For a brief moment, earlier this week, it seemed as though Pittsburgh might be the center of the tech universe. Just as Carnegie Mellon alum Duolingo was announcing its IPO. Senators Bob Casey and Pat Toomey were in town, as Vice President Kamala Harris paid a visit to the City of Bridges to talk infrastructure. […]
Therapy is rapidly becoming a standard part of many people’s lives, but 2020 interrupted that trend by nixing in-person sessions and forcing therapists to migrate their entire practice online — and it turns out that’s not so easy. Frame simplifies it with an all-in-one portal for clients and therapists, unifying the listings, tools and management […]
Privacy litigation that’s being brought against Facebook by two not-for-profits in the Netherlands can go ahead, an Amsterdam court has ruled. The case will be heard in October. Since 2019, the Amsterdam-based Data Privacy Foundation (DPS) has been seeking to bring a case against Facebook over its rampant collection of internet users’ data — arguing […]
In a surprise announcement today, IBM announced that Jim Whitehurst, who came over in the Red Hat deal, would be stepping down as company president just 14 months after taking over in that role. IBM didn’t give a lot of details as to why he was stepping away, but acknowledged his key role in helping […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Danny, Natasha, and Alex were on deck this week, with Grace on the recording and edit. But, if you want to hear more about Robinhood, this is not the episode for you. If you want to learn more about the consumer fintech […]
General Motors is investing in domestically sourced lithium. The company said Friday it became the first investor in an Australian company’s project to extract the mineral, a critical component of electric vehicle batteries, from the Salton Sea Geothermal Field near Los Angeles. The automaker will have first rights on lithium produced by Controlled Thermal Resources’ […]
Licious, a Bangalore-based startup that sells fresh meat and seafood online, has raised $192 million in a new financing round as it looks to expand its footprint beyond the South Asian market. The new round — a Series F — was led by Singapore’s investment firm Temasek and Multiples Private Equity. The round, which brings […]
Swedish gaming giant Modern Times Group (MTG) has acquired Indian startup PlaySimple for at least $360 million, the two firms said Friday. MTG said it will pay 77% of the acquisition sum to Indian game developer and publisher in cash and the rest in company shares. There’s also another $150 million reward put aside if […]
A great deal has changed since we last covered Nigerian fintech startup TeamApt two years ago. At the time, the company had just closed a $5.5 million Series A round from a single VC — Quantum Capital Partners, a firm owned by Zenith Bank billionaire Jim Ovia. TeamApt has quite the story. CEO Tosin Eniolorunda […]
Neobanks have led the charge as regards venture capital funding for consumer fintech startups. But while they have collectively dominated the fintech space, they don’t operate a monolithic model. There are five distinct models, and the one adopted by Nubank, the $30 billion behemoth, is the credit-led model. Neobanks operating this model start by offering […]
Two billionaires are neck and neck in the final sprint to the Kármán line, but Richard Branson may clinch it with a July 11 flight on a Virgin Galactic spacecraft, narrowly beating out Jeff Bezos’s planned July 20 trip aboard a Blue Origin New Shepard capsule. Whoever wins, the real lesson here is that with […]
Twitter is considering changes to the way it contextualizes misleading tweets that the company doesn’t believe are dangerous enough to be removed from the platform outright. The company announced the test in a tweet Thursday with an image of the new misinformation labels. Within the limited test, those labels will appear with color-coded backgrounds now, […]
Edtech startup Microverse has tapped new venture funding in its quest to help train students across the globe to code through its online school that requires zero upfront cost, instead relying on an income-share agreement that kicks in when students find a job. The startup tells TechCrunch it has closed a $12.5 million Series A […]
We are seeing a wave of private companies sweeping across parts of education and training that were previously overseen or funded centrally by governments. This is happening all across the world.
Twitter has a history of sharing feature and design ideas it’s considering at very early stages of development. Earlier this month, for example, it showed off concepts around a potential “unmention” feature that would let users untag themselves from others’ tweets. Today, the company is sharing a few more of its design explorations that would […]
It’s a sweltering day here in New York City, and that means Wall Street is on fire, and so is Robinhood, apparently. The popular stock trading app officially filed its Form S-1 with the SEC a few hours ago to go public, where it will trade under the ticker “HOOD.” Robinhood files to go public […]
