While Samsung and Apple continued to occupy long-time number one and two spots in the global smartphone market in the second quarter of the year, Chinese Android OEMs Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi are continuing to close the gap. Read More
Asian streaming company M17 Entertainment, which recently merged with Singapore-based dating startup Paktor, has closed a $40 million Series A round. This new funding will be used to increase M17’s roster of streaming talent — the company agrees contracts with its streamers and celebs, much like a talent agency — and expand into new genres, such as reality TV, variety shows… Read More
ProoV, a startup founded by a couple of industry veterans, solves a problem the founders encountered many times over the years: how do you get the CIO or CTO to agree to do a proof of concept for your startup to show that your idea will actually work as you’ve described. Today the company announced a $14 million Series B financing round led by Helios Capital and Mangrove Capital… Read More
WhatsApp is about to get an unlikely competitor in India, its largest global market based on users. That’s because Paytm, the $8 billion-valued company behind the country’s top digital wallet, is in the process of expanding its services into person-to-person communication, games and other mobile content. The planned update, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will… Read More
In what looks like a pretty decent exit for German company builder Makers, two of its incubated startups have been acquired by performance marketing platform OLAmobile. Read More
It looks like Snap is enlisting outside help to advance its expansion into new hardware projects. The U.S. company is in talks with China-based drone maker Zero Zero Robotics over an acquisition, according to a source with knowledge of discussions. The deal, which was first reported by The Information, is in the range of $150 million-$200 million, the source told TechCrunch. That price… Read More
Filling up your car can be a hassle, especially when there are lines at the gas station. It also costs too much because part of it is covering real estate costs. A startup called Booster thinks it has a solution for this and is partnering with major employers to send its gas trucks to office parking lots. The company says it can save you time by filling your tank while you’re at work… Read More
MIT’s latest jewelry is alive, 500 Startups shuts down its Canada fund, Theranos settles with Walgreens and Samsung’s latest Galaxy Note 8 leak. All this on Crunch Report! Read More
Snap shares fell 4% and closed at a record low on Tuesday at $13.10, but it wasn’t just because of the dreaded lockup expiration, which allowed some insiders to finally sell shares. Snap faced another devastating blow when it was revealed that the company won’t make it into the S&P 500, a popular stock market index. The way Snap has divided up its classes of stock have made… Read More
Another season, another group of startups presenting as part of 500 Startups’ 21st demo day. This time around, 29 companies pitched on stage at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. We noticed strong trends in healthcare focused businesses as well as startups tackling international markets out of the gate. Perhaps the most interesting trait of the startups selected for our top… Read More
Ritual Vitamins has raised $10.5 million in Series A venture funding to attract talent, scale the business and build in-house technology for customer experience and support. Unlike the majority of vitamin brands, Ritual is backed by an in-house team of scientists and a medical board. Read More
Apple Watch sales are up more than 50 percent since last year, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook. He mentioned this when discussing Apple’s strong third-quarter results on the investor call Tuesday. Read More
Last weekend Apple removed all major VPN apps from the App Store in China. In a statement the next day provided to TechCrunch, it explained that China requires all VPN developers to have a license issued by the government, and they’ve been required to remove some VPN apps in China that don’t meet the new regulations. Read More
Artificial intelligence seems to be nearly everywhere these days, yet most people have little understanding of AI technology, its capabilities and its limitations. Despite evocative names like “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning” and “neural networks,” such technologies have little to do with human thought or intelligence. Read More
Apple had a pretty good quarter — the stock just jumped 4 percent after hours on $45.4 billion in revenue and earnings per share of $1.67.
But there’s one dark spot in the company’s results — and that’s performance in Greater China. Read More
Impossible Foods, the six-year-old, Redwood City, Ca.-based company known for its “juicy” meatless burgers, quietly announced $75 million in funding late last week, led by Temasek, with participation from Open Philanthropy, as well as earlier investors Bill Gates, Khosla Ventures and Horizon Ventures. Read More
Apple had a semi-blowout quarter, sending the stock to an all-time high. The big jump means Apple is now a company worth more than $800 billion. It seemed not too long ago that Google might have a fair shot at being a bigger company than Apple when it comes to its market cap, but now Apple is on a steady march upwards. Which means the company may be a $1 trillion company before too long. Read More
Apple’s third-quarter earnings are out and the company was quick to highlight its solid iPhone sales and burgeoning services segment. The big surprise, however, was the 15 percent year-over-year increase in iPad unit sales, which seems to contradict the dominating narrative that the company’s iPad segment was losing steam due to lengthier upgrade cycles. Read More
Apple set its expectations for the fourth quarter above what Wall Street was looking for today in its earnings report — just in time for a huge iPhone launch coming up soon. Apple said it expected to generate between $49-52 billion in Q4. The midpoint of that falls above what Wall Street expected, and it alludes to a big quarter where Apple has traditionally unveiled a new iPhone. Read More
Uber SVP and Chief Human Resources Officer Liane Hornsey vividly remembers the day Susan Fowler published her blog post alleging workplace harassment and management issues came out. It was Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017 — her dad’s birthday. And the company was also “literally thrown into shock,” she told me at Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco last week. Read More
