Merge, a startup that helps its users build customer-facing integrations with third-party tools, today announced that it has raised a $4.5 million seed round led by NEA. Additional angel investors include former MuleSoft CEO Greg Schott, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, Expanse co-founders Tim Junio and Matt Kraning, and Jumpstart CEO Ben Herman. Launched in 2020, […]
When Art Agrawal was growing up in India, a car ride was a rare treat, and car ownership was a dream. When he moved to the U.S. and bought his first car, he was shocked by how much it cost and how difficult it was to maintain a car. In 2012, he co-founded a company […]
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 […]
From today until midnight on May 18 (PT), we’re offering a free Disrupt Innovator pass (a $99 value) to anyone who purchases an annual or two-year Extra Crunch membership. Grab an annual or two-year Extra Crunch membership here. TechCrunch Disrupt is a three-day virtual event with founders and investors shaping the future of disruptive technology […]
After seven years at Google, Jacquelle Amankonah Horton knew there was a white space in social between fans and creators. She built Fave to fill in that gap, and the company today announced the close of a $2.2 million seed round. Female Founders Fund, HYBE, Sony Music, Warner Music, Concord Music, Quality Control, Right Hand […]
On the heels of this morning’s announcement of Apple’s next-generation music service featuring lossless audio and spatial audio with support for Dolby Atmos, Amazon is making a move likely aimed at retaining its own streaming music subscribers. The company says that going forward, its high-quality streaming tier, Amazon Music HD, will be made available 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 […]
Apple has announced that it is adding some new features to its music streaming service Apple Music. Starting next month, users will find some new options, such as spatial audio with support for Dolby Atmos as well as lossless audio files. Spotify recently announced a new high-end subscription tier with CD-quality, lossless audio files. But Spotify […]
As gaming platforms capitalize on pandemic-fueled traffic to their digital worlds, brands that drive culture in the physical world are fighting to ensure they don’t miss any new opportunities. A new partnership between Roblox and Gucci brings digital items from the fashion house into the platform’s metaverse alongside a new limited-run digital experience. Gucci’s new […]
Another major telco in the U.S. is making a big move away from being a full player in media services, and specifically content creation. Today AT&T said that it is combining its WarnerMedia division with Discovery Inc. The deal is being structured as a “Reverse Morris Trust” transaction that will give AT&T $43 billion in […]
Buzzy face-swapping video app Reface is expanding its reality-shifting potential beyond selfies by letting users upload more of their own content for its AI to bring to life. Users of its iOS and Android apps still can’t upload their own user generated video but the latest feature — which it calls Swap Animation — lets […]
As a longtime real estate developer based in Chile, Benjamin Labra was able to spot gaps in the buying and renting markets in Latin America. To meet demands, he started Houm, an all-in-one platform that helps homeowners rent and sell their properties in the region. Fresh out of Y Combinator’s W21 cohort, today Houm announced […]
Egypt has a population of over 100 million people. The country has a high mobile and internet penetration necessary for a young and tech-savvy population with 61% below 30. But despite its youthful population, two out of every three individuals are currently unbanked in Egypt. It’s the same situation in MENA, where only 40% of […]
After operating in the red for 14 years, JD.com’s logistics subsidiary is getting ready for an initial public offering in Hong Kong. JD Logistics will price its share between HK$39.36 and HK$43.36 apiece, which could see the firm raise up to about HK$26.4 billion or $3.4 billion, according to its new filing. JD.com, Alibaba’s e-commerce […]
Ride-hailing giant Gojek and marketplace Tokopedia, Indonesia’s two biggest startups, said on Monday they have combined their businesses to form GoTo Group, the largest technology group in the Southeast Asian nation, the fourth most populous country that is currently navigating to contain the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. GoTo will be preparing for a […]
Moglix, an industrial business-to-business marketplace in India, said on Monday it has raised $120 million in a new financing round at $1 billion valuation, becoming the 13th firm from the world’s second largest market to attain the unicorn status this year. The startup’s Series E financing round was led by Falcon Edge Capital and Harvard Management […]
Pine Labs, a startup that offers merchants payments terminals, invoicing tools and working capital, said on Monday it has completed the first close of a $285 million funding as the nearly two-decade-old firm looks to expand its offerings and build and scale an online payments gateway. Baron Capital Group, Duro Capital, Marshall Wace, Moore Strategic Ventures […]
Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, I wrote about Facebook’s never-ending Trump problem. This week, I’m looking at Elon Musk’s wild week of whipping crypto markets. If you’re reading this on the TechCrunch site, you can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. […]
This week’s episode of Found features Courtne Smith, founder of NewNew, a social app where people pay to vote on your decisions. The platform takes the concept of social polling to the next level, essentially allowing everyone to monetize their choices by turning them into a kind of social stock market where others can purchase […]
