International travel is slowly opening up again, but that also means business and leisure travelers alike will once again have to think about visa restrictions as they take to the air. Nobody has ever enjoyed the process of applying for a visa, but Atlys promises to take the hassle out of the process. The company
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If you make some software and sell it online, you can make lots of money. Thanks to low-cost distribution, it’s possible to write one bit of code and sell it many times, generating fat margins in the process. Throw in a larger industry trend toward recurring pricing as opposed to single-shot sales, and you have
Facebook (aka “Meta”) CEO Mark Zuckerberg today took several thinly veiled shots at Apple and the overall app ecosystem when detailing his plans for the metaverse during today’s keynote speech at the company’s Facebook Connect 2021 event. Specifically, he called out app platforms and their associated fees for “stifling innovation,” while simultaneously justifying Facebook’s plans
Marc and Lynne Benioff announced a $200 million donation this morning to combat climate change and encourage others to take action. Marc Benioff’s company, Salesforce, threw in $100 million more for a total donation of $300 million. The Benioffs’ portion is divided into two tranches, with $100 million going to the Benioff Time Tree Fund
As companies gather ever-growing sets of data, finding issues with that data that could impact the viability of a machine learning model becomes increasingly important. Anomalo is putting machine learning to work to help solve the data viability issue automatically. Today the company announced a $33 million Series A investment led by Norwest Venture Partners
Companies like Slack and Asana stormed into the world of tech to steal a march on incumbents like Microsoft in providing a new wave of point solutions to make it easier for workers respectively to chat with each other, plan projects and more. Now another startup is announcing a massive round of funding for a
Apple has now launched a beta version of its “App Privacy Report,” a new feature that aims to provide iOS users with details about how often their everyday apps are requesting access to sensitive information, and where that information is being shared. The feature was first introduced at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference in June, amid
Biotech startup Immunai has been on a roll when it comes to funding. The company that set out to create an atlas of the human immune system in 2018 had raised about $80 million by February 2021. On Wednesday, the company announced another significantly larger round: a $215 million series B. Immunai has been building
Wavemaker Impact’s founders: (from left to right) Quentin Vaquette, Doug Parker, Marie Cheong, Paul Santos, and Steve Melhuish Wavemaker Partners doesn’t just want to invest in climate tech and sustainability startups. It also wants to help build them. Today, the Singapore-based firm announced the launch of Wavemaker Impact, a venture builder that identifies potential business
TikTok announced today it’s expanding its Video Kit offering for developers to include those building apps for the web, desktop, and consoles, in addition to its previous support for mobile platforms. Alongside the news, the company unveiled a host of new third-party apps that would now integrate with TikTok, including Clipchamp, Combo, Grabyo, Kapwing, Mobcrush,
Food is the very nourishment of life, but it’s also becoming increasingly challenging to grow at scale. A combination of explosive and unsustainable population growth, human-made climate change and depleted sources of clean water is contributing to overcultivation across the world. For its many advocates, vertical farming is a critical piece to solving that puzzle,
Groopit, an early stage startup from a 20-year Microsoft veteran, wants to help companies crowdsource data from information supplied by employees working in the field. Today, the company announced a $2 million pre-seed round led by Ascend.vc with participation from a group of investors that includes Voyager Capital and Vulcan Capital. The startup has raised
It’s fairly simply: Softwood grows a lot faster – in ‘sustainable’ forests – than hardwood. The latter is often found in bio-diverse old-growth forests like, um, the Amazon. So if you could make softwood behave like hardwood, you’d not only access more sustainable wood for construction, you’d also protect hardwood forests from destruction. Plus, you
Estonian on-demand transport firm Bolt is set to roll out electric taxi options in South Africa four months after introducing e-bike food delivery services in the country. Bolt’s plan follows the introduction of a ‘green category’ – which lets riders hail an electric or a hybrid vehicle. This comes as the company expands its services
Chris Legg Contributor Chris Legg serves as a senior managing director at Progress Partners and as a general partner at Progress Ventures, the firm’s venture capital arm. Mergers and acquisitions activity is at an all-time high — global mergers and acquisitions have already broken 2020 levels with about $4.4 trillion worth of deals as of
Paytm, one of India’s most valuable startups, is seeking to raise as much as $2.4 billion in what is shaping to be the biggest initial public offering in the country at a valuation of $20 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter and internal documents seen by TechCrunch. Paytm filed the paperworks for
Hinge is rolling out a new ‘Voice Prompts’ feature to give its users a new way to connect with their matches. Voice Prompts will allow users to answer a prompt through a 30-second voice recording. The new feature is rolling out globally starting today. Hinge says the new feature allows people to give others a
Farming is the most fundamental activity of civilization. Efficient, reliable and abundant food allows the great majority of people today to eschew cultivating plants and raising livestock and instead pursue every other activity that makes up an economy. It’s also an enterprise that has seen extensive innovation over the millennia, and farming has never been
LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned platform for those connecting with others in their fields of work and those looking for work, has been known best in recruitment for sourcing candidates and advertising job openings for permanent work. Now, to complement that, LinkedIn is opening up a new front in the job market for freelancers. Today it is
Spain’s on-demand delivery platform Glovo has announced what it’s calling “The Couriers Pledge” — an initiative which commits its business to setting a new — “fairer” — social rights standard for its gigging couriers. The self-defined “standard” covers earnings, safety, communication and support for development opportunities. Glovo says the commitments will (eventually) apply to couriers
Google today announced a preview of Android 12L, which may sound like a new version of Android, but Google calls it “a special feature drop that makes Android 12 even better on large screens.” The idea here is to provide users on tablets, foldables and Chrome OS laptops — anything with a screen above 600
Gringo, a Brazilian startup that has built an app aimed at supporting drivers in a variety of ways, has raised $8 million in a new round of funding. Kaszek led the financing, which also included participation from GFC and OneVC. Kaszek also led the company’s seed round in 2020. The latest investment brings its total
It’s early in the Wednesday trading session, meaning that we’re waiting on the first trades of Rent the Runway stock on the public markets. But what we do know is that the company priced at $21 per share, giving it a valuation of $1.33 billion using a simple share count, and around $1.47 billion on
Instagram announced on Wednesday that all users now have access to its Link Sticker feature in Instagram Stories. The expansion comes as the company recently ditched the “swipe-up” link in Instagram Stories in favor of the new Link Stickers. Both the previous “swipe-up” link and new Link Sticker feature have been historically limited to businesses
Daring Foods closed on $65 million in Series C funding Wednesday as the plant-based chicken startup launches its products into 3,000 Walmart stores nationally. Daring offers four plant-based chicken products, including Original, Lemon & Herb, Cajun and Breaded, that looks, cooks and tastes like its chicken counterpart. CEO Ross Mackay told TechCrunch that the goal
Abacus.ai wants to build an AI platform that simplifies machine learning model creation, while still leaving room for power users. Today the company announced a $50 million Series C. At the same time, it announced that the platform was expanding to include computer vision use cases. Tiger Global led the round with participation from Coatue,
Earlier this year European startup Sundayraised $100 million in a Series A raise led by US investors Coatue and DST Global, just five months after launching. The proposition was relatively simple and pretty much tailor-made for the Covid-19 era: diners scan a QR code to download an app, and then split the bill between friends
In September, analysts at eMarketer predicted Spotify was poised to overtake Apple Podcasts in U.S. listenership sometime this year. Today, Spotify announced for the first time it may have succeeded on that front. During the company’s Q3 2021 earnings call, the company said that according to Edison Research and its own internal sources, it “recently
Union54, the first Zambian startup backed by Y Combinator, has gotten another major venture capital firm on its term sheet: Tiger Global. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the VC juggernaut led its just-completed $3 million seed round, coming only two months after graduating from Y Combinator’s summer batch. San Francisco-based venture capital firm Runa
Based in Hong Kong, Finverse’s ambitious goal is to enable open banking throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The startup recently came out of stealth mode with $1.8 million in seed funding, and is now live in four markets (Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam) with connections to 30 banks. Founder and chief executive officer Stephane