Last fall, Opera introduced Opera Touch for iOS – a solid alternative to Safari on iPhone, optimized for one-handed use. Today, the company is rolling out a notable new feature to this app: cookie blocking. Yes, it can now block those annoying dialogs that ask you to accept the website’s cookies. These are particularly problematic […]

The field of medicine is, like other industries and disciplines, in the process of incorporating AI as a standard tool, and it stands to be immensely useful — if it’s properly regulated, argue researchers. Without meaningful and standardized rules, it will be difficult to quantify benefits or prevent disasters issuing from systematic bias or poor […]

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. Pinterest files confidentially to go public The business has confidentially submitted paperwork to the Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial […]

Daimler AG and BMW Group officially agreed to merge their urban mobility services into a single holding company back in March 2018 with a 50 percent stake each. And now, they want to unify their services under 5 categories by creating 5 joint ventures — Reach Now, Charge Now, Park Now, Free Now and Share […]

Every couple of months, I talk to an entrepreneur who is interested in building a marketplace for buying and selling app businesses (i.e. the actual IP and ownership of an app or other piece of software). These markets always seem to suffer from a lack of liquidity, and one reason why is that it’s really […]

Roku plans to be a billion-dollar company in 2019, the company said on Thursday as part of its announcement of strong earnings. The company beat analyst estimates and reported strong growth in active users and streaming hours with earnings of $0.05 per share, compared with the $0.03 analysts had estimated, and revenues of $276 million, […]

TechStyle Fashion Group, the company behind Kate Hudson’s Fabletics; the children’s brand FabKids; Rihanna’s lingerie brand, Savage X Fenty; and the shoe retailer Shoedazzle, has amassed 5 million members for its discount retail program. Those members were a large driver behind the $750 million in transactions the company saw for 2018, according to co-chief executive […]

Tesla has been masking its lobbying efforts on solar panels and battery storage through the Energy Freedom Coalition of America, a trade association that is little more than a front for the automaker and alternative energy company, public documents suggest. SolarCity, which Tesla bought in 2016, began the practice of using the EFCA to promote […]

Hoping to entice more users to attach the Venmo Mastercard to their account, Venmo this morning announced it’s launching a “special edition” rainbow-colored version of its debit card that will only be available in limited quantities. Clearly, the idea here is to generate a sense of urgency around ordering the Venmo Mastercard, as well as […]

Showfields, which helps online brands move into offline, brick-and-mortar retail, is announcing that it has raised $9 million in seed funding. “Our thesis was simple: Make the process of becoming physical as easy as becoming digital,” co-founder and CEO Tal Zvi Nathanel told me. I’ve written about other companies, like Bulletin, promising a more flexible […]

Circle makes a fantastic screen time management tool and today the company announced a round of funding to help fuel its growth. The $20 million Series B included participation from Netgear and T-Mobile, along with Third Kind Venture Capital and follow-on investments from Relay Ventures and other Series A participants. With this round of funding, […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a week. It had looked a bit quiet with just a few big rounds to cover. I was looking forward to a relaxed episode, frankly. But no, as Kate and I were prepping the show notes, the […]

Crypto market prices may be down significantly, but new investors continue to enter the blockchain space. The latest is Recruit Holdings, the $45 billion Japanese internet giant that owns Glassdoor among other things, which quietly launched a $25 million fund. The fund is based out of Singapore and it closed in November 2018, but its […]

Apple is looking to get over its sales woes in China by offering prospective customers interest-free financing with a little help from Alibaba. Apple’s China website now offers financing packages for iPhones that include zero percent interest packages provided in association with several banks and Huabei, a consumer credit company operated by Alibaba’s Ant Financial […]