On-screen guidance startup WalkMe raised $50M led by Insight, now valued around $400M

As more people and businesses shift to digital platforms to get things done, a cloud-based platform for making interfaces easier to navigate continues to grow. WalkMe, which helps guide people through confusing or complicated services online, has raised another $50 million in fun … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

FinAccel takes on Southeast Asia’s lending industry with easy online credit service

Credit card penetration is one of those problems that isn’t really a ‘problem’ in the West. In the U.S. alone, 232 million adults are said to own at least one credit card, with 18 percent of consumers in the country owning two or three cards. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Elon Musk doesn’t think Google will compete with Tesla — but Apple could

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk is watching the competition closely — including electric cars from existing manufacturers, and of course, potentially Apple. But he said at Vox Media’s Code Conference that he doesn’t view Google as a potential competitor.More clearly, he views that com … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Elon Musk wants people on Mars by 2025

One can never underestimate the ambition of SpaceX and Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk. After making a bold adjustment to Tesla Motors’ outlook, saying the company could produce 500,000 cars annually by 2018, Musk now says that he says SpaceX may be able to have people on Mars by 2025 … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

How one Italian entrepreneur’s business changed after riding along with Rocket Internet

The PIzzaBo founder’s experience may serve as yet another cautionary tale for entrepreneurs who hitch their fortunes to Germany’s startup “Rocket”. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Uber takes its most significant investment yet at $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia

Uber announced today it took $3.5 billion from Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s main investment fund as part of its latest round. The new investment is the largest to date for the ridesharing giant and brings the total balance of both cash and debt to more than $11 bi … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Tumblr blocked in China before Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary

Tumblr is now apparently completely inaccessible in China. GreatFire.org, a non-profit that monitors censorship by the Chinese government, first spotted the lockout earlier this week. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Crunch Report | Internet Trends Report 2016

Mary Meeker releases her annual internet trends report, sales force acquires Demandware for 2.8 Billion Dollars, Google now lets both iOS and Android users find their lost phones, Apple’s world wide developers conference is going to be June 13th, Peter Thiel to remain on Facebook … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Intel CEO, known for diversity efforts, cancels Trump fundraiser

Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, widely known for his efforts to improve diversity in the technology industry, planned to host a fundraiser at his home for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this week. But after an Intel spokesperson fielded questions from the New York Times … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Forbes downgrades Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes net worth from $4.5 billion to Theranothing

Elizabeth Holmes, the once celebrated founder of Theranos, sat at number one on Forbes list of richest self-made women last year but has taken quite the tumble – the media outlet has since revalued her net worth to zilch. Holmes, 31, comes from a family with powerful political co … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Amazon sues sellers for buying fake reviews

Seller beware — if you buy reviews for your products on Amazon, the company might sue you.As part of its effort to combat fake reviews on its platform, Amazon sued three of its sellers today for using sock puppet accounts to post fake reviews about their products. Amazon has been … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

The trends driving electric vehicle development

The recent unveiling of Tesla’s Model 3 resulted in the largest product pre-order in history. The fact that about 400,000 people paid $1,000 each for a car they will receive in 2018 is simply astounding. In addition to the $400 million wired to Tesla, this represents an order boo … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Box down 7% despite “strong quarter”

Enterprise cloud storage company Box posted its first-quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday. Despite beating analyst expectations on revenue and earnings per share, the stock dropped 12.89 percent then recovered to an 8 percent loss in after-hours trading after investors w … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Review: TUMI’s Luke Roll Top manages to be a charming business backpack

Though the Tumi Luke Roll Top is expensive for a backpack, it partially makes up for this by taking a military-inspired look (the roll-top) and heavily stylizing it. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Thread, the U.K. personal styling service for men, picks out £4M funding led by Beringea

Thread, the U.K. personal styling service for men that uses a mixture of algorithms and humans to help solve the online clothes shopping problem, has raised a further round of funding. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Social Nature raises $1M to promote natural products with influencer marketing

We write about a lot of influencer marketing companies at TechCrunch, but Social Nature has a unique focus — natural products.The company is announcing that it has raised $1 million in seed funding from investors including Shopify co-founder Scott Lake, the Pereira/Wharton family … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Tubular Labs raises $10 million to measure online videos across social platforms

Just how popular was that video of the mom laughing in her Chewbacca mask? And how did that video stack up against the mermaid pillow one which went viral in January? Are videos published by Last Week Tonight watched more or shared more than videos published by The Late Show with … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Mediachain enivisions a blockchain-based tool for identifying artists’ work across the internet

Content (in all its forms) is increasingly both the commodity and currency of the digital era, but the speed and ease of near-instantaneous global communication and a capacity for infinite reproduction has served to make it easier to sever the work from its creator.Brooklyn-based … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Why gaze tracking startup Cogisen is eyeing the Internet of Things

How will you interact with the Internet of Things in your smart home of the future? Perhaps by looking your connected air conditioning unit in the lens from the comfort of your sofa and fanning your face with your hand to tell it to crank up its cooling jets. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

TheSkimm just raised $8 million, led by 21st Century Fox

Newsletter startup theSkimm has raised $8 million in Series B funding from what looks to be a very strategic investor: 21st Century Fox, which was joined by earlier backers RRE Ventures, Homebrew, and Greycroft Partners. If you’re wondering what a newsletter might have in common … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

The best Meeker 2016 Internet Trends slides and what they mean

This is the gospel according to Mary Meeker, a living legend amongst venture capitalists. Instead of just blindly clicking through her 200+ page 2016 Internet Trends report, here we’ve picked the most important graphs and stats, and explained what they actually mean for people wh … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Google AI produces a melody that rivals the Casio keyboard concerts of our youth

It’s 1989. You’re upstairs in your room, fresh batteries in your Casio SA-1, prepping for your concert. The built-in beats are hot. You’ve been listening to the “Wake me up before you go-go” demo song and you think you’ve been inspired. You select instrument number 02, “HONKY-TON … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Facebook’s new Deep Text AI categorizes everything you write

If Facebook knows what your status update is about, it can show it to people who care about that topic. If it understands the difference between “I just got out of the taxi” and “I need a ride” messages, it can ask if you want an Uber. If it detects that you’re trying to sell som … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

It might be time to stop looking for the WeChat of the West

I was recently in China, which meant I was living on WeChat. All my meetings were arranged through the app. I authenticated my identity for free Wi-Fi at shopping malls with WeChat. I checked in for a flight by scanning a QR code through WeChat. I watched office workers in Shenzh … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Austin and Seattle, applications for the TC Pitch-Offs close on Friday

It’s time. The TC Pitch-offs are just a couple short weeks away, and applications for the competition close on Friday. That means you have only two days to get in on the action. Ten companies will be given 60 seconds to pitch their wares to a panel of judges, including TC editors … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Sheryl Sandberg: Peter Thiel will remain on the Facebook board

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said today on stage at Vox Media’s Code Conference that Peter Thiel would remain on the company’s board of directors despite the controversy surround his involvement in a lawsuit against Gawker. It was revealed that Thiel was … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Lady Gaga’s mom urges tech community to fight online harassment

Online harassment is no good. Unfortunately, 40 percent of all people on the Internet report experiencing some form of harassment online and 70 percent of people between the ages of 18 and 24 have been targeted, according to Pew Research Center. “A young person who was being bull … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Airbnb bans racist host

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has come out and said that racism and discrimination is not allowed on the platform. This comes after an Airbnb host in North Carolina canceled on a black person and sent her a slew of racist insults. Chesky also said Airbnb has permanently banned the host … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Sundar Pichai stays diplomatic about Google building its own phones

There’s been a lot of speculation as to whether Google will end up building its own phone. Google CEO Sundar Pichai had sort of an answer on stage at Vox Media’s Code Conference: “Our plan is still to work with OEMs to make phones.” That’s not entirely a yes or a no, but for the … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Facebook Messenger finally adds diverse emojis!

Facebook has started rolling out a more diverse set of emojis to its Messenger service on the web, iOS and Android. With the update, you’ll have access to over 1,500 new emojis — 100 of which were designed “to better reflect gender and skin tones” with gender-agnostic options and … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Apple sends out press invites for June 13 event at 10 AM

Apple has just issued invites for its next press event at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium. Like in previous years, the event is going to happen on June 13 at 10 AM PT on the first day of WWDC. As always, it’s unclear what the company is going to announce. But there are some like … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Google Fiber’s TV Boxes add support for Google Cast

Google Fiber, the company’s steadily expanding gigabit internet service, will now more easily work with Google Cast – the technology that powers Chromecast – the company announced this morning. Instead of requiring subscribers to use a device like Chromecast, Google Cast will act … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Apply now for Include Office Hours with Pejman Mar Ventures and ffVC!

TechCrunch Include Office Hours are happening on June 16th! Pejman Nozad, Mar Hershenson, Ajay Kamat and Neda Blocho from Pejman Mar Ventures, along with Adam Plotkin from ffVC, will join TechCrunch to provide valuable advice and feedback to startups. Launched in 2014, Include is … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Apple TV begins hiding apps from the charts if you have them installed

Apple rolled out a small but interesting change to its Apple TV App Store Top Charts recently, which, for the first time, are now personalized to the individual user. Instead of simply showing a list of the Top Paid, Top Free and Top Grossing apps on the platform, the charts are … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

CoreOS launches Torus, a new open source distributed storage system

CoreOS today announced the launch of Torus, its latest open source project. Just like CoreOS’s other projects, Torus is all about giving startups and enterprises access to the same kind of technologies that web-scale companies like Google already use internally. In the case of To … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Mary Meeker’s essential 2016 Internet Trends Report

The fastest way to learn everything going on in tech is to read this report. Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker has become a legend for publishing these compilations of the most critical stats and trends about how technology is evolving. From the funding climate to smartphone ad … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Segway’s smart mini-transporter is up for pre-order

Segway doesn’t mention hoverboards in today’s official Ninebot by Segway MiniPro availability announcement. Of course, it’s easy to see why the company would be so quick to distance itself from the incredibly popular but extremely problematic product category. For one thing there … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Wishbone, an app for comparing anything with photos, dives into video

After throwing its backing behind a simple app for comparing photos and experiences that’s geared toward a younger audience, Science is now betting that a simple way to compare videos is going to be one of the next big trends that will propel its app — Wishbone — to prominence. W … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

SevenFifty raises $8.5M to modernize the way restaurants and stores buy alcohol

Raise your hand if you know much about how alcohol distribution works in the United States. Fine, I can’t actually see how many of you have your hands up, but for those of you who don’t know: It’s apparently a pretty antiquated system, with three tiers — the businesses that produ … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

First look: LifeBEAM’s artificially intelligent headphones offer a “Her” workout

Wearable technology company LifeBEAM has powered products for the Israeli air force and brands like Under Armour and Samsung. It’s now making its own product – wireless, artificially intelligent headphones. What does that mean, exactly? Co-founder Omri Yoffe says the new “hearabl … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

USA Freedom Act allows Yahoo to disclose 3 National Security Letters

For years, tech companies have received demands from federal law enforcement for users’ data — and they’ve had to keep those demands a secret. Today, Yahoo is finally able to share three of the National Security Letters it has received from the FBI. The release of the three lette … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Vivendi’s hostile bid for Gameloft suggests more acquisitions on the way

Vivendi’s hostile bid for the French mobile games maker Gameloft has won majority shareholder backing, which means the deal looks like being as good as done. Gameloft makes smash hit games like Order & Chaos and Dungeon Hunter. In February Gameloft rejected a takeover offer from … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Finnish on-demand home cleaning startup Freska acquires Norway’s Wipe

Finland’s Freska has acquired Norway’s Wipe, signalling its intent to lead the on-demand home cleaning space in the Nordics. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

7Commerce takes full stake in Stylight

7Commerce, the investment arm of media company ProSiebenSat.1, is upping its stake in Munich-based fashion aggregator and discovery startup Stylight, intending to acquire 100 per cent of the company by July — pending regulatory approvals. Read More | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Google’s My Account will now help both iOS and Android users find their lost phones

Google announced today an update to its “My Account” service launched last year which will now include a feature that helps users find their lost or stolen phone. You’ll soon be able to find this new option just by googling for “I lost my phone,” the company says. While Google al … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Cleanly launches subscription laundry service with Cleanly Reserve

Cleanly, the on-demand laundry service looking to take on FlyCleaners, has today announced a new annual or monthly membership program that discounts service while offering a recurring pick-up and drop-off schedule. With Cleanly Reserve, users get 10 percent off of all Cleanly ser … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Armarium lets you borrow luxury fashion from your smartphone

A number of startups want to make wearing the latest – and in some cases, luxury – fashion more affordable, including Rent the Runway, Le Tote, Gwynniebee, The Ms. Collection, and others. These companies offer to rent out clothing, instead of selling garments new. Today, welcome … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago

Robinhood lets China trade US stocks free through Baidu’s finance app

Zero-fee stock trading startup Robinhood is barging into China, even though it lacks explicit regulatory approval. Robinhood will enter this legal grey area through an integration into Chinese search giant Baidu’s Stockmaster finance app. It will allow Chinese citizens to buy and … | Continue reading


@techcrunch.com | 8 years ago