TechCrunch Industry News

Pokémon GO trainer battles are now live (for some players)

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Last week we did a deep dive on how Pokémon GO’s new (and long overdue) player-versus-player battle system would work. The only thing we didn’t k...

Wellness giant Life Time targets co-working, shopping malls for next act

13 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Founded in 1990 by CEO Bahram Akradi, Minnesota-based Life Time used to be known as a premier health club that operated large gyms mainly in affluent ...

Gift Guide: the 16 best board games for holiday family fun

12 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Ah, holiday board gaming. A roaring fire. A glass of nog. And a raging debate over whether the blue guy was next to the red square or vice versa. Buyi...

Doom is 25 and co-creator John Romero is putting out a giant expansion for it

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

25 years ago, anyone old enough to navigate DOS was likely playing Doom every spare minute, assuming their parents weren’t around. A quarter century...

Pew: Social media for the first time tops newspapers as a news source for US adults

11 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s not true that everyone gets their news from Facebook and Twitter. But it is now true that more U.S. adults get their news from social media tha...

TransferWise keeps growing money transfers despite global turbulence

10 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

You don’t have to follow the financial technology industry or work with developers in faraway lands to know TransferWise, arguably the world’s lea...

Join TechCrunch for our 2nd Annual Winter Party

07 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

After last year’s stellar turn out of almost 1,000 Silicon Valley shakers and movers at our inaugural Winter Party, TechCrunch is returning with the...

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is good, clean, butt-kicking fun

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is good, clean, butt-kicking fun The Switch game is fan service in the best possible sense of the term After a few days wit...

You can now once again flip the camera during FaceTime calls with just one tap

06 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

You can now once again flip the camera during FaceTime calls with just one tap With the release of iOS 12, Apple hid the button that lets you jump fro...

Don’t miss out on free tickets to Startup Battlefield Africa 2018

05 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sorry folks. If you wanted to buy a ticket to Startup Battlefield Africa 2018you’re out of luck. We’re sold out. However, you could be one of the ...

AWS wants to rule the world

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

AWS, once a nice little side hustle for Amazon’s eCommerce business, has grown over the years into a behemoth that’s on a $27 billion run rate, on...

The battle over the driving experience is heating up and will be won in software

04 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Lou Shipley Contributor More posts by this contributor Why The Future Of Digital Security Is Open Sirius XM’s recent all-stock $3.5-bi...

Asana raises $50M, Airbnb gets a new CFO, and a 2019 IPO preview

03 Dec 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week as TechCr...

Rolling, hopping robots explore Earthly analogs of distant planets

30 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Before we send any planet-trotting robot to explore the landscape of Mars or Venus, we need to test it here on Earth. Two such robotic platforms being...

Users Guide to Disrupt Berin 2018

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Disrupt Berlin approaches with just a few days until things kick things off. We have an all-star lineup that only TechCrunch can assemble, and we’re...

Audi’s e-tron GT concept is an all-electric sedan with some Porsche DNA

29 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Audi is making room in its electric future for more than SUVs or crossovers. After a string of teasers, the German automaker finally unveiled the Aud...

Thanksgiving e-commerce spend to top $3.5B, mobile accounting for one-third of sales

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The 2018 holiday season is predicted to be a bumper year for e-commerce, helped by economic forces like lower unemployment and underlying trends like ...

Bitcoin sinks below $4,000 as the crypto market takes another hefty beating

27 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

As we hang out with family and friends this holiday season, it’s interesting to look back on the Bitcoin mania that we endured one Thanksgiving ago...

They’re making a real HAL 9000, and it’s called CASE

26 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Don’t panic! Life imitates art, to be sure, but hopefully the researchers in charge of the Cognitive Architecture for Space Exploration, or CASE, ha...

Be a Thanksgiving security hero with these family-friendly tips

23 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If you’re reading this, chances are you’re: Pretty good at tech stuff Spending time with your family for Thanksgiving Bored because you’re readi...

Internal Facebook memo sees outgoing VP of comms Schrage take blame for hiring Definers

22 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

TechCrunch has obtained an internal memo published by Facebook’s outgoing head of public policy Elliot Schrage in which he blames himself for hiri...

Thanksgiving travel nightmare projected to hit these US cities the worst

22 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The latest data from Inrix paints a dismal picture for folks traveling Wednesday (that’s today!) ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday. Drivers in Bosto...

Kindred’s robots help retailers handle fulfillment centers — and take on Amazon

21 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Since taking the reins as chief executive of Kindred at the beginning of the year, Jim Liefer has been focused on commercializing his company’s auto...

Walmart passes Apple to become No. 3 online retailer in U.S.

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Walmart passes Apple to become No. 3 online retailer in U.S. Walmart has overtaken Apple to become the No. 3 online retailer in the U.S., according to...

MailChimp teams up with Square to launch shoppable landing pages

20 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

MailChimp, the popular email newsletter service and marketing platform, today announced a partnership with Square that will allow its users to create...

Lyft launches default tipping, rating protections and more to keep drivers happy

19 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Until autonomous vehicles are here, ride-hailing companies like Lyft and Uber have to attract and retain human drivers if they hope to sustain their ...

Uber’s financials, Qualtric’s $8B exit and what’s going on at WeWork

19 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we had th...

Wonder Ventures aims to dazzle L.A. startups with its new seed-stage fund

16 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dustin Rosen thinks L.A. has a problem, aside from its famously car-choked highways. There aren’t enough investors willing to write small checks. Wh...

48-hours only: Early-bird prices for Disrupt Berlin 2018

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Das ist super geil — this is awesome! Early-bird prices for Disrupt Berlin 2018 passes have returned to the roost. But you need to act fast, because...

We tried Amazon’s bizarre Alexa microwave and weren’t convinced

15 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

I’m a fan of Alexa and of voice computing in general. But when Amazon said it was putting Alexa into a microwave, I wasn’t so sure. The value in v...

This $199 PS4 and ‘Spider-Man’ Black Friday bundle has my bargain-sense tingling

14 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

I’m calling it — this is the best deal of this year’s Black Friday season, for gamers anyway. It’s amazing. It’s spectacular. Sony is selli...

Former Beats Music CEO is back with an electric scooter startup

14 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

About a year ago, David Hyman, former Beats Music CEO and co-founder of music startup Mog that eventually sold to Beats Music, did something that was...

Chinese WeWork rival Ucommune raises $200M to go after international growth

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

China’s Ucommune, the country’s largest rival to WeWork, has been on a busy acquisition spree to build out its domestic business and now it is loo...

The top 10 cities for $100M VC rounds in 2018 so far

13 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor ...

Cloudflare rolls out its 1.1.1.1 privacy service to iOS, Android

12 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Months after announcing its privacy-focused DNS service, Cloudflare is bringing 1.1.1.1 to mobile users. Granted, nothing ever stopped anyone from usi...

Rocket Lab’s big ‘It’s Business Time’ launch targets this weekend for takeoff

12 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Upstart launch provider Rocket Lab aims to finally launch its first fully commercial payload to orbit this weekend after months of delays. The small E...

So I sent my mom that newfangled Facebook Portal

09 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

“Who am I going to be worried about? Oh Facebook seeing? No, I’m not worried about Facebook seeing. They’re going to look at my great art colle...

Vine co-founder plans to launch successor Byte in Spring 2019

09 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Vine — the much loved and mourned short video hosting platform — will return, kind of, sort of. Co-creator Dom Hofmann announced on Twitter today ...

Sling TV’s growth further slows in Q3, but still leads rivals in terms of subscribers

08 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Sling TV’s growth further slows in Q3, but still leads rivals in terms of subscribers It appears Dish’s live TV streaming service, Sling TV, has b...

Jaquet Droz’s “Sports Watch” is a high-end, heavy-duty chrono

07 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Watchmaker Jaquet Droz makes luxury watches that cost more than some San Francisco apartments. Now, however, they’ve decided to go “downmarket”...

Folding screens are here, and they look crappy

06 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

I dunno, man. Maybe it’s 2018 getting me down. Maybe I’ve just been at this for too long. Maybe it’s the flu shot I just got. Whatever the case,...

Thomas Reardon and CTRL-Labs are building an API for the brain

05 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alice Lloyd George Contributor Alice Lloyd George is an investor at RRE Ventures and the host of Flux, a series of podcast conversations with ...

Elon Musk says Tesla won’t make e-scooters, but might consider electric bikes

05 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Elon Musk says Tesla won’t make e-scooters, but might consider electric bikes Tesla won’t be joining the scooter wars. But electric bikes? Yeah, m...

The Autoblow A.I. brings machine learning to your lap

02 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Dearest Martha, I write to you from the cold wastes of Earth on the first day of the New Year, 2023, the third year of war, and so close to your own c...

How to build STEM toys

02 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

On chilly Saturday mornings my father would fire up the kerosene heater and get the back of our garage warm. He’d turn on the old radio, constantly ...

Three days left to save big on Disrupt Berlin 2018 tickets

01 Nov 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The early-bird clock is winding down, and you have just three days left to save up to €500 on passes toDisrupt Berlin 2018.You’d be cuckoo to miss...

The Tissot Seastar 1000 is a low-cost and high-quality Swiss diver

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In the pantheon of watches there are a few that stand out. Looking for your first automatic watch? Pick up a Seiko Orange Monster. Looking for a piec...

The Venture Twins

31 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Justine and Olivia Moore like to introduce themselves together, otherwise, it can be a little confusing. They live together in an apartment in Menlo P...

Xiaomi opts for sliding camera and no notch for new bezel-less Mi Mix phone

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Xiaomi has announced the newest version of its bezel-less Mi Mix family, and it doesn’t sport a notch like its Mi 8 flagship.Indeed, unlike the Mi ...

Google rolls out ‘.new’ links for instantly creating new Docs, Slides, Sheets and Forms

30 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Google Docs just rolled out a time-saving trick that’s sure to be welcomed by heavy users of Docs, or any of Google’s other productivity tools li...

The SaaS VC gap: China & other markets trail the US

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor ...

Market turmoil, billion dollar funds, and the Qualtrics IPO

29 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the norma...

Ex-GoPro exec launches clothing startup that does away with sizes

26 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Finding clothes that are the right fit can be a laborious, psychologically challenging experience. RedThread, a custom clothing startup founded by for...

Red Dead Redemption 2 sets the bar high for the next generation of open world games

26 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s been nearly a decade since Rockstar Games introduced Red Dead Redemption, a massive open world game with a story about as reflective of America...

Oracle’s Larry Ellison keeps poking AWS because he has no choice

25 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Larry Ellison gave his Oracle Openworld keynote on Monday and of course he took several shots sat AWS. In his view, his company’s cloud products we...

Google just upgraded a bunch of movies to 4K for free

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

If you’ve ever bought a movie on Google Play and decided to save a few bucks by buying it in standard definition, you might’ve just lucked out. G...

Simone Giertz, the “Queen of Shitty Robots”, just launched a Kickstarter

24 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Maybe it was her lipstick applying robot. Or her terrifying vegetable-chopping death machine. Or the robot that tried its best (and failed wonderfully...

Early-stage SaaS VC slip snaps recovery as public software stocks soar

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jason Rowley Contributor Jason Rowley is a venture capital and technology reporter for Crunchbase News. More posts by this contributor ...

Gearing up to step into virtual reality

23 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Makula Dunbar Contributor Makula Dunbar is a writer with Wirecutter. More posts by this contributor The best gear for starting a sma...

Convene uses landlord partnership model to outclass WeWork

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Recent reports that Softbank may take a majority stake in WeWork has added fuel to the already hot market for start-ups in the workspace and property ...

The 7 great features that will hopefully return to the MacBook Pro

22 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

I miss the old MacBook Pro. Remember when the MacBook Pro had a good keyboard? Or an SD Card slot? Or an escape key? I miss the time when the MacBook ...

Discord’s new game store rolls out to the rest of the world today

19 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

When Discord first launched its new built-in game store just a few weeks back, there was one big caveat: it was available to only a tiny, tiny slice o...

The new Kindle Paperwhite is thinner and waterproof

19 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The Voyage may be dead, but the Kindle line still has some life left in it. This time last year, Amazon upgraded the high-end Oasis model, and now the...

How to download your data from Apple

18 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Good news! Apple now allows U.S. customers to download a copy of their data, months after rolling out the feature to EU customers. But don’t be dis...

No, your Twitter was not hacked

17 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Twitter users on iOS were hit with a strange bug today. Instead of receiving notifications that included the tweet itself, they received a string of a...

Winamp returns in 2019 to whip the llama’s ass harder than ever

16 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The charmingly outdated media player Winamp is being reinvented as a platform-agnostic mobile audio app that brings together all your music, podcasts ...

Snapchat now has cat lenses. (Yes, for your cat.)

15 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

It’s 8:00 PM on Friday night and you’re home alone and already drunk. Oh, is that just me? Well no matter. Snapchat has made lenses for your cat n...

The Pixel 3’s best new features

15 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Google unveiled a number of new products Tuesday at its big hardware event, including the Google Home Hub and Google Pixel Slate. But the Pixel 3, th...

Dyson’s got a $500 air-powered curling iron

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Moving air — that’s the through line across most of Dyson’s products. The vacuums, fans, hand dryers, hair driers — at their heart, they all t...

Tech stocks (and the stock market) are tanking thanks to rising interest rates

12 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tech stocks tanked today amid a broader stock market slide as nervous investors worried that the ten year bull run in public stocks may be coming to a...

Apple needs a feature like Google’s Call Screen

11 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Google just one-upped Apple in a significant way by addressing a problem that’s plaguing U.S. cellphone owners: spam calls. The company’s new Pixe...

Google’s latest hardware innovation: Price

10 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

With its latest consumer hardware products, Google’s prices are undercutting Apple, Samsung, and Amazon. The search giant just unveiled its latest...

Google’s Pixel phones will soon get mobile Smart Compose in Gmail

10 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Google today announced that its Pixel phones will soon get support for Smart Compose in Gmail. Smart Compose automatically finishes your sentences fo...

Someone recreated Apple’s new campus with 85,000 LEGO bricks and it’s excellent

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

2018 has been a good year for ridiculous, gargantuan LEGO builds. Just weeks ago, there was that life size, driveable LEGO Bugatti. Now someone has g...

Most iOS devices now run iOS 12 according to Mixpanel’s data

09 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Analytics company Mixpanel is currently tracking the install base of iOS 12. And the latest version of iOS is quite popular as it’s already installe...

Banksy piece immediately shreds itself after being sold for $1.25M

08 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In what might be the most ridiculous stunt ever pulled in the art world, a Banksy piece has, in a sense, self-destructed. Right in front of an audienc...

Elon’s sick burn, Coinbase funding rumors, and VC hiring trends

08 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a tre...

Elon Musk is trolling the SEC on Twitter

05 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Tesla CEO Elon Musk trolled the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in a tweet Thursday afternoon, poking the bear that just days before had agre...

Jon Favreau’s new Star Wars streaming series will be called “The Mandalorian”

05 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

We’ve known for a few months now that Jon Favreau was working on a live-action Star Wars series for Disney’s upcoming (but as of yet unnamed) str...

MasterClass, the education platform featuring all-star instructors, will soon teach you how to run for office, too

04 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In 2015, the San Francisco-based education platform MasterClass was founded with an express mission to provide everyone access to “genius,” whethe...

Here are the newest additions to Microsoft’s Surface line

03 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Want excitement? Here’s something approaching that. Today’s Microsoft October event wasn’t exactly a blockbuster, but product lead Panos Panay d...

The 2019 BMW i3 now has 153 miles of range thanks to a bigger battery

03 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

The 2019 BMW i3 now has 153 miles of range thanks to a bigger battery The BMW i3 is getting an upgraded battery — plus a bunch of other improvements...

Best Buy stocked an unannounced Chromecast ahead of Google’s hardware event

02 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Google’s big hardware event, scheduled for October 9, is expected to feature the newPixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL phones. But now we know that Google wil...

SoftBank pays big, SurveyMonkey goes public and JUUL’s next step

02 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week on Equity,...

Betterment keeps growing as fintech competitors rise

01 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Betterment, which Barron’s recently declared the largest independent online financial adviser, is betting that the future of online investing inclu...

This is the Razer Phone 2

01 Oct 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Remember phone reveals? Once upon a time, companies were able to save a little for the event. These days, however, we nearly always know exactly what ...

Juul, the popular e-cig startup under growing FDA scrutiny, says removing flavors is “on the table” among other things

28 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Juul has been on an incredible, and in some ways, nightmarish, ride this year. The three-year-old, San Francisco-based company has handily won 75 perc...

Coinbase now lets users buy ‘bundles’ and launches its own index for the top 50 coins

28 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Coinbase is shaking things up quite a bit lately and its latest tools are geared toward cryptocurrency traders just getting their toes wet. On Thursd...

Star Wars: Vader Immortal is a virtual reality game coming in 2019

27 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Few properties seem better suited to tap VR than Star Wars, if only because… you know, lightsabers. And Lucasfilm knows it. They’ve just announced...

Product Hunt Radio: Finding the world’s lost Einsteins and putting an end to aging

27 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio I’m joined by two incredible people, Laura Deming and Daniel Gross, that have accomplished more before the age...

Google launches its group planning feature for Maps

26 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Earlier this year, Google announced its revamped Google Maps, which puts a stronger emphasis on discovery. Some of the features the company announced...

GoPro shakes up its entire camera line

26 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

GoPro delivered a big refresh of its cameras today with a lot of new product names but not quite as many hardware updates as we’ve seen in past upd...

Amazon’s Fire TV Recast will let you record live TV, stream it anywhere

25 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Amazon’s Fire TV Recast will let you record live TV, stream it anywhere Amazon this morning introduced a new device called the Fire TV Recast that w...

Mithril Capital Management, cofounded by Ajay Royan and Peter Thiel, is leaving the Bay Area

25 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

From its glass-lined offices in San Francisco’s leafy Presidio national park, six-year-old Mithril Capital Management has happily flown under the r...

Eventbrite goes public, and everyone else is raising hella money

24 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Hello and welcome back toEquity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we worked ...

Jamie Burke to explain why you should still bet on the blockchain at Disrupt Berlin

21 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Jamie Burke to explain why you should still bet on the blockchain at Disrupt Berlin Now that your cousin doesn’t ask you questions about bitcoin any...

Nintendo is offering an exclusive Fortnite bundle with the Switch

21 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Fortnite has taken the world by storm. In fact, the game is so popular that Epic has released versions for PC, Xbox, PS4, iOS, Android and the Nintend...

The Punkt MP02 inches closer to what a minimalist phone ought to be

20 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

There’s an empty space in my heart for a minimalist phone with only the most basic functions. Bad for my heart, but good for a handful of companies ...

Solving the mystery of sleep

20 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Alice Lloyd George Contributor Alice Lloyd George is an investor at RRE Ventures and the host of Flux, a series of podcast conversations with ...

Kayak’s new AR feature will tell you if your carry-on bag fits the overhead bin

19 Sep 2018

Contributed by Lukas

Kayak’s new AR feature will tell you if your carry-on bag fits the overhead bin Popular travel app Kayak has put augmented reality to clever use wit...