Crunch Hype

I asked a group of VCs about their approach to mobile content investing and whether new platforms were changing perspectives about mobile-first and desktop-first experiences.

Apple today announced a new editorial franchise called Apple Podcasts Spotlight, which aims to highlight rising podcast creators in the U.S. The editorial team at Apple will select new podcast creators to feature every month and then give them prominent screen real estate in the Apple Podcasts app and promote them across social media and […]

Like so many other subjects, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought concerns about the gig economy and contract workers into sharp focus over the past year, which is why we’ll be diving into this topic at TC Sessions: Justice on March 3. From food delivery services like Seamless to warehouse and fulfillment jobs at places […]

Northzone‘s new partner Wendy Xiao Schadeck isn’t new to the firm — she actually joined back in 2015. Before entering the venture world, Schadeck co-founded co-working and childcare startup CoHatchery. As a Northzone principal, she’s already been involved in the firm’s investments in Spring Health (mental health), 3box (cloud infrastructure), Livepeer (blockchain-based video transcoding) and Magic.link […]

Last year, ViacomCBS announced its CBS All Access streaming service would soon rebrand as Paramount+, to better reflect the expanded content lineup following the Viacom-CBS merger in 2019. Today, the company says it has set a launch date for Paramount+ in the U.S.: March 4, 2021. It’s also sharing the launch dates for other international […]

Rivian has raised $2.65 billion as it prepares to begin production this summer of its all-electric pickup truck. The round, which was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc., also included Fidelity Management and Research Company, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, Coatue and D1 Capital Partners as well as several other […]

Despite a pandemic that sparked a global recession, 2020 was still a record year for venture capital investments into American startups.

Citrix announced today that it plans to acquire Wrike, a SaaS project management platform, from Vista Equity Partners for $2.25 billion. Vista bought the company just two years ago. Citrix, which is best known for its digital workspaces, sees this as a good match, especially at a time where employees have been forced to work […]

WeChat continues to advance its shopping ambitions as the social networking app turns 10 years old. The Chinese messenger facilitated 1.6 trillion yuan (close to $250 billion) in annual transactions through its “mini programs,” third-party services that run on the super app that allow users to buy clothes, order food, hail taxis and more. That […]

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday Tuesday, 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. […]

Vise, a fintech firm that focuses on helping financial advisors rather than automating them out of existence, has today announced that its bringing on Andrew Fong as its Chief Technology Officer. Fong hails from Dropbox, where he served as VP of Infrastructure Engineering. He actually started out as a Site Reliability Engineer at Dropbox back […]

Three of the leading exam proctoring companies are facing calls to be more transparent, amid continued claims of bias by students forced to take remote exams because of the ongoing pandemic. Exam proctoring tech lets students take remotely invigilated tests from home. Students are told to install their university’s choice of proctoring software, which allows […]

When a system outage happens, chaos can ensue as the team tries to figure out what’s happening and how to fix it. StackPulse, a new startup that wants to help developers manage these crisis situations more efficiently, emerged from stealth today with a $28 million investment. The round actually breaks down to a previously unannounced […]

University education is getting more expensive, and at the moment it feels a bit like a petrie dish for infections, but the long-term trends continue to show a dramatic growth in the number of people worldwide getting degrees beyond high school, with one big reason for this being that a college degree generally provides better […]

Cruise has raised $2 billion in a new equity round that has pushed its valuation up to $30 billion and delivered Microsoft as an investor and partner. GM, Honda and other institutional investors have also put more capital into Cruise as the autonomous vehicle company inches closer to commercializing its technology. While Microsoft’s capital is […]

LatticeFlow, an AI startup that was spun out of ETH Zurich in 2020, today announced that it has raised a $2.8 million seed funding round led by Swiss deep-tech fund btov and Global Founders Capital, which previously backed the likes of Revolut, Slack and Zalando. The general idea behind LatticeFlow is to build tools that […]

Portland, Oregon-based Conversa Health, a virtual care and communication platform that helps health organizations stay in touch with their patients and customers, today announced that it has expanded its Series B funding round from $12 million to $20 million. The round is still co-led by Builders VC and Northwell Health’s venture arm Northwell Ventures. Additional […]

K Health, the virtual health care provider that uses machine learning to lower the cost of care by providing the bulk of the company’s health assessments, is launching new tools for childcare on the heels of raising cash that values the company at $1.5 billion. The $132 million round raised in December will help the […]

The pandemic has hastened a shift of most commerce becoming e-commerce in the last year, and that has brought a new focus on startups that are helping to enable that process. In the latest development, PPRO, a London-based startup that has built a platform to make it easier for marketplaces, payment providers and other e-commerce […]

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our <a href=”https://forms.gle/k4Ji2Ch7zdrn7o2p6”>survey of VCs in Athens, Greece will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Greece’s startup scene is evolving, […]

India has asked WhatsApp to withdraw the planned change to its privacy policy, posing a new headache to Facebook-owned service that identifies the South Asian nation as its biggest market by users. In an email to WhatsApp head Will Cathcart, the nation’s IT ministry said the upcoming update to the app’s data-sharing policy has raised […]

Spain’s Glovo, an on-demand delivery app, has announced a strategic partnership with Swiss-based real estate firm, Stoneweg. The deal will see the latter invest €100M in building and refurbishing “prime city real estate” in some of Glovo’s key markets as the delivery app works to build out its network of dark stores and sign up […]

A startup based out of San Diego and Taipei is quietly nailing fundings and deals from some of the biggest names in electronics. Kneron, which specializes in energy-efficient processors for edge artificial intelligence, just raised a strategic funding round from Taiwan’s manufacturing giant Foxconn and integrated circuit producer Winbond. The deal came a year after […]

Google is writing check to another startup in India. The Android-maker, which last year unveiled a $10 billion fund to invest in the world’s second largest internet market, said on Tuesday that it is participating in a $40 million investment round of hyperlocal delivery startup Dunzo, a Bangalore-based firm that it has also previously backed. […]

French startup Alan is generating 100% of its revenue from health insurance products — and that isn’t going to change. But the company wants to start a conversation with a bigger use base. Alan is going to launch multiple mobile apps that let you learn more about health topics, contact a doctor and chat with […]

Tencent’s WeChat Pay and Alibaba’s affiliate Alipay have long dominated digital payments in China, but they have always faced new challengers. The latest entrant in online payments is Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version. The short video app recently added “Douyin Pay” to its list of existing payment options, which have included Alipay and WeChat Pay. “The […]

Skyqraft, the Swedish startup using AI and drones for electricity powerline inspection, has raised $2.2 million in seed funding, capital it will use to further develop its technology and expand its operations in Europe and in the U.S. Leading the seed round is Subvenio Invest, with participation from pre-seed backer Antler, Next Human Ventures, and […]

French startup LeoCare has raised a €15 million funding round. Felix Capital, Ventech and Daphni are participating in today’s funding round. The company is selling a portfolio of insurance products with a focus on the signup process and user experience. You can control your insurance products from a mobile app. Chances are you already pay […]

Once overlooked, agritech startups are beginning to have a moment in India. On Tuesday, DeHaat, an online platform that offers full-stack agricultural services to farmers, said it has raised $30 million in a new financing round as the Indian firm looks to maintain its accelerated growth despite the pandemic. Prosus Ventures, formerly known as Naspers […]

Darwinbox, which operates a cloud-based human resource management platform, has raised $15 million in a new financing round as the Indian startup looks to further expand in the country and Southeast Asian markets. The new round — a Series C — for the Hyderabad-headquartered startup was led by Salesforce Ventures, the venture arm of the […]

Volopay, a Singapore-based startup building a “financial control center” for businesses, announced today it has raised $2.1 million in seed funding. The round was led by Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen, and included participation from Soma Capital, CP Ventures, Y Combinator, VentureSouq, the founders of Razorpay, Antler and other angel investors. The funding will be used […]

The best thing about 2020 is we survived it. No need to say what the worst thing is, it’s hands down our collective stupidity in the choices we’ve made. That reality has forced us to refactor what we do moving forward. If we had correctly understood the massive changes ahead, we would not be wondering […]

The idea for Capsule started with a tweet about reinventing social media. A day later cryptography researcher, Nadim Kobeissi — best known for authoring the open-source E2E-encrypted desktop chat app Cryptocat (now discontinued) — had pulled in a pre-seed investment of $100,000 for his lightweight mesh-networked microservices concept, with support coming from angel investor and former […]

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every weekend in your inbox. Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to […]

TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe and their cities. Our survey of VCs in Bucharest and Romania will capture how the country is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We’d like to know how Romania’s startup scene is evolving, […]

Shifting consumer demands within beauty and retail are creating rich opportunities for U.S.-based beauty/consumer tech SaaS companies.

"Now, you know, we did six acquisitions in 2019. I don't know if we'll do six acquisitions in 2021. But I want to do a lot more than one acquisition in 2021."

Virgin Orbit scored a major success on Sunday, with a test flight that not only achieved its goals of reaching space and orbit, but also of delivering payloads on board for NASA, marking its first commercial mission, too. The launch was a success in every possible regard, which puts Virgin Orbit on track to become […]

A long-running investigation in the European Union focused on the transparency of data-sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp has taken the first major step toward a resolution. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) confirmed Saturday it sent a draft decision to fellow EU DPAs toward the back end of last year. This will trigger a review process […]

India’s answer to WhatsApp has completely moved on from messaging. Hike Messenger, backed by Tencent, Tiger Global and SoftBank and valued at $1.4 billion in 2016, earlier this month announced that it was shutting down StickerChat, its messaging app. (StickerChat users saw notifications about it late last week.) The startup, founded by Kavin Bharti Mittal, […]

For several years there has been talk about how to leverage “experts” online. How do you “suck their brains” for information in an efficient manner, whether it be for research into companies or sectors, often for investment purposes. Major players in this arena include GLG, Third Bridge, Guidepoint and Alphasights. With the pandemic destroying many […]

Samsung Electronics vice chairman Jay Y. Lee is back in prison following a retrial of his 2017 conviction in a bribery case that helped lead to the downfall of former South Korean president Park Guen-hye. The Seoul High Court sentenced Lee to 30 months on Monday. Lee was originally convicted of bribery in 2017 and […]

Goama (also known as Go Games) lets developers quickly integrate social games into their apps. Some of Goama’s clients have used it for promotional campaigns, while others rely on the platform, which introduces new games every week, to add a full-fledged gaming function to their app. The startup, which recently took part in SOSV’s accelerator […]

Five years after its launch, Twitter Moments is growing beyond the American social networking platform. On Monday, Twitter said it had partnered with Dailyhunt to bring Moments to the Indian social app. Dailyhunt app now has a dedicated tab called ‘Twitter Moments India’ to showcase curated tweets pertaining to news and other events in the […]

Flipkart on Monday launched SuperCoin Pay that its customers will be able to use across thousands of retail stores across the country as Walmart-owned e-commerce giant bets on its loyalty program to win and sustain its user base in the world’s second largest internet market. The Bangalore-headquartered e-commerce giant said it had partnered with over […]

With the last year changing how (and where) many of us work, organizations have started to rethink how well they manage their employees, and what tools they use to do that. Today, one of the startups that is building technology to address this challenge is announcing a major round of funding that underscores its traction […]

The COVID-19 pandemic shined a harsh spotlight on the challenges many elderly people face. Older adults are among the highest-risk groups for developing cases that need hospitalization and nursing homes were especially vulnerable to outbreaks. While dealing with COVID-19, the elderly have also faced many other problems, including the difficulty of accessing medical care for […]

As fears over WhatsApp’s privacy policies send millions of users in the West to Signal and Telegram, the two encrypted apps are also seeing a slight user uptick in China, where WeChat has long dominated and the government has a tight grip on online communication. Following WhatsApp’s pop-up notification reminding users that it shares their […]

Bloom & Wild, a London-based startup that takes an updated and online approach to the very traditional business of ordering and delivering flowers, has seen business blossom in the last year. And today, it is announcing a big round of funding to help it double down on the opportunity ahead. The company has raised £75 […]

Virgin Orbit launched its LauncherOne rocket to orbit for the first time today, with a successful demonstration mission that carried a handful of satellites and delivered them successfully to low Earth orbit on behalf of NASA. It’s a crucial milestone for the small satellite launch company, and the first time the company has shown that […]