Day: June 11, 2020

Facing unprecedented growth, Instacart has secured new funding to keep up with demand. The San Francisco company announced today that it has raised $225 million in a round led by DST Global and General Catalyst. Existing investor D1 Capital Partners participated in the round, which brings Instacart’s valuation to $13.7 billion. Instacart will use the […]

A newly released draft intelligence bill, passed by the Senate Intelligence Committee last week, would require the government to detail the threats posed by commercial spyware and surveillance technology. The annual intelligence authorization bill, published Thursday, would take aim at private sector spyware makers, like NSO Group and Hacking Team, who build spyware and hacking […]

Facebook is testing a new feature that aims to keep users inside its platform when they’re looking for factual information they would otherwise turn to Google or Wikipedia to find. The company confirmed to TechCrunch it’s now piloting an updated version of Facebook Search that displays factual information when users search for topics like public […]

Food delivery takes a big step toward consolidation, Amazon announces a moratorium on providing facial recognition tech to law enforcement (but there are loopholes) and Twitter tests a way to scold users for tweeting an article they haven’t read. Here’s your Daily Crunch for June 11, 2020. 1. Just Eat Takeaway confirms it’s gobbling up […]

As companies struggle to find ways to control costs in today’s economy, understanding what you are spending on SaaS tools is paramount. That’s precisely what early stage startup Quolum is attempting to do, and today it announced a $2.75 million seed round. Surge Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners led the round with help from a […]

Early this week, Zencastr sent out an email to a select number of users, outlining plans to test a new video podcasting tool. The service has grown significantly in popularity over the last year or so, as more burgeoning podcasters have sought out a service that can streamline the remote recording process. The new feature […]

Pharmaceutical company Moderna told Bloomberg on Thursday that it’s on pace to begin the final-stage clinical trial of its vaccine for the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 by July. Moderna was the first company to begin human clinical trials of its vaccine candidate in the U.S., and the last stage of its study will include […]

No business is immune to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve seen Airbnb — a company particularly susceptible to this black swan event — go through an insane design sprint. Even enterprise collaboration tools have felt it, with Box readjusting its product road map to focus on how the tool worked for remote employees. […]

NASA has selected a company to fly its VIPER Moon rover to the Moon, for a mission which will be a crucial step in its Artemis program as it will help the agency determine where and how it can establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface. NASA announced on Thursday that Astrobotic will be […]