In many ways, China is the ideal testbed for alternative protein. The country has a long history of imitation meat rooted in Buddhist vegetarianism and a growing, health-conscious middle class.
FinanZero, a Brazilian online credit marketplace, announced today that it has closed a $7 million round of funding — its fourth since it launched in 2016. It has raised a total of $22.85 million to date. The real-time online loan broker allows people to apply for a personal loan, a car equity loan or a […]
Why did Byju’s raise over $1 billion last year and is already inching closer to securing another half a billion dollars? We are getting some answers today. Byju’s said on Monday it has acquired Aakash Educational Services, a 33-year-old chain of physical coaching centres, as the Indian online learning giant looks to further consolidate its […]
Meesho said on Monday it has raised $300 million in a new financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 as the Indian social commerce startup works to become the “single ecosystem that will enable all small businesses to succeed online.” The new round — a Series E — gives the five-year-old startup a valuation […]
LG said on Monday it will close its loss-making mobile phone business worldwide as the once pioneer brand looks to focus its resources in “growth areas” such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, AI and B2B solutions, and platforms and services. The South Korean firm said in a statement that its board […]
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Amazon kicked off the holiday weekend by backtracking slightly on a social media offensive that unfolded in the waning days of a historic unionization vote. The earlier comments reportedly arrived as Jeff Bezos was pushing for a more aggressive strategy. Along with taking on Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the Amazon News Twitter account […]
At the end of 2020, I argued that edtech needs to think bigger in order to stay relevant after the pandemic. I urged founders to think less about how to bundle and unbundle lecture experience, and more about how to replace outdated systems and methods with new, tech-powered solutions. In other words, don’t simply put […]
NASA’s SBIR program regularly doles out cash to promising small businesses and research programs, and the lists of awardees is always interesting to sift through. Here are a dozen companies and proposals from this batch that are especially compelling or suggest new directions for missions and industry in space. Sadly these brief descriptions are often […]
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 is as hot as ever, 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 […]
Apple adds classic titles to Apple Arcade, Microsoft experiences an outage and Coinbase is going public. This is your Daily Crunch for April 2, 2021. The big story: Apple Arcade expands with classic games Until now, Apple’s game subscription service was limited to exclusive new titles, but today it’s introducing two new categories: App Store […]
Woody Sears has long been interested in storytelling. Following the debut in 2007 of the first iPhone, he founded a storytelling app called Zuuka that built up a library of narrated and illustrated kids’ books for the iPhone and iPad. Sears later sold that company to a small New York-based outfit. But Sears, who is […]
Underrepresented founders are the most undervalued asset class in the U.S. today, and investors are starting to realize that diversity is not charity -- it’s economic opportunity.
Whether pure-play RPA will survive as a category remains to be seen, but it will likely be around for a long time under the intelligent process automation umbrella.
Cross-border payments startup dLocal has raised $150 million at a $5 billion valuation, less than seven months after securing $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. This means that the five-year-old Uruguayan company has effectively quadrupled its valuation in a matter of months. Alkeon Capital led the latest round, which also included participation from BOND, […]
Apple has announced an expansion for its subscription gaming service Apple Arcade. In addition to exclusive game releases, the company is adding two new categories — Timeless Classics and App Store Greats. In the “App Store Greats” category, you can find some well-known iPhone games that have been released over the past decade, such as […]
