When Dell voted to buy back the VMware tracking stock and go public again this morning, you had to be wondering what exactly the strategy was behind these moves. While it’s clearly about gaining financial flexibility, the $67 billion EMC deal has always been about setting up the company for a hybrid and private cloud […]

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), the open-source home of projects like Kubernetes and Vitess, today announced that its technical committee has voted to bring a new project on board. That project is etcd, the distributed key-value store that was first developed by CoreOS (now owned by Red Hat, which in turn will soon be […]

Dell announced it has agreed to buy back the VMware tracking stock from the EMC acquisition. The company confirmed the buy-back price of $120 per share for a total of $23.9 billion. With today’s move, Dell will return to being publicly traded starting on December 28th. Sixty-one percent of shareholders voted in favor of the deal. It’s […]

Chatbots and other AI-based tools have firmly found footing in the world of customer service, used either to augment or completely replace the role of a human responding to questions and complaints, or (sometimes, annoyingly, at the same time as the previous two functions) sell more products to users. Today, an Israeli startup called TechSee […]

“The screen is becoming the most important place in the world,” says InVision CEO and founder Clark Valberg . In fact, it’s hard to get through a conversation with him without hearing it. And, considering that his company has grown to $100 million in annual recurring revenue, he has reason to believe his own affirmation. […]

There’s lots of research going into tiny drones, but one of the many hard parts is keeping them in the air for any real amount of time. Why not hitch a ride on something that already flies all day? That’s the idea behind this project that equips bumblebees with sensor-filled backpacks that charge wirelessly and […]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted today that YouTube needs to do better in dealing with conspiracy content on its site that can lead to real-world violence. During his testimony on Tuesday before the House Judiciary Committee, the exec was questioned on how YouTube handles extremist content that promotes conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and, more recently, a […]

It’s an ad duopoly battle. Facebook is starting to test search ads in its search results and Marketplace, directly competing with Google’s AdWords. Facebook first tried Sponsored Results back in 2012 but eventually shut down the product in 2013. Now it’s going to let a small set of automotive, retail and e-commerce industry advertisers show […]

How do other dating apps compete with Tinder? By further distancing themselves from Tinder’s “hot-or-not” user interface design to focus on differentiating features — like conversation starters, commenting and richer profiles. Today, another anti-Tinder app is doing the same. On the heels of its $12 million Series B announced earlier this year, the oddly named […]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has managed to avoid the public political grillings that have come for tech leaders at Facebook and Twitter this year. But not today. Today he will be in front of the House Judiciary committee for a hearing entitled: Transparency & Accountability: Examining Google and its Data Collection, Use and Filtering Practices. […]

Uber has reportedly picked Morgan Stanley to lead its upcoming initial public offering, news of which became public last week when the ride-hailing giant filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO expected in the first quarter of 2019. Uber’s choice, first reported by Bloomberg, comes after a months-long bidding war, of sorts, […]

Wix is taking a big step beyond website building today with the launch of a suite of products called Ascend. PR Manager Matt Rosenberg explained that just as Wix was founded with the aim of “demystifying and democratizing how you get online,” Ascend has a similar mission: “You don’t have to be a developer and […]

In a disappointing year for female-founded startups — at least those looking to raise venture capital — The Riveter not only closed its first institutional funding round, but it’s today announcing a $15 million Series A funding, bringing its total backing to $20.5 million. The Seattle-based co-working startup, led by co-founder and chief executive Amy Nelson […]

We were promised jetpacks, but let’s be honest, they’re just plain unsafe. So a nice drone ride is probably all we should reasonably expect. Lift Aircraft is the latest to make a play for the passenger multirotor market, theoretical as it is, and its craft is a sleek little thing with some interesting design choices […]

Apparently, a lot of people realize at the last minute that they don’t have either beer, wine or liquor in their home when they need it. It’s certainly the most obvious explanation for a sizable new round of funding into Drizly, a six-year-old, Boston-based on-demand delivery app for alcohol that works with roughly 1,000 brick-and-mortar […]

At the heart of the lightweight augmented reality glasses that you’ve been promised is a display engine that a handful of tech companies are racing to improve. WaveOptics is one such startup looking to expand the capabilities and shrink the form factor of waveguide displays. The U.K.-based company has just raised $26 million in what […]

API platform Kong, which you may remember under its previous name of Mashape, is launching its new Kong Cloud service today. Kong Cloud is the company’s fully managed platform for securing, connecting and orchestrating APIs. Enterprises can deploy it to virtually any major cloud platform, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, and Kong will handle […]

If your luck is anything like mine, as soon as you jump on an important call, someone decides it’s a great time to blow some leaves off the sidewalk outside your window. 2Hz’s Krisp is a new desktop app that uses machine learning to subtract background noise like that, or crowds, or even crying kids […]

Voyager 2, the multi-planetary exploratory probe launched in 1977, has finally entered interstellar space, some six years after its twin, Voyager 1, did the same. It’s now about 11 billion miles from Earth, the second-farthest-out human-made object in space. Interstellar space starts where the sun’s “heliosphere” ends — the big ball of radiation and plasma […]

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 than from print newspapers. According to a new report from Pew Research Center out today, social media has for the first time surpassed newspapers as a preferred source […]

You’d think Facebook would be faster at copying itself. Five years after Facebook Messenger took a cue from WhatsApp and Voxer to launch voice messaging, and four months after TechCrunch reported Instagram was testing its own walkie-talkie feature, voice messaging is rolling out globally on Instagram Direct today. Users can hold down the microphone button […]

Trello, the organizational tool owned by Atlassian, announced an acquisition of its very own this morning when it bought Butler for an undisclosed amount. What Butler brings to Trello is the power of automation, stringing together a bunch of commands to make something complex happen automatically. As Trello’s Michael Pryor pointed out in a blog […]

Google is increasing its efforts in India after it snapped up the team behind popular transportation app “Where is my Train.” The app claims 10 million registered users and, as the name suggests, it helps commuters track arrivals and departures as well as buying seats. That’s no small job, given that India is estimated to operate […]

Waggel, a new “insurtech” startup in the U.K., is officially launching today to offer what it describes as “fully digital” pet insurance. Founded by Andrew Leal and Ross Fretten (a contestant of The Apprentice 2017), the company wants to offer more transparent coverage for your pet, where you’ll know exactly how much you’re paying and […]

China’s largest music streaming service has had a whirlwind year. With 800 million monthly users across multiple apps and a profitable business, Tencent Music Entertainment is gearing up for one of this year’s most anticipated initial public offerings in the U.S. But the firm has landed in hot water in the months leading up to […]

I’ve been thinking hard about the concept of sponsored content — you can find some of it on TechCrunch if you look hard enough, and it appears almost everywhere else. It’s an important consideration, because as an online journalist I’ve heard everything from “How much did Apple pay you to post this?” to “How much […]

SoftBank continues to invest in the future of transportation — this time in ParkJockey, a startup that has built a technology platform aimed at monetizing parking lots. And ParkJockey, which was founded in 2013, is already using that capital to scale up. Along with the SoftBank investment news, ParkJockey also announced that it was acquiring two […]

The race to replace the mouse and keyboard has yielded a lot of weird tech, but as various hardware startups try to find the missing link between what we have now and some sort of embedded brain chip, we’re seeing some fascinating solutions surface. New York-based CTRL-labs just announced its first developer kit that’s aiming to […]

Blippar, the U.K.-based AR startup that raised more than $130 million, may be nearing the end of the road. The company has been burning through cash in a bid to pivot in search of a profitable AR business model, and now shareholders are in dispute over whether to throw Blippar any more money to aid […]

Solo.io, a Cambridge, Mass-based startup that helps enterprises adopt cloud-native technologies, is coming out of stealth mode today and announcing both its Series A funding round and the launch of its Gloo Enterprise API gateway. Redpoint Ventures led the $11 million Series A round, with participation from seed investor True Ventures . Like most companies […]

South Korea has got its third unicorn startup after Viva Republica, the company beyond popular payment app Toss, announced it has raised an $80 million round at a valuation of $1.2 billion. This new round is led by U.S. firms Kleiner Perkins and Ribbit Capital, both of which cut their first checks for Korea with this […]

When the hell did building a house become so complicated? Don’t let the folks on HGTV fool you. The process of building a home nowadays is incredibly painful. Just applying for the necessary permits can be a soul-crushing undertaking that’ll have you running around the city, filling out useless forms, and waiting in motionless lines […]

Pivotal has always been about making open-source tools for enterprise developers, but surprisingly, up until now, the arsenal has lacked a serverless component. That changed today with the alpha launch of Pivotal Function Service. “Pivotal Function Service is a Kubernetes-based, multi-cloud function service. It’s part of the broader Pivotal vision of offering you a single […]

IBM announced last night that it is selling the final components from its 1995 acquisition of Lotus to Indian firm HCL for $1.8 billion. IBM paid $3.5 billion for Lotus back in the day. The big pieces here are Lotus Notes, Domino and Portal. These were a big part of IBM’s enterprise business for a long […]

Leica’s pricey — but sexy — CL camera is the closest thing you can get to an original portable luxury shooter without spending more than a used Toyota Corolla. The CL, which launched last year, is essentially a pared-down M series camera that has gotten rave reviews over the past year. Now, in time for […]

The year is 1940. Through the use of arcane atomic technologies, the Axis have brought back modern technology from the year 2018. Their main prize? This amazing Enigma Pocket Watch. This tiny watch, created by a maker calling himself asciimation, uses an Arduino Pro Micro and a small OLED screen to recreate the Enigma machine […]

Two days after Lyft submitted paperwork to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an early 2019 initial public offering, Uber has done the same, per The Wall Street Journal. The company filed confidentially for an IPO on Friday, marking the beginning of a race for the two ride-hailing giants to the stock markets. Uber’s most […]

Southeast Asian ride-hailing firm Grab has made its most ambitious investment to date after it backed India-headquartered budget hotel network OYO to the tune of $100 million. The investment was part of a $1 billion Series E round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund that closed back in September. The deal was first made public via a […]

Rapper 2 Milly is suing Epic Games over Fortnite’s use of his dance move, the Milly Rock. The lawsuit claims direct infringement of copyright, contributory infringement of copyright and violation of the Right of Publicity under California Common Law, among other things. From the filing: Defendants capitalized on the Milly Rock’s popularity, particularly with its […]

Jake Bright Contributor Jake Bright is a writer and author in New York City. He is co-author of The Next Africa. More posts by this contributor SimbaPay launches Kenya to China payment service over WeChat Africa’s agtech wave gets $10 million richer as Twiga Foods raises more capital Nigerian trucking logistics startup Kobo360 has raised $6 million […]

Want to run your own home shopping network? Facebook is now testing a Live video feature for merchants that lets them demo and describe their items for viewers. Customers can screenshot something they want to buy and use Messenger to send it to the seller, who can then request payment right through the chat app. […]

Contentful, a Berlin- and San Francisco-based startup that provides content management infrastructure for companies like Spotify, Nike, Lyft and others, today announced that it has raised a $33.5 million Series D funding round led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from OMERS Ventures and Salesforce Ventures, as well as existing investors General Catalyst, Benchmark, Balderton Capital and Hercules. In […]

Flipdish, the online ordering and loyalty platform for takeaways and restaurants, has closed a €4.8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital, with participation by existing investor Elkstone. Founded in 2015, Flipdish enables restaurants to directly accept online orders and manage their online presence and operations in […]

Lyft has filed a draft registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for its long-awaited initial public offering, Lyft wrote in a press release today. However, the exact timing of the offering is unclear. In a confidential filing with the SEC, Lyft did not state the number of shares it expects to offer, […]

It’s been a good week for Japanese startups. Fresh from Google making a rare investment in the country when it backed AI startup ABEJA, Salesforce — another U.S. tech titan — has announced a $100 million fund for enterprise startups in Japan. The Japan Trailblazer Fund is Salesforce Venture’s first local fund in Asia. The […]

M17, the Taiwanese streaming company that controversially priced on the NYSE but didn’t list, has returned to the private markets after it raised a $25 million funding round. The round was led by Terry Tsang — CEO of Hong Kong-based games company Madhead — with participation from Pavilion Capital, Stonebridge Ventures and existing investors. This new investment follows a $35 […]

Duet Display is an app that lets you turn your iPad into a second Mac monitor. And the team behind it just released a major update that makes it much more efficient — it consumes less CPU resources and is now recognized as a true external display. If you’ve used Duet Display over the past […]

Laco is a small German watch company famous for its Flieger watches — pieces featuring big crowns and legible faces designed for pilots. Now the brand has teamed up with A Blog To Watch on a Fallout-themed watch that looks like something pulled out of a deserted vault. The $2,950 watch contains ETA 2824.2 movement […]

A UK parliamentary committee has published the cache of Facebook documents it dramatically seized last week. The documents were obtained by a legal discovery process by a startup that’s suing the social network in a California court in a case related to Facebook changing data access permissions back in 2014/15. The court had sealed the documents […]

Despite the rise in electric scooters in the U.S., you’d be forgiven for thinking that Asia — the region where bike-sharing foreshadowed the rise of e-scooters — has been left off the party. But e-scooters have quietly been in the region for some time and now they are beginning to ramp up. Singapore-based Neuron Mobility is […]

Google has made a rare investment in Japan after the company led a follow-on round for AI and machine learning startup ABEJA. The deal amount is undisclosed but a little digging suggests that it is likely a single-digit million U.S. dollar figure. That’s because six-year-old ABEJA did confirm that it has now raised JPY 6 billion ($53 […]

India finally has its answer to Spotify after Reliance Jio merged its music service with Saavn, the startup it acquired earlier this year. The deal itself isn’t new — it was announced back in March — but it has reached its logical conclusion after two apps were merged to create a single entity, JioSaavn, which is […]

Facilio, an IoT startup that focuses on facility management software, announced today that it has raised a $6.4 million Series A led by Tiger Global and returning investor Accel. The funding will be used to expand further in India, where Facilio has an office in Chennai, the United States and the Middle East, as well […]

Consumer credit giant Experian is continuing to back Asian fintech startups after it led a $10 million investment in Southeast Asia’s Jirnexu . Jirnexu, which is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, operates financial comparison services in Malaysia and Indonesia. Those services aggregate offerings and deals from banks and financial services companies, effectively acting as a user acquisition […]

Video won’t start rolling on Meg Whitman and Jeffrey Katzenberg’s new bite-sized streaming service with the billion-dollar backing until the end of 2019, but talent keeps signing up to come along for their ride into the future of serialization. The latest marquee director to sign on the dotted line with Quibi is Catherine Hardwicke, who […]

First some notes on SoftBank’s rumored expansion into China and its weird fund math, then Foxconn and then quick notes on tech depression, Huawei and more. TechCrunch is experimenting with new content forms. This is a rough draft of something new — provide your feedback directly to the author (Danny at danny@techcrunch.com) if you like […]

Workato, a startup that offers an integration and automation platform for businesses that competes with the likes of MuleSoft, SnapLogic and Microsoft’s Logic Apps, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round from Battery Ventures, Storm Ventures, ServiceNow and Workday Ventures. Combined with its previous rounds, the company has now received investments […]

Content recommendation company Revcontent has a new chief executive: Omar Nicola, formerly the co-founder of mobile advertising company Kixer. Revcontent’s founder and outgoing CEO John Lemp will remain involved as chairman of the board of directors. “Omar is the perfect choice to take over as CEO of Revcontent, because of his wealth of experience and […]

As a former Arby’s sandwich artist I understand the value of a background check. Had I not been investigated back at age 16 no one at the restaurant would have known I was a lapsed Boy Scout and read Stephen King novels. But what would have happened had I taken up a life of petty […]

Samsung’s Malaysian arm has some explaining to do. The company, in an effort to show off the Galaxy A8 Star’s amazing photo retouching abilities, used a cleverly shot portrait, modified it and then ostensibly passed it off as one taken by the A8. The trouble began when Serbian photographer Dunja Djudjic noticed someone had bought […]