ContractPodAi, a London-based startup that has developed what it describes as AI-powered contract lifecycle management software, is disclosing $55 million in Series B funding. The round is led by U.S.-based Insight Partners, with participation from earlier backer Eagle Investment. Founded in 2012, ContractPodAi offers an “end-to-end” solution spanning the three main aspects of contract management: […]

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-led startup that the multi-entrepreneur founded in 2017, is working on technology that’s based around ‘threads’ which it says can be implanted in human brains with much less potential impact to the surrounding brain tissue vs. what’s currently used for today’s brain-computer interfaces. “Most people don’t realize, we can solve that with […]

Apple is said to be planning to bankroll the creation of original podcasts from third-parties that it will offer exclusively on its own streaming services, Bloomberg reports. The report says that Apple’s plans to land podcast exclusives will help the company compete with similar offerings from streaming rivals including Spotify and Sticher, both of which […]

FaceApp. So. The app has gone viral again after first doing so two years ago or so. The effect has gotten better but these apps, like many other one off viral apps, tend to come and go in waves driven by influencer networks or paid promotion. We first covered this particular AI photo editor  from […]

Tomorrow is World Emoji Day. Why is there a World Emoji Day? No idea! But it’s tomorrow! To recognize the day, Apple and Google have both shed some light on their plans regarding new emoji coming to their operating systems in the coming months. Both companies are adding around 60 new emoji in all, from […]

The Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind the annual Consumer Electronics Show, is slowly getting up to speed with the modern day. Today, CTA announced it will allow sex tech startups to participate and compete for awards as part of the health and wellness category on a one-year trial basis. This comes after the CTA […]

Retail isn’t dying, it’s evolving. How democratizing data access is changing the rules -- and roles -- for both brands and merchants.

One of Silicon Valley’s most fun and enduring traditions — the 14th Annual TechCrunch Summer Party — takes place on July 25. If you don’t have a ticket yet, know this: We just released the last batch of tickets. Once they’re gone, that’s it. No party for you. Don’t miss out on a night of fun […]

Amazon’s Prime Day continues to gain competition from rival retailers piggybacking on the annual event with their own sales. Ahead of this year’s Prime Day, RetailMeNot had forecast that this year’s sale would see competition from 250 retailers. Today, the firm upped this figure to over 300, saying it found that more retailers than earlier […]

A Swiss regulatory agency that Facebook executive David Marcus said in congressional testimony would be responsible for overseeing data and privacy protections for the company’s newly launched cryptocurrency, Libra, has not been contacted by Facebook, according to a report. Highlights from Facebook’s Libra Senate hearing CNBC is reporting that the Swiss Federal Data Protection and […]

If you’ve been waiting to check out Minecraft Earth (Mojang’s Pokémon GO-style augmented reality reimagining of its hugely popular game, Minecraft), good news: it’s starting to roll out to some people now. The catch? It’s only available to a slice-of-a-slice of the world, at first. After opening a registration system for its closed beta just […]

Senator Elizabeth Warren doesn’t seem too unhappy about being labeled “dangerous” by investor Peter Thiel . Thiel, who co-founded PayPal, Palantir and Founders Fund, made the comments in an interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson, where he described most of the Democratic presidential field as “equally unimpressive” and called Warren “the dangerous one.” “I’m […]

Toyota will work with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on a fuel cell Moon rover vehicle, with a target launch date of a Moon mission currently set for 2029. The two previously announced their collaboration, but on Tuesday they signed a formal agreement, which defines a three-year joint research agreement to co-develop pressurized lunar […]

Round sizes are up. Valuations are up. There are more investors than ever hunting unicorns around the globe. But for all the talk about the abundance of venture funding, there is a lot less being...

At first glance launching a new social app may seem as sensible a startup idea as plunging headfirst into shark-infested waters. But with even infamous curtain-ripper Facebook now making grand claims about a ‘pivot to privacy’ it’s clear something is shifting in the commercial shipping channels that contain our digital chatter. Whisper it: Feeds are […]

Uber Air, the transportation company’s upcoming flying taxi service, needs vehicle partners in order to make it a reality. Karem Aircraft, which Uber partnered with last year, has just raised a $25 million Series A round for its new air taxi spin-off. The round was led by Korean industrial conglomerate Hanwha Systems. “Karem’s technology for […]

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 can subscribe here. 1. Highlights from Facebook’s Libra Senate hearing David Marcus, the head of Facebook’s blockchain subsidiary Calibra, testified before the Senate Banking Committee […]

The price of a Tesla vehicle equipped with “full self-driving” is about to get more expensive, the second time in the past several months the company has increased fees for a feature that isn’t completely functional. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted Tuesday that the price of its full self-driving option will increase by $1,000 on […]

When the Emmy nominations were announced last year, Netflix had a big win, overtaking HBO for the first time. But this year, HBO is back in the lead, with 137 nominations compared to Netflix’s 117. The Hollywood Reporter has tallied up the just-announced nominations, with Amazon Prime Video getting 47 nods and Hulu receiving 20. HBO, […]

NBC News today announced an exclusive partnership with Jeffrey Katzenberg’s upcoming mobile streaming service, Quibi, which will see the media company becoming the first major producer for the service’s “Daily Essentials” news programming, aimed at millennial viewers. As part of the deal, NBC will produce both a six-minute morning and evening news show for the […]

Kevin Krim and Sebastian Chiu Contributor Share on Twitter Kevin Krim is EDO's President & CEO. His 21-year career has spanned search, social and TV advertising across start-ups and major companies like Yahoo and NBCUniversal. Sebastian Chiu is EDO's Chief Data Scientist. He earned his undergraduate and post-graduate degrees from Harvard, working previously as a […]

Billie, the Berlin-based fintech startup that offers a B2B invoicing and payments platform, has raised €30 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is Creandum, alongside SpeedInvest, Rocket Internet’s GFC and Picus. Founded in 2017 by the same team behind SME online lending platform Zencap, which exited to Funding Circle in 2015, Billie wants […]

One of Elon Musk’s stealthier endeavors is set to become a lot less stealthy tonight, with a presentation set for 8 PM PT (11 PM ET) streaming live from its website in which we’ll learn a lot more about Neuralink, the company Musk founded in 2017 to work on brain control interfaces (BCIs) and essentially […]

Lidar is a critical method by which robots and autonomous vehicles sense the world around them, but the lasers and sensors generally take up a considerable amount of space. Not so with Voyant Photonics, which has created a lidar system that you really could conceivably balance on the head of a pin.

It was the perfect storm when CEO and Founder Liam Reynolds finally decided to start TrueUp, a data-driven growth marketing agency/consultancy based in London. After decades of working for large creative advertising agencies, Liam quit his job right around the beginning of Silicon Valley’s growth hacking trend and plunged headfirst into running growth for early-stage […]

Facebook will only build its own Calibra cryptocurrency wallet into Messenger and WhatsApp, and will refuse to embed competing wallets, the head of Calibra David Marcus told the Senate Banking Committee today. While some, like Senator Brown, blustered that “Facebook is dangerous!,” others surfaced poignant questions about Libra’s risks. Calibra will be interoperable, so users […]

Sony unveiled the latest in its line of interchangeable lens mirrorless cameras on Tuesday, debuting the A7R IV, its top-of-the-line full-frame digital shooter aimed at pros. The new camera packs a walloping 61-megapixel sensor, and will retail for $3,500 when it goes on sale this September. The camera’s image resolution is a “world first” for […]

Curve, the London-based “over-the-top banking platform,” has raised $55 million in new funding. The startup lets you consolidate all of your bank cards into a single Curve card and app to make it easier to manage your spending and access other benefits. Curve’s Series B round is led by Gauss Ventures, the U.S.-based fintech investor, […]

Tomorrow, representatives from Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple will testify before Congress in the second hearing organized as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s antitrust investigation into the world’s largest technology companies. While the first hearing focused on the ways technology companies busted the traditional news business, this one promises to look at the “impact […]

Is Facebook preparing to launch a serious competitor to TikTok? If so, the company just picked up some key talent to make that happen. Last week, Facebook announced plans for a new division, called the NPE Team, which will build experimental consumer-focused apps where it will try different ideas and features, then see how people […]

SpaceX held a press conference on Monday to discuss the results of a months-long investigation conducted by itself and NASA into an anomaly that took place during a static fire test in April. The investigation found that the “anomaly” which occurred during the test was the result of oxidizer mixing at very high pressure with […]

Alan Turing, one of the pioneering figures in modern computing, and also a tragic one in LGBT history, will soon appear on the U.K.'s £50 note. He was selected from a shortlist of scientists and bright minds so distinguished that it must have made the decision rather difficult.

The unchecked digital land grab for consumers’ personal data that has been going on for more than a decade is coming to an end, and the dominoes have begun to fall when it comes to the regulation...

AllBright, the London-based women’s membership club backed by private real estate investment firm Cain International, has raised $18.8 million to expand into the U.S. The company’s new round was led by Cain International and was designed to take AllBright into three U.S. locations — Los Angeles, New York and Washington, DC. The company said that […]

Medical tech and computational pathology startup Paige has published a new article in the peer-reviewed medical journal Nature Medicine, detailing its artificial intelligence-based detection system for identifying prostate cancer, skin cancer and breast cancer, which the company says achieves “near-perfect accuracy.” Paige’s tech, which employs deep learning trained on a dataset of almost 45,000 slide […]

Dish is expanding its hardware lineup today with the launch of a new 4K streaming stick, the AirTV Mini, designed to make it easier for cord cutters to access its live TV service Sling TV, plus Netflix and over-the-air channels from one user interface. The Android TV-powered device is meant to complement an existing setup […]

Private equity firm Blackstone just announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire mobile advertising company Vungle. The companies aren’t disclosing the financial terms, but as part of the transaction, Vungle has also reached a settlement with founder Zain Jaffer, who filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the company earlier this year. “As a […]

On the start of Amazon’s biggest sales event of the year, Amazon workers and activists are taking to the streets today in protest of the retail giant. Protests are planned for San Francisco, Minnesota, New York, Seattle and other locations across Europe. The biggest employee-led one is happening in Shakopee, Minn., where Amazon warehouse workers […]

Yet-to-launch streaming media startup Quibi has been keeping up a slate of announcements at a fever pace, and its latest is a show that sounds potentially relevant to TechCrunch’s audience. The series, which will be created, written, executive produced by and star Reno 911! alum Thomas Lennon, will follow a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who turns […]

VidCon, the annual summit in Anaheim, CA for social media stars and their fans to meet each other drew over 75,000 attendees over last week and this past weekend. A small subset of those where entertainment and tech executives convening to share best practices and strike deals. Of the wide range of topics discussed in […]

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 can subscribe here. 1. Uber finally sets diversity, inclusion and equity goals While Uber is still predominantly white and Asian, the company has made notable […]

A report from Adobe’s analytics arm predicts Amazon’s Prime Day 2019 sales event, which began today, to have another sizable impact on the U.S. e-commerce market. The company expects a revenue lift for top retailers — those with over $1 billion in online sales — to reach 79% this year, up from the 60% lift […]

Twitter’s website is getting a major overhaul. The company has been testing a new version of its desktop website since the beginning of the year, and today the final product is rolling out to the public. The upgraded experience simplifies navigation with a new — and fairly large — left-hand sidebar that directs you to […]

The first mid-engine Chevrolet Corvette will have a familiar name. The 2020 Chevrolet Corvette will debut as a “Stingray” when it’s revealed July 18. If that sounds familiar, it is. Numerous Corvette model years have been dubbed Stingray, beginning in 1963 with the second generation of the sports car. The Stingray nameplate ran until 1976. […]

Brave Care is an urgent care facility for pediatric care that costs, on average, about 80% less than a pediatric ER visit. Darius Monsef and his co-founder came up with the idea shortly after a fateful week for the Monsef family, during which their four-year-old dove off a bike ramp and their one-year-old started having […]

The Operators highlights the experts building the products and companies that drive the tech industry. Speaking from experience at companies like AirBnB, Brex, Docsend, Edmodo, Facebook, Google...

The head of Facebook’s blockchain subsidiary Calibra David Marcus has released his prepared testimony before congress for tomorrow and Wednesday, explaining that the Libra Association will be regulated by the Swiss government since that’s where it’s headquartered. Meanwhile, he says the Libra Association and Facebook’s Calibra wallet intend to comply will all US tax, anti-money […]

Every startupper we’ve ever met loves a great deal, and so do we. That’s why we’re celebrating Prime day with a 48-hour flash sale on tickets to TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019, which takes place September 5 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. We’re talking a classic BOGO — buy-one-get-one — […]

When Chinese internet companies seek initial public offerings, they tend to look to the United States where rules for profitability are less strict. SMZDM, an online shopping guide that few people outside China have heard of, has joined a small rank of internet startups that are trading on public markets in mainland China. SMZDM, short […]

Within the sphere of diversity, inclusion and equity, it’s common knowledge that companies are unlikely to achieve meaningful progress unless they put goals in place. Uber has finally gotten the memo. Today, as part of its third diversity report, Uber committed to two three-year goals, as well as broke out the stats around intersectionality. Today, […]