Snafu Records is bringing a new approach to finding musical talent — founder and CEO Ankit Desai described the Los Angeles-headquartered startup as “the first full-service, AI-enabled record label.” It’s a world that Desai knows well, having spent the past five years working on digital and streaming strategy at Capitol Records and Universal Music Group.
Instagram will now show you who you interact with least frequently in case you want to unfollow them. In an effort to help you keep your feed clean and relevant, today Instagram is launching ‘following categories’ that divides the list of who you follow into batches including “most seen in feed” and “least interacted with”.
Datree, the early stage startup building a DevOps policy engine on GitHub, announced an $8 million Series A today. It also announced it has joined the Y Combinator Winter 20 cohort. Blumberg and TLV Partners led the round with participation from Y Combinator . The company has now raised $11 million with the $3 million
A/O PropTech is a new European VC officially launching today, after raising €250 million of so-called “permanent capital” to invest in technology companies disrupting real estate. It’s this “permanent” approach — seeing the firm structured more like a corporate with various shareholders, rather than a traditional venture capital fund that typically has a life cycle
Instagram may finally let IGTV video makers earn money 18 months after launching the longer-form content hub. Instagram confirms to TechCrunch that it has internally prototyped an Instagram Partner Program that would let creators earn money by showing advertisements along with their videos. By giving creators a sustainable and hands-off way to generate earnings from
When Fair laid off 40% of its staff in October, CEO Scott Painter promised it wasn’t shuttering leasing services to on-demand fleets. But just a week later, Painter was removed and replaced in the interim with Adam Hieber, a CFA from Fair investor SoftBank. Today, according to two sources, Fair announced at an all-hands meeting
SpaceX looks likely to take its burgeoning Starlink business and spin it out, seeking to bring that satellite internet project to public markets via an IPO. That’s according to SpaceX COO and President Gwynne Shotwell, who made the remarks during a JPMorgan Chase investor conference, as reported by Bloomberg. SpaceX has been launching batches of
The growing market of fantasy sports in India may soon have a new and odd entrant: ShareChat . The local social networking app, which in August last year raised $100 million in a financing round led by Twitter, has developed a fantasy sports app and has been quietly testing it for six months, two sources
Netskope has always focused its particular flavor of security on the cloud, and as more workloads have moved there, it has certainly worked in its favor. Today the company announced a $340 million investment on a valuation of nearly $3 billion. Sequoia Capital Global Equities led the round, but in a round this large, there
Launched at CES 2020, NURVV, a biomechanics startup, has closed a $9m Series A round, led by Hiro Capital, the sports/Esports VC fund, along with co-investment from Ian Livingstone CBE (Games Workshop co-founder) and Cherry Freeman (co-founder of LoveCrafts). It turns out that if you can figure out how to protect a smartphone from smashing,
Netflix announced this week that it has started to stream titles in AV1 on Android in what could significantly help the two-year-old media codec gain wider adoption. The world’s biggest streaming giant said on Wednesday that by switching from Google’s VP9 — which it previously used on Android — to AV1, its compression efficiency has
Time to mark September 14-16 on your calendar for the startup extravaganza that is TechCrunch’s Disrupt San Francisco 2020. Registration for our flagship, 10,000-person event is officially open, and pass prices will never be lower. Super early-bird passes are now available and if you reserve your seat today, you can save up to $1,800. There
Forescout, the network security company that has been publicly traded since 2017, announced today it was going private again. Private equity firms Advent International and Crosspoint Capital are acquiring the company in an all-cash purchase of $1.9 billion. The two private equity firms will pay $33 per share, which represented a premium of 30% over
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Jeff Weiner will step down as CEO of LinkedIn June 1, product head Ryan Roslansky steps up The changes are LinkedIn’s
Facebook’s use of the Onavo spyware VPN app it acquired in 2013 — and used to inform its 2014 purchase of the then rival WhatsApp messaging platform — is on the radar of Europe’s antitrust regulator, per a report in the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper reports that the Commission has requested a large volume
Next Tuesday, Samsung kicks off smartphone season with its Unpacked event in San Francisco. One of two tentpole events for the company, the big show brings with it the latest edition of the company’s primary flagship line, the Galaxy S. Samsung played a fun little trick, holding the event on February 11th at 11AM PT,
Drone startup Wingcopter, working with partners Merck and the Frankfurt University of Applied Science, has completed a first flight of a new drone delivery trial designed to show the benefits of using drones instead of trucks or other road faring vehicles for moving small cargo between two physically separate office facilities. This first flight covered
This morning The Zebra, an Austin-based insurance marketplace startup, announced it has closed a $38.5 million Series C. Accel led the funding event, which was participated in by prior investors Silverton Partners, Ballast Point Ventures, and the company’s CEO Keith Melnick. Floodgate and Weatherford Capital also invested in the round. According to Melnick, the company
The once-polarizing world of open-source software has recently become one of the hotter destinations for VCs. As the popularity of open source increases among organizations and developers, startups in the space have reached new heights and monstrous valuations. Over the past several years, we’ve seen surging open-source companies like Databricks reach unicorn status, as well
Moteefe, the e-commerce platform for on-demand production of merchandise has raised $5 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Gresham House, and Force Over Mass Capital. It brings total funding to date to $12.5 million, and will be used to expand into new geographies including Australia and LATAM. The U.K. company also plans
Huawei has filed two patent infringement lawsuits against Verizon Communications in U.S. District Court. The Chinese telecommunications equipment giant wants Verizon to compensate it for the use of technology it says are covered by 12 Huawei patents, including ones related to networking, security and video communications. Before the lawsuits were filed, Huawei claims it negotiated
Funko Pops. You’ve probably noticed them at your local GameStop, Hot Topic or spread out all over your co-worker’s desk. These lil’ vinyl figurines and their big ol’ heads have taken over retail shelves in the last few years. You can now find a Funko Pop! (or thirty) for just about every fandom; there are
In part two of a survey that asks top VCs about exciting opportunities in open source and dev tools, we dig into responses from 10 leading open-source-focused investors at firms that span early to growth stage across software-specific firms, corporate venture arms and prominent generalist firms. In the conclusion to our survey, we’ll hear from:
There is a major change ahead for LinkedIn, the social network for the working world, now with 675 million members. Jeff Weiner, who has been leading the company as CEO for the past 11 years, is stepping down on June 1, 2020. His new role will be executive chairman. Ryan Roslansky, who is currently head
In earnings reported this week, Alphabet announced that Google Cloud generated a robust $2.61 billion for the quarter, a number that includes revenue from both Google Cloud Platform and G Suite. That puts the division on a nice little run rate of $10.44 billion. It feels like a lot until you consider that Microsoft had a
Antler is a ‘company builder’ which emerged a couple of years ago, running startup generator programs and investing from an early-stage, bringing together a heady mix of technologists, product builders, and operators together with its own technology stack. Now, plenty of ‘company builders’ have come and gone. It’s a bit like Apocalypse Now: everyone goes
Snapchat’s developer platform is blowing up as a gateway to teen social app users. Hoop is the latest Snap Kit blockbuster, rocketing to #2 on the overall App Store charts this month with its Tinder -esque swiping interface for discovering people and asking to message with them over Snapchat. Within a week of going viral,
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Casper, the well-known D2C mattress company, has lowered its IPO price range in a new S-1/A filing made public this morning. The repricing leads to a lower expected valuation for the former startup and a
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Spotify is buying The Ringer to boost its sports podcast content Spotify is doubling down on its podcast strategy with a
Founders – it’s time to shoot for the stars. For the first time ever, TechCrunch is hosting a brand new event TC Sessions: Space on June 25th in Los Angeles. But that’s not all, because on June 24th TechCrunch will host a Pitch Night exclusively for early stage space startups. Yep, that’s right. On top