Last week, TechCrunch ran my TC-1 about Bowery Farming. What began as a piece about a heartily financed New York startup ballooned into an exploration about an emerging field with a rich and fascinating history. I sought to answer some big questions about the efficacy, profitability and sustainability of vertical farming. I would be lying
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Google Cloud announced a major deal today with The CME Group to move CME’s futures and options markets to the cloud over a 10-year period. The deal has several components, including a $1 billion investment from Google into CME. Google would not say how much the total deal is worth, however. Philip Moyer, VP of
The UK’s recently appointed secretary of state for digital, Nadine Dorries, has signalled she wants to take a tougher line on social media platforms than her predecessor — telling a parliamentary committee she’s looking at speeding up the application of criminal sanctions for breaches of incoming UK online safety legislation. A provision to hold named
A new app called Push It is sitting at the top of the App Store promising little more than the ability to send “push notifications to your friends.” The app features only two screenshots — one of a big red button and another basic, black-and-red screen with text that says “sending.” So what is going
Since it was founded in 2012, Blend has signed up some of the biggest banks in the country — including the likes of Wells Fargo and U.S. Bank — as well as a bevy of smaller, more traditional financial institutions across the U.S.. Now, it’s setting its sights on the startup and fintech market, hoping
You may have visited some quick-service restaurants or other retailers in the past few months and noticed signs posted with shortened hours or not being open on a certain day. Dubbed “The Great Resignation,” the mass exodus of hourly workers over the past 18 months has now resulted in a competition for talent. So much
The company formerly known as Facebook just announced its plans to sneak around Apple’s infamous platform fees, the latest beat in an ongoing war between major software companies and the creator of iOS. In a Facebook post Wednesday, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg said that the social network would give eligible creators on its platform new custom
Data streams with continual, real-time updates of information are a critical building block of how apps and sites function today, and now a startup that has built a platform to power those data streams is announcing a growth round of funding on the back of strong growth in its business into a wider set of
Aimed at construction sites, vacation homes or for other hard-to-reach locations, Arlo‘s new Arlo Go 2 LTE/Wi-Fi Security Camera is at your beck and call to keep an eye out for thieves, sneaks and other scoundrels. The company is also peddling its Arlo Secure subscription service, which gives users access to a rolling 30-day library
Alternative mobile browser Firefox today shipped its latest release for iOS and Android with an update aimed at helping users address common issues — like the visual clutter of having too many open tabs or needing to pick up where your left off the last time the app was closed, among other things. The changes
Self-driving trucks startup TuSimple signaled it is close to testing its system without a human safety operator on public roads before the end of the year. During the startup’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, TuSimple announced plans to proceed with its driver-out pilot program, which would remove the driver for runs over the 80-mile route
Paytm has raised $1.104 billion in India’s largest-ever anchor round as part of its initial public offering, which is also shaping up to be the nation’s largest, as the poster child of the Indian startup ecosystem moves closer to listing in the public markets. Blackrock, GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Birla MF are among
Twitter has been steadily updating its rebuilt API following its mid-2020 relaunch. Most recently, the company added support for Twitter Spaces to its developer platform. Today, it’s announcing support that will enable developers to build better Twitter bots by launching new end points that allow you to tweet, delete tweets, post polls, use Reply settings
As U.S. hotel occupancy hit pre-pandemic levels this summer, the hospitality industry is bracing for what is expected to be a rush of activity as people resume travel. There are some tailwinds pushing those sails: The largest population of future travelers was born after 1979, and after saving more money over the last decade they
QuintoAndar is taking its first steps out of Brazil to open a technology hub in Lisbon, Portugal aimed at attracting technology talent across the pond. Co-founder and CEO Gabriel Braga made the announcement at Web Summit 2021 going on this week in Lisbon. The new office will serve as its first in Europe and will be
Tinder has already undergone a big revamp with its recent launch of “Explore,” a new section inside the app that will enable more interactive experiences, including the second “Swipe Night” series, real-time chat, interest-based matching, and more. Now, parent company Match Group is detailing its longer-term vision for Tinder and Explore, which will expand to
Rent the Runway is more than 10 years old now and has raised upwards of $500 million, recently filing to IPO at a valuation north of $1 billion. Jenny Fleiss is a co-founder at Rent the Runway and sits on the board of several notable companies, including Shutterfly, Party City and, of course, Rent the
Fresh water is one of the many resources increasingly being affected by climate change, which in turn affects businesses that rely on this abundant but still limited natural resource. Waterplan, armed with a $2.6 million seed round, is looking to analyze and track not just how a company’s water use affects the local environment, but
Instagram is bringing back support for Twitter Card previews starting today. Now when users share an Instagram link on Twitter, a preview of the post will be shown in the tweet. Prior to this change, when users posted an Instagram link on Twitter, the tweet would only display the URL of the Instagram link. The
Ed Cowan Contributor Ed Cowan is an investment team member at TDM Growth Partners, a global investment firm with offices currently in Sydney and New York. Allbirds rings the bell on the Nasdaq today and has chosen an apt ticker to do it: BIRD. It started with a humble, natural wool (and extremely comfortable) shoe,
As companies deal with a growing array of privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA, they are looking for solutions that help them not only understand their customers better, but also help them comply with those laws in a less labor-intensive way. Bloutout, a member of the Y Combinator winter 2021 cohort, announced a $3 million
The ocean is vast and mysterious … but rather less so when you have thousands of little autonomous buoys reporting back interesting info to you every day. That’s just what Sofar Ocean has, and it just raised $39 million to scale up its vision of real-time understanding of the seven seas. The company operates what
Apple is furthering its investment in Original Podcasts with today’s debut of the new true crime-focused Apple Original Podcast “Hooked.” The nine-part series will explore the story of a top engineer, Tony Hathaway, whose addiction to opioids led him to become one of the most prolific bank robbers in U.S. history. The podcast is produced
Kneron has launched its first automotive-grade chip — fueled by funds from Foxconn, Alibaba, Sequoia, Horizons Ventures, and Qualcomm — that it says could revolutionize the path to vehicle autonomy. The chip industry has been dominated by legacy and tech companies like Intel, AMD and Qualcomm. Kneron – which has raised over $100 million to
When marketers Paul Benigeri and Geoffrey Woo were at their former companies, in food tech and e-commerce infrastructure, respectively, they experienced how manual and repetitive digital marketing workflows were, especially as the number of disparate and unintegrated marketing tools grew. With the goal of making their own lives easier, they formed Archive.ai in March to
In the days immediately following revelations that Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta held secret wealth in offshore tax havens, Odanga Madung noticed something odd on Twitter. In spite of the damning information implicating Kenyatta in a hypocritical tax shelter scheme, the prevailing conversation on Kenyan Twitter focused on defending the country’s beleaguered leader. The Kenyan president’s
Battery Ventures released its State of the OpenCloud report today, providing a set of data points that pretty clearly outline the accelerated growth of cloud services in recent quarters. The report helps explain the race to invest capital into startups that we’ve been observing over the past 18 months. The pandemic pushed companies to start
Nigeria’s lending startup Payhippo has raised $3 million in a seed round, funding the company plans to use in sourcing the talent needed to optimize its technology as it ramps up effort to extend speedy credit to more small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the West African country. The round was led by an array
Oct.13 — Goldman Sachs Global Investment Banking Co-Head Dan Dees joins Bloomberg Technology’s Emily Chang about the importance of investing in tech, what’s better between traditional IPO, SPAC and direct listing, and the future of investing under mounting regulatory scrutiny worldwide.
Alternative assets, from bottles of fine wine to non-fungible tokens to even fractional shares of physical art, are becoming a mainstream form of modern investing. As consumers diversify their portfolios away from traditional public equities, New York-based startup Aqua is betting that the future may look a little more private. Co-founded by Rohan Marwaha and