Crunch Hype

Earlybird Digital East Fund — a fund associated with Germany’s Earlybird VC, but operating separately — has launched a €200m ($242m) successor fund. The fund’s focus will remain the same as before: a Seed and Series-A fund focusing on what’s known as ‘Emerging Europe’, in other words, countries stretching from the Baltics to Central and […]

There are over 1.7 billion underbanked people globally, the majority of which are from emerging markets. For them, accessing loans can be difficult, which is a problem fintechs try to solve. One way they do this is by promoting financial inclusion by underwriting credit via a proprietary algorithm. One such company is FairMoney, which describes […]

The advance of short videos is reshaping how information is created, disseminated and consumed online. Snappy 15-second videos aren’t just for entertainment. On Chinese short-video apps Douyin and Kuaishou, people can get their daily dose of news, learn to cook, practice English, hunt for jobs, and seek practically any type of information from the platforms’ […]

Despite efforts from companies to create equitable environments, it’s clear that employees of a certain demographics, like Black women, sometimes have very different experiences from their counterparts. Glassdoor aims to better surface those experiences through a new feature that allows folks to filter ratings by demographics. Up until now, Glassdoor only presented an overall ranking […]

If you’ve ever tried to hop on the bus in San Francisco and were bummed to find that Apple Pay wasn’t an option (unlike in New York, Beijing, and plenty of other major cities): good news! That’s changing. Apple has announced that support for Clipper (the payment system for BART, Muni, Caltrain, AC Transit, and […]

As part of the grant-making associated with the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Infrastructure for Rebuilding America program, the agency will for the first time carve out some of that program’s $889 million budget for projects addressing climate change and environmental justice. The projects will be evaluated on whether they were planned as part of a […]

Facebook plays hardball in Australia, Epic Games expands its fight against Apple and New York’s attorney general sues Amazon. This is your Daily Crunch for February 17, 2021. The big story: Facebook cuts off news-sharing in Australia In response to a proposed law forcing internet platforms to pay news publishers directly, Facebook announced today that […]

Artie, a startup looking to rethink the distribution of mobile games, announced today that it has raised $10 million in funding. There are some big names backing the company — its latest investors include Zynga founder Mark Pincus, Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman’s Thirty Five Ventures, Scooter Braun’s Raised In Space, Shutterstock founder Jon Oringer, […]

The beauty of podcasting is that anyone can do it. It’s a rare medium that’s nearly as easy to make as it is to consume. And as such, no two people do it exactly the same way. There are a wealth of hardware and software solutions open to potential podcasters, so setups run the gamut […]

Google has suspended the Trump 2020 campaign app from the Google Play Store for policy violations, the company confirmed, following a report from Android Police which noted the app was unable to load any content and appeared to have been taken down. Both the Android version of the app and its iOS counterpart have been […]

Is there anything specific to SPACs that makes them a better route for edtech companies than a traditional IPO or direct listing?

Like corporate financial accounting, the power grid never draws headlines when things are going well. No journalist writes “The power remains on,” or discusses the extensive work it takes to maintain the grid. Instead, it takes a record-breaking ice wave to knock out power to one of the largest states in America for it to […]

Google today introduced a suite of updates for its online education tools whose adoption and further development have been accelerated by the pandemic, including Google Classroom, Google Meet and the next generation of G Suite for Education, now rebranded as Google Workspace for Education. In total, Google is promising more than 50 new features across […]

Jeff Chen has a pithy pitch for his new startup Taste: “We made the Instagram of nice food.” In other words, just as Instagram made it easy for regular smartphone users to look like talented photographers, Taste makes it easy for customers to prepare impressive meals at home. That’s because the real preparation is being […]

Australian Facebook users will be forced to go elsewhere to read news after the company announced Wednesday that they will be restricting users in the country from sharing or viewing news links on the platform. The drastic move follows the debate on proposed legislation from the Australian government that seeks to push internet platforms — […]

A security lapse by a Jamaican government contractor has exposed immigration records and COVID-19 test results for hundreds of thousands of travelers who visited the island over the past year. The Jamaican government contracted Amber Group to build the JamCOVID19 website and app, which the government uses to publish daily coronavirus figures and allows residents […]

When you’re just starting out building your company, there’s obviously a lot that can go wrong. Especially if you’re a first-time founder (but even if you’re an experienced serial entrepreneur), it can be hard to spot the potential pitfalls that might lead you astray before you even really get rolling. That’s why we’re thrilled to […]

The Atlanta area is getting a new incubator for startups working with 5G technology courtesy of T-Mobile and Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, the companies announced today. It’s an expansion of the T-Mobile Accelerator program and part of the big carrier’s efforts to boost 5G innovation. Located in the Atlanta adjacent exurb of Peachtree […]

Massachusetts-based Locus Robotics today announced a $150 million Series E. The round, led by Tiger Global Management and Bond, brings the firm’s total to around $250 to date, and values the robotics company at $1 billion. Locus is notable for a more modular and flexible solution for automating warehouses than many of its competitors (see: […]

We’re only two weeks away from TC Sessions: Justice 2021, a virtual conference focused on making diversity, equity, inclusion and labor as integral to tech as data, software engineers, startups and venture capital. Join your global community on March 3 for a day packed with presentations, panel discussions and fireside chats with the top social […]

Gravy, a startup helping subscription-based businesses recover failed payments, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding for its specialized combination of technology and a human workspace that works to reacquire customers lost to what’s known as “involuntary churn.” That means the customer didn’t choose to end their subscription, but — for any one of […]

The solution to the world’s climate change problems could be under our feet. But you can’t manage something until you can measure it, and that’s where Yard Stick comes in.

Blockchain.com has announced that it has raised a $120 million funding round. The company develops a popular cryptocurrency wallet as well as an exchange, an explorer and more. Moore Strategic Ventures, Kyle Bass, Access Industries, Rovida Advisors, Lightspeed Venture Partners, GV, Lakestar, Eldridge and other unnamed investors participated in today’s funding round. Overall, the company […]

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: How […]

Boldstart Ventures, a New York-based firm that started with a $1.5 million proof-of-concept fund in 2011, has just closed on $155 million in capital commitments for its fifth flagship fund and $75 million for its second opportunity fund, a vehicle meant to support breakout startups in its portfolio. Given Boldstart’s focus — and its track […]

SpaceX has raised a fresh round of funding, totalling $850 million, per a new report by CNBC, citing sources “familiar” with the matter. The new capital brings the total valuation of the company, which is still privately-held, to around $74 billion according to the report. This is a massive round, by most standards – but […]

Ford today announced a new strategy for the European market that aims the automaker at primarily only selling electric vehicles by 2030. To do so, Ford intends to spend $1 billion to revamp a factory in Cologne, Germany, where it will produce EVs using a Volkswagen platform. The first production vehicle from the updated factory […]

An influential India trader group that represents tens of millions of brick-and-mortar retailers called New Delhi to ban Amazon in the country after a report claimed that the American e-commerce group had given preferential treatment to a small group of sellers in India, publicly misrepresented its ties with those sellers, and used them to circumvent […]

Uber has been accused of downplaying its influence over working conditions in the gig economy after the ride-hailing giant published a white paper earlier this week in which it lobbied for a ‘Prop 22’ style deregulation of Europe’s labor laws. Fairwork, an academic research project that benchmarks gig platforms against a set of fairness principles […]

The only people who truly understand a relationship are the ones who are in it. Luckily for us, we’re going to have a candid conversation with both parties in the relationship between Ironclad CEO and co-founder Jason Boehmig and his investor and board member Accel partner Steve Loughlin. Loughlin led Ironclad’s Series A deal back […]

Dapr, the Microsoft-incubated open-source project that aims to make it easier for developers to build event-driven, distributed cloud-native applications, hit its 1.0 milestone today, signifying the project’s readiness for production use cases. Microsoft launched the Distributed Application Runtime (that’s what “Dapr” stand for) back in October 2019. Since then, the project released 14 updates and […]

When there’s a need for capital, not every startup goes the venture route. Boast.ai, a company that plugs into business systems and automatically finds them R&D tax breaks, announced Wednesday it has raised a $100 million credit facility from Brevet Capital to advance those R&D incentives. And proptech startup States Title announced it has closed […]

As startups get more broad and stay private longer, the space into which VCs can invest may narrow.

“Mining” has become synonymous with crypto the past few years in the tech industry, what with Bitcoin piercing the $50,000 barrier and GPUs and ASICs worldwide scrambling to hash functions in a bid for distributed crypto manna. That excitement belies an increasingly energetic push though to bring VC dollars and entrepreneurial acumen back to Mining […]

If we could teleport back in time to relaunch social media platforms with the goal of minimizing the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories from the outset … what would they look like?

Aeye, a lidar startup that developed its technology for use in autonomous vehicles as well as to support advanced driver assistance systems in passenger cars, is going public through a merger with CF Finance Acquisition Corp. III that will value the company at $2 billion. The agreement marks the latest lidar company to turn to […]

New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon failed to provide adequate safety health and safety measures in two New York facilities, and that it unlawfully disciplined and fired employees who complained. James opened an investigation into Amazon in March of last year, which her office says initially focused on conditions […]

There will be one more robot on Mars tomorrow afternoon. The Perseverance rover will touch down just before 1:00 Pacific, beginning a major new expedition to the planet and kicking off a number of experiments — from a search for traces of life to the long-awaited Martian helicopter. Here’s what you can expect from Perseverance […]

New Space startup Astra, which is currently focused on commercial rockets, but which plans to eventually build satellites, too, has hired one of Apple’s key engineering leaders to head its own engineering efforts. Benjamin Lyon spent over two decades at Apple, where he worked on everything from the iPhone, to input devices and sensor hardware, […]

ExOne this week announced that the U.S. Department of Defense has granted it $1.6 million. It’s one of the Pennsylvania-based metal 3D printing company’s largest government contracts, in service of building a portable 3D printing factory for the front line – essentially a method for troops to fabricate broken and missing parts where the need […]

The day before Robinhood goes under the the Congressional hammer, domestic rival Public.com announced this morning that it has closed a $220 million funding round at a $1.2 billion valuation. News of the round was first broken by TechCrunch. Further reporting colored in the lines concerning the investment’s size and valuation range. Confirming the funding […]

This morning Ally.io, a software startup with a focus on the OKR (objectives and key results, in case you’ve somehow avoided being exposed) goal-setting technique, announced that it has closed $50 million in new capital. The Series C round was led by Green Oaks Capital, Madrona Capital, and its Series B lead, Tiger Global. Ally […]

Drivers throughout the United States will now have the option to pay for street parking right from Google Maps as part of an expanded partnership with transportation software companies Passport and Parkmobile. Google also announced it was extending this contactless payment feature to public transit users. Google Maps’ pay for parking feature will expand first […]

This morning OutSystems, a low-code app development service, announced that it has closed $150 million in new capital. The round was led by Abdiel Capital and Tiger Global. Notably this is not the largest funding event that the Portugal and U.S.-based software company has raised. TechCrunch covered a $360 million round that OutSystems raised in […]

YouTube has a host of big product updates coming this year, and it just detailed a lot of them in a blog post from Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan. Google’s streaming video site plans to expand its TikTok-esque Shorts mobile video creation and consumption tool to the U.S. (it’s currently in beta in India), make […]

Amazon’s Day 1 Edition program pulled back the curtain ever-so-slightly on the company’s hardware development process. The initial class featured its Echo Frames smart glasses and Loop smart ring. Based on early user feedback, the company only opted to continue production on the former. But it takes the idea even further. The program is akin […]

Grafana Labs has created an open source observability trifecta that includes Prometheus for monitoring, Loki for logging and Tempo for tracing. Today, the company announced it was releasing enterprise versions of these open source projects in a unified stack designed specifically for the needs of large companies. Company CEO Raj Dutt says that this product […]

Edgybees, a company that helps businesses, first responders and military users accurately geotag and augment their aerial video streams in real time, today announced that it has raised a $9.5 million Series A round. The news comes almost exactly two years after the company announced its $5.5 million seed round. Seraphim Capital, which specializes in […]

There’s a low energy solution to home heating and cooling sitting right underneath most houses, but until recently no one has been able to tap it. That solution is geothermal energy, using the earth’s own heat to provide temperature controlled comfort to homeowners is the mission that Kathy Hannun set for herself while working at […]

TigerGraph, a well-funded enterprise startup that provides a graph database and analytics platform, today announced that it has raised a $105 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Tiger Global and brings the company’s total funding to over $170 million. “TigerGraph is leading the paradigm shift in connecting and analyzing data via […]