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Mar 02, 2021
Real estate tech startup Doma, formerly known as States Title, announced Tuesday it will go public through a merger with SPAC Capitol Investment Corp. V in a deal valued at $3 billion, including debt. SPACs, often called blank-check companies, are increasingly common. They exist as publicly traded entities in search of a private company to […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Fluid Truck has built an app-based platform that aims to take away the pain and cost of owning or leasing commercial vehicles, all while grabbing market share from established companies like Penske, Ryder and U-Haul. Now, it has the capital to help it get there. The Denver-based company said Tuesday it raised $63 million in […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Twitter announced today it's opening up its live audio chat rooms, known as Twitter Spaces, to users on Android. Previously, the experience was only open to select users on iOS following the product's private beta launch in late December 2020. The company says that Android users will only be able to join and talk in […]
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Mar 02, 2021
SpineZone is a startup that creates personalized exercise programs and treatment for neck and back pain. The company uses an online platform and in-person clinics to deliver a curriculum that, ideally, helps patients avoid the need for prescription drugs, injections and surgeries, and providers then avoid the cost of all of the above. Co-founded by […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Microsoft is warning customers that a new China state-sponsored threat actor is exploiting four previously undisclosed security flaws in Exchange Server, an enterprise email product built by the software giant. The technology company said Tuesday that it believes the hacking group, which it calls Hafnium, tries to steal information from a broad range of U.S.-based […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Bootstrapping a SaaS company is not only possible - I believe it's a saner, more sustainable way to build and scale a business.
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Mar 02, 2021
When I first wrote about Retail Zipline in 2019, the startup was focused on building a communication platform that would help corporate decision-makers in retail communicate with individual stores. As you'd probably guess, the startup saw some changes in 2020. "When COVID first hit, you might think a company that's primarily focused on retail would […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Mobile gaming hasn't seen the same demand for streaming content in the past as desktop has, but Amazon sees a market there to extend Twitch's dominance. After launching on Android back in November, the company's mobile streaming centric app has just launched on Apple's App Store. The app lets users record short clips (anywhere from […]
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Mar 02, 2021
A new digital marketplace called West Tenth, now backed by $1.5 million in seed funding, wants to give women a platform to start and grow their home-based businesses. Through its mobile app, women can promote their business to others in the local community, then field inquiries and requests through the app's integrated messaging platform, as […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Amazon on Tuesday issued a rare apology to users in India for an original political drama series over allegations that a few scenes in the nine-part mini series hurt religious sentiments of some people in the key overseas market. The series, called "Tandav," has faced criticism from some people in India — including a few […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Fortnite maker Epic today announced plans to acquire Tonic Games Group, most notably the publisher behind the fellow massive battle royale hit title, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Tonic Games Group is the parent company for the Irregular Corporation, Fortitude Games and Fall Guys developer, Mediatonic. Other titles developed under the umbrella include Murder by Numbers, […]
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Mar 02, 2021
There are many jobs in the construction industry that fall under the "dull, dirty, and dangerous" category said to be ripe for automation — but only a few can actually be taken on with today's technology. One such job is the crucial but repetitive task of rebar tying, which a startup called SkyMul is aiming […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Today, at a special AR/VR focused event held inside its virtual reality community platform Altspace, Microsoft showcased a new product aiming to provide their AR HoloLens platform and VR Windows Mixed Reality platform with a shared platform for meetings. The app is called Microsoft Mesh and it gives users a cross AR/VR meeting space to […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Airbyte, an open-source data integration platform, today announced that it has raised a $5.2 million seed funding round led by Accel. Other investors include Y Combinator, 8VC, Segment co-founder Calvin French-Owen, former Cloudera GM Charles Zedlewski, LiveRamp and Safegraph CEO Auren Hoffman, Datavant CEO Travis May and Alain Rossmann, the president of Machinify. The company […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Existential risk has been on many of our minds the past year. Sales of survival goods from food kits to nuclear-proof bunkers are way up, we doomscroll on Twitter all day, and it seems like there isn't a week that goes by where civilizational collapse isn't at least a possibility on the agenda. Yet, if […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Making money on livestreams has never been easier thanks to a suite of tools from the Los Angeles-based startup Maestro, which just nabbed $15 million in financing to grow its business. As video commerce becomes the norm and entertainers, brands, businesses, and franchises of all sizes and stripes look to cut out the middle man, […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Get ready to engage in essential conversations about some of the most important issues facing the tech industry — diversity, equity, inclusion and labor. TC Sessions: Justice 2021 — a day-long virtual symposium — begins tomorrow, March 3, and we're here to highlight just a few of the powerful people, presentations and fireside chats you […]
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Mar 02, 2021
We've known for a long time that music streaming royalties are fundamentally broken. As revenue has shifted away from sales of physical music, it's become increasingly difficult for many independent artists to make a living off recorded music. But all of that has come to a head as the pandemic has stripped live music out […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Postmates X, the robotics division of the on-demand delivery startup that Uber acquired last year for $2.65 billion, has officially spun out as an independent company called Serve Robotics. TechCrunch reported in January that a deal was being shopped to investors. Serve Robotics, a name taken from the autonomous sidewalk delivery bot that was developed and […]
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Mar 02, 2021
This morning Parabol, a startup that provides retrospective meeting software to agile development teams, announced that it has closed an $8 million Series A. Microsoft's venture capital arm, M12, led the deal. The investment also saw participation from Techstars, CRV, and Haystack. TechCrunch caught up with Parabol CEO Jordan Husney to talk about the round, […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Was back in 2019, Apple launched Research. The app was the latest effort by a company looking to take a more serious approach to user health, built (naturally) around data collected from the iPhone and Apple Watch. The app debuted with four studies: heart health, women's health, movement and hearing. Today, the company is issuing […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Vestiaire Collective announced a new funding round. The company has raised $216 million, or €178 million — it has reached a valuation above $1 billion, making it a unicorn. French fashion and luxury group Kering is leading the round with Tiger Global Management. Kering now owns 5% of Vestiaire Collective. The startup operates an online marketplace […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Live events in the age of Covid-19 have largely been moved into the virtual world: we buy tickets (or simply click on a link), go to a site or app, and watch the action unfold on a screen. Your seat or mine might be just as good as that of any other audience member, but […]
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Mar 02, 2021
These companies will soon convert tens of billions of dollars of illiquid private shares into public currency. As such, their offerings may reveal investors' sentiments regarding e-commerce and insurance companies backed by venture capital.
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Mar 02, 2021
Investors have been waiting for Spotify's multimillion-dollar bet on podcasting to pay off, in terms of increased paid subscriptions or improved revenues. But before that can occur, Spotify has to get more people listening to podcasts through its app. On that front, the streaming service has momentum. According to a new market forecast, Spotify's U.S. […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Semih Korkmaz and Hantz Févry launched Stoovo in 2019 as a way to help gig workers make the best use of their time. Févry, who immigrated to the U.S. from Haiti, knew first hand the struggles that come with part time work from his days as a student at Stonybrook University. While there bouncing from […]
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Mar 02, 2021
On-demand grocery delivery platform Instacart has raises a $265 million funding ground from existing investors, including Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, D1 Capital Partners and others. The new funding, which, like its past few rounds, isn't assigned a Series alphabetical designation, pushes the company's valuation to $39 billion - more than double its $17.7 billion valuation […]
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Mar 02, 2021
When a hacker broke into the computer systems of the Oldsmar Florida water supply last month, it sent up red flags across the operational tech world, whether that's utilities or oil and gas pipelines. Xage, a security startup that has been building a solution to help protect these hard-to-secure operations, announced a Zero Trust remote […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Insects are a lot of things - but fragile they're not. Sure, most can't withstand the full force of a human foot, but for their size, they're evolve to be extremely rugged and resilient. Insect-sized technology, on the other hand, is general another story. That's certainly been the historic case with scaled-down drones. The components, […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, digital transformation is happening all over the world. And Southeast Asia is no exception. Indonesia's Xendit, a startup focused on building digital payments infrastructure for the region, has just raised $64.6 million in a Series B led by Silicon Valley heavyweight Accel. The funding brings the total amount raised by […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Volvo Cars said it will only make and sell all-electric vehicles by 2030, as part of a broader transformation of the automaker that will include shifting sales online. "The key to sustainability is electrification, said Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson during a presentation Tuesday. "Together with investments in charging infrastructure that is the right way […]
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Mar 02, 2021
News aggregator Flipboard‘s local coverage is making what product lead Brian Gottesman described as a "quantum leap," expanding from 60 topics (a.k.a. cities, towns and communities that you can follow) to more than 1,000. While Flipboard has allowed users to follow stories focused on major cities like New York for years, it launched a broader […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Silicon Valley is novel, but not unique. Throughout the United States and abroad, there are communities of technology entrepreneurs leveraging local assets to build great companies. TechCrunch has long told these stories, and throughout the first half of 2021, our editorial staff is dedicated to shining a spotlight on exciting startups and notable investors in […]
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Mar 02, 2021
After inking a $9.2 billion deal to merge their classifieds businesses last year, eBay and Norway's Adevinta have announced a deal to sell off three popular web properties in the UK to get the deal cleared by local regulators, the Competition Markets Authority. The companies plan to sell off Adevina-owned Shpock, and eBay-owned Gumtree and […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Microsoft today announced that it is making Power Automate Desktop, its enterprise-level tool for creating automated desktop-centric workflows, available to all Windows 10 users for free. Power Automate Desktop is what Microsoft calls its "attended Robotic Process Automation" solution, but you can think of it as a macro recorder on steroids. It comes with 370 […]
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Mar 02, 2021
As the pandemic drags on and we learn about the requirements of working from home with distributed teams, users could be craving more integration across their tools to help reduce the clicks required to complete a set of tasks. Today at the Ignite Conference, Microsoft announced tighter integration between its business suite Dynamics 365 and […]
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Mar 02, 2021
DJI has flirted with FPV goggles before, of course. The company got on the burgeoning FPV movement with the launch of its DJI Goggles back in 2016. It was a logical extension for the company that controls around 70% of the drone market, at last count, and a push toward a more mainstream experience for […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Piano is expanding its platform for digital publishers with the acquisition of AT Internet, a 25-year-old analytics company based in France. Even if you don't recognize Piano as a company, TechCrunch readers will probably be familiar with the product, since we use it to manage the reader experience of our Extra Crunch membership program. Other […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Microsoft today announced Azure Percept, its new hardware and software platform for bringing more of its Azure AI services to the edge. Percept combines Microsoft's Azure cloud tools for managing devices and creating AI models with hardware from Microsoft's device partners. The general idea here is to make it far easier for all kinds of […]
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Mar 02, 2021
With Azure Arc, Microsoft offers a service that allows its customers to run Azure in any Kubernetes environment, no matter where that container cluster is hosted. From Day One, Arc supported a wide range of use cases, but one feature that was sorely missing when it first launched was support for machine learning (ML). But […]
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Mar 02, 2021
At its Ignite conference today, Microsoft announced the launch of Azure Managed Instance for Apache Cassandra, its latest NoSQL database offering and a competitor to Cassandra-centric companies like Datastax. Microsoft describes the new service as a ‘semi-managed offering that will help companies bring more of their Cassandra-based workloads into its cloud. "Customers can easily take […]
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Mar 02, 2021
This morning Beam, an insurtech startup that provides dental coverage to corporate employees, announced that it has closed an $80 million Series E. Mercato-affiliated Traverse led the investment, with Nationwide insurance joining the deal. Both are new investors in Beam. Prior investors Drive Capital and Georgian Partners also put capital into the funding event. The investment […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Last week the mobile charging battery company SparkCharge announced a partnership agreement with AllState that expands the company's reach into vehicle services, driving the company further down the road toward its goal of making electric vehicle charging the next gig economy job. The company, which has developed, designed and is commercializing a mobile vehicle charger […]
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Mar 02, 2021
The on-demand grocery delivery industry in Europe (and beyond) continues to heat up amidst the pandemic, including a plethora of startups taking a vertical approach by operating their own delivery only — or "dark" — stores. The latest to show its hand is Berlin-based Flink, which today is announcing that it has raised a hefty […]
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Mar 02, 2021
The Future Africa Fund kicked off in 2015 when Iyinoluwa Aboyeji and Nadayar Enegesi, co-founders of US-based and African-focused talent company Andela, wrote checks to African startups as angel investors. This continued even as Aboyeji joined and left Flutterwave, the fintech company he co-founded. In January 2020, the pair made the fund official, with Aboyeji […]
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Mar 02, 2021
TikTok is bringing in external experts in Europe in fields such as child safety, young people's mental health and extremism to form a Safety Advisory Council to help it with content moderation in the region. The move, announced today, follows an emergency intervention by Italy's data protection authority in January — which ordered TikTok to […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Humaans, a London-based HR startup, has raised $5 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its employee on-boarding and management platform. Backing the round is Y Combinator, Mattias Ljungman's Moonfire, Frontline Ventures and former head of Stripe Issuing, Lachy Groom. A number of other investors, made up of seasoned entrepreneurs and startup operators, […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Crisp, an Amsterdam-based, online-only supermarket focused on fresh produce, has raised €30 million in a Series B financing led by leading Target Global and joined by Keen Venture Partners and the co-founders of Adyen and Takeaway.com. Crisp has now raised a total of €42.5 million to date. It plans to use the money to expand […]
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Mar 02, 2021
Food delivery — whether it's ready-made orders from restaurants, meal kits or groceries — has been one of the most-used services in this last year of living under the cloud of a global health pandemic, and today one of the companies with ambitions to build a pan-European empire in the third of these categories is […]
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Mar 02, 2021
According to an amended S-1 filing, South Korean e-commerce leader Coupang expects to price its initial public offering between $27 to $30 per share, potentially raising up to $3.6 billion. After the IPO, Coupang will have a total of 1.7 billion shares outstanding, including Class A and Class B. This means the means the pricing […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Compass, the real-estate brokerage startup backed by roughly $1.6 billion in venture funding, filed its S-1 Monday. The move comes just under one year after the New York-based company laid off 15% of its staff as a result of the shifting economic fortunes created by the global response to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Prior to […]
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Mar 01, 2021
What if we no longer needed cameras to make videos and can instead generate them through a few lines of coding? Advances in machine learning are turning the idea into a reality. We've seen how deepfakes swap faces in family photos and turn one's selfies into famous video clips. Now entrepreneurs with AI research background […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Hyzon Motors plans to produce fuel cells, including a critical component required to power hydrogen vehicles, at two U.S. factories in a move aimed at kickstarting domestic production at a commercial scale. The hydrogen-powered truck and bus manufacturer has already leased a 28,000-square-foot facility in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook and plans to expand it […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Known for its innovations in the payments sector, Square is now officially a bank. Nearly one year after receiving conditional approval, Square said Monday afternoon that its industrial bank, Square Financial Services, has begun operations. Square Financial Services completed the charter approval process with the FDIC and Utah Department of Financial Institutions, meaning its ready for […]
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Mar 01, 2021
It's unicorn melting season, with gobs of investors hoping for liquidity while public markets are hot. Expect more Kalturas.
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Mar 01, 2021
A startup by an Apple alum that has become home to millions of low-skilled workers in India said on Tuesday it has raised an additional $12.5 million, just five months after securing $8 million from high-profile investors. One-year-old Apna said Sequoia Capital India and Greenoaks Capital led the $12.5 million Series B investment in the […]
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Mar 01, 2021
A challenger bank raises funding at a massive valuation, Instagram adds Live Rooms and Google updates Workspace. This is your Daily Crunch for March 1, 2021. The big story: Klarna valued at $31B The Swedish challenger bank and buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) service has raised $1 billion at a post-money valuation of $31 billion. Klarna says it […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Google over the weekend began to update many of its flagship iOS apps after a lengthy delay caused by the company's failure to add Apple's newly required privacy labels in a timely fashion. Though Google earlier this year said it would "soon" begin to add the labels to its apps as they were updated, it […]
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Mar 01, 2021
"You're seeing a lot of large companies … are now investing significant amounts into really trying to understand their emissions profile and prioritize emission reductions in a data-driven way."
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Mar 01, 2021
AWS launched the DeepRacer League in 2018 as a fun way to teach developers machine learning, and it's been building on the idea ever since. Today, it announced the latest league season with two divisions: Open and Pro. As Marcia Villalba wrote in a blog post announcing the new league, "AWS DeepRacer is an autonomous […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Facebook was ordered to pay $650 million Friday for running afoul of an Illinois law designed to protect the state's residents from invasive privacy practices. That law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), is a powerful state measure that's tripped up tech companies in recent years. The suit against Facebook was first filed in 2015, alleging […]
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Mar 01, 2021
TC Sessions: Justice is coming up on Wednesday, and we've decided to sweeten the deal for what's included with your event pass. Buy your ticket now and you'll get a free month of access to Extra Crunch, our membership program focused on founders and startup teams with exclusive articles published daily. Extra Crunch unlocks access […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Twitter announced Monday that it would begin injecting new labels into users' timelines to push back against misinformation that could disrupt the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The labels, which will also appear as pop-up messages in the retweet window, are the company's latest product experiment designed to shape behavior on the platform for the better. […]
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Mar 01, 2021
As the next Y Combinator demo day approaches, more startups from the current Winter 2021 batch are showing up in our inboxes. One of the most interesting from the mix is BrioHR, which is building human resources (HR) software for Southeast Asia. The company fits into a theme I've noticed amongst startups, namely a focus […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Rocket Lab packed a ton of news into Monday to kick off this week: It's going public via a SPAC merger, for one, and it's also building a new, larger launch vehicle called Neutron to support heavier payloads. I spoke to Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck about why it's building Neutron now, and […]
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Mar 01, 2021
You might call Cappuccino the anti-Clubhouse, but the company has been iterating on its app concept for a couple of years — its CEO doesn't have any strong opinions on Clubhouse. And it's true that Cappuccino is an interesting social app on its own. It has been attracting a loyal user base, especially after a […]
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Mar 01, 2021
As building in public continues to gain popularity with early-stage startup founders, Murmur, coming out of stealth today, wants to leverage that natural transparency to a louder frequency. Founded by Aaron Dignan, Murmur helps startups create work agreements based on the policies of other startups. "Work agreements" is an intentionally broad phrase, but encapsulates everything […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Product principles should always evolve to keep up with the changing ways you work and what your customers need.
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Mar 01, 2021
In a move designed to directly challenge Amazon, Walmart today announced it's dropping the $35 minimum order requirement for its two-hour "Express" delivery service, a competitor to Amazon's "Prime Now." With Walmart Express Delivery, customers can order from Walmart's food, consumables or general merchandise assortment, then pay a flat $10 fee to have the items […]
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Mar 01, 2021
On a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live, Bain Capital Ventures' Matt Harris said that if you had asked him a year ago what would happen to venture capital during a pandemic lockdown, he would have replied "it would have fallen off a cliff." Before the world changed so fundamentally, VCs and founders alike believed […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Buzzy mega-rounds and high-profile IPOs often dominate headlines. But many of those companies were once early-stage and scrapping to raise a seed round. Today, Chicago Ventures, a VC firm that often leads seed-stage rounds, announced the close of its third fund — a $63 million vehicle that it's already put to work. Chicago Ventures (which […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Tech companies are no stranger to controversy and workplace issues. Over the years, it's become clear that no company is immune from diversity issues. But it's the job of those in the diversity, equity and inclusion departments to create and foster environments that are welcoming to all. Last year, in the wake of the police […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Tech companies are no stranger to controversy and workplace issues. Over the years, it's become clear that no company is immune from diversity issues. But it's the job of those in the diversity, equity and inclusion departments to create and foster environments that are welcoming to all. Last year, in the wake of the police […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Google Workspace, the company's productivity platform you'll forever refer to as G Suite (or even ‘Google Docs'), is launching a large update today that touches everything from your calendar to Google Meet and how you can use Workspace with the Google Assistant. Indeed, the highlight here is probably that you can now use the Assistant […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Zeta Global, the marketing technology company founded by David A. Steinberg and former Apple CEO John Sculley, is announcing an additional $222.5 million in new debt financing. The company has gone down the debt route before — a Series F raised in 2017 combined $115 million funding with $25 million in debt. BofA Securities served […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Let's see what we can learn about Coinbase's recent trading volume before looking into Robinhood's. Is Robinhood crypto a possible threat to Coinbase's consumer trading volumes?
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Mar 01, 2021
Instagram today announced it's adding a much-requested feature to its app with the launch of "Live Rooms," which allow up to four people to broadcast live together at the same time. Previously, the app only allowed users to live stream with one other person, similar to Facebook Live. The company says it hopes Live Rooms […]
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Mar 01, 2021
The European Commission has said it will present a legislative plan later this month for what it's calling a "digital green pass" — aka a digital certificate — which it says will be aimed at facilitating cross-border travel in the age of coronavirus. President Ursula von der Leyen said today that the planned digital tool will […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Tonal, maker of the smart home fitness trainer, announced it is more than tripling the number of physical locations it sells devices in through a new partnership with Nordstrom. Starting this month, Tonal will have 50-square-foot stations in the women's activewear departments of at least 40 Nordstrom locations across the U.S., bringing the total number […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Few things are more personal than a keyboard and yet they are often overlooked by Work From Home guides. Why use the standard issue keyboard when there are so many options available? This is a sampling of some of the keyboards used by TechCrunch's editorial staff. Some are boring, some are for different languages, and each […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Atlanta startups can now add another name to their rolodexes of venture firms operating out of the Big Peach with the close of Silicon Road Ventures new $31 million fund. Silicon Road invests across the U.S. from its base in Atlanta, the firm said with a focus on e-commerce, retail, and consumer packaged goods. The […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Extra Crunch Live, the members only event series that features tech leaders waxing poetic on how to perfect the pitch deck (and more!) has gotten off to a strong start in 2021. Thus far, we've seen the most beautifully simple deck in existence with the help of Justworks' Isaac Oates and Bain's Matt Harris, learned […]
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Mar 01, 2021
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. […]
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Mar 01, 2021
The U.S.-based oil major Chevron is doubling down on its investment in geothermal power by investing in a Swedish developer of low-temperature geothermal and heat power projects called Baseload Capital. Oil companies are under pressure to find new lines of business as the world prepares for a massive shift to renewable energy resources to power […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Syniverse Technologies, a company that helps mobile providers move communications across public and private networks, announced an extensive partnership with Twilio this morning. Under the agreement, Twilio is investing up to $750 million to become a minority owner in the company. The idea behind the partnership is to combine Twilio's API communications expertise with Syniverse's […]
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Mar 01, 2021
An iPhone hacking team has released a new jailbreak tool for almost every iPhone, including the most recent models, by using the same vulnerability that Apple last month said was under active attack by hackers. The Unc0ver team released its latest jailbreak this weekend, and says it works on iOS 11 (iPhone 5s and later) […]
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Mar 01, 2021
TechCrunch is embarking on a major project to survey the venture capital investors of Europe, and their cities. Our survey of investors in Zagreb will capture how Croatia is faring, and what changes are being wrought amongst investors by the coronavirus pandemic. We'd like to know how the Croatian startup scene is evolving, how the […]
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Mar 01, 2021
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. Hi friends and new readers, welcome back to The Station, a newsletter dedicated to all the present and future ways people and packages move from Point A to […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Businesses, and the tech platforms that support their operations, had to adapt quickly to the pandemic. Ben Thompson, co-founder and chief executive officer of human resources platform Employment Hero told TechCrunch that "COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of employment management software by roughly five years," as teams adjusted to remote work. The Sydney, Australia-based company announced […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Clue, an early pioneer in the femtech category with a well-regarded period-tracking app that's used by around 13 million people, is getting ready to launch a digital contraceptive which will offer users a statistical prediction of ovulation as a birth control tool. A US launch of Clue Birth Control is slated for "this year". The […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Monday brings with it not one, but two space SPACS - there's Rocket Lab, and there's Spire Global, a satellite operator that bills itself primarily as a SaaS company focused on delivering data and analytics made possible by its 100-plus spacecraft constellation. SPACs have essentially proven a pressure-release valve for the space startup market, which […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Because news of its SPAC-fueled public market debut wasn't enough, Rocket Lab also unveiled a new class of rocket it has in development on Monday. The launch vehicle, called Neutron, will be able to carry 8 metric tons (around 18,000 lbs) to orbit, far exceeding the cargo capacity of Rocket Lab's current Electron vehicle, which […]
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Mar 01, 2021
The SPAC run is on for space startups, which have been relatively slow in their overall exit pace before the current special purpose acquisitions company merger craze got underway. Rocket Lab is the latest, and likely the most notable to jump on the trend, with a deal that will see it combine with a SPAC […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Klarna, the Swedish buy now, pay later behemoth and upstart bank, has raised $1 billion in new funding at a post-money valuation of $31 billion. That sees the company retain the crown as the highest valued private fintech in Europe. Backers of this round are said to be combination of new and existing investors, while […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Remote work has become the norm for many businesses in the last year, and today a startup that has built a cybersecurity platform to help manage all the devices connecting to organizations' wide-ranging networks — while also providing a way for those organizations to take advantage of all the best that the quite fragmented security […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Paytm, India's most valuable startup, said on Monday it processed 1.2 billion transactions in the month of February, illustrating the level of penetration it has made in one of the world's fastest-growing payments markets where it competes with Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Flipkart-backed PhonePe. Paytm said its users made 1.2 billion transactions last month across […]
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Mar 01, 2021
On the back of Zynga acquiring Turkey's Peak Games for $1.8 billion last year and then following it up with another gaming acquisition in the country, Turkey has been making a name for itself as a hub for mobile gaming startups, and specifically those building casual puzzle games, the wildly popular and very sticky format […]
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Mar 01, 2021
Lime said Monday it has allocated $50 million towards its bike-share operation, an investment that has been used to develop a new ebike and will fund its expansion this year to another 25 cities in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand. If the company hits its goal, Lime's bike-share service will be operational […]
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Feb 28, 2021
Microsoft is getting a new leader for its Greater China business. Yang Hou, a former senior vice president at Qualcomm, will take over Alain Crozier as the chairman and chief executive officer for Microsoft Greater China Region, says a company announcement released Monday. After eight years at Qualcomm where he led sales and business development, Hou […]
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Feb 28, 2021
Skydio has raised $170 million in a Series D funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz's Growth Fund. That pushes it into unicorn territory, with $340 million in total funding and a post-money valuation north of $1 billion. Skydio's fresh capital comes on the heels of its expansion last year into the enterprise market, and it […]
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