Many founders talk about their desire for a more diverse investor base. Richie Serna took that desire and made it a reality. Serna, who founded payments infrastructure startup Finix in 2016, had raised more than $95 million in venture funding from the likes of Lightspeed Venture Partners, American Express Ventures, Homebrew, Precursor Ventures, Insight Partners, […]
Over the past year, the coronavirus crisis has spurred app usage in the United States as people stay indoors to limit contact with others. Mobile games particularly have enjoyed a boom, and among them, games from Chinese studios are gaining popularity. Games released on the U.S. App Store and Google Play Store raked in a […]
BigCommerce has partnered with Walmart to allow its customers to sell on the Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer’s ecommerce marketplace, it announced this morning. Shares of Austin-based BigCommerce rose sharply in pre-market trading after the news, gaining around 10% before the bell. Walmart, best-known for in-person shopping, has proven an ecommerce success story in recent years. For […]
The concept of the “marketing cloud” — sold by the likes of Salesforce, Oracle and Adobe — has become a standard way for large tech companies to package together and sell marketing tools to businesses that want to improve how they use digital channels to grow their business. Some argue, however, that “cloud”, singular, might […]
Mozilla has further beefed up anti-tracking measures in its Firefox browser. In a blog post yesterday it announced that Firefox 86 has an extra layer of anti-cookie tracking built into the enhanced tracking protection (ETP) strict mode — which it’s calling ‘Total Cookie Protection’. This “major privacy advance”, as it bills it, prevents cross-site tracking […]
Every new smart home device invites new questions. Questions of privacy, security and what we’re willing to give up for the sake of convenience. It’s not an anti-technology stance to welcome these conversations and assess new products as we invite them into our homes. For my part, my apartment is fairly limited when it comes […]
It’s almost too simple. You get a tablet made of household chemicals that can be dissolved in water which can become a cleaning spray for the kitchen, glass and bathroom, with no need to ship the water it is dissolved into because it literally comes out of your tap. That was the premise of Munich-based […]
Knowledge workers — those whose professions tend to be anchored to desks or computers — have long been the most obvious and primary focus for a lot of B2B apps and services. But as the wider world migrates to doing more and more on smartphones and other connected devices, the opportunity to build for the […]
Joby Aviation, a startup that has spent a more than a decade developing an all-electric, vertical take-off and landing passenger aircraft, will become a public company through a merger with Reinvent Technology Partners, a special purpose acquisition company from well-known investor and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. The combined company, which will be listed on the […]
While more businesses are turning to text messages as a marketing channel, Emotive CEO Brain Zatulove argued that most marketers are just treating it as another “newsletter blast.” “The reason the channel performs so well is it’s not saturated,” Zatulove said. But that’s changing, and as it does, companies will have to do more to […]
RecargaPay, a Brazil-based fintech that allows users to top off their prepaid cell phones online, announced this morning that they’ve closed their $70 million Series C. The company, which operates solely in Brazil, was launched in 2010 by Miami-based serial entrepreneur Rodrigo Teijeiro, who is co-founder and CEO. Unlike in the U.S. where most people […]
Bay Area-based AI startup Symbio today announced its “official launch.” Backed by a total of $30 million in funding, the company has struck deals with both Nissan and Toyota to implement its software in U.S.-based factories. The company says its SymbioDCS technology is capable of dramatically increasing automation with factory robots on the assembly line. […]
India’s Flipkart said on Wednesday it will deploy more than 25,000 electric vehicles in its supply chain by 2030 as the Walmart-owned e-commerce giant looks to achieve a 100% transition to electric mobility in the next 10 years. The Bangalore-headquartered firm said it has partnered with leading EV makers including Hero Electric, Mahindra Electric, and […]
The Facebook-Australia news battle seems to have reached an end, Android gets an update and Lucid Motors is going public via SPAC. This is your Daily Crunch for February 23, 2021. The big story: Facebook brings news sharing back to Australia Last week, Facebook responded to the Australian government’s proposed law requiring internet platforms to […]
Join TechCrunch for its first 2021 installment of the Ask Me Anything series, where TechCrunch interviews experts and answers your burning questions about virtual events. Our first guest is Xiaoyin Qu, co-founder and CEO of Run The World. Friday, February 26, 1 p.m. PT Register here Run The World is a one-stop shop virtual events […]
Spain is preparing to push forward with pro-startup legislation, having recently unveiled a big and bold transformation plan with the headline goal, by 2030, of turning the country into ‘Spain Entrepreneurial Nation’, as the slightly clumsy English translation has it. Prime minister Pedro Sanchez took a turn on Web Summit’s stage in December to announce […]
SpaceX hasn’t issued any public statement about the $850 million in fresh funding CNBC reported it raised last week, but a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published today confirms the round. SpaceX’s funding was said to value the company at around $74 billion, with a per-share value set at just under […]
Real estate tech startup Sunroom Rentals, which leases units on behalf of property managers and apartment owners, has raised $11 million in a Series A round of funding led by Gigafund. Ben Doherty and Zachary Maurais, former founders of the delivery app Favor, launched Sunroom in May 2018 with the mission of “boosting the profitability” […]
TC Sessions: Justice, our second-ever dedicated event to diversity, equity, inclusion and labor in tech, is coming up on March 3, 2021. This is a virtual one-day conference featuring the brightest innovators, leaders and worker-activists in the industry. We’re pumped to be able to host Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Backstage Capital founder and Managing Partner Arlan […]
Miami is quickly becoming a symbol for the tech exodus from Silicon Valley. The area is home to a number of investors, successful tech founders and an eager local government. For this survey, TechCrunch spoke to a number of investors about the area’s potential, opportunities and key players. This is the second survey TechCrunch published […]
