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 […]
From time to time, we see a Chinese app climbing to the top of Google Play and App Store in a host of Western countries. It might be a utility tool like a selfie beautifier or some casual video game, which has universal appeal and require little localization effort. But most of them tend to […]
Investment activities in Egypt continue to gain steam, not for startups only but also the funds backing them. Today, seed accelerator Flat6Labs announced the second close of its Egypt fund to support early-stage startups and provide follow-up investment. The fund had a target for EGP50 million (~$3.2 million) but eventually closed at EGP207 million ($13.2 […]
Zeta, a startup that helps banks and fintech firms launch products, is the newest to attain the coveted unicorn status after closing a financing round. The banking tech firm, co-founded by veteran Indian entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia, said on Monday it has raised $250 million in a Series D Series C round led by SoftBank Vision […]
Aurora Solar had one of those pitches that seemed obvious in retrospect. Instead of going to a house and measuring its roof manually for a solar panel installation, why not use aerial scans and imagery of the whole region? That smart play earned them a $20M A round, a $50M B round, and now only […]
Emitwise, a startup that claims its AI platform can measure greenhouse gas emissions from companies and their supply chains, has added to its seed funding round by $3.2 million, bringing its total seed funding raised to $6.6 million. ArcTern Ventures led the $3.2m raise. Also participating were Angel investors including Peter Harrison, the CEO of […]
In February, Nigerian fintech startup Mono announced its acceptance into Y Combinator and, at the time, it wanted to build the Plaid for Africa. Three months later, the startup has a different mission: to power the internet economy in Africa and has closed $2 million in seed investment towards that goal. The investment comes nine […]
British artificial intelligence (AI) company, Faculty has raised £30 million ($42.5M) in growth funding from the Apax Digital Fund (ADF). The startup has now raised a total of £40m ($56.6M) to date. In April this year, the company announced it had won a contract to work with the UK’s NHS to better predict its future […]
These days, the path of least resistance in laptop design is straight-up knocking off the MacBook. We’ve certainly seen our share of egregious cases over the years. Microsoft, however, has defiantly forged its own path with industrial design across the board. Its products are largely interesting and innovative — something not every hardware manufacturer can […]
Three months after air transport data giant SITA reported a data breach, we are still learning about the damage. Air India said this week that personal data of about 4.5 million passengers had been compromised following the incident at SITA, Indian flag carrier airline’s data processor. The stolen information included passengers’ name, credit card details, […]
Startups used to be obsessed with billboards. It was the first thing I noticed when I moved to San Francisco: venture-backed companies including Eaze, Airbnb, and notoriously, Brex, would post large billboard advertisements all over the city to grab attention and eyeballs. When I dug into it more, I learned this type of old school, […]
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]
Full disclosure: the second time I worked at a startup founded by Mark Pincus, his dog Zinga slept behind my desk and I was one of her favorite dog-sitters.
The buyer’s guide is a win for both sides: Buyers are informed of what’s to come, and startups can expedite a potential deal by preempting any concerns about a product and/or the sales process.
