TechCrunch

Expect to keep hearing about insurtech for quarters and quarters to come.

NASA and Boeing are looking to March 29, 2021 as the earliest possible date for their Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2), a key qualifying demonstration mission in their ongoing Commercial Crew spaceflight program. Boeing is the second company selected by NASA to build and qualify a human space launch system for transporting astronauts to and […]

As the pandemic has raged on, it has shone a spotlight on the importance of procurement, especially in certain sectors. Fairmarkit, a Boston startup, is working to bring a modern digital procurement system to the enterprise. Today, the company announced a $30 million Series B. GGV Capital and Insight Partners led the round with help […]

With Slack being acquired by Salesforce for $28 billion, the world of collaborative tools for teams is on fire right now. Notion is super hot and last year Frame.io raised $50 million and Microsoft has Fluid. Now, after some months in private beta, JetBrains — which also makes development environments (IDE) for various programming languages […]

Pinterest today is adding a few new features — notes, favorites and a board toolbar — aimed at helping those who use their boards for making lists of gift ideas, or who have a hard time navigating and sorting through boards with a larger number of items. The additions follow a blowout third quarter for […]

Product managers can only be successful if they can make effective use of both quantitative and qualitative data. But mapping the former to the latter, and collecting high-quality data, is a huge challenge to organizations looking to rapidly productize and innovate. UserLeap, a company founded by serial product manager Ryan Glasgow, thinks it has found […]

This week Koan, a startup that provides objectives-and-key-results (OKR) and status-tracking software, announced that it has raised an additional $1 million, added a free tier to its service and acquired a design firm with which it has worked. Koan, which raised $3 million in seed funding last October, was co-founded by Matt Tucker, who previously […]

I’ve had Apple’s AirPod Max headphones for less than 24 hours, so there is no way I would attempt to write a review of any sort. But I do have some of those oh so popular these days “first impressions” to share. Mostly on build quality, but I’ll throw a few first listen thoughts at […]

In the view of most Americans, there’s abundant competition and choice throughout the digital marketplace.

Planet FWD, the climate-friendly food startup founded by Zume co-founder Julia Collins, is today launching its first product, Moonshot Snacks. The climate-friendly snack is carbon neutral, organic, kosher, plant-based, non GMO and has no sugar added. The crackers come in three flavors: sourdough sea salt rosemary garlic and tomato basil. A box of crackers costs $5.99. […]

Nobody likes dealing with taxes — until the system works in your favor. In many countries, startups can receive tax credits for their R&D work and related employee cost, but as with all things bureaucracy, that’s often a slow and onerous task. Boast.ai aims to make this process far easier, by using a mix of […]

LeafLink is today announcing it raised a $40 million Series C financing round, led by Founders Fund with participation from Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. This round of financing brings the total amount raised by the company to over $90 million. This financing round is Founder Fund’s largest technology investment in the cannabis […]

Only a few months after announcing its $15 million Series A round, Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm Hunters today announced that it has received additional growth funding from Snowflake Ventures for its Open Extended Threat Detection & Response service (XDR). With this, Snowflake’s venture arm joins existing investors M12 and U.S. Venture Partners, which led the Series A […]

Aira is the company behind one of the most exciting wireless power innovations, and now this technology could be headed into vehicles. The wireless power company just announced a strategic investment from Motherson, a Tier 1 global auto parts supplier. Aira’s technology allows companies to build a better wireless charger. Instead of a wireless charger […]

Facebook’s bad week just got worse: It’s being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account. The tech giant raised the hackles of the VR community this summer when it announced it would be merging users of the latest Oculus kit onto a single Facebook account — […]

More than one billion people in India today have a mobile connection, thanks in part to the proliferation of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data plans in recent years. This scale was unimaginable just three decades ago, when India had fewer than 2.5 million telephones in the country. One of the earliest […]

Instagram today is launching Shopping in Reels, its TikTok competitor. The new feature was announced in October as something the company had in the works, as part of a ongoing series of shopping-related updates to the Instagram app. With today’s launch, both businesses and creators will be able to tag products when they create Reels […]

Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding. Leading the round, which I understand actually closed earlier this year, is EQT Ventures. Also participating are existing investors Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and […]

German fintech Solactive, a technology-enabled provider of indices and index solutions to the global financial services industry, has taken a $60.4m / €50 million minority investment from growth investor Summit Partners. Widely regarded as something of a disruptor in the global indexing industry, Solactive is benefitting from the ongoing and significant shift of active to […]

UK-based Orbex has raised a new $24 million funding round, led by BGF and Octopus Ventures, and including participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital, and Elecnor S.A. This new investment help “secure the roadmap” that Orbex was already working towards regarding its launch vehicle development and deployment, which is currently targeting 2022 for […]