Crunch Hype

In 2020, investors became laser-focused on sections of the pitch deck that address monetization and business viability — signs that founders need to present better-defined businesses to succeed.

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) released a report today that cleared the Apple Card credit card program of discriminatory practices and specifically, gender-based discrimination, following an investigation triggered by online complaints back in November 2019. At the time, tech entrepreneur David Heinemeier Hansson had called out Apple Card program, jointly run by […]

The frequent difficulty of founders finding product-market fit has been a topic of constant (and ever-evolving) discussion at TechCrunch conferences over the years. Superhuman founder and CEO Rahul Vohra will be joining us at TechCrunch Early Stage: Marketing & Fundraising in July to dive into the much-obsessed topic of product-market fit. We’re looking to dig […]

Eat Just, the purveyor of eggless eggs and mayonnaise and the first government-approved vendor of lab-grown chicken, has raised $200 million in a new round of funding, the company said. The funding was led by the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of the state of Qatar, with additional participation from Charlesbank Capital Partners […]

Move fast, break things, get hacked. That’s what happened at Roll, the social currency platform that allows creators to mint and distribute their own Ethereum-based cryptocurrency known as social tokens. Last week, Roll disclosed a hacker had stolen $5.7 million from its hot wallet, a little over a year after the company launched. Roll set […]

In Africa, Y Combinator is known to be a major backer of most of the continent’s well-known startups. Two of the most talked-about in the last two quarters — Flutterwave and Paystack — are YC-backed. Their recent successes (Flutterwave’s billion-dollar valuation and Paystack’s rare exit to Stripe) have greatly increased YC’s appeal in the eyes of […]

QuantumScape has issued a share offering to pay for an expanded pilot production line for its solid-state batteries just months after it became a publicly traded company via a reverse merger. QuantumScape said in a regulatory filing that the net proceeds from its sale of 13 million shares — along with an additional 1.95 million […]

U.K. challenger stockbroker Freetrade has raised a $69 million Series B round led by Left Lane Capital. The growth fund of L Catterton and existing investor Draper Esprit also participated. Freetrade operates a stock trading app and has managed to attract 600,000 users in the U.K. — they generated £1 billion in quarterly trade volume. […]

Researchers say a botnet targeting Windows devices is rapidly growing in size, thanks to a new infection technique that allows the malware to spread from computer to computer. The Purple Fox malware was first spotted in 2018 spreading through phishing emails and exploit kits, a way for threat groups to infect machines using existing security […]

Chinese automaker Geely Automobile Holdings is launching a new brand of premium electric vehicles as it aims to capture a share of the luxury EV market that has been dominated by Tesla and other homegrown companies. The new brand of vehicles, called Zeekr, will be manufactured by parent company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. The first […]

Soft robotics have long been one of the more exciting categories among emerging technologies. Of course, as with most new tech, the field has some drawbacks over more traditional models. While they improve flexibility and complains over their more rigid counterparts, robots made of soft materials have often had an issue delivering electrical connectivity. In […]

Well before the rumors, we knew this day was coming. After several generations of smartwatches and a handful of headphones, the smartwatch was the next logical step for OnePlus. At today’s big launch event, the company made its first major wearable official, sporting the decidedly pared-down name, OnePlus Watch. As the title implies, the smartwatch […]

Cameras have long been the battleground on which the smartphone wars have been fought. Short of any left-field innovation like folding screens or strange form factors, that looks likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Year after year and generation after generation, companies tout imaging breakthroughs to set themselves apart. It […]

When it comes to fast-moving technology, mobility zooms ahead of the pack — both literally and figuratively. Early-stage startup founders and investors need to keep their fingers on the sector’s very rapid pulse and the best place to do that is, you guessed it, TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 on June 9. If you’re eager to […]

There's a lot of news this morning, so let's discuss all the big dollars before YC demo day kicks off.

OneTrust, a late stage privacy platform startup, announced it was adding ethics and compliance to the mix this morning by acquiring Convercent, a company that was built to help build more ethical organizations. The companies did not share the purchase price. OneTrust just raised $300 million on a fat $5.1 billion valuation at the end […]

Apple this morning announced a handful of education-related updates to its suite of classroom apps as well as a new recognition for teachers, called the Apple Teacher Portfolio. Teachers who complete a total of nine lessons where they learn foundational skills on iPad and Mac to become an officially recognized Apple Teacher will be able […]

Augmented Reality pioneer Blippar – which has had a tortuous history after early investors pulled out and the company had to scramble for new backers – has now closed a $5 million funding round, after 18 months of re-positioning as a B2B company in the AR space. The pre-Series A round was co-led by Chroma […]

On the third greatest television show of all time (sorry Rolling Stone), one of Texas’ most famous fictional football players once said, “When all the scared rats are leaving a sinking market, that’s when a real entrepreneur steps in — a true visionary.” If that’s the case, then the startup renewable energy retail reseller Arcadia […]

Huckleberry, an insurtech company that offers a variety of insurance to small businesses, has announced a partnership with Berkshire Hathaway GUARD. This represents the biggest partnership with a carrier for the startup to date. The startup, cofounded by Bryan O’Connell, has made some major moves in the past year. The company launched in 2017 offering […]

User Interviews, the Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator-backed company that has built a CRM for product developers to get user feedback, has closed on a $10 million Series A round. The financing was led by Teamworthy Ventures, with participation from Las Olas, Accomplice, FJ Labs, ERA, Trestle Partners and ValueStream. The company, cofounded by Basel Fakhoury, was […]

Last fall, delivery startup goPuff made a big splash by raising $380 million in funding and acquiring West Coast beverage retailer BevMo shortly afterwards. Just a few months later, the Philadelphia-based company is announcing that it has raised another $1.15 billion in funding at an $8.9 billion valuation (compared to $3.9 billion in October). Available in […]

After a few twists and turns and then ultimately cancelling its F8 developer conference last year over Covid-19 concerns, Facebook today announced a return of the event in a virtual-only format it is calling F8 Refresh. The company today said that it will be holding it as a one-day event on June 2. You can […]

Trace, an early startup that wants to bring a taste of SaaS to the budgeting side of the house, announced an $8 million seed round today led by Greylock and Uncork Capital with participation from Nyca Partners, Redpoint Ventures and various individual angels. Mike Gonzalez, co-founder and CEO at the company describes Trace as the […]

Like other venture investors over the past year, Cain McClary, co-founder of the investment firm KdT Ventures, recently made the jump to Austin. But unlike the rest of them, he was coming from Black Mountain, NC. McClary had spent the better part of the last three years with his co-founder Mack Healy building out a […]

In a recent interview discussing Bill Gates’ recent book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster“, the Microsoft and Breakthrough Energy founder (and the world’s third wealthiest man) advocated for citizens of the richest countries in the world to switch to diets consisting entirely of what he called synthetic meat in an effort to curb greenhouse […]

ActionIQ, which helps companies use their customer data to deliver personalized experiences, is announcing that it has extended its Series C funding, bringing the round to a total size of $100 million. That number includes the $32 million that ActionIQ announced in January of last year. Founder and CEO Tasso Argyros said the company is […]

Hopin, a unicorn best known for its online events-hosting service, announced this morning that it has acquired two more companies. The smaller concerns, Jamm and Streamable, were acquired in deals that Hopin declined to detail. However, in an email to TechCrunch, Hopin CEO Johnny Boufarhat said that both companies were “early-stage” concerns. We can infer […]

Messaging platform Telegram, which recently passed 500 million monthly active users but still isn’t monetizing all the digital chatter it hosts — has taken in a little more funding to keep its engines ticking over. Mubadala Investment Company, the Abu Dhabi-based sovereign investor, is throwing in $75M in exchange for 5-year pre-IPO convertible bonds of […]

Significant funding news today for one of the startups making a business out of tapping huge, noisy troves of publicly available data across social media, news sites, undisclosed filings and more. Dataminr, which ingests information from a mix of 100,000 public data sources, and then based on that provides customers real-time insights into ongoing events […]

For patients and healthcare professionals to properly track and manage illnesses especially chronic ones, healthcare needs to be decentralized. It also needs to be more convenient, with a patient’s health information able to follow them wherever they go. Redbird, a Ghanaian healthtech startup that allows easy access to convenient testing and ensures that doctors and […]

ServiceNow became the latest company to take the robotic process automation (RPA) plunge when it announced it was acquiring Intellibot, an RPA startup based in Hyderabad, India. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. The purchase comes at a time where companies are looking to automate workflows across the organization. RPA provides a way […]

Orca Security, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that offers an agent-less security platform for protecting cloud-based assets, today announced that it has raised a $210 million Series C round at a $1.2 billion valuation. The round was led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund CapitalG and Redpoint Ventures. Existing investors GGV Capital, ICONIQ Growth and angel syndicate […]

Polish startup Tylko, a modular furniture company that employs Augmented Reality as part of its sales cycle, has closed a €22 million ($26m) investment Series C funding round, led by Israel-based Pitango Growth and Finnish Evli Growth Partners, following previous investors TDJ Pitango and Experior Venture Fund. Additionally, Brian Walker, former CEO of Hermann Miller, […]

Buying and selling residential real estate is a complex business, no matter where you live. A slew of startups in the United States are focused on streamlining that process for people. But in Brazil, where no MLS exists, the challenge of digitizing real estate is even greater. One startup that has set out to serve […]

Insuretech startup Counterpart, has raised $10 million in funding led by Valor Equity Partners. Also participating was Susa Ventures and Felicis Ventures. Counterpart works in the ‘management liability’ insurance market. Counterpart will also partner with Markel Specialty, a specialty insurance division of Markel Corporation, to offer its management liability insurance products. Insuretech startups like Oscar, […]

Digital identity services — used as a key link between organizations to verify that you are who you say you are online and individuals logging into those services — have come into their own in this past year. Now, one of the companies providing digital identity products is announcing a large round of funding, underscoring […]

According to the World Bank, more than one billion people in South and East Asia lack access to a bank account. For many, this makes it is difficult to secure loans and other services because they don’t have traditional financial records like a credit score. Jeff’s loan brokerage platform was created to make it easier […]

Sending money from the U.S. to Nigeria can be a painstaking process. For remittance platforms like Western Union, it will cost a transfer fee and take between one to five business days for money sent from a U.S. debit card to enter a Nigerian bank account. Crypto remittance platforms are rising to the challenge of […]

While much of the recent wave of relentless hype around NFTs — or non-fungible tokens — has been most visibly manifested in high-dollar art auctions or digital trading cards sales, there’s also been a relentless string of chatter among bullish investors who see a future that ties the tokens to the future of social media […]

Starting May 1, apps in China can no longer force users into providing excessive personal data, according to a document jointly released by a group of the country’s top regulators, the Cyberspace Administration, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Market Regulation. It’s a common […]

Nearly five years after the launch of Pokémon Go, Niantic announced Monday that they are partnering with Nintendo to co-develop a new title based on the company’s Pikmin franchise. Niantic says the app is being developed in their Tokyo office and will launch later this year. “The app will include gameplay activities to encourage walking […]

The music streaming arm of Tencent is further tightening its ties with the “big three” record label companies, its major licensing partners. Tencent Music Entertainment announced Tuesday that it has formed a new joint label with Warner Music Group, following similar deals with Universal Music Group in August 2020 and Sony Music Entertainment in early […]

Purplle, an e-commerce platform for beauty products in India, said on Monday it has raised $45 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market. The new round, a Series D, was financed by Sequoia Capital India and existing investors Verlinvest, Blume Ventures, and […]

Healthcare tech startup Ro has raised $500 million to help fuel continued growth of its hybrid telehealth/in-home primary care platform, which also includes a growing pharmacy business as the company pursues a strategy of vertical integration to optimize delivery and reduce costs for clients. The company’s latest raise is a Series D round, and means […]

Teamflow, founded by ex-Uber manager Flo Crivello, has raised an $11 million Series A just three months after raising a $3.9 million seed for its virtual HQ platform. The latest round in the startup was led by Battery Ventures, with Menlo Ventures leading its previous financing event. Teamflow’s raise comes just days after competitor Gather […]

Dispo is in the midst of a sexual assault controversy, Zoom introduces an SDK and Android owners will have to continue waiting for Clubhouse access. This is your Daily Crunch for March 22, 2021. The big story: Investors back away from Dispo After a recent story in Business Insider brought allegations to light that a […]

At its most generous share count and highest projected price, Coursera's valuation could reach $5.56 billion.

Shares of Box, a well-known content-and-collaboration company that went public in 2015, rose today after Reuters reported that the company is exploring a sale. TechCrunch previously discussed rising investor pressure for Box to ignite its share price after years in the public-market wilderness. At the close today Box’s equity was worth $23.65 per share, up […]

Biden didn’t campaign on getting tough against Big Tech, but his early actions are speaking louder than his words. The White House confirmed its intentions to nominate Lina Khan to the FTC Monday, sending a clear signal that his administration will break from the Silicon Valley-friendly precedents of the Obama era. Politico first reported Biden’s […]