Fallout from revelations around teen mental health on Instagram continues — and not just for Facebook. On Tuesday, policy reps from YouTube, Snap and TikTok faced Congress to talk about kids and online safety, marking the first time the latter two companies appeared in a major tech hearing. The hearing, held by the Senate Subcommittee
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AI and big data are an important part of most enterprise-scale companies now, but that very scale can make it difficult to employ them safely and ethically. Kathy Baxter at Salesforce and Nashlie Sephus at AWS have made ethical AI and data collection their business over the last few years, both sounding the alarm on
Surveys have long been used by marketing teams and other business decision makers to learn how customers tick. But they can be costly to put together, hard to run at scale, and, at the end of the day, are only as credible as the data that gets put into them. Today, a London startup called
mPharma, a Ghanaian health startup, has taken a controlling stake in Uganda’s Vine Pharmacy for an undisclosed amount, marking the firm’s entry into its latest market in Africa. mPharma disclosed to TechCrunch that it has acquired a 55 percent stake previously held by the Abraaj Group, a private equity firm that collapsed after investors, including
Zolve, a neobanking startup that aims to help immigrants in the U.S. gain access to financial services, said on Wednesday it has raised $40 million in a new financing round as it begins to roll out its offerings. Partners of DST Global led the Bangalore-headquartered startup’s Series A financing round. The round, which values the
It felt like something of a coming-of-age party for the Chicago startup scene, a city that has long held a leading position in the larger Midwest market, when Sprout Social went public. The company would go on to become a breakout IPO success, pricing at $17 per share in the closing days of 2019 to
Representatives from TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security today to discuss how to protect kids online. This hearing follows Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen‘s document leaks to the Wall Street Journal, which — among many things — exposed Facebook’s knowledge that Instagram is toxic for
Healthcare spending accounts for almost 18% of U.S. GDP, so it’s no surprise that digital health is attracting record levels of investment. This year, VCs have flowed $14.7 billion to health tech startups, compared to $14.6 billion in all of 2020. Given the high cost of care in the United States compared to other nations,
Last year we covered Adtech startup Admix’s $7 million Series A funding. The London-based company brings ads to games, e-sports, virtual reality, and augmented reality. In-game advertising at scale, where advertisers can bid programmatically through traditional ad-buying platforms, rather than relying on an ad agency model, remains an enormous area, largely under-exploited. Today Admix is
YouTube and Snapchat were asked by lawmakers to defend whether or not their respective social media apps were appropriately rated on the U.S. app stores, given the nature of the content they hosted. In a line of questioning led by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Snap was given specific examples of the types of content found
Bridgit, a “workforce intelligence” technology company that is focused on the construction industry, announced today that it has raised $24 million in Series B funding. Camber Creek and Storm Ventures co-led the financing, which brings the Toronto-based startup’s total raised to more than $35 million. Nine Four Ventures also put money in the round, along
Rent the Runway is expected to price its IPO later today and trade tomorrow morning, provided that all things go as planned. Udemy is also on the way to the public markets. Allbirds, too. And this week, Sweetgreen threw its hat into the ring. Sweetgreen is a food chain best known for salads that are popular
After dragging in the same companies and their reticent, overtrained executives time and time again, Congress is turning its attention to two of the tech industry’s fresh but important faces: TikTok and Snap. On Tuesday, lawmakers on the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security will question policy leads from those two
Logicbroker, a Connecticut-based e-commerce company focused on cloud fulfillment, secured a $135 million growth round from K1 Investment Management. Its software provides drop ship and marketplace automation capabilities to brands, retailers, suppliers and third-party logistics providers. As CEO Peyman Zamani explained it, “drop ship” is a way that packages get from the seller to the
While software development frameworks make developing software faster and easier than ever, pre-deployment testing gets more and more complex by the day. Over the past decade, Testlio has grown exponentially and positioned itself as an “Elance for Software Testing.” In addition to its own team of 150 or so, the company now commands an army
NYSE-listed e-commerce platform Jumia experienced a shift in shopping habits across its markets in Africa last year, as more shoppers bought everyday products as opposed to electronics. Shopping for essentials such as foodstuff, fashion and beauty products, saw Jumia’s total sales value of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods grow by 13 percentage points last year from 44%
Rhinoceros beetles are one of the greatest threats to oil palm crops, attacking plants while they are young and potentially lowering a farm’s yield for years. They also affect workers’ health, since pesticides need to be sprayed frequently. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Poladrone wants to change the way farms use pesticides with a combination of
Chalo, a startup that is digitizing bus commutes in India and which recently raised $40 million in a financing round, has acquired Amazon-backed app-based office commute bus aggregator Shuttl in an all-cash deal, the two said on Tuesday. Chalo founder and chief executive Mohit Dubey said the acquisition of Shuttl, which operates thousands of buses
YouTube is rolling out a designated “New to you” tab on its platform after testing the feature earlier this year. The new tab is now available on the YouTube homepage across mobile, desktop and TV devices. YouTube says the feature will help users discover new creators and content beyond the recommended videos they usually see.
When Pradyut Paul was a hardware engineering program manager at Apple, he saw firsthand the challenges of building and sharing hardware products using antiquated tools like email and spreadsheets. It was after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on expedited shipping after some designs were delayed that Paul realized there had to be a better
You might have previously thought that Ecosia was a nice-to-have search engine that planted trees when you punched-in a search term. Lovely. How nice. But no. Ecosia’s founders and the network around it are far more serious about climate change than that superficial assessment might suggest. Last year in March 2020, just before the world
Radio has long been described as the most intimate of media. Quips about putting radio on the internet aside, the persistent popularity of podcasting and the cockamamie climb of Clubhouse shows that audio-based platforms will continue to echo around the upper echelons of the ecosystem for a while yet. Joining the fray is Heart to
Seems like the goal of every startup is to exit via IPO, and if you can’t do that, by way of acquisition. In many cases, a sale gives a founder the opportunity to pay back investors and reward long-time employees, but what happens after the ink dries on the contract, and the reality of being
U.S. social networking giant Facebook reported its Q3 financial results today after the bell. It reported $29.0 billion in total revenue and earnings per share of $3.22, calculated on a diluted basis. Investors had expected the company to report revenues of $29.58 billion, per data collected by Yahoo Finance, and earnings per share of $3.19.
Digital lenders that share personal data of loan defaulters, with third parties, risk license withdrawal in Kenya after lawmakers added a clause – granting the banking regulator the mandate to revoke permits of operators who breach customer confidentiality – to the new law passed by the country’s National Assembly. Typically, loan apps collect borrowers phone
Frances Haugen, one of (now) multiple Facebook whistleblowers who have come forward in recent years with damning testimony related to product safety, gave testimony in front of the UK parliament today — where, in one key moment, she was invited to clarify her views on end-to-end encryption following a report in the British newspaper the
Hark, all ye who pay attention to the stock market, for Elon Musk’s wheels-focused company broached the $1 trillion market cap threshold today. Yeah, it finally happened, so the Equity team quickly scrambled for the microphones. Chris put together the show, allowing Alex and Kirsten to dive into the matter. Kirsten, in case you aren’t
Selfbook, a hotel payment software startup, announced today that it has raised $25 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. Valia Ventures, Fin Venture Capital, early Stripe employee turned investor Lachy Groom and “strategic” angel investors also participated in the financing, which values the company at $125 million and
Welcome to the week! Sure, the technology and business worlds are busy digging through a deluge of Facebook-focused reporting ahead of the social media company’s earnings report, but we have other work to do. Namely, the Braze IPO filing. The New York City-based company focuses on customer engagement software. We’ll get into what that means
Celeb video site Cameo is making its first acquisition. The company will buy Represent, a marketing and merch company that helps celebrities and brands set up individualized online storefronts. It’s a natural fit for Cameo, which invites fans to pay celebrities of all stripes for short customized videos. Represent counts Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo