Crunch Hype

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. What a week, yeah? Instead of the news cycle slowing as the year races to a close, things are still as hot as ever. We have funding rounds big and small, IPOs, first-day extravaganza and […]

After pricing above its raised range last night, Airbnb opened this morning at $146 per share, up around 115% to kick off its life as a public company. The company is now worth $158 per share. Using its IPO share count inclusive of shares reserved for underwriters, the company is worth $95.1 billion, but on […]

Governments are no more likely to help manage unhealthy tech consumption than consumption of sugar or illegal drugs. We need to take control.

A group of industry heavyweights, including Google, Box, Citrix, Dell, Imprivata, Intel, Okta, RingCentral, Slack, VMware and Zoom, today announced the launch of the Modern Computing Alliance. The mission for this new alliance is to “drive ‘silicon-to-cloud’ innovation for the benefit of enterprise customers — fueling a differentiated modern computing platform and providing additional choice […]

Spotify said it has reset an undisclosed number of user passwords after blaming a software vulnerability in its systems for exposing private account information to its business partners. In a data breach notification filed with the California attorney general’s office, the music streaming giant said the data exposed “may have included email address, your preferred […]

Cityblock Health, a company that provides healthcare services to low-income communities, is now commanding a high-priced valuation of over $1 billion after venture capitalists poured $160 million into the company. The round was led by new investor General Catalyst with participation from crossover investor Wellington Management and support from major existing investors, including Kinnevik AB, Maverick […]

Twitter is partnering with Snap to bring tweets into Snapchat with a native integration that both companies hope will push users away from screenshots and towards more interactive embeds. Twitter users who are also logged into the Snapchat app on their phone will be able to access the functionality by tapping share on a particular […]

DoNotPay, the consumer advice company that started out helping people easily challenge parking tickets, has come a long way since it launched. It’s expanded to help consumers cancel memberships, claim compensation for missed flights, and even sue companies for small claims. In the early days of the pandemic, the startup helped its users file for […]

“Within the next five years, I think we're going to see that having AR and 3D on your dot-com and beyond will be mandatory.”

Given how reliant many people have become on rideshare drivers and especially delivery workers during the pandemic, Uber is pushing for them to get priority access to the COVID-19 vaccine. Today, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent a letter to all 50 governors asking them to prioritize giving drivers and delivery workers the vaccine as essential […]

TC Sessions: Space is happening this December 16 and 17 — our first-ever dedicated space event. This is a live, virtual two-day conference featuring the most important people in the space industry, across public, private and defense. We’re thrilled to be hosting NASA’s head of the Human Spaceflight Office Kathryn Lueders, Rocket Lab CEO and […]

Google announced today it’s introducing a new search feature that will surface a list of authorized vaccines in users’ location, as well as informational panels about each individual vaccine. The feature is first being launched in the U.K., which earlier this month gave emergency authorization to the BioNTech/Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. The company says the feature […]

As remote work continues to solidify its place as a critical aspect of how businesses exist these days, a startup that has built a platform to help companies source and bring on one specific category of remote employees, engineers, is taking on some more funding to meet demand. Turing — which has built an AI-based […]

AT&T announced yesterday that it’s selling anime streaming service Crunchyroll to Sony’s Funimation for an acquisition price of $1.18 billion. According to the announcement, Crunchyroll has 90 million registered users and 3 million paying subscribers. The service started out in 2006 as a site for fan-uploaded, fan-subtitled (and often pirated) content, but it has increasingly […]

Expect to keep hearing about insurtech for quarters and quarters to come.

NASA and Boeing are looking to March 29, 2021 as the earliest possible date for their Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), a key qualifying demonstration mission in their ongoing Commercial Crew spaceflight program. Boeing is the second company selected by NASA to build and qualify a human space launch system for transporting astronauts to and […]

As the pandemic has raged on, it has shined a spotlight on the importance of procurement, especially in certain sectors. Fairmarkit, a Boston startup, is working to bring a modern digital procurement system to the enterprise. Today, the company announced a $30 million Series B. GGV Capital and Insight Partners led the round with help […]

With Slack being acquired by Salesforce for $28bn, the world of collaborative tools for teams is on fire right now. Notion is super hot and last year Frame.io raised $50 million and Microsoft has Fluid. Now, after some months in private beta, JetBrains – which also makes development environments (IDE) for various programming languages — […]

Pinterest today is adding a few new features — notes, favorites and a board toolbar — aimed at helping those who use their boards for making lists of gift ideas, or who have a hard time navigating and sorting through boards with a larger number of items. The additions follow a blowout third quarter for […]

Product managers can only be successful if they can make effective use of both quantitative and qualitative data. But mapping the former to the latter, and collecting high-quality data, is a huge challenge to organizations looking to rapidly productize and innovate. UserLeap, a company founded by serial product manager Ryan Glasgow, thinks it has found […]

This week Koan, a startup that provides objectives-and-key-results (OKR) and status-tracking software, announced that it has raised an additional $1 million, added a free tier to its service, and acquired a design firm that it has worked with. Koan, which raised $3 million in Seed funding last October, was co-founded by Matt Tucker, who previously […]

I’ve had Apple’s AirPod Max headphones for less than 24 hours, so there is no way I would attempt to write a review of any sort. But I do have some of those oh so popular these days “first impressions” to share. Mostly on build quality, but I’ll throw a few first listen thoughts at […]

In the view of most Americans, there’s abundant competition and choice throughout the digital marketplace.

Planet FWD, the climate-friendly food startup founded by Zume co-founder Julia Collins, is today launching its first product, Moonshot Snacks. The climate-friendly snack is carbon neutral, organic, kosher, plant-based, non GMO and has no sugar added. The crackers come in three flavors: sourdough sea salt rosemary garlic and tomato basil. A box of crackers costs $5.99. […]

Nobody likes dealing with taxes — until the system works in your favor. In many countries, startups can receive tax credits for their R&D work and related employee cost, but as with all things bureaucracy, that’s often a slow and onerous task. Boast.ai aims to make this process far easier, by using a mix of […]

LeafLink is today announcing it raised a $40 million Series C financing round, led by Founders Fund with participation from Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. This round of financing brings the total amount raised by the company to over $90 million. This financing round is Founder Fund’s largest technology investment in the cannabis […]

Only a few months after announcing its $15 million Series A round, Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm Hunters today announced that it has received additional growth funding from Snowflake Ventures. With this, Snowflake’s venture arm joins existing investors M12 and U.S. Venture Partners, which led the Series A round, as well as YL Ventures, Blumberg Captial and Okta […]

Aira is the company behind one of the most exciting wireless power innovations, and now this technology could be headed into vehicles. The wireless power company just announced a strategic investment from Motherson, a Tier 1 global auto parts supplier. Aira’s technology allows companies to build a better wireless charger. Instead of a wireless charger […]

Facebook’s bad week just got worse: It’s being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account. The tech giant raised the hackles of the VR community this summer when it announced it would be merging users of the latest Oculus kit onto a single Facebook account — […]

More than one billion people in India today have a mobile connection, thanks in part to the proliferation of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data plans in recent years. This scale was unimaginable just three decades ago, when India had fewer than 2.5 million telephones in the country. One of the earliest […]

Instagram today is launching Shopping in Reels, its TikTok competitor. The new feature was announced in October as something the company had in the works, as part of a ongoing series of shopping-related updates to the Instagram app. With today’s launch, both businesses and creators will be able to tag products when they create Reels […]

Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding. Leading the round, which I understand actually closed earlier this year, is EQT Ventures. Also participating are existing investors Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and […]

German fintech Solactive, a technology-enabled provider of indices and index solutions to the global financial services industry, has taken a $60.4m / €50 million minority investment from growth investor Summit Partners. Widely regarded as something of a disruptor in the global indexing industry, Solactive is benefitting from the ongoing and significant shift of active to […]

UK-based Orbex has raised a new $24 million funding round, led by BGF and Octopus Ventures, and including participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital, and Elecnor S.A. This new investment help “secure the roadmap” that Orbex was already working towards regarding its launch vehicle development and deployment, which is currently targeting 2022 for […]

Productivity software has been getting a major re-examination this year, and human resources platforms — used for hiring, firing, paying, and managing employees — have been no exception. Today, one of the startups that’s built what it believes is the next generation of how HR should and will work is announcing a big fundraise, underscoring […]

Two months ago, Kubernetes observability platform Pixie Labs launched into general availability and announced a $9.15 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark, with participation from GV. Today, the company is announcing its acquisition by New Relic, the publicly traded monitoring and observability platform. The Pixie Labs brand and product will remain in place […]

This morning Candu, a software startup that provides no-code web tools for SaaS apps, announced a $5 million funding round. TechCrunch caught up with founder Jonathan Anderson and lead investor Villi Iltchev, a partner at Two Sigma Ventures, to chat about the deal. First thing: This round, a bit like Scotch, has aged. It’s from […]

The worldwide shift to virtual workplaces has been a blessing and a curse to people with hearing impairments. Having office chatter occur in text rather than speech is more accessible, but virtual meetings are no easier to follow than in-person ones — which is why real-time captioning startup Ava has seen a huge increase in […]

Papercup, the U.K.-based AI startup that has developed speech technology that translates people’s voices into other languages and is already being used in the video and television industry, has raised £8 million in funding. The round was led by LocalGlobe and Sands Capital Ventures, alongside Sky, GMG Ventures, Entrepreneur First (EF) and BDMI. Papercup says […]

Another batch of complaints has been filed with European Union data protection agencies urging enforcement action against the adtech industry’s abuse of Internet users’ information to target ads. The complaints argue that behavioural ads are both harmful and unlawful. Earlier complaints over the same Real-Time Bidding (RTB) programmatic advertising issue were filed across the EU […]

France’s data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent. Google has been hit with a total of €100 million ($120M) for dropping cookies on Google.fr and Amazon €35M (~42M) for doing so on the Amazon .fr domain under the penalty notices issued today. The regulator […]

The rise of U.S.-China tensions has accelerated the bifurcation of global technology, with the two superpowers each working on their own tech systems. While the rift might be discouraging cross-border investment and business expansion between the rivals, the countries that are in-between — like those in Southeast Asia and Europe — are still finding opportunities. […]

A startup that is improving the way construction and real estate companies in India procure materials and handle logistics for their projects has received the backing of three new investors. Mumbai-headquartered Infra.Market said on Thursday it has raised $20 million in a Series B financing round. The round was led by Evolvence India Fund, Sistema […]

Demand for contactless payments and e-commerce has grown in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is good news for payment service operators, but the market is very fragmented, so adding payment options is a time-consuming process for many merchants. CHAI wants to fix this with an API that enables companies to accept over 20 […]

LabCorp has now become the first company to receive approval to sell its COVID-19 test kit over-the-counter without a prescription, according to a statement from the company. One of the largest diagnostics testing companies in the U.S., LabCorp could be a significant competitor to companies like EverlyWell, which received approvals for its at-home testing kits […]

The WSJ is reporting that Airbnb is expected to price its IPO at either $67 or $68 per share. The American hospitality unicorn raised its IPO price target earlier this week, from $44 to $50 to $56 to $60. While we’re still waiting for official pricing, Airbnb is worth $41 billion at its IPO price, […]

Facebook faces big antitrust lawsuits, DoorDash and C3.ai go public and YouTube announces new election misinformation policies. This is your Daily Crunch for December 9, 2020. The big story: FTC and 48 state AGs sue Facebook The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook today, as did 48 attorneys general representing 46 states. […]

Arrival, the U.K. electric vehicle startup that plans to become a publicly traded company through a merger with special purpose acquisition company CIIG Merger Corp., has picked Charlotte for its North American headquarters. The company said it will add 150 new employees to support the headquarters and invest about $3 million in office space in […]

SpaceX is one step closer to replacing its Falcon line of active duty spacecraft: Its Starship prototype “SN8” achieved a major milestone in the ongoing spacecraft’s development program, flying to a height of around 40,000 feet at SpaceX’s development facility in southern Texas. One of the Starship’s three Raptor engines cut off around two minutes […]

A new robot created by researchers at Northwestern University looks and behaves like a tiny aquatic animal, and could serve a variety of functions, including moving things place to place, catalyzing chemical reactions, delivering therapeutics and much more. This new soft robot honestly looks a heck of a lot like a lemon peel, but it’s […]