Crunch Hype

Before we get too far into this week’s roundup, I want to kick things off with an interview we haven’t published anywhere else. Earlier this week, we noted that Ford will be deploying some 100 researchers and engineers to the new $75 million facility at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The automaker told TechCrunch […]

The running line from any acquired company CEO is that the company can do so much more with resources of the company that acquired it than it could on its own. Just seven months after being acquired, Drone, co-founder Brad Rydzewski says that his company really has benefited greatly from being part of Harness, and […]

Security compliance may not be the hottest conversation starter, but it’s a critical and often grueling process that companies have to endure every year to show that their security practices are up to par. It’s a burden that bogs down startups more than others, and so it’s fitting that startups are trying to find a […]

Sentry, the company that helps developers catch bugs before they result in downtime, has added support for React Native, Android and Xamarin to its Performance Monitoring software. The company, which reached unicorn valuation in its last funding, also updated its Flutter SDK with support for new languages. App monitoring platform Sentry gets $60 million Series […]

The team at Google’s Area 120 in-house incubator says the idea for ThreadIt came well before COVID-19 made remote work a necessity for large swaths of the globe. Of course, the pandemic certainly accelerated interest in the product among the team behind it. “It’s adjusted the lens through which everyone sees it,” Keller Smith, general […]

YouTube Shorts, the company’s short-form video experience and TikTok rival, is launching today in the U.S. The feature allows creators to record, edit and share short-form video content that’s 60 seconds or less in length, optionally set to popular music. At launch, YouTube has deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group […]

Kosta Eleftheriou, a co-founder of the Fleksy keyboard app later sold to Pinterest in an acqui-hire deal, has been calling attention to Apple App Store issues like fake reviews, ratings and subscription scams, as well as malicious clone apps, after his own app, FlickType, was targeted by scammers. Now, the developer is taking the next […]

Five years ago, entrepreneur Dan Sommer bet big on the adult learning space when he was building out Trilogy Education, an online and in-person bootcamp in collaboration with universities to train workforces on the latest tech skills. In 2019, Sommer sold that company for $750 million to 2U in one of the largest edtech exits […]

SecurityScorecard has been helping companies understand the security risk of its vendors since 2014 by providing each one with a letter grade based on a number of dimensions. Today, the company announced a $180 million Series E. The round includes new investors Silver Lake Waterman, T. Rowe Price, Kayne Anderson Rudnick, and Fitch Venture along […]

Barely more than seven months after its most recent funding announcement, Yotpo is revealing that it has raised another $230 million in a Series F round that values the company at $1.4 billion (post-money). “Our round, in my eyes, it’s all about celebrating the future of e-commerce,” co-founder and CEO Tomer Tagrin told me. “Brands […]

In February, London-listed telecom, Airtel Africa, said it was looking to sell a minority stake in its mobile money business in a bid to raise cash and sell off some assets. The firm seems to have found an investor as it announced that The Rise Fund, the global impact investing platform of investment firm TPG, […]

Asteya, a Miami-based disability insurance startup that is geared toward small business owners and gig workers, launched today with a seed round of $10 million. Co-founder and CEO Alex Williamson, who was Bumble’s chief brand officer, describes Asteya as an “income insurance” startup. The announcement comes on the heels of Bumble’s IPO last month, signaling […]

Fireblocks has raised a $133 million Series C funding round led by Coatue, Ribbit, and Stripes. The company provides several products that let you store, transfer and issue digital assets. In particular, Fireblocks provides custody to institutional investors — it currently stores $400 billion in cryptocurrencies. BNY and Silicon Valley Bank are also participating in today’s […]

Saleor, a Poland and U.S.-based startup that offers a “headless” e-commerce platform to make it easier for developers to build better online shopping experiences, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round is led by Berlin’s Cherry Ventures, with participation from various angels. They include Guillermo Rauch (Vercel CEO and inventor of Next.js), Chris […]

Cubyn, the Paris-based logistics startup that lets e-merchants outsource fulfilment and delivery logistics, has raised another €35 million in funding. The round is led by Eurazeo and Bpifrance Large Venture, with participation from First Bridge Ventures and Fuse Venture Partners. Existing backers DN Capital, 360 Capital, Bpifrance Smart Cities fund and BNP Paribas Développement followed […]

The adoption of financial apps is surging in Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, the region’s most populous country. Founded by fintech veterans last year, Brick develops APIs that make it easier for tech companies to add identity verification and access financial data from their users. It is currently partnered with Indonesia’s seven largest banks, covering […]

Years ago, Serge Salager, a Vancouver-based entrepreneur who’d taken a small company public on the Toronto Stock Exchange, was approached by deep-pocketed buyer who was interested in buying the business. Flattered but also nervous about who else the potential acquirer was talking with, Salager found himself scouring the web obsessively for news about other possible […]

More details have emerged today about the European Commission’s legislative proposal for a pan-EU ‘digital green pass’ to show verified COVID-19 status. The plan is controversial from a human rights and civil liberties perspective, given the clear risk of discrimination. But privacy and security experts are also raising concerns about the technology architecture that will […]

Uber changes driver classification following a legal defeat in the U.K., Facebook says it will crack down on rule-breaking Groups and Snap makes an e-commerce acquisition. This is your Daily Crunch for March 17, 2021. The big story: Uber to classify UK drivers as workers Following a Supreme Court ruling, Uber said it will classify […]

Cymbio, a Tel Aviv-based startup focused on what it calls “brand-to-retailer connectivity,” announced today that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding. CEO Roy Avidor, who founded the company with Mor Lavi and Gilad Zirkel, told me that the platform is designed to help brands sell their products on any e-commerce marketplace that […]

HR professionals need to collaborate with data science managers to craft job descriptions that speak to a data science audience. The increasingly pivotal role of job postings will not abate with the virus.

BMW plans to have 25 electrified cars in its lineup by 2025 and it’s taking a few more steps in this direction this year with the launch of the all-electric iX SUV and the i4 sedan. Today, for the first time, the German automaker shared a few more details of what we can expect from […]

This morning TechCrunch covered an interesting round for Copy.ai, a startup that employs GPT-3 to help other companies with their writing projects. GPT-3, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, is a piece of AI from the OpenAI group that takes text from the user, and writes a lot more for them. As part of the process of […]

Seon, which lets online businesses fight online fraud like fake accounts has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Creandum, with participation from PortfoLion, part of OTP Bank. The funding appears to be one of Hungary’s larger series A rounds to date. Seon is a fraud-detection startup that establishes a customers’ ‘digital […]

We should be deploying simple AI tools to solve and improve upon everyday tactics so we can spend more time on strategic growth goals and long-term execution.

Lucid Motors has designed the battery packs in its luxury electric vehicle for two lives. The company, which is already experimenting with energy storage systems for commercial and residential customers, is also eyeing ways to repurpose batteries from its electric vehicles. While Lucid is still years from having to contend with a large number of […]

Amazon is apparently pleased with how its Amazon Care pilot in Seattle has gone, since it announced this morning that it will be expanding the offering across the U.S. this summer, and opening it up to companies of all sizes, in addition to its own employees. The Amazon Care model combines on-demand and in-person care, […]

Ultra precise cancer therapies! Human-like hair grown from plants! A way to potentially save the bees! The spectrum of companies coming out of IndieBio has always been pretty wild, and its latest batch definitely doesn’t disappoint. As the early stage, biology-focused accelerator arm of SOSV, IndieBio gives the companies in its program $250,000+, mentorship, and […]

Diem, a London, UK-based fintech start-up has raised a seed round of $5.5 million led by Fasanara Capital, and Angel investor Chris Adelsbach, founder of Outrun Ventures. Additional investors include Andrea Molteni (early investor in Farfetch), Ben Demiri (co-chairman at fashion tech PlatformE) and Nicholas Kirkwood (founder of the eponymous brand). Diem is a debit […]

“Snap, Inc. is a camera company,” Snap notes on its homepage, and while a lot of its effort up to now have been about using that camera ethos to help people share images of their lives with their social circles on its flagship app Snapchat, today the company made an acquisition to further that camera […]

Should we come to Silicon Valley to meet with venture capitalists? How should we begin that process? What type of visa should we get and how easy is it to get?

Apple has fended off an attempt by advertisers in France to use a competition complaint route to derail incoming pro-privacy changes in iOS that will require third party apps to obtain users’ consent before they can track them. The French competition authority (FCA) said today it has rejected calls by IAB France, MMAF, SRI and UDECAM […]

Riva, founded by scientist Tuhin Sinha and Siri co-founder Dag Kittlaus, wants to help people measure their blood pressure in a clinically-approved way. Blood pressure can help indicate at-risk patients before they are actually at risk, showing early signs of heart disease. And while other hardware solutions on the market promise the same end-goal, Riva […]

Arrival, the UK electric vehicle startup that will soon be a publicly traded company, plans to build a second microfactory in the United States. The announcement comes several months after Arrival picked Charlotte, North Carolina for its North American headquarters. This new microfactory will be located in West Charlotte near the airport and about 32 […]

We're checking in on the price investors paid for a block of Olo shares before it began trading and will look into the latest numbers in Coinbase's new S-1/A filing

Google earlier this year announced an update to Google Maps to help people find Covid-19 vaccination sites nearby, and now Apple is doing the same. Apple device owners can either ask Siri or search within Apple Maps to find nearby Covid-19 vaccine providers within the U.S., the company says. These results will include key information, […]

One of the biggest gripes about investing apps is that they are not acting responsibly by not educating users properly and allegedly letting them fend for themselves. This can result in people losing a lot of money, as evidenced by the number of lawsuits against Robinhood. Today, an eight-year-old company that has been focused on […]

When we think about getting access to an application, we tend to focus on the authentication side — granting or denying people (or devices) entry. But there is another piece to this, and that’s authorization. This is related to what you can do once you are inside the application, and Oso, an early stage startup, […]

LA and Bangalore-based space startup Pixxel has closed a $7.3 million seed round, including newly committed capital from Techstars, Omnivore VC and more. The company has also announced a new product focus: Hyperspectral imaging. It aims to provide that imaging at the highest resolution commercially available, via a small satellite constellation that will provide 24-hour, […]

 Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a single topic, or theme. This is our sweet spot: going beyond definitions and into the dirty and deep impact of how a phenomenon could […]

Facebook this morning announced it will increase the penalties against its rule-breaking Facebook Groups and their members, alongside other changes designed to reduce the visibility of groups’ potentially harmful content. The company says it will now remove civic and political groups from its recommendations in markets outside the U.S., and will further restrict the reach […]

Clubhouse, the buzzy but still invite only social audio app that’s popular with the Silicon Valley technorati, is being investigated by France’s privacy watchdog. The CNIL announced today it’s opened an investigation into Clubhouse following a complaint and after it got some initial responses back from Alpha Exploration Co., the U.S.-based company behind the app. […]

Copy.ai, a startup building AI-powered copywriting tools for business customers, announced a $2.9 million round this morning. The investment was led by Craft Ventures. Other investors took part in the deal, including smaller checks from Li Jin’s newly-formed Atelier Ventures, and Sequoia. The startup is notable for a few reasons. First for its model of […]

Victories notwithstanding, the 2020 election blew up many of the assumptions Democrats have long held about the American electorate.In Florida, Arizona and elsewhere, Latino voters broke for Trump in unexpected numbers, upending conventional wisdom that the growing Spanish-speaking population will reliably vote the same way — and vote blue. Polling again failed to capture contours […]

Stack Overflow is the default Q&A site for programmers (though the overall Stack Exchange network goes well beyond helping you answer your basic PHP questions). But over the course of the last year and a half, with its new CEO Prashanth Chandrasekar coming on board, the company has also kickstarted its SaaS business with a […]

Policybazaar has raised $75 million as the Indian online insurance platform looks to expand its presence in UAE and Middle East. Sarbvir Singh, chief executive of PolicyBazaar, told TechCrunch that the startup had raised $75 million, but didn’t elaborate. Falcon Edge Capital led the new tranche of investment in the Indian startup, which has raised […]

Investors often say they don’t just invest in products, but in the right teams to solve a particular problem. With Steady, Adam Roseman built the platform based on his own personal experience. His father hadn’t saved enough for retirement and needed to work part-time. Steady is a platform that helps people find flexible jobs quickly, […]

For the first time, Pinduoduo has surpassed Alibaba in annual active users, marking the Chinese e-commerce upstart’s meteoric rise over the course of five years. The milestone also indicates Pinduoduo has overcome the early stereotype that it was an app for users in China’s less developed, low-tier cities. Pinduoduo made its name by removing intermediary […]

Back in December, Swell Energy said it would be raising $450 million to support the development of distributed power projects in three states. Now, with the announcement of a deal between the venture-backed startup and New York City’s utility, ConEd, industry watchers can get a glimpse of what those projects may look like. The Los […]

Unagi, the startup behind the portable, design-centric electric scooters, is launching its subscription service to six more U.S. cities in an expansion fueled by $10.5 million in funding. The startup, launched in late 2018 by former Beats Music CEO David Hyman and Mog co-founder, said Wednesday it is bringing its subscription service to Austin, Miami, […]