Crunch Hype

Barkyn, a European subscription service for pets that combines food with tele-vet services, has raised a further €3 milion ($3.6M) from FoodTech investor Five Seasons Ventures, extending its previous Series A to €8M, and total funds raised to date to €10M. Five Seasons Ventures joins previous investors Indico Capital Partners, All Iron Ventures, Portugal Ventures […]

Kenyan consumer experience platform for businesses in Africa, Ajua today announced that it has acquired WayaWaya, a Kenya-based AI and ML messaging and payments company. WayaWaya’s customers and partners include the likes of I&M Bank, Interswitch and MTN. The company offers a range of services, from digital banking and payment services to financial services APIs […]

The COVID-19 pandemic threw remote work into the spotlight, but tech companies have hired in other locations for years to deal with talent shortages. Arc announced today it is opening its remote hiring platform to all software developers. Previously, Arc was open only to developers who passed its verification process. Developers can still get verified […]

Look out Amazon Go. A Lisbon startup plans to offer the same autonomous store technology to other retailers. Lisbon-based Sensei, a computer vision startup that allows convenience stores to offer check-out-free purchasing has secured a seed round of $6.5 million (€5.4M). The funding was led by Seaya Ventures and Iberis Capital, with participation from 200M […]

Environmental, social and corporate governance data is everywhere. Learning how to understand it promises big payoffs.

Dutch-German growth capital firm Endeit Capital has raised a 250 million euro fund to invest in B+ stage European startups. This is its third and largest investment fund, Endeit Capital III. The firm says it plans to support European scale-up companies that “lead to an accelerated digital transformation of the European society and economy and […]

Indian food delivery startup Zomato on Wednesday filed for an initial public offering, ushering a new era for tech unicorn startups in the world’s second largest internet market after years of promising growth. The 12-year-old Gurgaon-headquartered Indian startup, which counts Info Edge and Ant Group among its largest investors, plans to raise $1.1 billion from […]

Founders Circle Capital, a nine-year-old, San Francisco-based investment firm that strikes agreements with private, venture-backed companies to buy some of the vested stock options of their founders and employees — so they can buy a house or just breathe a bit more easily — has closed its newest fund with $355 million in capital commitments, […]

Porsche has always gone its own way when it comes to creating new vehicles. It is, after all, the company that continues to stick to the wacky idea that putting the weight of an engine in the rear of a sports car is a great idea. (It is!) So, bucking the crossover trend to create […]

Spotify launches paid podcast support, Amazon announces new tablets and we unveil the agenda for TC Sessions: Mobility. This is your Daily Crunch for April 27, 2021. The big story: Spotify adds support for paid podcasts As first announced in February, Spotify is now allowing podcasters to offer subscriber-only content, published through its Anchor podcasting […]

Rather than a CEO-slamming sound bite free-for-all, Tuesday’s big tech hearing on algorithms aimed for more of a listening session vibe — and in that sense it mostly succeeded. The hearing centered on testimony from the policy leads at Facebook, YouTube and Twitter rather than the chief executives of those companies for a change. The […]

This afternoon Alphabet, Microsoft and Pinterest reported their quarterly earnings results for the first three months of 2021. Microsoft and Pinterest have rapidly lost value after reporting their results, while Alphabet appreciated after its own earnings download. Sparing you a deluge of numbers, here’s what TechCrunch is pondering from each report in as few words […]

Exyn Technologies announced Tuesday that it has achieved what it considers the highest level of aerial autonomy reached within the industry. The key to the achievement is that Exyn drones are immune to GPS signal loss, meaning all spatial and mapping computations are done onboard, the company said. Under Exyn’s definitions of autonomy, which are […]

Let’s be clear: The venture capital industry has lacked diversity. The good news is the industry is working to improve itself.

Red Hat CEO Paul Cormier runs the centerpiece of IBM’s transformation hopes. When Big Blue paid $34 billion for his company in 2018, it was because it believed it could be the linchpin of the organization’s shift to a focus on hybrid computing. In its most recent earnings report, IBM posted positive revenue growth for […]

TechCrunch’s Early Stage 2021 is back for part two of our bootcamp-for-entrepreneurs event, with a focus on marketing and fundraising. Building on the first half of the event in April, this two-day virtual sprint will take place July 8 & 9, and we’re thrilled to welcome Rebecca Reeve Henderson as one of our all-star slate […]

Tech innovation is becoming more widely distributed across the U.S. amid moves from the Bay Area. Startups are booming in emerging markets -- and getting a bigger piece of the VC pie.

TC Sessions: Mobility is back and we’re excited to give you the first look at who is coming to the main stage and what we plan to talk about. The event will be virtual, but never fear, we will bring you the same informative panels and provocative one-on-one interviews and networking you’re used to. The […]

You might know him for his viral tweets, but Turner Novak wasn’t always a master meme-maker. Instead, Novak grew up with a single mother in the United States. The financial situation of his family led to the internet being not always accessible. They often hop-scotched between discounted trials and went months without access. The experience, […]

Stripe, the privately-held payments company now valued at $95 billion, has made an acquisition to expand the range of tools (and services) that it provides to online businesses. It has acquired TaxJar, a popular provider of a cloud-based suite of tax services, which can be used to automatically calculate, report and file sales taxes. One […]

In the never-ending stream of funding rounds, from time to time, a group of startups working on the same problem will raise money nearly in unison. So it was with OKR software last year.

San Antonio-based Plus One Robotics today announced a $33 million Series B. The round follows an $8.3 million Series A announced in 2018 and brings the company’s total funding to north of $40 million. The round, led by McRock Capital and TransLink Ventures, features BMWi Ventures, Kensington Capital Partners and Ironspring Ventures, along with existing […]

Materials Zone, a Tel Aviv-based startup that uses AI to speed up materials research, today announced that it has raised a $6 million seed funding round led by Insight Partners, with participation from crowdfunding platform OurCrowd. The company’s platform consists of a number of different tools, but at the core is a database that takes […]

When Amazon debuted AWS DeepRacer in 2018, it was meant as a fun way to help developers learn machine learning. While it has evolved since and incorporated DeepRacer competitions, today the company announced it was adding a new wrinkle. It’s open sourcing the software the company created to run these miniature cars. At its core, […]

Ford Motor Company will open a $185 million R&D battery lab to develop and manufacture battery cells and batteries, a first step toward the automaker possibly making battery cells in-house. The facility comes as yet another signal to consumers and other automakers that the auto giant is no longer hedging its bets on the transition […]

Toucan, a startup that helps users learn a new language while they browse the web, is announcing that it has raised an additional $4.5 million in seed funding. As I wrote last fall, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based startup has built a Chrome extension that scans the text of whatever website you’re reading and translates select […]

Mobile social networking app for women, Peanut, is today becoming the latest tech company to integrate audio into its product following the success of Clubhouse. Peanut, which began with a focus on motherhood, has expanded over the years to support women through all life stages, including pregnancy, marriage and even menopause. It sees its voice […]

Over the course of the last few years, Mailchimp morphed from a basic newsletter platform to a fully-fledged marketing company. And while the service already offered integrations with a number of e-commerce sites, it is now launching its own online stores for small and medium businesses, as well as a new appointment booking service. These […]

SaaS has become a bit too interchangeable with subscription models. Every software firm looks to sell by subscription ASAP, but the model may not fit all industries or align with early customer needs.

What will China’s answer to Estée Lauder look like in the digital age? According to Ushopal, it will provide a seamless online and offline shopping experience, where China’s savvy beauty shoppers get to discover niche, tasteful brands and learn their stories. Ushopal was founded in 2017 by J&J veteran Lu Guo as an “omni-channel” partner […]

Greenlight, the fintech company that pitches parents on kid-friendly bank accounts, has raised $260 million in a Series D funding round that nearly doubles its valuation to $2.3 billion. The funding comes just months after the Atlanta-based startup landed $215 million in funding at a $1.2 billion valuation. With the latest round, Greenlight has now […]

Vena, a Canadian company focused on the Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software space, has raised $242 million in Series C funding from Vista Equity Partners. As part of the financing, Vista Equity is taking a minority stake in the company. The round follows $25 million in financing from CIBC Innovation Banking last September, and brings […]

Interactive voice advertising startup Instreamatic, which can insert interactive voice ads into an audio stream, has raised $6.1 million in a Series A funding led by Progress Ventures led the round, joined by Accomplice, and Google Assistant Investments. SF-HQ’d Instreamatic lets brands that advertise through streaming music apps and podcasts (for instance) have interactive voice-based […]

The director of a new unit set up this month inside the UK’s competition watchdog — with a dedicated focus on tech giants’ impacts on digital markets — has been giving a hint of how it could operate, once it’s on a statutory footing and imbued with powers to sanction problem platforms and potentially even […]

Positive Ventures, a Sao Paulo-based venture firm, has secured $10 million for its latest fund. Positive Ventures has raised the capital from an impressive list of LPs including investor Luis Stuhlberger, founding partner of Verde Asset Management and Teresa and Cândido Bracher, who was the chairman of Itaú-Unibanco, Brazil’s largest bank. The Brazilian venture firm’s […]

Five months ago, Adobe purchased Workfront for $1.5 billion, a company that helps build marketing department workflows. Today the company is officially announcing how it intends to use it. As marketing executives try to balance mapping strategy to the creative process while building customized experiences, a marketing workflow tool would fit neatly into Adobe Experience […]

Popular family tracking app Life360 is investing in hardware. The company this morning announced the $37 million acquisition of Chicago-based Jiobit, the maker of a wearable location device designed for use by families with younger children, pets, or seniors. The $37 million is primarily in stock and debt, Life360 notes, but if certain performance metrics […]

Adobe today announced the launch of a new asset management tool, Adobe Experience Manager Assets Essentials. That’s a mouthful, but while the company didn’t necessarily simplify the name, the idea here is to give teams that work with lots of digital assets an easier-to-use management experience in the Adobe Experience Cloud than Adobe’s current enterprise-centric […]

Step, the digital banking service aimed at teens and endorsed by TikTok star Charli D’Amelio, announced this morning the close of a $100 million round of Series C funding after growing to over 1.5 million users just six months after launch. The new round, led by General Catalyst, comes shortly after Step’s $50 million Series […]

There’s a bunch of tablet news coming from Amazon this morning. Leading the way is the release of two new 10-inch devices: the Fire HD 10 and Fire HD 10 Plus. The former features a 1080p display with a bump in brightness, an unnamed eight-core processor and 3GB of RAM — a 50% jump over […]

Arm today announced the launch of two new platforms, Arm Neoverse V1 and Neoverse N2, as well as a new mesh interconnect for them. As you can tell from the name, V1 is a completely new product and maybe the best example yet of Arm’s ambitions in the data center, high-performance computing and machine learning […]

German startup Wingcopter has launched a new autonomous delivery drone designed to remove a technical bottleneck hindering the growth of drone transport services. The Wingcopter 198, which was revealed Tuesday, is capable of making three separate deliveries per flight, the company said. Wingcopter has couched this multi-stop capability as a critical feature that will allow […]

U.S.-based challenger bank Current, which has now grown to nearly 3 million users, announced this morning it has raised a $220 million round of Series D funding, led by new investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). The funding swiftly follows Current’s $131 million Series C at the end of last year, at which point the company had […]

It’s been a very tough year for Placer.ai’s core customer segments of retail and commercial real estate, to put it mildly. But the foot traffic and location analytics startup saw growth in new categories, including consumer packaged goods (CPG) and hedge funds that use its tech to perform due diligence. The Los Altos, California-based company […]

Getting actionable business information into the hands of users who need it has always been a challenge. If you have to wait for experts to help you find the answers, chances are you’re going to be too late. Enter Tellius, an early stage startup building a solution to help business users find the information they […]

Spotify today is officially rolling out paid podcast subscriptions, after first unveiling its new subscription platform at the company’s “Stream On” event in February. Through Spotify’s podcast creation tool Anchor, podcasters will be able to mark select episodes as subscriber-only content, then publish them to Spotify and other platforms. The service was initially tested with […]

Clio, a software company that helps law practices run more efficiently with its cloud-based technology, announced Tuesday it has raised a $110 million Series E round co-led by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and OMERS Growth Equity. The round propels the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company to unicorn status, valuing it at $1.6 billion. Clio last […]

Guesty, which has created property management software for hosts on short-term rental platforms like Airbnb and Vrbo, is announcing that it has raised $50 million in Series D funding. “In the public markets, there are many players in hospitality property management,” said co-founder and CEO Amiad Soto. “The same thing goes with residential property management. […]

DoorDash is announcing new pricing plans for the restaurants who use the platform for pickups and deliveries. Before this, the company did not offer standardized pricing across restaurants. However, the question of how high delivery app fees might go (and how parsimonious the payments might be for restaurants as a result) prompted DoorDash to publish […]

TikTok will open a center in Europe where outside experts will be shown information on how it approaches content moderation and recommendation, as well as platform security and user privacy, it announced today. The European Transparency and Accountability Centre (TAC) follows the opening of a U.S. center last year — and is similarly being billed […]