read More
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10 quick tips for becoming a Pokémon Master
Pokémon Go is officially the biggest mobile game of all time — at this point, you’re either playing or you’re sick of hearing about it. If you’re in that first camp, keep reading. We are only a week in and several members of the TechCrunch team are level 20 or higher. We have put a ton of mileage into the game. Hundreds of miles in fact. And here’s what we think… Read More
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Rick and Morty is coming to virtual reality
GOOD NEWS, EVERYONE! Er, wrong show. W-w-w-whoa, Morty. Rick and Morty is coming to virtual reality by way of the HTC Vive. Beyond that, there’s… not a whole lot to know, just yet, except that it’s called “Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality” and is being built by Owlchemy — the same folks who made the silly but oh-so-wonderful Job Simulator… Read More
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