The UK government has suffered yet another defeat in the courts over a surveillance regime that critics have dubbed a ‘Snooper’s charter’. Today the UK High Court agreed with digital and civil rights group Liberty’s crowdfunded legal challenge to a portion of the UK’s 2016 Investigatory Powers Act that gives the state the power to […]

Over coming years Ford intends to stop selling most of its cars in North America. This plan would leave just the Mustang and upcoming Focus Active as the only traditional car it sells while crossovers, SUVs and trucks make up the rest of its lineup. The news was abruptly revealed in Ford’s latest quarterly financial […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today Katie Roof and I were joined by James Hardiman, a partner at Data Collective (DCVC). If you want to tell him how he did, he’s on Twitter here. It was good to have Hardiman on board as […]

With the Windows 10 April 2018 Update, Microsoft is launching a number of new features for its desktop operating system today. Most of those apply to all users, but in addition to all the regular feature updates, the company also today announced a couple of new features and tools specifically designed for its business users […]

Following the steady pace of its semi-annual update cadence, Microsoft today launched the latest version of Windows 10. For the most part, there are no major revelations here since Microsoft’s Windows Insider program now regularly provides early access to all the new features to those who are brave enough to try out pre-release software. But […]

Unlike other browser vendors, Microsoft remains committed to a relatively slow update cycle that sees the company launch major new versions of Edge in sync with the bi-annual Windows 10 updates. It doesn’t look like that’s changing anytime soon, even as the Edge mobile browser is seeing far more regular updates now. Since today is […]

The ongoing trend of consolidation in the world of ridesharing continues apace, with the latest development coming out of Europe. BlaBlaCar, the French carpooling platform, is acquiring Less, a young carpooling platform based in Paris and focusing only on urban rides, paying drivers on a per-kilometer rate to incentivize them. The financial terms are not […]

$4.5 billion-valued ride-sharing startup Go-Jek may be busy in Southeast Asia, where it is aiming to step into the gap following Uber’s exit, but that isn’t stopping it from looking at opportunities elsewhere in the world. Over in Bangladesh, motorbike-taxi hailing service Pathao has announced that it raised a “pre-Series A” investment led by Go-Jek. […]

While Bumble BFF and Hey! Vina help adult women find new friends, there isn’t a social network dedicated to young women. But Brooke Chaffin and Catherine Connors are looking to change that with the introduction of Maverick, a social network that connects young girls with female mentors to express their creativity in a safe space. […]

DocuSign priced its IPO Thursday evening at $29 per share, netting the company $629 million. It was a better price than the e-signature company had been expecting. The initially proposed price range was $24 to $26 and then that was raised to $26 to $28. The price gives the company a valuation of $4.4 billion […]

[embedded content] As we navigate further and further into this strange Ready Player One-like future that plenty of tech companies are investing heavily, Disney wants to ensure that people can feel content in the most life-like way possible. Disney Research has shown off some research into the world of haptic feedback via a vest with “pneumatically-actuated […]

With Microsoft’s BUILD 2018 conference right around the corner, the company just made good on a promise from last year’s conference; Apple iTunes is finally coming to the Windows Store. The music software was originally forecast to arrive by the end of 2017, but it took a bit longer to finally find its Windows home. […]

Bluetooth and smart speakers are a dime a dozen these days, and many of them aren’t bad — so what it often comes down to is style. Native Union has my number with its latest device, which accentuates the classic bookcase speaker look with a tech-heavy back end and brass volume knob. It’s a collaboration […]

On today’s wildly successful earnings call, Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky dropped a bit of a bombshell for Amazon Prime subscribers. The retailer’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink annual subscription plan is about to get pricier. On May 11, Prime annual memberships will jump $20, from $99 a year to $119. The news follows a similar announcement back in January, […]

It’s an end of an era in Cupertino today. Apple just announced the end of production on its AirPort line of base stations, a list that includes the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Time Capsule. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, the company noted that it will continue to sell its remaining stock, but […]

Thanks in part to its colossal cloud business, Microsoft earnings are drenching shareholders in dollars. For the quarter ending March 31, 2018, the tech ringer from Redmond saw its revenue increase to $26.8 billion (up 16 percent) from $23.2 billion, with operating income up 23 percent to $8.3 billion, up from $6.7 billion. Income was […]

Amazon just announced that it’s scored the rights to stream Thursday Night Football games for another two years. The contract renewal will bring 11 NFL games simulcast on Fox to its Prime video offerings for both the 2018 and 2019 seasons, including weeks four through 15 of the season, save for Thanksgiving.  The NFL and Amazon […]

Square just announced that it’s reached an agreement to acquire Weebly for $365 million in cash and stock. While Square is best known for its payment software and hardware, it’s also been expanding into other areas; for example, with the acquisition of food delivery service Caviar and corporate catering startup Zesty. Weebly, meanwhile, offers easy-to-use […]

Amazon reported first-quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday, sending shares up 7 percent in after-hours trading after its significantly better-than-expected report. The company reported earnings per share of $3.27, well above the $1.26 that analysts had been expecting. This worked out to $1.6 billion in net income, up from $724 million last year. Revenue […]

MoviePass is known for a pricing model that sounds too good to be true — in exchange for paying $9.95 per month, subscribers get up to one movie ticket per day. At least, they used to: If you try to sign up now, that isn’t quite what you’re offered. Instead, there’s a bundle that combines […]

Stock market investors greeted payroll software company Ceridian with enthusiasm on its debut Thursday. After pricing above its expected range at $22 per share, the stock shot up 42 percent, closing above $31 by day’s end. Ceridian helps clients ranging from BlackRock to Trader Joe’s keep tabs on personnel, including payroll, benefits and onboarding. Its […]

Daniel Tawfik Contributor Often when I attend a conference or a networking event I am surprised by how many people operate at the periphery of the tech industry. Social media gurus, SEO “ninjas,” bloggers, etc. It’s a coterie of tech “club promoters.” The hype men of the industry. “Hack your way to success.” “Meet the […]

Zurich-based DeepCode claims that their system — essentially a tool for analyzing and improving code — is like Grammarly for programmers. The system, which uses a corpus of 250,000 rules, reads your public and private GitHub repositories and tells you how to fix problems, remain compatible and generally improve your programs. Founded by Veselin Raychev, […]

Teradyne, a prosaic-sounding but flush company that provides automated testing equipment for industrial applications, has acquired the Danish robotics company MiR for an eye-popping $148 million, with $124 million on the table after meeting performance goals. MiR, which despite the lowercase “i” stands for Mobile Industrial Robots, does what you might guess. Founded in 2013, […]

Tesla’s VP of Autopilot and low-voltage hardware, Jim Keller, is leaving the company, Electrek first reported. In a statement to TechCrunch, Tesla said it appreciates “his contributions to Tesla and wish the best,” a spokesperson said. “Tesla is deeply committed to developing the most advanced silicon in the world and we plan to dramatically increase […]

Reddit, one of the internet’s largest hubs for both traffic and controversy, announced today that it has hired former Time Inc. President of Digital Jen Wong to take on the role of COO. She will be tasked with managing Reddit’s business strategy, working out of the company’s New York office. Wong left Time Inc. earlier […]

A class-action lawsuit led by a number of Lyft drivers against Uber regarding the alleged “Hell” spying program is moving forward in an amended way. The lawsuit, brought by Lyft driver Michael Gonzales on behalf of other Lyft drivers, alleges Uber wrongfully intercepted the communications and whereabouts of Lyft drivers, and resulted in the loss of […]

We’re less than a month out from TC Sessions: Robotics, and we’ve still got some key names to share with you for the big event. We’ve already announced some of the top names in robotics, including Playground’s Andy Rubin, Boston Dynamics’ Marc Raibert, Ayanna Howard of Zyrobotics, Chris Urmson of Google and U.C. Berkeley professor […]

Rare Bits wants to be eBay for the blockchain, where you buy, sell, and trade non-fungible crypto-goods. After CryptoKitties raised $12 million from Andreessen Horowitz last month for its decentralized digital collectibles game, there’s been an explosion of interest in the space. But without a popular marketplace, it’s hard to find the goods you want at […]

Walmart announced on Thursday it’s beginning to test new technology that arms store staff with mobile devices for checking out customers from the floor. The devices will first be put into use in Walmart’s “Lawn & Garden Centers” in over 350 U.S. stores, where there’s the most need for a mobile checkout experience like this. […]

Investors, it seems, aren’t entirely soured on the world of 3D printing. The technology is still making progress in the enterprise sector, and Shapeways is certainly continuing to make a case for it in the world of online marketplaces. This morning, the New York-based company announced the closing of a $30 million Series E.  The […]

Watchmaker Jaquet Droz announced its Signing Machine – a mechanical device that will sign your name for you using a series of miniature gears and springs – in 2014. Four years later, the company is ready to ship their miraculous contraction just in time for you to ink the deal you’ve made with Cybereus, lord […]

Helios and Matheson Analytics is looking to push additional capital into its prime and wildly popular asset, MoviePass, by raising money in a new stock sale that appears to be giving Wall Street fits. Looking to raise additional capital, Helios and Matheson said it would sell up to $150 million in a stock sale that […]

Eventbrite has been shopping again in Europe — announcing today that it’s picked up Spanish ticketing firm, Ticketea. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed. The Madrid-based events discovery and ticketing platform lets people find and book tickets for a variety of live experiences — including festivals, concerts and performing arts shows. It focuses on […]

Rylo wants people to use 360 cameras to capture everything around them, then use software to determine what exactly they want after the fact. Today, the startup is adding a new feature to the app, a new feature to the camera and a new camera effect to keep things interesting on the company’s 360 camera […]

Ebay is rolling out an app update designed to make it easier to list items for sale on its online marketplace. Instead of filling out detailed forms on your mobile phone’s small screen, you can now scan the barcode on the item in question or type a description, choose the item’s condition, then click “list […]

mParticle, which helps companies like Airbnb and Spotify manage their customer data, has hired four new executives — including John Sedlak, most recently a vice president at Adobe, who’s joining the company as chief revenue officer. In addition, Kiran Hebbar (formerly CFO of Social Tables) is joining as chief financial officer, Will Rogers (previously an engineer […]

Nearly 200 colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada are actively recruiting for esports scholarships. But unlike other sports, there is currently no real infrastructure for high school esports. PlayVS, a Science-backed startup out of Los Angeles, is looking to change that. Founded by Delane Parnell, PlayVS has signed an exclusive contract with the […]

It might just be time for Intel admit that’s not great at this whole wearables thing. A few months after their flashy online debut, the Vaunt smart glasses are dead, the chipmaker has confirmed. Some things, it seems, are just too beautiful to live — or receive sufficient investment from their parent company. The news […]

Commodity trading is a very old industry which focuses on raw materials, like lead or copper, that are worth hundreds of billions. These materials are constantly moving from producers to consumers in a global market worth about $80bn, but it often lacks efficiency and transparency. Meanwhile, intermediaries make a lot of money just by acting […]

Lyft, recognizing the impact of its ride-hailing platform on the environment, is making a “multi-million” dollar investment in carbon offsets. Within the first year of this effort, Lyft says it expects to be able to offset about one million metric tons of carbon. “The stark reality is that transportation is one of the largest sources of […]

Music and visual art creation VR startup TheWaveVR just wrapped a $6 million Series A round and when all was said and done, it seemed appropriate for the team to actually sign the term sheet with their lead investor inside virtual reality. The round, led by RRE Ventures, brings the startup’s total funding to $10 million. […]

I’ll be helping build a larger meetup focused on pre-ICO companies in New York on April 23 and I’d love to see you there. It will be held at Knotel on April 23 at 7pm and will feature a pitch-off with eight startups  and two panels with some yet-unnamed stars in the space. Let’s get […]

Amazon this morning is introducing “Alexa Blueprints,” a new way for any Alexa owner to create their own customized Alexa skills or responses, without needing to know how to code. The idea is to allow Alexa owners to create their own voice apps, like a trivia game or bedtime stories, or teach Alexa to respond […]

2018 is the year that smartphone usage eclipses time spent watching TV in China and it’s all down to the growth of digital video platforms, according to a new report from eMarketer. You’d be forgiven for thinking that this had already happened in China, which happens to be the world’s largest smartphone market, but eMarketer forecasts […]

Facebook has another change in the works to respond to the European Union’s beefed up data protection framework — and this one looks intended to shrink its legal liabilities under GDPR, and at scale. Late yesterday Reuters reported on a change incoming to Facebook’s T&Cs that it said will be pushed out next month — meaning […]

Netflix is introducing its own take on Snapchat and Instagram stories after it began to roll out 30-second preview videos for mobile viewers. The previews look much like Stories because the thumbnails are circular and the content plays with virtual videos, so there’s no need to move your phone to the side. Added to that, […]

Prenetics, a Hong Kong-based startup that offers genetic testing services for patients, is expanding outside of Asia and into the consumer space after it acquired London-based company DNAFit. The deal — which a source told TechCrunch is worth $10 million — not only sees Prenetics enter new geographies, but also expand the scope of its services. […]

Facebook has posted a job opening looking for an expert in ASIC and FPGA, two custom silicon designs that companies can gear toward specific use cases — particularly in machine learning and artificial intelligence. There’s been a lot of speculation in the valley as to what Facebook’s interpretation of custom silicon might be, especially as […]

After taking them down to investigate what it called a “cybersecurity incident,” TaskRabbit’s website and app are back online. The Ikea-owned platform for on-demand labor also posted an update from its chief executive officer Stacy Brown-Philpot about the incident. “While our investigation is ongoing, preliminary evidence shows that an unauthorized user gained access to our […]

ZTE will postpone the release of its quarterly earnings report after the United States government banned American companies from selling goods to the Chinese telecom and smartphone maker. In a filing with the Hong Kong stock exchange, ZTE said that its earnings report, originally set to be released on Thursday, is now delayed to an […]

After a report by Reveal suggested that Tesla was underreporting workplace injuries at its Fremont plant, Tesla responded with a blog post calling the report “completely false” and pinning it all up as a “calculated disinformation campaign.” Now California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health (otherwise known as Cal/OSHA) is looking into things at the […]

Getting to space is already tough, but getting there on short notice and then doing it again a couple weeks later? That’s a big ask. Nevertheless, DARPA is asking it as part of its Launch Challenge, announced today at the 34th Space Symposium in Colorado. Teams must take a payload to space with only days […]

iZettle, the startup out of Sweden that has been referred to as the Square of Europe, is today making a move that underscores its bigger strategy to build on its traction with small businesses in mobile payments, to expand into an ever-wider range of financial services to fill out its $950 million valuation. The company […]

SpaceX has successfully deployed NASA’s new exoplanet-hunting telescope into high Earth orbit. From there, it will get a gravity assist from the moon and enter a wide orbit, beginning its mission. Meanwhile, back on the surface, the Falcon 9’s first stage landed successfully on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You. This is […]

In the ongoing race to build the best and smartest applications that tap into the advances of artificial intelligence, a startup out of London has raised a large round of funding to double down on solving persistent problems in areas like healthcare and energy. BenevolventAI announced today that it has raised $115 million to continue […]

Jeff Bezos is understandably all sorts of self-congratulatory in the annual shareholder letter Amazon released today. The note is full of all smanner of large numbers, including, perhaps most notably, 100 million. Amazon has exceeded that number of Prime subscribers globally, 13 years after the service launched as a free shipping offering. It’s no surprise, […]

Girlboss, the juggernaut business and lifestyle brand launched by serial entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso (the founder of Nasty Gal), has launched a fresh redesign of its website as the company looks to evolve beyond publishing. While publishing will remain a central component of the business that Girlboss is building, Amoruso says that the brand encompasses much […]

One of the biggest headaches for freelance writers is the need to send an invoice for their work, then wait (and wait, and wait) for payment. Matt Saincome, founder of the satirical punk-themed news site The Hard Times, knows this, which is why he’s launching a new payment product called Outvoice. Saincome said he started […]

Picture this. You’re driving down the street and Google Maps tells you to turn right at the Burger King, instead of telling you to turn right on [insert street name you’ve never heard of]. Well, Google is starting to do this. I noticed this while I was in a Lyft in Washington D.C., but I […]

As you can probably imagine, launching satellites is a complicated business. To get into the game, companies must often go to the biggest players, like Nasa. It makes puts the opportunity for small companies to participate in the benefits of satellite usage completely out of reach. Until recently. Mini or nano-satellites are proliferating and so […]

A new space imaging startup called EarthNow aims to provide not just pictures of the planet on demand, but real-time video anywhere a client desires. Its ambition is matched only by its pedigree: Bill Gates, Intellectual Ventures, Airbus, SoftBank and OneWeb founder Greg Wyler are all backing the play. Its promise is a constellation of […]

Days after Disney-owned ESPN launched its new streaming service, ESPN+, a three-year old streaming TV service for sports fans, fuboTV, is announcing the close of $75 million in Series D funding. The round included new investor AMC Networks, and existing investors 21st Century Fox, Luminari Capital, Northzone, Sky, and the former Scripps Networks Interactive, which […]

It looks like at least one major news publisher is on-board with Brave, the ad-blocking web browser founded by former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich. Brave Software and Dow Jones Media Group announced today that they will be partnering in a deal that will give bring Dow Jones content (specifically, full access to Barrons.com or a […]

Yesterday brought some interesting news in the cryptocurrency space. In a move that is at once sleazy and ridiculous, PornHub and its tech arm Mindgeek announced a partnership with the creators of VergeCoin (XVG), an anonymized cryptocurrency in the vein of Monero that is currently trading at 7 cents, down from an all-time high of […]

Coverfox, one a handful of companies aiming to digitize insurance in India, has landed fresh funding via a $22 million Series C round that will be used to push into more rural parts of the country. The investment is led by IFC, a sister organization of World Bank, and U.S. insurance firm Transamerica with participation from existing […]

Entrepreneurs know the stress that comes from bootstrapping a tech startup on a shoestring budget — and a frayed one at that. That’s why we’re reminding you that you can still save big bucks on passes to San Francisco Disrupt 2018, which runs from September 5-7. The Super Early Bird price offers up to $1,800 […]

Cybersecurity continues to be a growing focus and problem in the digital world, and now Stripe is launching a new paid product that it hopes will help its customers better battle one of the bigger side-effects of data breaches: online payment fraud. Today, Stripe is announcing Radar for Fraud Teams, an expansion of its free […]

Google’s internal incubator, Area 120, is today releasing its next creation: a learn-to-code mobile app for beginners called Grasshopper. At launch, the app teaches would-be coders how to write JavaScript, via short lessons on their iPhone or Android device. The goal is to get coders proficient in the basics and core concepts, so they can […]

This week Snapchat is rolling out Shoppable AR, a new feature that makes it even easier for advertisers to sell goods through sponsored lenses. The new offering builds on top of the Sponsored Lenses the service rolled out in late-2015, which let advertisers create branded filters, bringing product placements to selfies. Now companies can essentially […]

The first digital media networks have popped up on YouTube TV, with the addition of two new channels from the startup Cheddar. Earlier this month, Digiday had reported how YouTube’s streaming television service, YouTube TV, would soon gain new channels from a variety of digital media publishers, including Cheddar, Tastemade and The Young Turks Network. The […]

YouTube says it’s rolling out more tools to help its creators make money from their videos. The changes are meant to address creators’ complaints over YouTube’s new monetization policies announced earlier this year. Those policies were designed to make the site more advertiser-friendly following a series of controversies over video content from top creators, including […]

Qapital, one of a slew of mobile applications trying to make it easier for users to save money (and spend it more wisely), has raised $30 million in fresh financing as it expands beyond savings to offer investment advisory services. Since its launch in the U.S. in 2015, Qapital has amassed roughly 420,000 users that […]

As the future of technology continues to give us plenty of things we wish it hadn’t, we’re still managing to get some simple pleasures out of the way. Star Wars Holochess can now be played on the iPhone in your pocket in full augmented reality glory. The game may have only occupied a few seconds […]