Crunch Hype

New regulations, stricter cross-border data transfer rules and increasing calls for data sovereignty have helped the privacy startup space grow thanks to an uptick in investor support.

Now that Apple’s lost item finder AirTag has officially been introduced, competitor Tile is going on record ahead of its testimony in front of Congress tomorrow about how it perceives Apple’s latest product. The company says it will be asking Congress on Wednesday to take a closer look into Apple’s business practices, and specifically its […]

It’s Apple event day! From tweaks to the Apple Card to all new iMacs and iPads, Apple crammed this one-hour event with news. Don’t have time to sit down and click through every last announcement? We’ve slimmed it down to just the key points for maximum skimmability. Enjoy! Apple Card Apple kicked things off with […]

Apple just announced the new iMac powered by Apple’s own M1 silicon. Among the numerous updates and upgrades is a new power brick that sports something special to Apple’s lineup: an Ethernet port. On the surface, this seems like a silly placement of a critical I/O port, but there’s a good chance this feature could […]

The big news from today’s Spring Loaded event is, as anticipated, a new version of Apple’s high-end tablet. The new iPad Pro is the first in the line to adopt the M1 chip introduced on the company’s Mac line. The new chip sports an 8-core CPU, with performance up to 50% faster than the A12Z […]

Apple has unveiled a new, colorful iMac today with an Apple-designed M1 chip. But that was just part of the story as the company used that opportunity to release new Mac accessories. In addition to a Magic Trackpad and a Magic Mouse with multiple color options, Apple is bringing Touch ID to desktop Macs with […]

Apple announced a new Apple TV 4K today, which will come with a new Siri Remote. In addition to the existing Siri support, this new aluminum remote features a redesigned clickpad that allows for circular gestures in the outer ring, which viewers can use to quickly find the scene they’re looking for. And to eliminate […]

Apple introduced new iMacs at its event on Tuesday, outfitted with its M1 processor and redesigned inside and out from the ground up. The hardware is impressive, but one of the biggest improvements for everyone’s Zoom-heavy life might be the webcam. Apple said it’s the “best camera ever in a Mac,” which honestly wouldn’t take […]

Research papers come out far too frequently for anyone to read them all. That's especially true in the field of machine learning, which now affects practically every industry and company.

Apple has been slowly building a position for itself as a financial services giant, banked around its digital wallet for storing a user’s payment cards and the launch of its own Apple Card in 2019. Today during Apple’s spring event, the company announced the newest chapter in that story: the launch of Apple Card Family, […]

After years of waiting, Apple has finally given the world a dramatic new iMac redesign, aimed at the company’s long-standing goal of “making the computer disappear.” That, of course, only applies to the the thin new design, because these things are eye-popping. Naturally, the latest version of the 24-inch all-in-one desktop is built around the […]

Class, an edtech startup that integrates exclusively with Zoom to make remote teaching more elegant, has raised $12.25 million in new financing. The round brings Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures and Super Bowl champion Tom Brady onto its capital table. CEO and founder Michael Chasen said that Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, approached the company […]

Apple has added a new color option to the iPhone 12 lineup — a rare mid-cycle facelift for the company’s flagship product. The new color is purple, and looks like a lavender-ish pastel hue, which is in keeping with the tones on the rest of the color options on the 12 lineup, which include a […]

Apple today officially unveiled AirTag, its location tracking beacons that can help Apple device owners find lost items through Apple’s “Find My” application. The AirTags themselves are small, rounded tracking devices that can be attached to personal items, like purses, bags or keys. Pre-orders start this Friday, and the product goes on sale April 30th, […]

After years of increased competition from Spotify, Apple today announced its own expansion into podcast subscriptions. At the company’s spring event this afternoon, Apple unveiled its plans for a podcasts subscription service which would allow listeners to unlock “additional benefits,” like ad-free listening, early access to episodes and the ability to support favorite creators. The […]

Back in December last year Injective Protocol, launched the testnet for its DeFi protocols for cross-chain derivatives trading, with backing from giant crypto exchange Binance. It has now raised $10 million in a “party” funding round. Participating in the round was Pantera Capital, BlockTower, Hashed, Cadenza Ventures (formerly BitMex Ventures), CMS, and QCP Capital. Billionaire […]

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is now the default business model for most B2B and B2C software startups. And while it’s been around for a while now, its momentum keeps accelerating and the ecosystem continues to expand as technologists and marketers are getting more sophisticated about how to build and sell SaaS products. For all of them, we’re […]

Catch&Release founder and CEO Analisa Goodin told me that she wants to help brands break free from the limitations of stock photography — and that her startup has raised $14 million in Series A funding to achieve that goal. Goodin explained that the company started out as an image research firm before becoming a product-focused, […]

For IBM, much of the last 8 years simply posting positive revenue growth was a challenge. In fact, the company had a period between 2013 and 2018 when it experienced an astonishing 22 straight quarters of negative revenue growth. So when Big Blue reported yesterday that revenue was up slightly, I’m sure the company took […]

The investment landscape for insurtech startups is off to a hot start in Q2 2021.

WayUp started out as a platform to help college graduates find jobs and internships, but over time, it has increasingly focused on helping employers find diverse job candidates. And it recently introduced a new feature to help those employers see exactly where their diversity and inclusion efforts may be falling short. Co-founder and CEO Liz […]

Farshad Yousefi and Masoud Jalali used to drive through Palo Alto neighborhoods and marvel at the outrageous home prices. But the drives sparked an idea. They were not in a financial position to purchase a home in those neighborhoods (to be clear, not many people are) either for investment or to live. But what if […]

Apple’s introduction of ARKit changed the game for entrepreneurs, not unlike the App Store did on a much, much larger scale back in 2008. One entrepreneur, Dana Loberg, has capitalized on the launch of ARKit with her startup Leo AR. Leo is the result of a few pivots. The company first started out as MojiLala, […]

As AI improves, the possibilities of what we can do with the technology grow exponentially (for better or worse). Synthesia, an AI video generation platform, is looking to make video content creation as simple and efficient as possible, and FirstMark is taking a bet on it making the world better, and not worse. The company […]

Pragma is building what it calls a “backend as a service,” providing ready-made infrastructure to developers of online, live service games. And it’s announcing today that it has raised $12 million in Series A funding. The round was led by David Thacker at Greylock, with participation from Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Oculus founder Nate Mitchell […]

Last week, Scale AI announced a massive $325 million Series E. Led by Dragoneer, Greenoaks Capital and Tiger Global, the raise gives the San Francisco data labeling startup a $7 billion valuation. Alexandr Wang founded the company back in 2016, while still at MIT. A veteran of Quora and Addepar, Wang built the startup to […]

Amazon announced this morning it’s opening Amazon Salon, the retailer’s first hair salon and a place where Amazon aims to test new technologies with the general public. The salon will occupy over 1,500 sq. ft on Brushfield Street in London’s Spitalfields, where Amazon says it will initially be trialing the use of augmented reality (AR) […]

Today, Apple is holding a (virtual) keynote at 10 AM PT (1 PM in New York, 6 PM in London, 7 PM in Paris). And you’ll be able to watch the event right here as the company is streaming it live. Rumor has it that Apple plans to unveil a brand new iPad Pro. In […]

Cape Privacy, the early stage startup that wants to make it easier for companies to share sensitive data in a secure and encrypted way, announced a $20 million Series A today. Evolution Equity Partners led the round with participation from new investors Tiger Global Management, Ridgeline Partners and Downing Lane. Existing investors Boldstart Ventures, Version […]

Many large enterprises now rely on hundreds of third-party SaaS applications to do business, but their security organizations can barely keep pace. Right now, the state of the art for SaaS enterprise security are cloud access security brokers (CASBs) that act as intermediaries between users and the actual service. But they don’t provide the kind […]

After five years of providing non-dilutive financing for founders, Clearbanc is tired of being only a bank. So, it’s rebranding, and has just raised $100 million Series C at a $2 billion valuation off of its broader ambitions. The new valuation is five times larger than it was when Clearbanc closed a Series B in […]

Community banks and credit unions aim to be the heart of the, well, communities, they serve. But without the big budgets of larger institutions, keeping up technology-wise can be a challenge. And not only are they competing with legacy players, there is also a slew of digital banks that have emerged in recent years, as […]

Pulumi was one of the first of what is now a growing number of infrastructure-as-code startups and today, at its developer conference, the company is launching version 3.0 of its cloud engineering platform. With 70 new features and about 1,000 improvements since version 2.0, this is Pulumi’s biggest release yet. The new release includes features […]

Founded almost a decade ago, Octopus Deploy has grown to serve 25,000 organizations, including Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney and Stack Overflow, through bootstrapping. Today the company announced its first outside investment. Insight Partners has taken a minority stake in Octopus Deploy for $172.5 million and will help the automated enterprise software deployment company embark on […]

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a landmark bill aimed at easing restrictions placed on the cannabis industry. The SAFE ACT (Secure and Fair Enforcement) banking act provides safe harbor for financial institutions to work with cannabis operators. If passed by the Senate and approved by President Biden, this bill would allow the cannabis industry […]

A startup that enables businesses to set up and manage their billing, subscription, revenue operations and compliance has become the newest firm to earn the much coveted unicorn status. Chennai and San Francisco-headquartered Chargebee said on Tuesday it has raised $125 million in its Series G financing round led by Sapphire Ventures and existing investors […]

The FoodTech industry is effectively now going into fast food. Sweetgreen in the US is a ‘fast-casual’ restaurant chain that serves healthy “bowl food”. It’s raised $478.6M. A similar firm is Sweetfin. Both employ a lot of tech in their back-end to improve efficiencies. Into this area has come European startup Poke House, which is […]

The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has given the go ahead to local startup sees.ai, which is developing a beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) command & control solution to aid data capture for industrial use-cases, to trial a concept for routine BVLOS operations — the first such authorization for a U.K. company, the regulator said today. The test […]

Venmo is adding support for cryptocurrency, starting today. The company says it will begin to roll out the ability for Venmo’s more than 70 million users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the app, similar to the support Venmo parent company PayPal added late last year. Initially, Venmo will support four types of […]

Tesla is working on vehicles tailored to Chinese consumers as complaints about the quality of its electric vehicles send shock waves through the internet in the country. The American EV giant is mulling new products that will be designed from the ground up for China, Grace Tao, a vice president at Tesla, told 21st Century […]

“Challenger” startups in banking and insurance have upended their industries, and picked up significant business, by building more customer-friendly tools and services — more personalized, easier to access, and usually competitively priced — than those typically provided their bigger, incumbent rivals. Now, a startup out of Romania that is building tools to help the incumbents […]

Earlier this year we covered the launch of Heights, a new supplements startup in an increasingly hot category. Feel, is a year-old UK startup with another twist on this world: pure nutritional supplements. It’s now closed a $6.2 million investment, led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from TMT Investments, Sova VC, Richard Longhurst (founder of […]

In the past ten years, an investment team led by Christian Winter, Jan Sessenhausen, Helmut Klawitter and Wilken Engelbracht worked principally with German family offices, investing in startups such as Klarna, Zalando and Delivery Hero that went on to be worth around €80 billion in total. Today they are launching a VC firm of their own, Cusp Capital, with €300 million ($361m) […]

Qapita, a Singapore-based fintech that provides capitalization table and employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) management software, has raised $5 million in pre-Series A funding. The round was led by MassMutual Ventures, with participation from Endiya Partners and angel investors including Avaana Capital founder Anjali Bansal and Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar. Vulcan Capital and East Ventures, […]

One after another, Chinese tech giants have announced their plans for the auto space over the last few months. Some internet companies, like search engine provider Baidu, decided to recruit help from a traditional carmaker to produce cars. Xiaomi, which makes its own smartphones but has stressed for years it’s a light-asset firm making money […]

Dott has raised a new $85 million Series B funding round — this round is a mix of equity and asset-backed debt financing. Belgium-based investment company Sofina is leading the investment. Dott is a micromobility startup that is better known for its colorful electric scooters that you can find across several European cities. The company […]

Singapore-based fintech Hashstacs Pte Ltd (STACS) announced today it has raised $3.6 million USD in pre-Series A funding. The company develops blockchain platforms that can work with financial institutions’ existing infrastructure, and its core technology is also used in GreenSTACS for environmental, social and governance (ESG) investments. The round was led by Wavemaker Partners, which […]

Indonesian startup CoLearn started as a chain of physical tutoring centers and was in the process of shifting to a hybrid offline-online model when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The team sensed that remote learning would permanently change how students want to be tutored and decided to focus completely on its app, which launched in August […]

Fintech startup Payhawk has raised a $20 million funding round. QED Investors is leading the round with existing investor Earlybird Digital East also participating. Payhawk is building a unified system to manage all the money that is going in and out. Essentially, companies switching to Payhawk can replace several services they already use and that […]

Facebook reveals its Clubhouse competitor, Parler will return to Apple’s App Store and a helicopter flies on Mars. This is your Daily Crunch for April 19, 2021. The big story: Facebook announces new audio products Yes, these products include new Clubhouse-style Live Audio Rooms, as well as the ability for podcasters to share long-form audio, […]