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Hello friends and welcome to Daily Crunch, bringing you the most important startup, tech and venture capital news in a single package.

Investor Marlon Nichols and founder Chris Bennett review Wonderschool's original pitch deck.

Viva Republica, the Seoul-based fintech company behind Toss, a super app with more than 40 financial services, announced today it has raised $410 million at a post-money valuation of $7.4 billion. The new funding was led by Alkeon Capital, an American investment firm, and included participation from new investors like Korea Development Bank, and returning […]

GM has launched a series of new subsidiaries tackling electrification, connectivity and even insurance — all part of the automaker's aim to find value beyond its traditional business.

Facebook is making it even easier to buy stuff while you scroll past photos of your high school lab partner’s dog. Yes, Instagram Shops and Facebook Marketplace are already displayed prominently on the apps’ bottom navigation tabs. But now, you can shop on WhatsApp too, along with other updates. Today on a Live Audio Room, […]

Here at TechCrunch, we’re big fans of startup competitions. From our Extra Crunch Live Pitch-offs all the way up to the world-famous Disrupt Startup Battlefield, we can’t get enough of ’em. So we’re hooking up with Extreme Tech Challenge (‘XTC’) to present the Extreme Tech Challenge Global Finals, a startup competition focused on powering a […]

The hubbub surrounding the autonomous vehicle industry often focuses on venture capital rounds, speculation about IPOs and acquisitions. But the industry’s future also hinges on the high-stakes task of proving the technology can operate safer than human drivers do today and gaining the public’s trust. In short: safety matters. Zoox issued a safety report Tuesday […]

Addressing the skills gap and strengthening your own security team means bringing in different minds and perspectives — and that starts with embracing neurodiversity.

This Thursday, Apple will mark the opening of a new store in downtown Los Angeles. The space occupies the newly renovated Tower Theatre, which opened in DTLA’s Broadway Theater District in 1927. Among other milestones, the 900-seat theater was the first in LA to be wired for the talkies, hosting a premier of “The Jazz […]

Amazon’s purchase of MGM must pass the scrutiny of the FTC, newly chaired by prominent Amazon critic Lina Khan, the Wall Street Journal has reported. While the $8.45M merger is not likely to be stopped, it may provide early indicators of how the agency is revising its approach to mega-corporations consolidating multiple industries with acquisitions […]

Max Q is a weekly newsletter from TechCrunch all about space. Sign up here to receive it weekly on Mondays in your inbox. This week, China started staffing up its own space station, and Rocket Lab got the nod from NASA to develop small satellites for the purposes of exploring Mars. Meanwhile, space startups continue […]

While Amazon's marketplace has proved a boon for businesses trying to get off the ground, many successful companies are now looking beyond the fences, spurred by a desire to compete on their own terms.

In Twitter’s latest appeal to one-up competitors from Clubhouse to Patreon, the company announced today that it will begin rolling out applications for Super Follows and Ticketed Spaces. Twitter first teased the Super Follow feature during an Analyst Day event in February. Super Follows allow creators on Twitter to generate monthly revenue by offering paywalled […]

One of the country’s most powerful unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, confirmed today that it plans to make a nationwide push to unionize Amazon warehouse workers and drivers. And it won’t be a gentle one. The news was first reported by Motherboard, which obtained a video and resolution announcing the effort. As the organization […]

Hey you there — early-stage founders. Yes, you. TC Early Stage 2021: Marketing and Fundraising, our mini masterclass in entrepreneurship, is right around the proverbial corner. And by mini we mean it’s just two days — July 8-9. There’s nothing mini about the expert advice, information and actionable tips you’ll glean from attending this event. […]

Mercedes-Benz has used the “best or nothing” tagline to market its vehicles for the last 21 years. To ensure its 2021 Mercedes-Benz S580 sedan ticks that “best” box, the German automaker has loaded its flagship vehicle with technology, including an infotainment system that learns to anticipate its owner’s needs, some new rear-steering tricks and upgrades […]

It's imperative that entrepreneurs sharpen and maintain their mental health while slogging through fundraising. It takes two things: prevention and awareness.

Meet Airbank, a startup that is taking advantage of open banking regulation and related APIs to aggregate all your bank accounts. Focused on startups and small and medium companies, the company wants to build an all-in-one banking interface to access financial data, initiate payments, manage cash flow and more. Airbank just raised a $3 million […]

Quanergy Systems, the Sunnyvale, California-based lidar company, said Tuesday it has agreed to merge with special purpose acquisition fund CITIC Capital Acquisition Corp., a Chinese blank-check firm affiliated with the country’s largest state-owned investment conglomerate. The deal, which puts an implied valuation on Quanergy at $1.4 billion, is expected to close in the second half […]

India’s antitrust watchdog has ordered an investigation into allegations that Google has abused the dominant position of Android in the country’s smart TV market. The news comes hours after the European Union opened a formal antitrust investigation into allegations that Google abuses its leading role in the advertising-technology sector. In its initial review, the Competition […]

The future of work is long on long-distance, and today a startup that’s built a platform to help organizations hire global talent and build out those remote workforces is announcing a round of funding on the heels of strong growth. Oyster — which provides tools to help with hiring, onboarding, payroll, benefits and salary management […]

Vantage, a service that helps businesses analyze and reduce their AWS costs, today announced that it has raised a $4 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. A number of angel investors, including Brianne Kimmel, Julia Lipton, Stephanie Friedman, Calvin French Owen, Ben and Moisey Uretsky, Mitch Wainer and Justin Gage, also participated in this […]

Pro-privacy browser Brave, which has been testing its own brand search engine for several months — operating a waitlist where brave (ha!) early adopters could kick the tyres of an upstart alternative in Internet search — has now launched the tool, Brave Search, in global beta. Users interested in checking out Brave’s non-tracking search engine, […]

With as much seed capital as there is in the market today, we talked to investors about startups raising later Series As than before, while Series B rounds can happen incredibly rapidly.

We’ve chronicled, in great detail, the many layers of technology, services and solutions that have been wrapped around the world of education in recent years — and especially in the last year, which became a high watermark for digital learning tools because of COVID-19. Today, a startup called Merlyn Mind is coming out of stealth […]

The conversation on founder pay is changing for the better. We've gathered insights from founders and VCs and narrowed down the most important factors and benchmarks to guide your decision.

In 2017, Paul Hawken published a book compiling a set of concrete actions people could take to combat climate change called The Climate Drawdown. Inspired by this, Seth Bannon, founding partner at Fifty Years, a firm that provides seed funding for companies aiming to make the world a better place, decided to do something similar […]

Zeller, a Melbourne-based fintech founded by former Square executives to serve small- to mid-sized businesses, has raised $50 million AUD (about $37.5 million USD) led by Spark Capital, the investment firm whose portfolio also includes Twitter, Slack and Coinbase. Zeller’s valuation is now $400 million AUD (about $301 million USD). The funding included participation from […]

More than a million people migrate to the U.S. each year. Upon their arrival, they face challenges in opening a local bank account and accessing financial services at regular rates. These challenges for migrants, a significant portion of whom also need to send money home, have persisted globally for decades, despite large government support programs. […]

As venues reopen across the U.S., Mixhalo has announced a pair of additions to its in-person audio live event audio streaming platform: Mixhalo Over Cellular and Mixhalo Rodeo. The first is, more or less, what it sounds like. Rather than relying on Wi-Fi, the leverages 5G. The company says it will be able to offer […]

Kairos, the startup studio led by Ankur Jain, is launching a new brand today called Bilt Rewards. Bilt is a rewards program that lets renters earn each time they make a rent payment. The company is funded by Kairos, which is the studio that is also responsible for brands like Rhino, Alloy, and Little Spoon. […]

Squad used to be an app that connected people with similar interests for in-person meetups. Then the coronavirus pandemic hit. While most social apps thrived under these conditions — people craved digital connection more than ever — Squad couldn’t operate. Founder Isa Watson didn’t know how long the world would be in shutdown. Instead of […]

You might well have a sleep app that tracks your sleep. I use Sleep Cycle, and have found it has started to even tell me when I cough during the night. It turns out you can run machine learning over how you might cough in the night, to detect changes in the way you cough. […]

This morning G2, a company that provides an online software review and information database, announced that it has raised a $157 million Series D. Per a release the company shared with TechCrunch in advance of its news, G2 is now worth more than $1 billion, making it a unicorn in modern parlance. Permira led the […]

Time is your most valuable asset — as the saying goes — and today a startup called Memory.ai, which is building AI-based productivity tools to help you with your own time management, is announcing some funding to double down on its ambitions: it wants not only to help manage your time, but to, essentially, provide […]

Entrepreneur Kuljeev Singh has had a three-course meal in the restaurant business. He was an angel investor in ChefHero, a part-time owner in an Australian-style meat pie shop, and now, is the founder of ResQ, a startup that helps restaurants repair and service their equipment through contractor work. Sitting at multiple seats at the table […]

We’re about a week away from TechCrunch Spotlight: Pittsburgh, and one of the uniquely-TechCrunch things we do at events is a pitch-off. Be it the big Disrupt Battlefield, or the flash pitch-offs that happen weekly on Extra Crunch Live, the energy around folks pitching their company — sometimes for the first time — is downright […]

EU antitrust authorities are finally taking a broad and deep look into Google’s adtech stack and role in the online ad market — confirming today that they’ve opened a formal investigation. Google has already been subject to three major EU antitrust enforcements over the past five years — against Google Shopping (2017), Android (2018) and […]

Insilico Medicine, an A.I-based platform for drug development and discovery announced $255 million in Series C financing on Tuesday. The massive round is reflective of a recent breakthrough for the company: proof that it’s A.I based platform can create a new target for a disease, develop a bespoke molecule to address it, and begin the […]

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) published its final recommendations yesterday setting on guidance for making transfers of personal data to third countries to comply with EU data protection rules in light of last summer’s landmark CJEU ruling (aka Schrems II). The long and short of these recommendations — which are fairly long; running to […]

Transmit Security, a Boston-based startup that’s on a mission to rid the world of passwords, has raised a massive $543 million in Series A funding. The funding round, said to be the largest Series A investment in cybersecurity history and one of the highest valuations for a bootstrapped company, was led by Insight Partners and […]

How do you follow up a burger-flipping robot? If you’re Miso Robotics (which you likely are, if you’ve created a burger-flipping robot), the answer is simple: beverages. The robotics startup continues to focus on the fast food service industry with the planned launch of an automated beverage-dispensing robot. The system, which is being created as […]

Chinese merchants selling on Amazon are having a moment. The scruffy exporters are used to roaming about suburban factory areas and dealing with constant cash flow strain, but suddenly they find themselves having coffee with top Chinese venture capital firms and investment representatives from internet giants, who come with big checks to hunt down the […]

A payments startup whose backend was originally built by the founder while still living with his parents and bootstrapping the company is today announcing a massive round of funding that catapults it into being one of the most valuable startups in Europe. Mollie, an Amsterdam-based startup that provides a way for businesses to integrate payments […]

Online teaching came into the spotlight for many students and parents in the last year, and today one of the companies that saw a big lift during that rush of activity is announcing a big round of funding to carry it into what has emerged as a more permanent change of habits for many learners. […]

The Gillmor Gang recording session is nestled on Friday midday on the East Coast and midmorning out West. Streamed live on Twitter, Facebook Live, and Youtube embed, the show is then edited, sweetened with titles and music, and released on Techcrunch. It’s a kind of hybrid between podcast, Zoom collaboration meeting, and work-from-anywhere encounter group. […]

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been teasing a neural network training computer called ‘Dojo’ since at least 2019. Musk says Dojo will be able to process vast amounts of video data to achieve vision-only autonomous driving. While Dojo itself is still in development, Tesla today revealed a new supercomputer that will serve as a development […]

For most people in India, having to engage with banks doesn’t instill a sense of joy. Banks in the South Asian market are notorious for making unannounced spam calls to upsell customers loans and credit cards, even when they have been explicitly asked not to do so. Moreover, when a customer does reach out to […]

Some Clubhouse users were treated to a surprise feature in their favorite app, but it wasn’t long for this world. A new UI element called “backchannel” popped up briefly before disappearing late last week, pointing the Clubhouse faithful to a new area of the app and generating plenty of chatter among users ready for more […]