A rebranded and expanded version of the CBS All Access streaming service will arrive this summer, ViacomCBS announced this morning. The service, now run by ViacomCBS following the merger, today offers a mix of live TV, on-demand video, original programming, streaming news, local broadcast stations and sports. Now the company is accelerating its plan to […]
Cuckoo Internet is a new U.K. startup that aims to disrupt the U.K. broadband market. It has now raised £470,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from work.fund, a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling founder). Other investors include Lorin van Nuland (early investor in Betterment), Edward Campbell-Harris (Bulb early […]
Google today is launching a new app, Read Along, that aims to help elementary school students practice their reading skills and stay educationally engaged amid school closures due to coronavirus. The new Android app is based on Google’s existing application, Bolo, which launched in India last year with a catalog of read-along stories in both […]
Sidewalk Labs is closing its project in Toronto, the company said in a brief statement on Thursday. “For the last two-and-a-half years, we have been passionate about making Quayside happen — indeed, we have invested time, people, and resources in Toronto, including opening a 30-person office on the waterfront,” wrote Sidewalk Labs chief executive, Dan […]
In the space of several weeks, COVID-19 has transformed countless industries and will continue to do so in ways we can only imagine. The pandemic has also spurred many to find new ways to work and keep society moving amid physical distancing, stay-at-home orders and mass hospitalizations. For years, robotics and automation have been a […]
YouTube is giving advertisers a few more tools to reach consumers and measure ad effectiveness on TVs. These tools already exist for YouTube on other platforms, but now the Google -owned video service is bringing them to connected televisions. In a blog post, it says this is in response to how YouTube viewership has grown […]
Optimization. Efficiency. Data-driven decisions. If I had a nickel for every time I hear these words from founders I’d be long retired. And yet, the process involved in achieving resource optimization, efficiency and making truly data-driven decisions is laborious to say the least, and usually involves an immense amount of talent and resources. And then […]
Zoom announced this morning that it has acquired Keybase, a startup with encryption expertise. It did not reveal the purchase price. Keybase, which has been building encryption products for several years including secure file sharing and collaboration tools, should give Zoom some security credibility as it goes through pandemic demand growing pains. The company has […]
Lime has announced that it has raised a $170 million funding round. Uber is the leading investor with existing investors Alphabet, Bain Capital Ventures, GV and others also participating. The Information first reported on the new funding round before the official announcement. As part of the deal, Lime is also acquiring Uber’s micromobility subsidiary Jump. […]
Savings and investing apps are having a moment. While many startups are struggling in the wake of COVID-19 and its economic impacts, services that help regular folks save a bit more or invest their funds are seeing a demand boom. Coming into 2020 on the back of a huge fundraising year for the fintech cohort, […]
Harbr co-founder Anthony Cosgrove has been working with data for over 15 years, so he has an inkling of some of the problems associated with pulling data together in a way that makes it easy for others to consume, whether internally or externally. Like many entrepreneurs before him, he decided to start a company to […]
A couple of weeks ago, we noted some new NPD numbers pointing to a very good March for the Switch. Nintendo’s financials this week bear out the predicted surge in popularity for the three-year-old console. The company has sold 21 million Switch units in the past year, handily beating a 19.5 million forecast. 6.2 million […]
Hub Security, a Tel Aviv-based startup that developed a software and hardware platform for cryptographic operations, today announced that it has raised a $5 million Series A round led by AXA Ventures. Crowdfunding platform OurCrowd also participated in this round. Like most companies at the Series A stage, the company plans to use the investment […]
A UK parliamentary committee that focuses on human rights issues has called for primary legislation to be put in place to ensure that legal protections wrap around the national coronavirus contact tracing app. The app, called NHS COVID-19, is being fast tracked for public use — with a test ongoing this week in the Isle […]
Today at 10am PDT, two-thirds of the Equity crew are sitting down with Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist with Homebrew and well-known seed-stage investor. Continuing TechCrunch’s running series of Extra Crunch Live discussions with prominent people in the tech industry, bringing Walk in for a discussion is fitting. Our recent chat with Sequoia Roelof Botha’s […]
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. As the economy has worsened, the market for many goods and services has slowed. Some SaaS products have found themselves immune, or even boosted by recently changes in consumer and business consumption patterns and travel […]
We live in a time when old playbooks about how to build a company are suddenly out the window. Some VCs are questioning whether it’s even worth having a true sales team for early stage startups when there is nobody to sell to right now. But eventually you will need to have people in place […]
With unemployment growing at a worrying rate, we’re seeing a lot more people finding themselves in hot water when it comes to their finances. Today a startup that’s built a platform to help identify and help those users when they find themselves unable to make payments is announcing a very large growth round of funding […]
With the new MacBook, Apple closes one of the more unfortunate product chapters in its history. The upgraded 13-inch mercifully marks the end of the failed five-year experiment that was the butterfly switch. I won’t go into too much detail here. If you’ve purchased a MacBook in the past several years, you almost certainly know […]
When the shutdown began six weeks ago, the powers that be at Box sat down for a meeting to discuss the situation. They weren’t in the same room of course. They were like everyone else, separated by the virus, but they saw this as a key moment for Box as a company. They had been […]
