Month: October 2019

Koyo, a fintech startup using open banking to offer loans to people with “thin” credit files and currently poorly served by the market, has closed $4.9 million in funding. The round — a mixture of debt and equity funding — is led by Forward Partners, with participation from Seedcamp. Other investors include Christian Faes (founder
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Weave, a developer of patient communications software focused on the dental and optometry market, was the first Utah-headquartered company to graduate from Y Combinator in 2014. Now, it’s poised to enter a small but growing class startups in the ‘Silicon Slopes’ to garner ‘unicorn’ status. The business announced a $70 million Series D last week
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Zamna — which uses a blockchain to securely share and verify data between airlines and travel authorities to check passenger identities — has raised a $5m seed funding round led by VC firms LocalGlobe and Oxford Capital, alongside Seedcamp, the London Co-Investment Fund (LCIF), Telefonica, and a number of angel investors. Participation has also come
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A couple of years ago, the co-founder and CEO of a blood-testing company was publicly taken to task for implying in articles and professional profiles that he has a PhD, when, in reality, he’d left a prestigious graduate group three years after enrolling, without a degree. The CEO is hardly alone in intentionally or otherwise
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Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about All Raise’s expansion, Uber the TV show and the unicorn from down under. Remember, you can send me tips,
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Does quantum computing really exist? It’s fitting that for decades this field has been haunted by the fundamental uncertainty of whether it would, eventually, prove to be a wild goose chase. But Google has collapsed this nagging superposition with research not just demonstrating what’s called “quantum supremacy,” but more importantly showing that this also is
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At this week’s International Astronautical Congress, where the space industry, international space agencies and researchers from around the world convene to discuss the state of space technology and business, I asked NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine about what role he sees for startups in contributing to his agency’s ambitious Artemis program. Artemis, named after Apollo’s twin
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The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. Facebook starts testing News, its new section for journalism Facebook’s news section, which was previously reported to be imminent, is here:
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Bespoke Financial wants to provide cannabis businesses with the same kind of financial services that other businesses get, but that dispensaries and growers can’t yet access. The regulations around cannabis operations are so stringent at the local level — and so nebulous at the federal level — that national banks won’t give businesses in the
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While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg seemed cheerful and even jokey when he took the stage today in front of journalists and media executives (at one point, he described the event as “by far the best thing” he’d done this week), he acknowledged that there are reasons for the news industry to be skeptical. Facebook, after
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate and Alex held the reins as a duo (check out our chat with Greylock’s Sarah Guo from last week here) to dig into an enormous raft of news. And don’t worry, it’s not all late-stage
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HowNow, the workforce learning platform, has raised $3 million (£2.4m) in a “pre-series A” funding round. The round is led by Mark Pearson’s Fuel Ventures and brings the total raised by the startup to $4.5 million. Other investors include Andy Murray OBE; Michael Whitfield and Chris Bruce (founders of Thomsons Online Benefits); Bernie Sinniah (former
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Facebook’s news section, which was previously reported to be imminent, is here: The company is rolling out Facebook News in a limited test. In a blog post, Facebook’s Campbell Brown (vice president of global news partnerships) and Mona Sarantakos (product manager, news) said that news articles will continue to appear in the main News Feed. However,
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Fabric, the startup that wants to make automated logistics available to retailers of all sizes, announced today it has raised $110 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek. This brings the total
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StepLadder, another London-based startup aiming to help so-called “generation rent” get onto the housing ladder, has raised £1.5 million in seed funding. Backing the round is Spanish banking giant BBVA and fintech VC Anthemis via the London-based venture studio the pair have partnered on. Early investor Seedcamp also followed on, in addition to unnamed angel
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Are we really doing this again? After the pivot to video. After Instant Articles. After news was deleted from the News Feed. Once more, Facebook dangles extra traffic, and journalism outlets leap through its hoop and into its cage. Tomorrow, Facebook will unveil its News tab. About 200 publishers are already aboard including the Wall
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Lotame, a company offering data management tools for publishers and marketers, today unveiled a new product called Cartographer — described by CMO Adam Solomon as “our new people-based ID solution.” In other words, it’s Lotame’s offering to help businesses connect their visitor and customer data across platforms and devices. We’ve written about plenty of other cross-device
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