The best-known unicorns in the world are getting fit, showing that it is possible to trim losses while still posting growth. They are living experiments when it comes to corporations looking to get lean without cutting muscle. European fintech giant Klarna is working through a valuation reset and a change in investor priority ahead of
Month: March 2023
Climate change is a problem important and pressing enough that investors have begun to grasp the opportunities that arise when trying to solve it. Now, they’ve started to cast their nets wider for other, adjacent opportunities. Tech that serves to conserve the oceans while using it to replace older, more harmful means of generating energy
Drone developer Brinc today showed off its newest drone, designed to help cops and others who care about public safety do their jobs from a safe distance. The new quadcopter is called Lemur 2 and is tooled up and ready to go into areas that otherwise would be too dangerous for humans. The new drone
Bloomberg’s Kamaron Leach joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow to discuss the latest wave of layoffs at Twitter as Elon Musk fired workers from the sales side of the social network’s business beginning late on Sunday.
According to a recent report, 92.4% of consumers use reviews when deciding to purchase products. It’s understandable. They want confidence in their purchase choice before buying a product online. A Seoul-based startup called Indent wants to help these shoppers through access to video reviews and product ratings, while also helping to drive sales for e-commerce merchants
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As a Universal Hydrogen-branded plane, equipped with the largest hydrogen fuel cell ever to power an aircraft, made its maiden test flight in eastern Washington, co-founder and CEO Paul Eremenko declared the moment the dawn of a “new golden age of aviation.” The 15-minute test flight of a modified Dash-8 aircraft was short, but it
Neuralink’s ambition to provide a brain-computer interface orders of magnitude better than what’s out there now has hit headwinds with the FDA, Reuters reports. The agency reportedly rejected the company’s application to begin human testing last year, a somewhat expected obstacle that seems nevertheless to have frustrated backer Elon Musk. The well-sourced report explains that
The official trailer for the final season of “Succession” premiered today, and it appears the series is ending with an epic mic drop. Season 4 makes its debut on March 26, giving fans 10 more episodes before we bid farewell to the Roy family. The new trailer gives viewers a closer look at the feud
It seems like only yesterday that I wrote about Gable’s $12 million Series A, but it was, in fact, two days ago. The company is building an interesting product in the world of remote work, and I was curious how the founders were able to convince investors to part with a big pile of dough.
Victoria Melnikova Contributor Alongside fellow Evil Martians, Victoria Melnikova builds devtools and commercial open source products and writes about her journey in tech. Despite the premise of open source software distribution being “free,” multibillion dollar companies like RedHat, MongoDB, GitLab and Elastic have already broken ground building profitable businesses with open source at their core.
YouTube’s new head Neal Mohan penned his first letter to creators emphasizing that the company in the year ahead aims to continue supporting the community by giving them more tools to make money. He also touched on other 2023 priorities, including how YouTube is looking to experiment with generative AI and multiple formats like Shorts
Shifting investor priorities, more expensive cash and a dearth of the large deals that were so common during the last startup boom could leave many late-stage web3 companies short on cash. And the clock is ticking. People are already memeing that venture capitalists have pivoted from crypto to AI, hunting, as they’re wont to, for
Austin-based venture firm 8VC, led by controversial Palantir founder Joe Lonsdale, has raised $880 million in its fifth fund. In a blog post published today, Lonsdale — who serves as 8VC’s general partner — said that his firm’s mission is “to fix a broken world.” While he did not specify which industries the new fund
The big, giant message Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other execs tried to impart during its four-hour Tesla Investor Day was how the company would be the driver of a global shift away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy. Investors, at least those active after the market closed, weren’t impressed perhaps because it lacked that
Audible today announced that it would launch its first-ever singing competition series as an exclusive podcast featuring artists Sara Bareilles and Kelly Rowland as judges. “Breakthrough” will premiere on the Amazon-owned audio service on June 1. On the podcast series, Bareilles and Rowland will mentor five artists over the course of nine episodes. The host
Bloomberg’s Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow discuss how a new activist ad is taking aim at Big Tech by using deepfakes to mock a lack of oversight.
Enterprise project management and team collaboration unicorn monday.com is digging deeper into the Asia-Pacific region with the opening of its new regional headquarters in Sydney. Founded in Israel, monday.com opened its Sydney HQ two and a half years after it first launched in Australia in June 2020. Monday.com recently marked a 76% year-over-year growth in
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Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing (NLP) to generate insights from digital content, has raised €35 million ($37 million) in a round of funding to expand internationally. Despite a growing backlash against ESG efforts from some politicians and vocal executives, companies
Qualcomm announced at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) that multiple phone makers, including Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Motorola, Nothing and Honor, are bringing satellite communication capabilities to their phones. However, manufacturers didn’t provide details about what devices will first have these features and when the companies would launch them. Qualcomm unveiled its Snapdragon Satellite tech in
Roku struck a deal with creator company Jellysmack to launch new content featuring 17 popular YouTube and TikTok creators like Brad Mondo, Lauren Riihimaki (LaurDIY), Emmy Cho (Emmymade), Karina Garcia and more. The company announced yesterday that it’s launching two free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, “Hello Inspo” and “Mysteria,” to The Roku Channel’s Live TV
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Is there a domestic
In its quest to turn the culinary talents of passionate home cooks into small businesses, Shef, a chef-to-consumer marketplace, is now taking those efforts nationwide. Shef works with local cooks making authentic, homemade dishes and provides them with business tools, like menu formation and pricing, photography, how to create their bios and how to market
Every year, about 35% of the food supply in the U.S. is wasted. About half of that’s because of picky eaters or outsize restaurant portions, but the rest happens further upstream, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with about 6% to 13% occurring at grocery stores. For grocery stores, which operate on very thin
The all-in-one fintech app Revolut has released its annual report for 2021. While 2021 ended more than a year ago, this report includes some significant figures as the company nearly tripled its revenue between 2020 and 2021. Because of this explosive growth trajectory, the company reached profitability for the first time. Revolut’s financial success starts
While the chatter around the metaverse has slowed down, both social media companies and phone manufacturers have been experimenting with tech that could lead to commercial AR glasses. At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Xiaomi unveiled its new prototype Wireless AR Glass Discovery Edition, which weighs 126 grams and has a “retina-level” display.
A new “Stranger Things” play is coming to the Phoenix Theatre in London’s West End in late 2023, Netflix announced today. “Stranger Things: The First Shadow” is a prequel spinoff play set in Hawkins in 1959, less than 25 years before the Netflix series. It will feature younger versions of Jim Hopper, Bob Newby and
Amazon has struck a deal with embattled online mortgage lender Better.com to offer up a new benefit to employees. Better.com is launching Equity Unlocker, a program that allows employees to use their vested equity as collateral for a down payment when trying to buy homes. Amazon employees in Florida, New York and Washington State will
On a recent winter morning in New Delhi, Rajan Anandan and Pieter Kemps were pacing on the floor of a five-star hotel, quizzing a group of over two dozen young startup founders about their goals. One founder set eyes on getting the most downloads in the mobile gaming category. Another pledged to reach an annual