Cera, a U.K. provider of healthcare inside people’s homes augmented by a platform that allows carers to monitor a patient’s health and potentially flag problems, has raised $320 million (£260 million) in an equity and debt financing round, split roughly 50/50. The equity side of the funding round was led by Cera’s existing investor Kairos
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Today in New York City, OnePlus held its first in-person launch event in two-plus years. That’s a lot of time away for a company that’s leaned so heavy on its fanbase for previous launches. Accordingly, the Gotham Hall event packed in fans and members of the press. COVID-19 may still be looming, but the OPPO-owned
Starbucks will unveil its web3 initiative, which includes coffee-themed NFTs, at next month’s Investor Day event. The company earlier this year announced its plans to enter the web3 space, noting its NFTs wouldn’t just serve as digital collectibles, but would provide their owners with access to exclusive content and other perks. At the time, Starbucks
Which startups will benefit the most from a strengthening greenback? And will changes in the value of major currencies lift any particular region? The U.S. dollar is having a good year. The U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the value of the dollar against other currencies, for example, bottomed out at around 95 points in early
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha and Alex asked: Is it the bootstrapper’s time to jump on the
Anitra St. Hilaire Contributor I’ve been the first human resources leader at two successful startups. In both instances, I’ve built the human resources function and people teams from the ground up. Doing this from scratch means you have to consider everything, from compliance to compensation. Often, processes and procedures just fell into place before I
Andreessen Horowitz’s recent hire of former Jordan Park Group Chief Investment Officer Michel Del Buono suggests the venture capital firm is getting into startup founder wealth management. The outfit, more commonly known as a16z, confirmed Del Buono’s hire as CIO to oversee those types of services for founders, as first reported by Bloomberg. TechCrunch reached
Barely a day goes by without news of layoffs emerging from the tech world — from cybersecurity to gaming, no industry is impervious. It’s not limited to any particular size of company, either — everything from fledgling startups and scaleups, to billion-dollar public entities such as Netflix have all “downsized” or put their hiring plans on
With the shift to working from home becoming permanent for many, it’s important to upgrade more than just your desk chair. A good keyboard is not only more pleasant to work on but can help you avoid pain or even change the way you work entirely. Here are a few that stray from the beaten
Twitter is developing an updated version of its audio chat rooms product known as Spaces, TechCrunch learned and Twitter confirmed. The company said it’s currently working a new experiment for the Twitter Spaces tab in its app, but declined to discuss the specifics of that change. However, screenshots of one of the earlier versions of
Bluecopa, an Indian startup building a finance operations automation platform for high-volume companies, has raised $2.3 million to expand its offering in the global market. The seed funding round was led by Mumbai-headquartered Blume Ventures, with participation from Titan Capital, T-Fund, Speciale Invest, Bharat Founders Fund, T2D3, Amplify and Force Ventures. It was also joined
E-commerce marketing automation platform Klaviyo has received a $100 million strategic investment from Shopify, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The disclosure coincided with the announcement that Klaviyo and Shopify will strengthen their existing partnership by making Klaviyo the recommended email product for Shopify’s premium merchant plan, Shopify Plus, while
In spite of the so-called Great Resignation, wages haven’t risen as dramatically as some economists anticipated. About 41% of workers recently surveyed by Willis Towers Watson say that they’re living paycheck to paycheck, while the Bureau of Economic Advisers reports that personal savings rates reached a seven-year low in April — reflecting the dire financial
Braxia Scientific is a Toronto-based company that focuses on depression, suicidality and related mental health conditions. Today, the company announced it is buying KetaMD to extend its telehealth prowess and in particular to expand its tech-facilitated ketamine-based treatments from its current local market of Florida into the wider U.S. The deal is worth around $6
Way back in March, Samsung joined a growing number of hardware makers announcing self-repair initiatives. The list, which includes similar offers from both Apple and Google, finds companies proactively reacting to potential right to repair legislation. Both Samsung and Google teamed up with popular repair site iFixit for their offerings, providing low-cost tools to fix
Y Combinator says it has intentionally shrunk the number of startups within its accelerator for the Summer 2022 batch. As first reported by The Information and independently verified by TechCrunch, Y Combinator’s Summer 2022 cohort — currently in action — boasts nearly 250 companies, down 40% from the previous cohort, which landed at 414 companies.
Perhaps the most interesting story to emerge from the venture capital slowdown and stock market correction that began in late 2021 is the rejiggering of unicorn valuations. Instacart and Stripe picked up new, lower 409a valuations. Klarna got repriced via an equity round, and other richly funded startups that raised last year are staring down the
Spur Capital Partners, an investor in venture capital funds, is out to raise $200 million for its seventh core fund. So far, it has secured nearly $74 million to bet on early-stage VCs, per a securities filing. Who or what is Spur betting on, exactly? Over the years, the investor claims it has indirectly backed
Ro’s co-founder and chief growth officer Rob Schutz is stepping back from his current role and will stay involved with the digital health company in an advisory role, TechCrunch has learned. The shift comes just weeks after Ro cut 18% of its staff to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of our organization and better map our
A ruling put out yesterday by the European Union’s top court could have major implications for online platforms that use background tracking and profiling to target users with behavioral ads or to feed recommender engines that are designed to surface so-called ‘personalized’ content. The impacts could be even broader — with privacy law experts suggesting
Dating giant Match Group announced a series of changes to Tinder’s management team alongside the announcement of disappointing second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Notably, Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg will be departing the company after less than a year in the top job. Match Group is also killing Tinder’s plans to adopt new technology, like virtual currencies
Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan joins Emily Chang and Bloomberg’s Sonali Basak to discuss the highly-anticipated Ethereum Merge and its potential impact on the whole crypto ecosystem, after Ethereum developer Tim Beiko revealed the update is expected to happen on the second week of September.
Sprig, a startup offering tools for user and software product research, today announced that it raised $30 million in a funding round from Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, First Round Capital, Elad Gil and Figma Ventures. It brings the company’s total raised to $90 million, which CEO Ryan Glasgow says is being put toward expanding Sprig’s service
Mudafy, a tech-enabled real estate broker operating in Latin America, has raised $10 million in a Series A round of funding led by San Francisco-based Founders Fund. Founded in mid-2019, Mudafy operates with a typical digital brokerage model — aiming to make it easier for people to buy and sell their homes and serve as
Happy August! Or, as many of my neighbors are fond of saying: Happy Fogust. San Francisco sits on a peninsula surrounded by chilly water, so when warm summer air rushes in, thick fog obscures the landscape. Some days, the blanket is so thick, visibility is just a few hundred feet. It’s an apt metaphor for
A number of startups have cropped up to tackle the challenge of making hydrogen cheap and accessible for industrial users, including the latest, Aurora Hydrogen. The startup announced a $10 million Series A yesterday led by Energy Innovation Capital and joined by Williams Companies, Shell Ventures, Chevron Technology Ventures and the George Kaiser Family Foundation.
Yair Snir Contributor Yair Snir is vice president and managing director of Dell Technologies Capital, leading venture investment activity in Europe and Israel. Good companies get bought not sold. This saying has been passed down as conventional wisdom through generations of entrepreneurs, but it doesn’t tell the entire story. While the IPO is characterized as
Instagram may be worried about TikTok’s threat to its business, but in the near-term, it’s still far ahead when it comes to the influencer marketing dollars spent on its platform in the U.S. According to a new analyst report, Instagram is on track to capture nearly 3x the amount of influencer marketing spend compared to
Large-scale and mid-sized enterprises and businesses are increasingly adopting — and offering — software-as-a-service platforms as they seek to increase their revenue and parlay their growth into greater efficiency. Now a young startup, Emitrr, is aiming to bring the benefits of this model to small and local businesses in the U.S. Emitrr claims to help
We knew it was happening, but Meta has confirmed that its long-standing chief operating officer (COO) Sheryl Sandberg has departed from her role as of yesterday (August 1). News emerged on June 1 that Sandberg would be stepping down after more than 14 years in position and would be replaced by chief growth officer Javier