WhatsApp users can now choose to easily have all new messages they send or receive disappear as the world’s largest instant messaging service broadens its offerings for what an executive described as the next privacy standard. The Facebook-owned service, used by over 2 billion users globally, on Monday rolled out an option that allows users
Month: December 2021
Clubbi, a Brazilian business-to-business resource for small food retailers, brought in $4.5 million in seed funding to expand across the country. The remote first company started in 2020 as an online commerce resource for neighborhood markets and grocery stores — most that have never shopped online before — to stock up on products they need,
It was in 2017 that I covered the emergence and first funding of Learnerbly, a SaaS marketplace for professional development. Quite a lot has happened since then, not the least of which was the COVID-19 pandemic, which has meant pretty much meant all kinds of learning had to transition to virtual, including inside corporates. The
Hello and welcome back to Max Q! There was a TON of space news this week so I won’t ramble too much, other than to remind you that many of the people mentioned below will be at TC Sessions: Space on the 14th and 15th! That includes Peter Beck, CEO of Rocket Lab, Nanoracks’ Jeffrey Manber, and
Digital World Acquisition Corp. (DWAC) announced in a recent filing that it has received questions from the United States government regarding its anticipated combination with Trump Media & Technology Group (TMTG). TechCrunch covered the SPAC’s planned combination with the company associated with former U.S. President Donald Trump here. We were broadly skeptical of the deal,
Less than a year ago, WildWorks, the makers of the kid’s virtual world game Animal Jam, launched its next big effort with a game aimed at Gen Z teens, called Feral. But in recent days, the company has angered many of its core users with news that it’s reusing Feral’s technology platform and many of
U.S. securities regulators have opened a probe into Tesla over allegations from a whistleblower that the company did not disclose to shareholders fire risks from its solar panel systems. The allegations were made by Steven Henkes, a former Tesla employee, who filed his complaint with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission back in 2019, Reuters
Pinterest is further investing in creator tools and video with today’s news it’s acquired the video creation and editing app, Vochi, for an undisclosed sum. The company will be bringing in both the IP at Vochi and its forty-person team, including its founders, to expand Pinterest’s set of video creation tools and to help its
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Despite the advanced week, news is still coming in in hot and heavy, so strap in for today’s busy episode: I would normally say that it’s a holiday week, so let’s relax, but
Here in the United States, we’re counting down to the Nubank and HashiCorp IPOs that should touch down in mere days. But those are not the only technology offerings to keep eyes on at the moment. SenseTime, a Chinese AI company, is also listing this week, providing a new window into the value of the
Facebook Gaming might not be a hot streaming destination like Twitch or YouTube Gaming, but the social network is steadily adding interactive features to build its appeal. Facebook is trying out a new layer of interactivity the company is calling “play with streamer” that lets viewers hop into game streams with their favorite streaming personalities.
Plastic containers are ending up in landfills and oceans all over the world as more countries stop accepting our recycled goods. This is adding up: The average American uses and throws away 110 pounds of single-use plastic every year, yet only 8% of plastic is recycled in the United States. You might think that all
In a landmark court decision against Uber, the UK High Court has ruled that its business model is unlawful. The decision — which reboots the application of London’s regulations around private hire vehicle contracts — has huge ramifications for how ride-hailing platforms like Uber can operate in the UK capital and how much UK tax
Berlin-based smartphone-as-a-service provider, Everphone, has topped up with $65 million in a Series C equity raise in addition to taking $135M in debt financing — for a total raise of $200M. The latest tranche of funding is led by German private equity investor, Cadence Growth Capital (CGC), which is now Everphone’s biggest shareholder. Deutsche Telekom,
TikTok has launched a new app for its seller community taking advantage of its suite of TikTok Shopping features, but the app is only available in Indonesia at present. TikTok Seller, as the app is called, allows TikTok’s seller community to run all aspects of their TikTok shop from their mobile device, from initially registering
Startups digitizing B2B e-commerce and retail in Africa continue to grab the headlines after the pandemic paved the way for widespread offline retail and commerce disruption. TradeDepot, a Nigeria- and U.S.-based company that connects consumer goods brands to thousands of retailers and help out with distribution, has raised $110 million in new equity and debt
Stacked, a web-based platform that provides passive investment tools for retail investors interested in crypto, just announced it raised a $35 million Series A co-led by Alameda Research, a crypto trading firm owned by FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Bybit and BitDAO partner Mirana Ventures co-led the round alongside Alameda. Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, DRW Venture
MarketForce, a Kenyan B2B retail and financial services distribution startup, has expanded into five additional markets across Africa to grow RejaReja — its retailer ‘super app’ that makes it possible for informal merchants to order and pay for inventory digitally, accept payments for utility bills, and access financing for their businesses. The startup has today
Jordan-based mobile game publisher TamatemGames announced today it has raised $11 million in a Series B led by KRAFTON, a South Korean game developer behind PUBG, marking its first investment in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Venture Souq, Endeavor Catalyst and existing investors also participated in the round. The Series B round brings its total
The Federal Trade Commission sued to block Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion takeover of Arm Ltd., saying the deal would harm competition in the semiconductor market. Bloomberg Intelligence’s Mandeep Singh has more on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
Sergiu Matei Contributor Sergiu Matei is the founder of Index, a platform that helps teams find and hire world-class remote software developers and be globally compliant from the get-go. We’ve recently been bombarded with news of job surpluses, including predictions that the number of software developer roles will increase 22% by 2030. With the need
Two years ago at AWS re:Invent, then AWS CEO Andy Jassy made it clear that he was tired of the slow pace of change and he wanted to find ways to get companies to move to the cloud faster. At yesterday’s opening keynote, in fact, new AWS CEO Adam Selipsky stated that the pace is
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes
James Nash Contributor James Nash is CEO and founder of inbeta, a tech-enabled talent specialist using data, social listening and human science to help corporations overcome bias. Today, the age of corporate social justice is dawning. With the business case for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) now more vital than ever, we’re beginning to see
Sourcing and importing goods from overseas can go very wrong, leaving companies in a position of not receiving what they paid for or even getting nothing. Manuel Rodriguez Dao, co-founder and CEO of Mexico City-based Meru.com, and co-founder Federico Moscato, learned this the hard way when they were sourcing goods for another company and faced
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai talks about how he passed the time during the pandemic and his parenting skills. He speaks with Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Studio 1.0.”
Russ Heddleston Contributor Russ Heddleston is the co-founder and CEO of DocSend. He was previously a product manager at Facebook, where he arrived via the acquisition of his startup Pursuit.com, and has held roles at Dropbox, Greystripe and Trulia. Follow him here: @rheddleston and @docsend More posts by this contributor Pre-seed round funding is under
Online grocery sales are in single digits right now, but new data suggests it will top 20% by 2026 due to more consumers getting comfortable buying their groceries this way over the past two years. JOKR, an instant grocery delivery startup based in New York and operating in the Americas, is getting out ahead of
At its annual re:Invent conference, AWS announced that it will be launching over 30 new AWS Local Zones in major cities around the world. These new AWS Local Zones will be made available starting in 2022 in over 21 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece,
Donald R. Cravins Jr. Contributor Systemic racism is nothing new in America, and the effects of unconscious racial bias have long created inequity in the workplace. So why — when presented with the task of developing new “normal” hybrid workplaces — are we allowing the same systemic problems that boxed generations of Black and brown