It’s been a tough few years for Berlin-based femtech hardware startup Inne which came out of stealth R&D in the fall of 2019, shortly before COVID-19 hit Europe. By January 2020, founder and CEO Eirini Rapti tells us she was busy making final inspections ahead of the launch of its debut product — a connected
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Yubo, a social livestreaming app popular with a Gen Z audience, announced today it’s becoming one of the first major social platforms to adopt a new age verification technique that uses live image capture technology to identify minors using its app, in order to keep them separated from adult users. While other companies serving a
There’s a vast unmet demand for medical consultation in developing markets like Egypt due to low doctor supply. As of 2018, Egypt’s doctor to citizen ratio stood at 1:2,000; you can paint a picture when you walk into any government hospital and see long queues. These problems and pandemic-changing habits have resulted in an uptake
Every era is different, but here are some tips for our new normal Navin Chaddha 22 hours Navin Chaddha Contributor Navin Chaddha is managing partner at Mayfield, an inception and early-stage investor with more than 50 years of a people-first investing philosophy. More posts by this contributor Survival tips for startup founders living through their
Roblox has picked up a key hire to help grow its ecosystem of user-generated content for the metaverse. Nick Tornow is joining the company as VP of Engineering for its developer team, leaving his former post as Twitter Platform Lead. Tornow also spent a decade at Zynga and served as the company’s CTO from 2013
Singularity Energy, a SaaS platform that reports on carbon emissions for the electricity grid, has closed a $4.5 million seed round led by Spero Ventures and Energy Impact Partners and joined by existing investors, including Third Sphere and J Ventures. Singularity, based in Somerville, Massachusetts, provides detailed information about the carbon intensity on the grid
If I received a note from an investor stating, “although somber, this data is not meant to alarm you,” well, I might be alarmed. But that quote from Reach Capital represents a slew of memos sent in recent days by venture firms to portfolio companies offering advice and asking questions about how founders are positioned
If you’re working for an advertising agency or you’re in charge of a brand, editing and exporting a video ad that works across all social and web platforms can be a lengthy and time consuming task. French startup Aive speeds up the process quite drastically as it can automatically generate all formats and all durations
Today at Build 2022, Microsoft unveiled Project Volterra, a device powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform that’s designed to let developers explore “AI scenarios” via Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (SNPE) for Windows toolkit. The hardware arrives alongside support in Windows for neural processing units (NPUs), or dedicated chips tailored for AI- and machine learning-specific
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. It’s the 24th of May, 2022, and today Amanda made us laugh with her “Welcome to Hell, we all drive Teslas,” subhead to her story about Everything you wanted to know about
A chill has descended onto the global startup market, albeit not evenly. Venture capital totals are sagging in most geographies, and falling share prices for tech companies large and small have soured sentiment on the future value of high-growth and often cash-hungry startups. The end of the lengthy startup boom that first formed in the
Twitter announced today that it has rebranded its Twitter Media website to “Twitter Create.” The social media giant says the website is a new hub for creators to access resources, product information and tips for getting the most out of Twitter. With this new rebrand, the company says it wants to make it easier for
The startup says most companies’ carbon footprint math is bogus Tim De Chant 7 hours When Wenbo Shi started Singularity Energy, a carbon intelligence platform that today raised a $4.5 million seed round, he never thought he would focus the company on a greenhouse gas. But one conversation with a customer changed the way he
PlanetScale, the highly scalable MySQL database service founded by the co-creators of the increasingly popular Vitess open source project, today announced a series of updates that push the platform beyond its basic database features by adding new enterprise features and new tools to improve the developer experience. The first of these new features is PlanetScale
Is the beauty industry ready to wean itself off single-use plastic? Shellworks is betting on it. Targeting cosmetics brands, the London-based biotech startup has scooped up a $6.2 million seed round to prove it can scale its petroleum-free, compostable packaging, which “performs like plastic” but breaks down in about a year, the company claims. Shellworks’
Microsoft’s Imagine Cup is something I look forward to every year. The students and young entrepreneurs who submit their extremely early-stage projects to this global competition are like the seeds of future startups and potentially world-changing projects. This year’s winner, V Bionic, created a robotic glove to help patients with neurological damage recover faster at
Dating platform Bumble is looking to enhance its non-dating social features with a further investment into its Bumble BFF feature, first launched in 2016. This friend-finding feature currently uses the same swiped-based mechanics to connect people looking for platonic relationships, but will soon expand to include social networking groups where users can connect with one
It’s Demo Day time! Today marks the 30th Demo Day for Alchemist, the enterprise-focused accelerator that helped grow companies like LaunchDarkly, Rigetti Computing, and Privacera early on. As an enterprise accelerator, the companies Alchemist backs generally focus on selling things to other companies as opposed to selling straight to consumers. Some of the companies might
Nowports, an automated digital freight forwarder in Latin America, has raised $150 million in a Series C funding round which values the company at $1.1 billion. For the unacquainted, digital freight forwarders use digital tools that improve communication and efficiencies in the shipping process, among other things, to help shipments get where they need to
So you want to know what’s going on with Elon Musk and Twitter, but you thought maybe it’s a little too late to ask your tech-obsessed buddies for the low-down. You’ve come to the right place. Last month, in perhaps the year’s biggest tech news story yet, Elon Musk announced his intent to buy Twitter
Chrysler’s new EV will create a new category, drawing upon lessons learned from designing the brand’s minivan, according to chief design officer Ralph Gilles. “Chrysler was one of those brands that was honestly on the OR table, and we decided to reinvest in it big time,” Gilles said at the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility conference last
Firework, a San Mateo livestreaming commerce company, secured $150 million in Series B funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The company says it is now valued at $750 million. In 2021, Firework raised $55 million to value it at $230 million. Firework has now taken in more than $235 million in funding since it
Robotics are playing a growing role in the world of e-commerce logistics and fulfillment — where they are seen not just as a way to speed up operations but to drastically reduce the costs of running them — and today a startup developing software and hardware specifically in the area of robot picking is announcing
Google Maps’ Street View feature was created 15 years ago, and since then, has added more than 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories. Many of us have taken advantage of its capabilities, especially scoping out unknown locations before heading there in person. To celebrate the anniversary, the company announced upgrades
Monday May 23, 2022, and we’re listening to our brand-new podcast called the TechCrunch Podcast. In it, we talk to TechCrunch writers about the stories they’re most excited about. The first episode is live now, featuring Darrell and Taylor talking about … UFOs‽ — Haje and Christine The TechCrunch Top 3 Hey, you, get into
French startup moka.care has raised a new $16 million Series A funding round (€15 million). The company is focused on mental well-being in the workplace. It offers a full-fledged service that sits in between employees and HR departments. Left Lane Capital is leading today’s funding round. Existing investor Singular is participating once again. VC firm
Instagram is rolling out a “visual refresh” for its branding this week, the company announced in a blog post on Monday. The company is introducing a slightly tweaked brighter new logo, typeface and full-screen marketing layouts. Instagram says the refresh is designed to embrace continued evolution and to help it “create more immersive and inclusive
Actiondesk is a new spreadsheet solution for the software-as-a-service era. It connects with the databases, CRMs and SaaS tools that you already use so that you can build dashboards and generate reports without having to manually import data. The startup raised a $3.9 million seed round from Tiger Global, Bling Capital, Y Combinator, Speedinvest, FundersClub,
A host of major European tech founders and investors are today backing the launch of OneUkraine, a new charity providing sustainable humanitarian relief for the Ukrainian people. OneUkraine will be supporting Ukrainians at home and abroad, delivering humanitarian aid, and aiming to rebuild the tech and broader infrastructure of Ukraine by SMEs and startups on
Andrea D’Ambra Contributor Andrea D’Ambra is a partner in Norton Rose Fulbright’s New York office and the U.S. head of Technology and the U.S. head of eDiscovery and Information Governance. Susana Medeiros Contributor Susana Medeiros is an associate in Norton Rose Fulbright’s New York office and member of the information governance, privacy and cybersecurity group