Crunch Hype

Since launch, ‘learning pods’ have been controversial in the world of edtech. The term, somewhat synonymous with micro-schools, pandemic pods, and small-group learning, describes small clusters of children within the same age range who are paired with a private instructor with the goal of replacing, or supplementing, learning. The concept took off last year as […]

Bitcoin maximalists aren't going to find much here that underscores their core thesis that every coin not mentioned in Satoshi's whitepaper is, in fact, a scam. Save your tweets, please.

Holoride’s VR gaming system for passengers caught our attention a few years back at CES. The company is back, demoing two games and threw off the shackles of the track for the real world.

Floods are devastating. They rip asunder communities, wipe out neighborhoods, force the evacuation of thousands of people every year, and recovering them can take years — assuming recovery is possible at all. The U.S. government estimates that floods in recent decades (exclusive of hurricanes and tropical storms) have caused an estimated $160 billion in damage […]

Last fall, Spotify introduced a new format that combined spoken word commentary with music, allowing creators to reproduce the radio-like experience of listening to a DJ or music journalist who shared their perspective on the tracks they would then play. Today, the company is making the format, which it calls “Music + Talk,” available to […]

Blumira today announced it raised a $10.3 million Series A financing round. The Ann Arbor-based cybersecurity company says the capital will be used to expand its product offering, double its headcount to 80 employees, and grow its partnership program with managed service providers. The company, founded in 2018, seeks to provide enterprise-level security to medium-sized […]

Its technology automates how distributors and manufacturers create, execute and track rebates.

Rapid Robotics announced a $12 million Series A all the way back in April 2021. Four months later, the Bay Area-based robotic manufacturing firm is back with a $36.7 million Series B, led by Kleiner Perkins and Tiger Global. The round, which also features existing investors NEA, Greycroft, Bee Partners and 468 Capital, brings the […]

No code platforms have developed into a hot market, and Stacker, a London-based no-code platform is attempting to bring the concept to a new level. Not only can you create a web application from a spreadsheet, you can pull data from a variety of sources to create a sophisticated business application automatically (although some tweaking […]

T-Mobile has confirmed that millions of current and former customers had their information stolen in a data breach, following reports of a hack over the weekend. In a statement, T-Mobile, which has more than 100 million customers, said its preliminary analysis shows 7.8 million current postpaid T-Mobile customers had information taken in the data breach. […]

Dublin-based Evervault, a developer-focused security startup which sells encryption vis API and is backed by a raft of big name investors including the likes of Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures, is coming out of closed beta today — announcing open access to its encryption engine. The startup says some 3,000 developers are on its […]

San Francisco-based Postman, which operates a collaborative platform for developers to help them build, design, test and iterate their APIs, said on Wednesday it has raised $225 million in a new financing round that values it at $5.6 billion, up from $2 billion a year ago. The startup’s new financing round — a Series D […]

MobileCoin, a cryptocurrency business that counts founder Moxie Marlinspike of the encrypting messaging app Signal as its earliest technical advisor, has raised $66 million in Series B funding from a long list of investors, including Alameda Research, Berggruen Holdings, BlockTower Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Marc Benioff’s TIME Ventures, Vy Capital, and earlier backers General Catalyst and […]

Fifteen years ago, Aydin Senkut, a former Google exec, was an outsider in venture circles that didn’t take seriously his ambitions to become a top VC. Now, his firm, Felicis Ventures, is announcing $900 million in capital commitments across two new funds — a $600 million early stage fund and a $300 million opportunities-type fund […]

Apeel developed a plant-based layer for the surface of fruits and vegetables, that is tasteless and odorless, and keeps moisture in, while letting oxygen out.

Canada Drives currently operates in British Columbia and Ontario. With the new funds, Canada Drives hopes to expand to Alberta in the next month, according to co-CEO Cody Green.

Amazon has entered the financial services and insurance markets of India in recent years. Now it is paving the way to foray into the wealth management category. The American e-commerce giant has backed Bangalore-based startup Smallcase in a $40 million Series C financing round. The round was led by Faering Capital and Premji Invest as […]

A one-year-old startup that is attempting to build the railroads for e-commerce in Pakistan has just secured a mega round of funding in a major boost to the South Asia nation’s nascent startup ecosystem. Airlift operates a quick commerce service in eight cities including Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad in Pakistan. Users can order groceries, fresh […]

RaRa Delivery’s ambitious goal is to offer same-day deliveries in Indonesia without burning cash like many on-demand logistics providers. The company announced today it has raised $3.25 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program and East Ventures. Other participants included 500 Startups, Angel Central, GK Plug and Play and angel investors […]

Danggeun Market, the publisher of South Korea’s hyperlocal community app Karrot, announced it has raised $162 million in a Series D round of funding with a valuation of $2.7 billion. (By the way, Danggeun means carrot in Korean.) This round of funding was led by DST Global, with additional participation from Aspex Management, Reverent Partners […]

Fitness and the outdoor passion space is one of the most exciting CSS categories in a growing landscape that includes everything from family planning to entertainment and education.

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"With these self driving cars, it's only a matter of time before a country song is written about a guy's truck leaving him."

YouTube announced two feature updates today to make it easier for people to find the content they’re looking for on the platform. This includes visual search features and easier discovery of foreign language videos that have captions in the user’s local language. On desktop, YouTube users can hover over a video’s thumbnail and watch a […]

Fortnite now boasts its own version of one of the pandemic’s hottest games. Fortnite-maker Epic just introduced into the game a new limited-time mode called Impostors; it follows the hit format that sent Among Us to Twitch’s front page — and Congress — during the pandemic’s earlier days. Up to 10 people can play the […]

If you’re a tech company offering anyone a service, somewhere in your future is a security assessment giving you the seal of approval to manage clients’ data and operate on your devices.

Twitter introduced a new test feature Tuesday that allows users to report misinformation they run into on the platform, flagging it to the company as “misleading.” The test will roll out starting today to most users in the U.S., Australia and South Korea. In the new test, Twitter users will be able to expand the […]

British growth agency Ascendant says growth marketing is a process that startups need to put in place in their early days that will scale as their customer base and internal teams grow.

Among Apple’s more recent social good initiatives is the Impact Accelerator, an effort launched about a year ago intended to find and elevate minority-owned small businesses taking on sustainability and climate change. The program now has its first 15 participants, gathered from all over the country for a three-month program and a shot at an […]

This the story of one regulator, the Brazilian Central Bank, and how it has taken center stage in creating a framework that will have far-reaching effects on merchants and fintechs in Brazil.

It’s no secret that Google is in the midst of a pretty massive overhaul of its Pixel division. The Pixel 6 offers the next major Hail Mary for the company’s hardware division, complete with its own custom chip, Tensor. This is not that. The new flagship won’t be available until the fall. Meantime, here’s the […]

IKEA won't just sell you smart lights — it'll soon sell you the electricity to power those lights, too. IKEA has revealed plans to sell clean energy to Swedish homes through a subscription service.

Many governments that are not major tech hubs (i.e., most countries excluding the U.S., China, Israel and India) should stop restricting themselves to supporting locally domiciled VC funds.

"There are many high-quality tech companies being built in Brazil with very experienced management teams and very exciting stories that will capture the hearts and wallets of Brazilian … investors."

OnlyFans — the platform where adult creators can directly monetize their audience — is pushing its safe-for-work app OFTV, which is available on iOS and Google Play. The ad-free app launched in January, sharing over 800 videos from OnlyFans creators, like cooking tutorials, yoga routines, and interviews. But this week will be the first time […]

For Kate Ryder, the founder of women’s health clinic and benefits platform Maven, business is personal. During the first year of building her company, Ryder experienced a miscarriage. Maven began offering support for pregnancy loss and high-risk care management as the founder herself waded through the emotions and confusion of it. Ryder was then a […]

One of the most important goals for any early-stage startup venture is gaining exposure for your company and product. As much as we love the mantra, “if you build it, they will come,” it’s gonna take more than that to make your Field of Dreams come true. Are you a founder of an early-stage SaaS […]

Monterey Car Week wrapped up on Sunday with the return of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. A black 1938 Mercedes-Benz 540K Autobahn Kurrier took top honors at the show, now in its 70th year, held on the golf course overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But it was the electric hypercars and high-performance hybrids, not the historics […]

Just five months after raising $90M, Brazil’s Nuvemshop announced today it has raised $500 million in a round co-led by Insight Partners and Tiger Global Management. The financing values Nuvemshop – which some say is Latin America’s answer to Shopify – at $3.1 billion and brings the Sao Paulo-based startup’s total funding in the last […]

InfoSum, a London-based startup that provides a decentralized platform for secure data sharing between organizations, has secured a $65 million Series B funding round led by Chrysalis Investments. The investment comes less than a year after InfoSum closed a $15.1 million Series A round co-led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures. Since, the data privacy […]

Solving the twin challenges of human and planetary health is the greatest task of our generation, and it also presents the greatest entrepreneurial opportunity in history which is why we’ve partnered with Mayfield to bring you an engineering biology track to Disrupt 2021 this September 21-23. Haven’t secured your spot yet? Grab your ticket now […]

Some Bluetooth bugginess and questionable mic performance, I liked the NuraTrue, quite a bit. And obviously, I’m always in favor of smaller companies mixing it up with tech giants, while bringing something unique to the process. In Nura’s case, that thing is custom sound profiles that can dramatically enhance the listening experience. The company has […]

Branch, which has built a flexible workforce payments platform, announced today it has raised $48 million in Series B funding and closed on a $500 million credit facility. Lee Fixel’s Addition –– which has also backed the likes of Flipkart, Stripe and Coinbase – led the equity financing while the credit facility was secured in […]

Aurora Propulsion Technologies, a Finnish company that develops thrusters and de-orbiting modules for small satellites, will be sending its technology to space for the first time. The company has signed on with Rocket Lab to send its inaugural AuroraSat-1 cubesat into low Earth orbit aboard an Electron rocket rideshare mission in the fourth quarter of […]

A California-based medical startup that provides COVID-19 testing across Los Angeles has pulled down a website it used to allow customers to access their test results after a customer found a vulnerability that allowed access to other people’s personal information. Total Testing Solutions has ten COVID-19 testing sites across Los Angeles, and processes “thousands” of […]

As many companies shift to a hybrid approach to work where some folks are working in the office and some at home, it’s easy for the home-based workers to feel a disconnect, even with video conferencing tools like Zoom. Video Window is designed to give users a feeling of being connected to other offices as […]

Swing Therapeutics, a digital therapeutics startup, has received an FDA breakthrough device designation for their 12 week smartphone-assisted fibromyalgia management program. This is the company’s first breakthrough designation, and precedes a deluge of clinical trials scheduled for this year. Swing Therapeutics was founded in 2019 and has raised a total of $9 million in seed […]

Alex Kalogiannis Contributor Share on Twitter Automotive writer, editor and host for hire. Bylines: Gear Patrol, DriveTribe, Forbes, Others. The sports car market can seem like an exclusive club, one reserved for those with enough extra cash and garage space to make such a highly impractical passion purchase. More often than not, these prestige items […]

Forward Foods, Starday raised $4 million in seed funding to take on “big food” incumbents.