Crunch Hype

E-commerce is on the rise, but that also means the risk, and occurrence, of e-commerce fraud is, too. Now, Forter, one of the startups building a business to tackle that malicious activity, has closed $300 million in funding — a sign both of the size of the issue, and its success in tackling it to […]

Young startup Atlan, which has built a SaaS data collaboration platform and is courting customers in international markets, has now won the trust of some high-profile investors. Atlan said on Tuesday it has raised $16 million in its Series A financing round that was led by Insight Partners. Bob Muglia (former CEO of Snowflake), Bob […]

New York City-based vertical farming startup Bowery Farming this week has announced a $300 million Series C. The round, which brings its total funding north of $472 million, values the company at $2.3 billion. Fidelity Management & Research Company led the beefy round, with participation from existing investors GV (formerly Google Ventures), General Catalyst, GGV […]

Ben Herman and Adam Gefkovicz launched Jumpstart in 2017 with a clear mission: to make the world more equitable via a more fair and balanced hiring process. The company released its “Diversity Recruitment Platform” in July of 2018 with the aim of helping people earlier in their careers get a “jumpstart” via technology. Over the […]

Sinch — a Twilio competitor based out of Sweden that provides a suite of services to companies to build communications and specifically “customer engagement” into their services by way of APIs — has been on a steady funding and acquisitions march in the last several months to scale its business, and today comes the latest […]

Germany’s national competition regulator, the Bundeskartellamt, has continued its investigative charge against big tech — announcing that it’s opened two proceedings into Google. The move follows earlier proceedings targeting Amazon and Facebook — both of which are also looking to determine whether their businesses are of “paramount significance for competition across markets”, as German competition law […]

Since the pandemic began last year, nearly 61% of adults in the United States gained weight, with the average adult surveyed gaining 15 pounds, according to a report from the American Psychological Association. Likely as a result of that rise in girths, Noom witnessed a surge of demand for its weight-loss app, generating $400 million in […]

Buy now, pay later is everywhere these days, mostly focused on the consumer. Resolve — a San Francisco-based startup in the space specializing in “buy now, pay later” capabilities for B2B transactions — announced today that it has raised $60 million in funding. Initialized Capital led the round — the company’s first funding since its […]

Investments in African startups keep growing at a healthy pace ever since reports started keeping count in 2015. That year, publications Disrupt Africa and Partech released independently researched and contrasting figures showing that venture capital investments hit $186 million and $277 million, respectively. Those are ridiculously low figures for a continent when you consider that […]

FarEye, an Indian SaaS startup that helps firms globally optimize their supply chain and logistics operations, said on Tuesday it has raised a new financing round, its third since the pandemic broke last year, as it looks to further expand in international markets. The Noida-headquartered startup has raised $100 million in its Series E round, […]

Interactio, a remote interpretation platform whose customers include massive institutions like the United Nations, European Commission and Parliament along with corporates like BMW, JP Morgan and Microsoft, has closed a whopping $30 million Series A after usage of its tools grew 12x between 2019 and 2020 as demand for online meeting platforms surged during the […]

Video is, quite literally, what gets the world moving online these days, expected to account for 82% of all IP traffic this year. Today a startup that has built a set of tools to help better parse, index and ultimately discover that trove of content is announcing a big round of funding to expand its […]

B Capital Group, the six-year-old venture capital fund formed by Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Bain Capital veteran Raj Ganguly, is doubling down on China as it looks to allocate $500 million to $1 billion of its fund into Chinese tech companies over the next few years. With $1.9 billion assets under management, B Capital […]

Germany has adopted legislation that will allow driverless vehicles on public roads by 2022, laying out a path for companies to deploy robotaxis and delivery services in the country at scale. While autonomous testing is currently permitted in Germany, this would allow operations of driverless vehicles without a human safety operator behind the wheel. The […]

Photonic computing technology is on the brink of being commercially available and has the potential to supercharge the current roadmap of autonomous driving while also reducing its carbon footprint.

Hyundai developed an in-car payment system that will debut in its upcoming all-electric Ioniq 5 crossover that will offer drivers the ability to find and pay for EV charging, food and parking — the latest example of automakers finding new ways to generate revenue and offer customers features that are typically associated with smartphones. When […]

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a restriction on social media companies’ ability to ban candidates for state offices and news outlets, and in doing so offered a direct challenge to those companies’ perceived free speech rights. The law is almost certain to be challenged in court as both unconstitutional and in direct […]

Zocdoc says it has fixed a bug that allowed current and former staff at doctor’s offices and dental practices to access patient data because their user accounts weren’t properly decommissioned. The New York-based company revealed the issue in a letter to the California attorney general’s office, which requires companies with more than 500 residents of […]

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Lordstown Motors’ cash-rich SPAC dreams have turned out to be nothin’ more than wishes. The automaker reported Monday a disappointing first-quarter earnings that was a pile-up of red-ink-stained negativity. Lowlights include higher-than-expected forecasted expenses, a need to raise more capital and lower-than-anticipated production of its Endurance vehicle this year — from around 2,200 vehicles to […]

In the wake of the news that U.K.-based AI startup Faculty has raised $42.5 million in a growth funding round, I teased out more from CEO and co-founder Marc Warner on what his plans are for the company. Faculty seems to have an uncanny knack of winning U.K. government contracts, after helping Boris Johnson win […]

The co-CEO model can work — with the right ingredients in place.

Almost exactly a month ago, researchers revealed a notorious malware family was exploiting a never-before-seen vulnerability that let it bypass macOS security defenses and run unimpeded. Now, some of the same researchers say another malware can sneak onto macOS systems, thanks to another vulnerability. Jamf says it found evidence that the XCSSET malware was exploiting a […]

Research papers come out far too frequently for anyone to read them all. That’s especially true in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, […]

Over the last year, Instagram has added a slew of features to help independent creators make a living, like Instagram Shop and Shopping in Reels. Today, Instagram launched new Insights for Reels and Live on its Professional Dashboard, giving businesses and creators essential data about the reach of their content. These tools will help Reels […]

How’s your Monday going? If you’re Apple, the answer is probably somewhere between “very busy” to “gaaaaaaah.” The company just dropped a whole bunch of new OS updates today, including iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS, all ahead of the upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off (virtually) on June 7. Indeed, iOS and iPadOS are […]

Solidus Labs, a company that says its surveillance and risk-monitoring software can detect manipulation across cryptocurrency trading platforms, is today announcing $20 million in Series A funding led by Evolution Equity Partners, with participation from Hanaco Ventures, Avon Ventures, 645 Ventures, the cryptocurrencies derivative exchange FTX, and also a sprinkling of government officials, including former […]

I’ve experienced enough of the funding game to know that if you fail to spot the warning signs, you’ll live to regret it.

Uber and Lyft have officially started to offer free rides to anyone traveling to get a COVID-19 vaccine, two weeks after the ride-hailing companies announced an agreement with the White House to offer the program. The free rides will last through July 4, the date when President Joe Biden wants 70% of U.S. adults to […]

Listen up mobility mavericks. TC Sessions: Mobility 2021 is right around the corner of your calendar (June 9). If you want to place your ground-breaking, edge-cutting, envelope-pushing (no extra charge for clichés) early-stage startup in front of the world’s leading mobility movers, shakers and makers you gotta hustle. You have just one week left to […]

Future Family, a company we’ve written about a few times over the years, makes fertility treatments more accessible. They pre-negotiate terms with fertility clinics to ensure there are no surprise fees, convert the often substantial upfront costs into a monthly payment plan, and give each user a dedicated Fertility Coach to help them navigate their […]

A Norwegian conciliation council has ordered Tesla to pay thousands of dollars each to Model S owners after it found that a software update led to longer charging times, the Norwegian newspaper Nettavisen reported Monday. Drivers eligible for compensation under the ruling will receive 136,000 kroner ($16,000) each. Thirty Tesla drivers brought a complaint to […]

As we head into the summer of vaccination, travel is bound to start bouncing back from the lows of 2020, and Airbnb is betting it will look very different than it did in the pre-COVID era. The home-sharing platform has introduced some big changes, across a wide variety of feature sets, that focus on flexibility […]

Last year, we held our first dedicated space startup event, TC Sessions: Space, featuring some of the industry’s top founders and leaders, including Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck, Lockheed Martin’s Lisa Callahan, Amazon’s Dave Limp, NASA’s Kathy Leuders and many more. This year, we’re excited to announce we’re doing it again with TC Sessions: Space 2021, […]

The Fireflies.ai project is a good reminder that not every startup project goes from idea to unicorn-status in 48 minutes. Instead, the startup’s CEO Krish Ramineni told TechCrunch about how a period of interest in natural language processing (NLP), tinkering with a friend, a stint at Microsoft, and even working on Slack bots led him […]

SiriusXM is leaning into TikTok. The satellite radio company and Pandora parent today announced a partnership with the social video platform to power several new initiatives, including a TikTok channel on SiriusXM, hosted TikTok playlists on Pandora, and re-airings of Pandora LIVE events on TikTok. The hosted playlists on Pandora are the first of the […]

In December, Microsoft wrote a blog post highlighting “The year ahead for Surface Duo.” The news highlighted the dual-screen device’s upcoming availability outside the U.S. (including Canada, the U.K., France and Germany this year), as well as a smattering of features. It’s been pretty well acknowledged from most everyone who reviewed the device (us included), […]

Delhi police, controlled by India’s central government, on Monday evening searched two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in neighboring state of Haryana — to seek more information about Twitter’s rationale to label one of the tweets by ruling partly BJP spokesperson as “manipulated media.” An hour into […]

Toast has a reported valuation over $5 billion and has raised more than $900 million since launch. The restaurant POS service has clearly been on a rapid growth trajectory, but how has the company navigated the market during the pandemic, which has pushed and pulled the restaurant industry unlike ever before? On an upcoming episode […]

With a rising adjusted EBITDA result and improving adjusted EBITDA margins, Zeta has a profit story to tell investors along with possibly accelerating revenue growth.

Long before SoftBank launched its $2 billion Innovation Fund in Latin America, and before Andreessen Horowitz began actively investing in the region, Sao Paulo-based Kaszek has been putting money into promising startups since 2011, helping spawn nine unicorns along the way. And now, the early-stage VC firm is announcing its largest fund closures to date: […]

You might have thought that with more than 300 companies joining this year’s winter batch of Y Combinator, the investor interest might have thinned. Well, it’s 2021 and investors are hopping around like crazy to invest in ideas that push the boundaries in fields far-flung from enterprise SaaS. Case in point today: Gridware. It’s a […]

This story was reported in partnership with video surveillance news site IPVM. At least a hundred U.S. counties, towns, and cities have bought China-made surveillance systems that the U.S. government has linked to human rights abuses, according to contract data seen by TechCrunch. Some municipalities have spent tens of thousands of dollars or more to […]

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower has made its first acquisition. The company this morning announced it’s acquiring Pathmatics, a market intelligence company which will now combine its paid digital and social media platform with Sensor Tower’s business. Deal terms were not detailed but include an undisclosed growth investment from Riverwood Capital into Pathmatics. […]

Mobile landing page builder Beacons has raised $6 million seed round to expand its vision for empowering creators to make money beyond the cramped confines of their social media profiles. The company, co-founded by Neal Jean, Jesse Zhang, Greg Luppescu and David Zeng, provides anyone who uses social media a single, mobile-optimized link hub to […]

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. Hello and welcome back to The Station, a weekly newsletter dedicated to all the ways people and packages move (today and in the future) from Point A to […]

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

“AI is eating the world of education,” Riiid co-founder and CEO YJ Jang notes in his biographical description on his LinkedIn profile, and today his startup — which builds AI-based personalized learning, including test prep, for students — is announcing a major funding round to help it position itself as a player in that process. […]

Melbourne-based Little Birdie, an e-commerce startup that wants to become the “new homepage of online shopping,” won’t launch until next month, but it’s already scored a major investor. Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), the largest of Australia’s “Big Four” banks, has poured $30 million AUD (about $23.2 million USD) in pre-launch funding into Little Birdie, […]

On the heels of expanding its marketing call analytics platform last year to provide more insights to help those in sales, e-commerce and customer experience, Invoca is making its first acquisition to widen the net of companies that it targets. The company has acquired DialogTech, a startup that builds tools for marketers to analyze inbound […]