Crunch Hype

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You […]

This morning Creatio, a Boston-based software company, announced that it has raised $68 million. Volition Capital, a growth-equity fund, led the round. The deal was a minority investment in the startup. The deal is notable not merely thanks to its sheer size, but because up until today Creatio had bootstrapped. That’s according to founder and […]

As live audio chat app Clubhouse ascends in popularity around the world, concerns about its data practices also grow. The app is currently only available on iOS, so some developers set out in a race to create Android, Windows and Mac versions of the service. While these endeavors may not be ill-intentioned, the fact that […]

After online dating’s tremendous 2020 growth that culminated in last week’s epic Bumble IPO, a new entrant has tossed its hat into the dating app ring. Snack, founded by Kimberly Kaplan, looks to merge the popularity and format of TikTok with the dating world. Kaplan hails from Plenty of Fish, where she was one of […]

Identifying and supporting anti-champions during the sales cycle helps enterprise software startups close more deals.

Nanit’s nursery camera pairs computer vision with specially-patterned clothing to help answer the question that most new parents ask themselves roughly every 90 seconds: “Is my baby still breathing?” This morning the company is announcing that it has raised an additional $25 million in a Series C round led by GV. As part of the […]

Retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient and better at withstanding climate change induced extreme weather is going to be a big, multi-billion dollar business. But it’s one that’s been hard for low-income communities to tap, thanks to obstacles ranging faulty incentive structures to an inability to adequately plan for which upgrades will be […]

Netflix today is launching a new feature that aims to bring more offline content to users who opt in automatic downloads. With “Downloads for You” enabled, the Netflix app will download recommended TV shows and movies to your mobile device based on your tastes, as determined by your Netflix watch history. After turning on the […]

David Baga is going to be getting a new paycheck, which is fitting all things considered. Even, an “on-demand pay” startup that ‘evens’ out paychecks for workers to give them financial stability and flexibility, will announce later this morning that Baga is joining the company as its new CEO effective March 1, replacing co-founder and […]

SpaceX is now in the business of flying people to space, and if all goes to plan, it’ll be the first to provide a trip for a crew made up entirely of private space tourists later this year. Now, we know who will join billionaire and Shift4Payments founder Jason Isaacman on that trip – St. […]

Gophr, a U.K.-based last-mile delivery provider, has raised £4 million in funding, as it looks to invest in its product off the back of 300% revenue growth during the last 12 months. Leading the round is pan-European B2B investor Nauta Capital. The company had previously raised £1 million in two rounds, including £500,000 from publicly-listed […]

Vertical marketplaces continue to be a key lynchpin in the digital economy, a centralized place where people providing certain goods or services can connect with those specifically looking to buy them, a position that has, it seems, become even more prominent and in-demand in our pandemic economy. In line with that trend, today a startup […]

Despite the market impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investing is increasing in Indonesia, especially among people aged 18 to 30. Today, investment platform FUNDtastic announced it has raised a $7.7 million Series A to tap into that demand, with plans to launch new products for retail investors, reports DealStreetAsia. The round was led by […]

Twitter recently held talks to acquire Indian social media startup ShareChat as the company explored ways to expand its presence in the world’s second largest internet market and build a global rival to TikTok, three sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The American firm, which is already an investor in Bangalore-based ShareChat, offered to […]

“Ten years in, TransferWise is now Wise,” screams the press release that landed in my in-box late last week. The fintech giant, most recently valued by private investors at $5 billion, is re-branding ahead of an expected IPO. Of course, the company doesn’t actually make reference to a public listing — for regulatory reasons, it […]

Zhou Yuxiang doesn’t have the typical profile for working in China’s manufacturing world. A soft-spoken yet incisive person in his early thirties, Zhou graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in government and went on to work in investment banking in Hong Kong, following the path of many Chinese overseas returnees. But a few years […]

It turns out the most important decision made was not the vote to choose (and remove) in the election but Twitter’s permanent banning of the former President from the social network. Suddenly the temperature cooled, the new administration engaged with the details of vaccine rollout, and the second impeachment trial ended with an expected outcome. […]

You’ve landed on the web version of the weekly Human Capital newsletter. Sign up here to get this in your inbox every Friday at 1 p.m. Welcome back to Human Capital. A lot happened this week pertaining to on-demand companies like Uber, Postmates, DoorDash and Instacart, and their respective gig workforces. Meanwhile, New York’s attorney general […]

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. Ready? Let’s talk money, startups and spicy IPO rumors. Can data fix healthcare? Not alone, but […]

After garnering an estimated 8 million downloads since its launch, Clubhouse’s popularity continues across the world and even outside of its original tech-focused seed community. The latest news comes from East Asia, where Korean media reported this morning that the country’s current prime minister, Chung Sye-kyun, has officially joined the social audio app under the […]

Community isn’t a single Slack group or event or newsletter. It’s an aggregation of all of these touch points, and includes both customers, eventual customers and one-time users. Despite this nebulous, disconnected reality, companies are paying more attention to various channels as remote work and digital communication powers our days. My recent tweet underscored the […]

Your enjoyment of “Ted Lasso” — a sports comedy that debuted on Apple TV+ last year — will probably depend on how you respond to the titular football coach played by Jason Sudeikis. As we discuss on the latest episode of the Original Content podcast, the show’s setup is deliberately over-the-top and ridiculous with Rebecca […]

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]

Another week and the biggest story in a sea of big stories continues to center on SPACs, these blank-check companies that raise capital through IPOs expressly to acquire a privately held company and take it public. But some industry watchers as starting to wonder: Is the party just getting started, with more early guests still […]

Uber loses a legal battle over driver classification, we survey mobility investors and new data suggests a COVID-19 vaccine should be easier to transport. This is your Daily Crunch for February 19, 2021. The big story: Uber loses UK legal challenge The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has reaffirmed earlier rulings that the Uber drivers who […]

Google has fired Margaret Mitchell, the founder and former co-lead of the company’s ethical AI team. Mitchell announced the news via a tweet. Google confirmed Mitchell’s firing in a statement to TechCrunch; Google said: After conducting a review of this manager’s conduct, we confirmed that there were multiple violations of our code of conduct, as […]

Thanks very much for reading Extra Crunch this week!

WhatsApp said earlier this week that it will allow users to review its planned privacy update at “their own pace” and will display a banner to better explain the changes in its terms. But what happens to its users who do not accept the terms by the May 15 deadline? In an email to one […]

Brex is the latest fintech to apply for a bank charter. The fast-growing company, which sells a credit card tailored for startups with Emigrant Bank currently acting as the issuer, announced Friday that it has submitted an application with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions (UDFI) to establish […]

In 2017, Ironclad founder and CEO Jason Boehmig was looking to raise a Series A. As a former lawyer, Boehmig had a specific process for fundraising and an ultimate goal of finding the right investors for his company. Part of Boehmig’s process was to ask people in the San Francisco Bay Area about their favorite […]

Austin is known for its usually mild winters. But on February 12, a winter storm hit the state — leading to over a week of freezing temperatures. This has resulted in a statewide disaster with millions of Texas residents losing power or water, or both. It’s too early to tell the exact toll this has […]

The Perseverance Mars rover landed safely yesterday, but only after a series of complex maneuvers as it descended at high speed through the atmosphere, known by the team as the “seven minutes of terror.” NASA has just shared a hair-raising image of the rover as it dangled from its jetpack above the Martian landscape, making […]

Tracy Chou’s resume is impressive. She interned at RocketFuel, Google and Facebook before becoming a software engineer at Quora and Pinterest. She is also a major advocate for diversity within the tech industry, launching Project Include in 2016. Now, she’s the founder and CEO of Block Party, a platform aimed at making people feel safer […]

The last year has been one of financial hardship for billions, and among the specific hardships is the elementary one of paying for utilities, taxes and other government fees — the systems for which are rarely set up for easy or flexible payment. Promise aims to change that by integrating with official payment systems and […]

Providing real value through content is an excellent way to build authority in the short and long term. The key is figuring out the best route for your investment.

We’re less than two weeks away from TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a day-long deep dive into the state of diversity, inclusion and equity in tech. March 3 is your opportunity to hear from and engage with the people who, through entrepreneurship, venture capital, labor organizing and advocacy, are both using and challenging tech to disrupt […]

Nearpod, the Miami-based edtech company, is being acquired by Renaissance Holding Corp., a group that develops education technology. While Nearpod isn’t announcing the news until later this month, the information leaked to Yahoo! Finance yesterday, and a source inside the company confirmed the sale with TechCrunch this morning. The acquisition price and further details have […]

Just because there are no shortcuts to startup success doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel. At TechCrunch Early Stage 2021, a virtual bootcamp experience in two distinct parts, you’ll learn from leading experts across the startup spectrum — including prominent founders ready to share their personal experiences and hard-won advice to help you […]

Big Tech has written the playbook for what not to do with our data, while also laying a framework for how to build exceptional experiences.

We’re excited to announce another terrific panel for our stacked TechCrunch Early Stage event on April 1 & 2. Marlon Nichols will be joining us to discuss securing seed funding. Nichols is intimately acquainted with the topic — as a founding managing partner of MaC Venture Capital (nee Cross Culture Ventures), he has been involved […]

The COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech now has less stringent and extreme transportation requirements than when it debuted. Originally, the mRNA-based vaccine had to be maintained at ultra-low temperatures throughout the transportation chain in order to remain viable — between -76°F and -112°F. New stability data collected by Pfizer and BioNTech, which has […]

"Transportation is important to basically all people and is a real mess, so it will likely continue to be a hot topic and a source of investor interest for years to come."

Borrowing a term from the casino trade, these whales generate the bulk of the company's revenue stream.

As of 2019, the majority of venture firms — 65% — still did not have a single female partner or GP at their firm, according to All Raise. So naturally, anytime we hear of a new female-led fund, our ears perk up. Today, New York-based Avid Ventures announced the launch of its $68 million debut […]

SailPoint, an identity management company that went public in 2017, announced it was going to be acquiring Intello today, an early stage SaaS management startup. The two companies did not share the purchase price. SailPoint believes that by helping its customers locate all of the SaaS tools being used inside a company, it can help […]

A new study underway at Toronto’s University Health Network (UHN), a group of working research hospitals in the city, could shift our approach to treatment in an area of growing concern in human health. The study, led by Dr. Heather Ross, will investigate whether the Apple Watch can provide early warnings about potentially worsening health […]

Podimo, the Copenhagen-founded subscription service for short form audio stories and podcasts, has raised an additional €11.2 million in funding. The round is led by Chr. Augustinus investment fund, and comes just 8 months after announcing its €15 million Series A. Existing investors, and the Spanish VC Aldea Opportunity Fund also participated. Founded in 2019, […]

Podcast advertising company Acast is announcing that it has acquired RadioPublic, the startup that spun out of public radio marketplace PRX in 2016. At first, RadioPublic’s main product was a mobile app for podcast listening, and it still supports the app. But co-founder and Chief Product Officer Matt MacDonald said that over time, the team’s […]

Antler is an early-stage venture capital firm which can also be described as a “company builder.” It helps founders build complementary co-founding teams, provides support with deep business model validation and a global platform for scaling their businesses. To date, Antler has invested in and helped build over 250 companies. Of these companies, 40% have at […]

Uber has lost a long running employment tribunal challenge in the UK’s Supreme Court — with the court dismissing the ride-hailing giant’s appeal and reaffirming earlier rulings that drivers who brought the case are workers, not independent contractors. The case, which dates back to 2016, has major ramifications for Uber’s business model (and other gig […]