Augmented Reality pioneer Blippar – which has had a tortuous history after early investors pulled out and the company had to scramble for new backers – has now closed a $5 million funding round, after 18 months of re-positioning as a B2B company in the AR space. The pre-Series A round was co-led by Chroma
Month: March 2021
Cameras have long been the battleground on which the smartphone wars have been fought. Short of any left-field innovation like folding screens or strange form factors, that looks likely to continue to be the case for the foreseeable future. Year after year and generation after generation, companies tout imaging breakthroughs to set themselves apart. It
It’s that time again! Today is Demo Day for Y Combinator’s latest accelerator batch — its largest to date, with more than 300 teams getting a minute each to pitch their companies to an audience of investors. This is the third time YC has held its Demo Day via a Zoom livestream and the second
Today Bloomberg reported, and Axios confirmed that Robinhood has filed privately to go public. The well-financed Robinhood is an American fintech company that provides zero-cost trading services to consumers. Private IPO filings have become common in recent quarters, making Robinhood’s decision to file behind closed doors before showing its numbers to the public unsurprising. That
Clubhouse, the social audio app that first took Silicon Valley by storm and is now gaining much wider appeal, is an interesting user experience case study. Hockey-stick growth — 8 million global downloads as of last month, despite still being in a prelaunch, invite-only mode, according to App Annie — is something most startups would
When Amazon announced last month that Jeff Bezos was moving into the executive chairman role, and AWS CEO Andy Jassy would be taking over the entire Amazon operation, speculation began about who would replace Jassy. People considered a number of internal candidates viable, such as Peter DeSantis, vice president of global infrastructure at AWS and
U.K. challenger stockbroker Freetrade has raised a $69 million Series B round led by Left Lane Capital. The growth fund of L Catterton and existing investor Draper Esprit also participated. Freetrade operates a stock trading app and has managed to attract 600,000 users in the U.K. — they generated £1 billion in quarterly trade volume.
OnePlus unveils new hardware, Apple updates its educational offerings and Facebook reveals plans for its next developer conference. This is your Daily Crunch for March 23, 2021. The big story: OnePlus announces its first smartwatch The Chinese smartphone maker announced the OnePlus Watch today, a $159 smartwatch with a minimalist design and a new operating
Dec.15 — Zoox, the self-driving startup owned by Amazon.com Inc., has unveiled a fully autonomous electric vehicle with no steering wheel. Zoox CEO Aicha Evans speaks exclusively to Bloomberg’s Ed Ludlow about the company’s business plan, timeline for deployment and Amazon’s backing.
Orca Security, an Israeli cybersecurity startup that offers an agent-less security platform for protecting cloud-based assets, today announced that it has raised a $210 million Series C round at a $1.2 billion valuation. The round was led by Alphabet’s independent growth fund CapitalG and Redpoint Ventures. Existing investors GGV Capital, ICONIQ Growth and angel syndicate
ServiceNow became the latest company to take the robotic process automation (RPA) plunge when it announced it was acquiring Intellibot, an RPA startup based in Hyderabad, India. The companies did not reveal the purchase price. The purchase comes at a time where companies are looking to automate workflows across the organization. RPA provides a way
Israel’s ironSource, an app-monetization startup, is going public via a SPAC. But before you tune out to avoid reading about yet another blank-check company taking a private company public, you’ll want to pay attention to this one. For starters, this is the second SPAC-led debut from an Israeli company in recent weeks worth more than
For patients and healthcare professionals to properly track and manage illnesses especially chronic ones, healthcare needs to be decentralized. It also needs to be more convenient, with a patient’s health information able to follow them wherever they go. Redbird, a Ghanaian healthtech startup that allows easy access to convenient testing and ensures that doctors and
Polish startup Tylko, a modular furniture company that employs Augmented Reality as part of its sales cycle, has closed a €22 million ($26m) investment Series C funding round, led by Israel-based Pitango Growth and Finnish Evli Growth Partners, following previous investors TDJ Pitango and Experior Venture Fund. Additionally, Brian Walker, former CEO of Hermann Miller,
Teamflow, founded by ex-Uber manager Flo Crivello, has raised an $11 million Series A just three months after raising a $3.9 million seed for its virtual HQ platform. The latest round in the startup was led by Battery Ventures, with Menlo Ventures leading its previous financing event. Teamflow’s raise comes just days after competitor Gather
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. You
With Y Combinator Demo Day kicking off tomorrow morning, startups in the current batch are hurrying to make a little news before they show off their recent growth to investors. The list includes Runway, Mono, Pangea and Flux. Add Chums to the mix. Chums is a social shopping service that helps friends suggest products to
Shares of Box, a well-known content-and-collaboration company that went public in 2015, rose today after Reuters reported that the company is exploring a sale. TechCrunch previously discussed rising investor pressure for Box to ignite its share price after years in the public-market wilderness. At the close today Box’s equity was worth $23.65 per share, up
London-based fintech startup Revolut has announced that it is applying for a bank charter in the U.S. The company has submitted a draft application with the FDIC and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. If the company manages to get a charter in California, it would let the company operate throughout the U.S.
It’s plain to see that electric vehicles are the future, but there’s more to making that change happen than swapping out a gas motor for a battery-powered one — especially in aircraft. H3x is a startup that aims to accelerate that future with a reimagined, completely integrated electric motor that it claims outperforms everything on
Traditional remittance companies, while necessary, currently have two flaws in speed and exorbitant fees. It can take a long while (days to weeks) for money sent from an immigrant in the U.S. to reach a relative in Nigeria. The fees charged depend on the amount sent — and let’s not forget the extra charges for
Indonesia-based fintech Pluang announced today it has raised $20 million in a pre-Series B round led by Openspace Ventures, with participation from Go Ventures and other returning investors. The company offers proprietary savings and investment products that allow users to make contributions starting from 50 cents USD. Go Ventures, the investment arm of Gojek, also
The historical trajectory of venture capital has been to move to earlier and earlier finding rounds in order to capture the greatest potential multiple on exit. In the US, we’ve seen an explosion of Pre-series A funds, and similarly in Europe. But there’s been an opportunity to tie a lot of that activity together and
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Want it in your inbox every Saturday morning? Sign up here. Earnings season is coming to a close, with public tech companies wrapping up their Q4 and
Jul.10 — Marcos Galperin, MercadoLibre Inc. chairman and chief executive officer, discusses the growth of e-payments in Latin America with Bloomberg’s Paul Sweeney at the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
Once the path less traveled, bootstrapping today has become a much more viable and common approach to building a startup. By not taking venture capital dollars early, bootstrapping can force founders to remain disciplined in serving their paying customers well. It’s also a pretty compelling way to minimize dilution for founders and early employees. No
Ann Shepherd Contributor Ann Shepherd is co-founder of social impact venture Him For Her. She serves on the board of fintech startup HoneyBook. More posts by this contributor How to build a diverse board Jocelyn Mangan Contributor Jocelyn Mangan is the founder and CEO of social impact venture Him For Her. She serves on the
Nathan Beckord Contributor More posts by this contributor Founders seeking their first check need a fundraising sales funnel Fundraising lessons from David Rogier of MasterClass Christine Tao runs Sounding Board, a business founded in 2016 that offers executive coaching services to leaders at major companies like Kraft and Heinz. But not long ago, she was
Abodu, one of a slew of startup companies pitching backyard homes and office spaces to Californians in an effort to help address the state’s housing shortage, has instituted a new “Quickship” program that can take an order from contract to construction and installation in about 30 days. Behind the quick turnaround time is a pre-approval
Most American retail banks are designed the same way: Customers must pass several desks set aside for loan and mortgage officers before they can talk to a customer representative. I only step inside a bank a few times each year, but even pre-pandemic, I can’t remember the last time I saw someone sitting at one