Payments remains a very fragmented business around the world: depending on where you’re buying or selling something (and whether you are selling online or offline) you will have different “standard” payment methods, currencies and settlement schemes and more. Today, a startup called Kevin that’s taking one piece of that puzzle — payments made from account
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People in the Global South are often subject to terrible fluctuations in their currencies, as well as hyperinflation. At the same time, many are unbanked, but still able to access a crypto wallet. A way for these populations to access more stable currencies would be by accessing Stable Coins which are pegged to the US
Gooood [your time of day] startup fans! It’s a brand new week and we’re flippin’ psyched that it’s… wait, it is May? How’d that happen? In any case – May 2nd 2022, here we go. Spring is a good time to do a bit of a spring clean; we loved Zack’s guide to how to
Augmented reality (AR) can help customers shopping online preview products before making a purchase, and is a growing area of investment for e-commerce businesses. According to a recent survey of 16,000 Snapchat users in 16 markets, 92% of Gen Zers want to use AR and VR for online shopping. Now, a South Korean augmented reality
Stellantis will spend $2.8 billion (CAD $3.6 billion) to increase production of electric vehicles at two of its Canadian plants, the company said on Monday. The funding is a portion of the $35.5 billion Stellantis dedicated to electric vehicles and new software over the next year in its push to move away from internal combustion
LinearB, a startup that helps engineering leaders optimize the workflow of their development teams, today announced that it has raised a $50 million Series B round led by Tribe Capital. New investor Salesforce Ventures, as well as existing investors Battery Ventures and 83North, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to
Twitter’s work on its forthcoming Edit button is continuing. While several people last month already spotted the in-development “Edit Tweet” menu option, what we didn’t yet know was how edited tweets would appear to users viewing them on Twitter, or how the edited tweet’s original text could be read. Now, we’re able to see what
After a week of making headlines, one-click-checkout startup Bolt has issued a public response to questions about how it’s faring in the competitive space. CEO Maju Kuruvilla issued a blog post today acknowledging that the company “has become very popular in the media these past few months.” In case you missed it, last week the
The pace at which startups raise rounds worth $100 million or greater is slowing, according to early data. Looking at historical periods stretching back a year, TechCrunch’s analysis of Pitchbook data shows Q2 2022 is on pace to undershoot the first quarter’s tally of so-called mega-rounds. And data from Crunchbase shows a similar decline. When you
A Chinese provider of hydrogen used in fuel cell vehicles is considering a NASDAQ debut early next year via a SPAC merger that would land it a $1 billion valuation after listing. If the deal with its undisclosed suitor goes through, Shenzhen State Fuel Cell Corporation (SFCC) will become the latest in a long line
Accern, which uses AI to analyze online conversations around particular companies, trends, and industries, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Mighty Capital alongside Tribe Capital, Shasta Ventures, Gaingels and Fusion Fund and others. CEO Kumesh Aroomoogan says that the new capital will be put toward “product-led growth,”
The European Commission has shared the preliminary findings of an antitrust case focused on Apple Pay on iOS devices. According to antitrust investigators, Apple abused its dominant position as competitors can’t provide NFC-enabled contactless payments on the iPhone to develop other mobile wallets and compete fairly with Apple Pay. The Commission says NFC is a
QED incubated this auto financing company in 2016 and Kevin Bennett became CEO in 2018 and soon after raised its first seed round. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in November 2021 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relationship with their cars. Since the founding, Bennett has raised $74 million for the
Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities says Elon Musk will own Twitter within 24 hours. He says Musk will then likely turn Twitter into a subscription model. Ives speaks on “Bloomberg The Open.”
Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I’ll take a look at the
Much has been written about Elon Musk’s bid to acquire Twitter, an effort which, despite substantial backing from Morgan Stanley and the approval of Twitter’s board, stands on unsure footing at present. Reporting and punditry have focused on the security implications of the proposed acquisition, as well as Musk’s potential approaches to content moderation and,
Just over a year ago, UiPath was among the most favored startups in the world. Last February the company raised a massive $750 million round at a staggering $35 billion valuation. The robotic process automation, or RPA company, was firing on all cylinders. By the time that UiPath went public in April of last year,
Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. There’s a clash happening in the early-stage market. In one world, late-stage investors are reacting to tech stonk corrections by clamoring toward the early-stage investment world, forcing seed investors to go even
Are you slouching at your desk again? There’s an app for that… Zen uses posture mirroring software to help information workers stop hunching over their desks — sending alerts when it detects you’re not sitting up straight so you can correct your posture and, hopefully, avoid a lifetime of back problems. The catch? It uses
Symmetrical.ai, a payroll tech provider, today announced that it raised $18.5 million in financing led by Target Global with participation from Global Founders Capital, Finch Capital, Partech, Market One Capital, and Inovo. The proceeds will support Symmetrical’s expansion into new European markets and enterprise clients, CEO Piotr Smoleń told TechCrunch via email, as well as
For investors, one factor will almost always stand head and shoulders above the rest: Your TAM (total addressable market) needs to break at least $1 billion. But alongside a massive addressable market, investors are also looking to see that you have existing customers, even they’re few in number, who truly love your product. However, communicating
Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. Good news! We’re not talking about crypto, Elon Musk or SaaS multiples today. We’re also not talking IPOs, global venture capital trends or the like. Instead, we’re going to
Synthesis AI, a startup developing a platform that generates synthetic data to train AI systems, today announced that it raised $17 million in a Series A funding round led by 468 Capital with participation from Sorenson Ventures and Strawberry Creek Ventures, Bee Partners, PJC, iRobot Ventures, Boom Capital and Kubera Venture Capital. CEO and founder
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 number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the
BNPL is not a new concept; it’s just taken off in recent years and become far more mainstream. Buy now, pay later lets people do exactly what its name suggests — buy something and pay for it later. The difference between BNPL and credit cards is that rather than charge the full amount of a
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This was a live week! Which meant that Mary Ann Azevedo was on the mic with Alex Wilhelm, and Grace Mendenhall, our ever-trusty producer, helped us power through. A big shoutout to Dennis,
Thanks to the explosion of low- and no-code development tools, building web apps from scratch has become easier — and cheaper — than it once was. But sophisticated search and navigation functions can complicate the process. A recent survey from IT research firm GoodFirms estimates the cost of a complex app to be between $91,550
One thing I love about fintech is the promise of unlocking more tools for more people. In a broad sense, the current era of fintech has done just that — people around the world now have access to financial services that were earlier either completely out of reach before, or, at a minimum, prohibitively expensive.
Less than a year ago, Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI VP of research Dario Amodei, intending to perform research in the public interest on making AI more reliable and explainable. Its $124 million in funding was surprising then, but nothing could have prepared us for the company raising $580 million less than a year
Snapchat is adding new assistive devices for Bitmoji avatars to expand its representation options for users. Now, users can add a hearing aid in a variety of colors and choose to have them in one ear or both. Snapchat has also added a selection of its most popular Bitmoji stickers featuring the avatar with a