As venture capital grew around the world, tracking the fintech market was a fine way to understand the general health of the VC world; when venture was getting bigger, so too was fintech fundraising. Worth around a fifth of all venture dollars invested last year, fintech startups raised nearly unfathomable sums of capital but with
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Big tech companies are facing increased scrutiny in South Africa for dominance abuse and anti-competitive behavior, just months after the country’s competition regulator, the Competition Commission (CompCom), started an inquiry into the conduct of online intermediation (b2c) platforms. In its initial findings, the regulator has established that Apple, Google, UberEats, Airbnb, Booking.com, and South Africa’s
Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column, Perceptron, aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and
Lightyear, a U.K. fintech startup that promises consumers commission-free trading on U.S. and European stocks, is officially extending to Europe from today. To power the expansion, which will see Lightyear land in 19 new markets including the Baltics and much of Western Europe, London-based Lightyear has also raised $25 million in a seres A round
Deci, a startup company with 50 employees who are developing a platform to build and optimize AI-powered systems, today announced that it closed a $25 million Series B financing round led by Insight Partners with participation from Square Peg, Emerge, Jibe Ventures, Fort Ross Ventures, and ICON that brings the company’s total raised to $55.1
Julie Gionfriddo Contributor If an early-stage startup is ready to raise money but its valuation hasn’t been established yet, a convertible note can serve as a good fundraising option. A convertible note is a debt instrument that typically converts into equity at a later date. Investors who invest in a note are effectively loaning money
Black founders raised 1.3% of last year’s $330 billion worth of U.S. venture investment, totaling just over $4.3 billion. So far this year, Black founders have raised a smaller 1.2% of the $125 billion invested. The past few months have seen private market investors reduce their investment pace as a possible recession looms, but that
Is it really written in the stars? This week, Bumble launched weekly customized astrology content in-app, with astrologer Aliza Kelly taking on the task of helping you find a star-crossed soulmate. Dubbed “Astrology Tuesdays,” Bumble users in the U.S. can go to the new astrology channel within the conversations screen in Bumble’s Date mode. There
If you’re feeling confused about the state of startup investing, join the club. Public company shares have been relentlessly hammered in recent months amid rising fears of a recession, yet startup funding seems as brisk as ever and, more surprising, to us, VCs are still routinely announcing enormous new funds as they have for many
A proposal put forward by European Union lawmakers in May, to establish a legal framework to make it easier to share electronic health records and other medical data — across borders and care institutions and with researchers and developers of innovative health products — should be revised to ensure citizens’ health data is stored locally,
The anonymous Q&A app NGL climbed to the top of the App Store by tricking its users with questions it claims are sent in by their friends and by charging for useless hints about who supposedly wrote those messages. But many of the questions users receive aren’t from real people; they’re generated automatically — an
Nucleus Genomics, a genetic testing company focused on calculating a patient’s risk of certain diseases, is adding $14 million on to their initial seed funding round. With this round the company has raised, in total, $17.5 million. This “seed plus” funding round was led by Alexis Ohanian’s 776. Ohanian is joining investors like Founders Fund,
Merchants building businesses on giant marketplaces often have to think inside the marketplace’s box, but Medusa, a one-year-old e-commerce startup from Denmark, is going after e-commerce platforms, like Shopify and WooCommerce, with its open source alternative aimed at the JavaScript developer community. Co-founders Sebastian Rindom, Oliver Juhl and Nicklas Gellner started the company a year
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Time to do the Friday dance! We’ve mentioned our virtual TC Sessions: Robotics event a few times, but we’ve got some good news for events fans. Hang on to your blockchains and
Citing “disturbing” levels of power used by cryptocurrency miners, a group of Democrats led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren is urging the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy to crack down on the controversial industry. The letter, signed by four senators and two representatives, calls on regulators to compel cryptominers to disclose their carbon
With Twitter pressing for a quick trial, Elon Musk’s lawyers are making a case to slow things down. In the lawsuit Twitter filed against its would-be owner, the company argued that it would only need four days to prove that the court should require Musk to follow through with his agreement to buy it for
Rhys Spence Contributor Rhys Spence is head of research at Brighteye Ventures, a European edtech-focused fund, where he works with portfolio companies to help address priorities, with a focus on internationalization and HR. More posts by this contributor European, North American edtech startups see funding triple in 2021 The unbundling of professional learning and entrepreneurship
Can a smartphone still be cool? They were, once upon a time, in those days when they were more luxury than ubiquity. But what happens when everyone has one — and, more to the point, we all pretty much have the same one? Phones aren’t fashion. They’re not clothes or shoes or even cars. Chances
Dec.02 — The U.S. proposed tariffs on roughly $2.4 billion in French products, in response to a tax on digital revenues that hits large American tech companies including Google, Apple Inc., Facebook Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. Bloomberg’s Laura Davison reports on “Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia.”
After the 2008 financial crisis, a new slate of regulations aimed at protecting consumers and businesses opened the floodgates for a surge of fintech companies to develop into household names over the last decade. Now, it might be healthcare’s turn. Part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Consumer Reform and Protection Act, passed in 2010, stated
While credit cards are ubiquitous in the U.S., they are far less so across Latin America, where people — especially lower-income members of the population — have historically relied on cash for payments. But the market in LatAm has shifted in recent years, and with increased digital adoption, more people are opening their minds to
We’re fired up and ready to connect with the global robotics and AI community at TC Sessions: Robotics on July 21. The agenda for this online event is packed with presentations, interviews and robot demos, and our speaker lineup features the brightest minds and makers in the business. If for some reason you haven’t yet
For much of her career, hacker Runa Sandvik has worked to protect journalists and newsrooms from powerful adversaries who want to keep wrongdoing and corruption out of the public eye. Journalists and activists are increasingly targeted by the wealthy and resourceful who seek to keep the truth hidden, from nation-state aligned hackers hacking into journalist’s
Amazon has offered to limit its use of marketplace seller data and make changes to ‘Buy Box’ rankings in a bid to settle antitrust concerns in the European Union, the Commission confirmed today. It has also offered to revise how sellers can quality for inclusion to Prime; and allow them to choose their own delivery
South Korean messaging giant Kakao confirmed today it will remove an external payment option after Google blocked the South Korean company behind KakaoTalk from issuing updates. The South Korean company continued using an external payment link in its Android app against Google’s new in-app payment rules. While the app’s updates were suspended on June 30,
Stripe is the latest high-profile fintech company to take a massive valuation cut as the market downturn begins to hit the sector especially hard. Last valued at $95 billion, the payments processor has cut the internal value of its shares by 28%, sources told the Wall Street Journal. The Journal reports that the valuation cut
No merchant likes a bad customer review and Okendo, a customer marketing platform, announced $26 million in Series A funding today to continue developing its customer review tools for e-commerce brands. Base10 Partners led the funding round and was joined by Craft Ventures and existing investor Index Ventures. It gives the company $33.5 million in
Hyundai said Thursday it will begin building electric vehicles under its high-performance N brand created to compete with luxury sports cars from Mercedes-Benz and BMW. The automaker said the Ioniq 5 N, high-performance version of its battery-electric SUV, will launch in 2023. Hyundai also premiered Thursday two high-performance concepts — RN22e and N Vision 74
General Motors is teaming up with Pilot Flying J to build a national fast-charge network for EVs. The partnership between GM and Pilot will help accelerate EV sales by filling in gaps along the charging infrastructure. Access to charging stations remains American drivers’ top concern over buying or leasing an EV, according to a July
There’s no shortage of headlines about the onset of “crypto winter.” Amid a growing pile of bankruptcies, one of the buzziest startups in the business, the NFT marketplace OpenSea, announced a major layoff just today. Behind the scenes, however, plenty of founders and VCs are doubling down on the promise of largely decentralized, blockchain-based outfits,