Crunch Hype

Neal Sáles-Griffin, managing director of Techstars Chicago, hands out essential tips and tricks for when you're applying to an accelerator

Historically, the transmasculine community has been neglected by the fashion world. But Both& is a new brand looking to offer clothing tailored specifically for transmasculine bodies. The company was founded by Finnegan Shepard, a trans man who started Both& after going through top surgery and feeling like he still couldn’t find clothing that fit his […]

There’s been a lot of investment in machine learning startups recently as companies try to push the notion into a wider variety of endeavors. Comet, a company that helps customers iterate on models in an experimentation process designed to eventually reach production, announced a $13 million Series A today. Scale Venture Partners led the round […]

Omada Health, one of the U.S.’s original virtual healthcare providers, today announced the creation of the Omada Insights Lab. “The Insights Lab is an approach to product development that leverages multidisciplinary teams to rapidly look at what does and does not work in a digital care setting and then scale those tools within the company,” […]

Honda and Verizon are researching how 5G and mobile edge computing might improve safety for today’s connected vehicles and the future’s autonomous ones. The two companies, which announced the partnership Thursday, are piloting different safety scenarios at the University of Michigan’s Mcity, a test bed for connected and autonomous vehicles. The aim of the venture […]

Corporate training startup Attensi — which originally emerged out of Oslo, Norway — has raised $26 million from New York-based Lugard Road Capital, DX Ventures (a VC fund backed by Delivery Hero), and existing shareholder Viking Venture. The new funding will be used to expand in North America and Europe. Attensi uses a ‘gamified approach […]

Box announced this morning that private equity firm KKR is investing $500 million in the company, a move that could help the struggling cloud content management vendor get out from under pressure from activist investor Starboard Value. The company plans to use the proceeds in what’s called a “dutch auction” style sale to buy back […]

Swag has a long and patchy history in the world of business. For every hip pair of plaid socks, there are five t-shirts you may never wear, an itchy scarf, a notepad your kids might use, and an ugly mug; and most of all, likely thousands of dollars and lots of time invested to make […]

The once quiet world of seed investing became frenetic a few years ago as dedicated seed funds and angel networks increased in scale and velocity. That environment has now crescendoed into the present world of the seed capital hurricane: funds galore, solo capitalists splurging streams of rolling-capital dollars wherever they can find a cap table […]

With the pandemic sending the planet indoors to workout, the at-home fitness market has boomed. It was only in October last year that three-year-old Future closed $24 million in Series B and Playbook (streaming for personal trainers) raised $9.3 million in a Series A. Into this market launched Moxie, a platform that allowed fitness instructors […]

Tines, a no-code automation platform co-founded by two senior cybersecurity operators, today announced that it has raised a $26 million Series B funding round led by Addition. Existing investors Accel and Blossom Capital participated in this round, which also includes strategic investments from CrowdStrike and Silicon Valley CISO Investments. After this round, which brings the […]

This morning, Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, announced that it has closed $115 million across two investments, the latter of which valued the company at $1.6 billion. The Information first reported that Ramp was raising new capital. TechCrunch confirmed the news prior to the company’s announcement earlier today. Ramp raised the […]

Canvas Medical, an electronic health records (EHR) startup, today announced their $17 million Series A and a new partnership with Anthem, one of the biggest health insurance companies in the country. The round was co-led by Inspired Capital and IA Ventures, with participation from Upfront Ventures. This round brings the company’s total funding to date […]

While Nigeria and Kenya have been at the forefront of African fintech innovation, activities in Egypt are beginning to shape up nicely. Right now, Egypt is home to a burgeoning fintech startup ecosystem, and today, one of its biggest players, Paymob announced that it has completed an $18.5 million Series A round. In July 2020, […]

A startup that began its journey in India 15 years ago, helping businesses reach and engage with users through texts said on Thursday it has attained the unicorn status and is also profitable. San Francisco-headquartered Gupshup has raised $100 million in its Series F financing round from Tiger Global Management, which valued the 15-year-old startup […]

SaaS to support mid-sized companies’ financial planning with real-time data and native collaboration isn’t the sexiest startup pitch under the sun but it’s one that’s swiftly netted Abacum a bunch of notable backers — including Creandum, which is leading a $7M seed round that’s being announced today. The rosters of existing investors also participating in […]

Butter, a startup registered in Denmark but operating fully remote, is building an “all-in-one” platform for planning and running virtual workshops. Offering video software and other features dedicated to workshopping, the idea is to pull people away from using more generic tools, such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, which, arguably, aren’t well suited to workshops. […]

Shilling, an early-stage VC in Portugal, has now launched a new €30M ($35.6M) early-stage fund called Shilling Founders Fund, which is backed just over 35 successful tech founders, as well as large European VC Atomico. The fund will run on a profit-sharing model, sharing fund returns with all of its portfolio founders. While the fund […]

TrueLayer, the London startup that offers a developer-friendly platform for companies, including other fintechs, to utilise open banking, is disclosing $70 million in new funding. The Series D round is led by new investor Addition. Existing investors, including Anthemis Group, Connect Ventures, Mouro Capital, Northzone and Temasek, also participated. New investors include Visionaries Club, Zack […]

Byju’s plans to expand to international markets in the second half of next month as the Indian edtech giant, valued at over $13 billion, looks to accelerate its growth, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed. The Bangalore-based startup, which acquired 33-year-old tutor Aakash for nearly $1 billion earlier this week, plans to launch in the U.S., UK, […]

Meet Nabla, a French startup launching a new app today focused on women’s health. On Nabla, you’ll find several services that should all contribute to helping you stay on top of your health. In short, Nabla lets you chat with practitioners, offers community content, helps you centralize all your medical data and will soon offer […]

Hundreds of thousands of used cars are sold in India each month. But buying one through the offline and traditional channel could prove to be a painstakingly long and high-risk process. A Gurgaon-based startup that is attempting to improve this experience said on Thursday it has raised a new financing round. Spinny has raised $65 […]

Food delivery startups, and specifically those focused on grocery delivery, continue to reap super-sized rounds of funding in Europe, buoyed by a year of pandemic living that has led many consumers to shift to shopping online. Today, the latest of these is coming out of Norway. Kolonial, a startup based out of Oslo that offers […]

ShareChat said on Thursday it has raised a new financing round that values it at over $2 billion, joining four other local startups in attaining the unicorn status this week. The Indian social network said it has raised $502 million in a new financing round — Series E — led by Tiger Global that valued […]

About a year after Beyond Meat debuted in China on Starbucks’s menu, the Californian plant-based protein company opened a production facility near Shanghai to tap the country’s supply chain resources and potentially reduce the carbon footprint of its products. Situated in Jiaxing, a city 85 km from Shanghai, the plant is Beyond Meat’s first end-to-end […]

In 2019, Spotify began testing a hardware device for automobile owners it lovingly dubbed “Car Thing,” which allowed Spotify Premium users to play music and podcasts using voice commands that began with “Hey, Spotify.” Last year, Spotify began developing a similar voice integration into its mobile app. Now, access to the “Hey Spotify” voice feature […]

Google announces its I/O plans, Facebook tests an audio Q&A feature and Patreon triples its valuation. This is your Daily Crunch for April 7, 2021. The big story: Google I/O will return virtually next month Google canceled its giant developer conference last year during the pandemic. This year, the show will return in virtual form, […]

Twitter held talks with Clubhouse around a potential acquisition of the live drop-in audio networking platform, with a deal value somewhere around $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg. TechCrunch has also confirmed the discussions took place from a source familiar with the conversations. While the talks occurred over the past several months, they’re […]

Despite the classification of ride-hail drivers as “essential workers” during the early days of the pandemic, last April Uber’s business dropped by 80%. Drivers decided they’d rather not risk contracting or spreading COVID-19 for the measly revenue provided by the few rides per day they were getting, so when the federal CARES Act extended the Pandemic […]

Pinterest today hosted an event focused on its creator community, where the company announced a series of updates including the launch of a $500,000 Creator Fund, a new content policy called the Creator Code, as well as new moderation tools, among other things. With the changes, the company says its goal is to ensure the […]

Cybersecurity veteran Katie Moussouris explains what startups should (and shouldn't) do, what to prioritize, and the difference between vulnerability disclosure, penetration testing and bug bounties.

Healthcare insurance, if you’re lucky to have it, only covers a subset of conditions in the United States. As a result, patients can often get burdened with horror story charges, like huge deductibles, out-of-network costs and expensive co-pays. So for the uninsured and insured alike, innovative ways of managing big bills are in high demand […]

Twitch will start holding its streamers to a higher standard. The company just expanded its hate and harassment policy, specifying more kinds of bad behavior that break its rules and could result in a ban from the streaming service. The news comes as Twitch continues to grapple with reports of abusive behavior and sexual harassment, […]

Okta today announced it was expanding its platform into a couple of new areas. Up to this point, the company has been known for its identity access management product, giving companies the ability to sign onto multiple cloud products with a single sign on. Today, the company is moving into two new areas: privileged access […]

Zoom Chief Revenue Officer Ryan Azus gives tips on when founders should step aside from leading their startup's sales org, how to build a working sales culture, hiring diversely and more.

Yesterday we noted that Apple launched a new Find My Certification Asst. app, designed to test support for third-party hardware. Find My, of course, has been a long-standing feature for Apple’s own hardware like iPhones, AirPods and Macs, but back at WWDC, the company announced plans to open it up to manufacturers. Today the company […]

Eghosa Omoigui explained what it means to have an All-22 tape and the steps founders should take to develop a skillset that will allow them to see and understand the playbook from all sides.

Facebook’s internal R&D group, NPE Team, has today launched its latest experiment, Hotline, into public beta testing. The web-based application could be described as a mashup of Instagram Live and Clubhouse, as it allows creators to speak to an audience who can then ask questions through either text or audio. However, unlike Clubhouse, creators can […]

Kavak, the Mexican startup that’s disrupted the used car market in Mexico and Argentina, today announced its Series D of $485 million, which now values the company at $4 billion. This round more than triples their previous valuation of $1.15 billion, which established them as a unicorn just a couple of months ago in October […]

My startup registered two H-1B candidates in this year’s lottery. Sadly, neither was selected. Help! We can’t afford for them to have to leave the U.S. What are our options?

When the pandemic arrived in the U.S. early last year, companies scrambled to figure out what to do with their long-standing, in-person developer events. For Apple and Microsoft, that meant going virtual – something companies have done with mixed results. For Google, it meant calling off I/O all together. The company canceled the developer conference […]

The question of whether Facebook will face any regulatory sanction over the latest massive historical platform privacy fail to come to light remains unclear. But the timeline of the incident looks increasingly awkward for the tech giant. While it initially sought to play down the data breach revelations published by Business Insider at the weekend by […]

SpaceX has launched another batch of Starlink satellites, keeping up its rapid pace of launches for the broadband constellation it’s deploying in low Earth orbit. This now makes 300 Starlink satellites launched since March 4, with 60 on each of five flights between then and now. The most recent launch before this one happened on […]

Despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of goods flowing across the U.S.-Mexican border each year, the freight industry has remained analog — each side of the border offering up its own maze of bureaucracy. Nuvocargo, a digital logistics platform for cross-border trade, is trying to modernize the process. The company offers an all-in-one service […]

Black Innovation Alliance and Village Capital today announced Resource, a national initiative aimed at boosting the efforts of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) led by, and focused on, founders of color. The motivation behind the project is straightforward. ESOs “face record demand, declining resources and are chronically underestimated, underappreciated and underfunded,” the organizations say. Resource aims […]

Fuel Capital General Partner Leah Solivan joined us at TechCrunch Early Stage 2021 to talk about how to avoid early mistakes in building your startup

TikTok today is doubling down on its roots as a music-backed creation app with the launch of a half dozen new music effects for creators. The effects, which offer interactivity, visualizations, animations and more, will roll out over the next few weeks, starting with the launch of Music Visualizer. This effect is now available to […]

Hiro Capital has gradually been making a name for itself as an investor in the area know as ‘Digital Sports’ or DSports for shorts. It’s now led a $2.3m funding round in PlayerData. While the round might sound small, the area it’s going into is large and growing. Also investing in the round is Sir […]

With 17 startups participating, Berkeley SkyDeck’s Demo Day isn’t the largest cohort we’ve seen by any stretch. The collection of companies is, however, defined by a wide range of focuses, from pioneering diabetes treatments to retrofitting autonomous trucking, curated by the SkyDeck’s small team and a number of advisors. Founded in 2012, the accelerator is […]

CaptivateIQ, which has developed a no-code platform to help companies design customized sales commission plans, has raised $46 million in a Series B round led by Accel. Existing backers Amity, S28 Capital, Sequoia, and Y Combinator also participated in the financing, which brings the San Francisco-based company’s total raised to $63 million since its 2017 […]