The meteoric rise of collaborative design startup Canva — now valued at $40 billion — and conversely, the viral interest we’ve been seeing in the market for NFTs where you can “buy” a share of a limited-edition digital asset, are two examples of how the tech world today revolves around — and values — catchy
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Ninja Van, a Singapore-based logistics startup, has closed a $578 million Series E round to support its operations infrastructure and technology systems growth. Investors include China’s Alibaba Group as well as existing investors DPDgroup’s GeoPost, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Savering’s B Capital Group, Monk’s Hill Ventures, and Zamrud, a sovereign wealth fund controlled by Brunei, based on its
After working as an investment banker in Canada for a decade, Halima Iqbal moved back to Pakistan in 2017 and quickly realized how difficult it is for women to access financial services. “I had a really hard time opening up a basic bank account. It took me about three and a half months,” Iqbal told
Covid-19 really put the kibosh on live events in the last 18 months, but in the world of tech, it also meant that live event startups that found a way to survive and grow throughout the period got a lot of attention. In the latest development, Dice — a London company that has built a
Sep.23 — Gavin Wood, Polkadot Founder & Ethereum Co-Creator, joins Emily Chang to talk about the future of crypto and Polkadot’s ongoing adoption, and why looming regulation could be useful for the industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly been devastating on many levels. But if there’s any silver lining in the global crisis, it could be that it’s less taboo to talk about feeling anxious, depressed or burnt out. Because chances are, the person you’re talking to is feeling one of those things too. So it’s no surprise
Intuit, the business and financial tools company best known for its TurboTax software, made news last week for its acquisition of Mailchimp, and is now announcing a corporate venture capital arm, Intuit Ventures, to identify growth opportunities and trends beneficial for its key customers — small businesses and consumers. The company is the latest to
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 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.
Priyanka Srinivas Contributor Priyanka Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Live Green Co, a Chilean food tech startup that uses artificial intelligence to suggest plant-based alternatives for meat and artificial additives in food. When it comes to gender equality in the business world, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg hit the nail on the head: “Knowing
SoftBank is gaga for startups in Latin America. Since first announcing it was planting a stake in the ground in the region in early 2019, the Japanese conglomerate has plugged more than $5 billion into the region, and it expects that number to top $8 billion by year’s end. Its capital contributions are meaningful to
The tools you use most often are the ones you think about the least. Calendly, an app that helps people plan, schedule and follow up on meetings, may be a perfect example of that. Today, some 10 million people send Calendly links to millions of others to sort out meeting slots. But perhaps because its
Sunday, a startup that didn’t exist just a few months ago, has raised a $100 million Series A funding round. Today’s funding round is led by Coatue with participation from partners of DST Global. Investors in the restaurant, hospitality and tech industries are also participating. I already wrote a lengthy profile of Sunday when it
If that headline sounded judgmental, I apologize. We just wrapped up a three-day virtual event that included discussions and interviews with some of the most notable people in technology, media, government and venture capital. Even in person, there’s no way to absorb Disrupt in its entirety. Full Extra Crunch articles are only available to membersUse
Just two months after securing $2 million in pre-seed funding, plant-based pudding startup Noops is announcing an additional $2 million round led by Lerer Hippeau. The Long Island-based company was founded in 2019 by Hungryroot co-founder Gregory Harry Struck after he adopted a plant-based diet while battling cancer. “It was born out of a need
When it comes to online calendars and calendar apps, services like Google Calendar and Outlook from Microsoft rule the roost with hundreds of millions of users globally. Now another company is hoping to ruffle some feathers with its own move into the space. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Yahoo is working on called Day,
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2021, Slack founder and CEO Stewart Butterfield and Salesforce COO Bret Taylor discussed their $28 billion merger, announced last December, a deal the Department of Justice signed off on this summer but that shareholders still seem to be second-guessing. At least, they aren’t convinced of the value that Slack brings to Salesforce
The UK government has announced a national AI strategy — its first dedicated package aimed at boosting the country’s capabilities in and around machine learning technologies over the longer term. It says it hopes the strategy will lead to an increase in the number and types of AIs being developed and commercialized in the UK
Jul.01 — Epyllionco Managing Partner Matthew Ball discusses how people can now invest in the “metaverse,” the convergence of online gaming, virtual reality, augmented reality, user generating content, and social networking. He explains how the Metaverse ETF works with Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, along with TechCrunch’s Neesha Tambe. Neesha is one of our best and is the leading light of the Startup Battlefield event at our yearly Disrupt conference. That made her the perfect guest — that’s precisely what we discussed on the show today. From a tight
The boom in venture capital fundraising that the technology startup market has enjoyed since the back half of 2020 has been eye-popping. Record sums have been disbursed around the world as more firms entered the fray to invest in startups, and the late-stage capital flowed like water. But while the venture capital game seemed to
Avenue launched Friday to give operations their own tools to monitor teams, and is building a “command center” for this area of business that is often forgotten, co-founder and CEO Justin Bleuel told TechCrunch. In addition to the launch the company is announcing $4 million in seed funding, led by Accel, with participation from Flexport
The UK published its first ever national AI strategy this week. The decade-long commitment by the government to levelling up domestic artificial intelligence capabilities — by directing resource and attention toward skills, talent, compute power and data access — has been broadly welcomed by the country’s tech ecosystem, as you’d expect. But there is a
The FCC has sent out the first checks from its Emergency Connectivity Fund, an effort to help close the “homework gap” at schools by covering the cost of computers and internet services. Thousands of school districts, in every state plus D.C., Guam and Puerto Rico, will split this first $1.2 billion distribution, and there’s still
A new forecast on the state of the app economy indicates the third quarter will see record-breaking revenues spent on apps and games. According to App Annie, consumers worldwide will spend $34 billion on apps and games in Q3, a 20% year-over-year increase on spending. The increase indicates that the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on consumer
Bay Area-based autonomous farming startup Iron Ox this week announced a $53 million round. The Series C, led by Breakthrough Energy Venture, brings the firm’s total funding up to $98 million. Iron Ox is one of a large number of companies looking to revolutionize farming for the 21st century, amid growing concerns over population growth,
Earning passive income as an investor in single-family rental homes is a dream for many, but also something that can be intimidating to break into. Awning is a startup that aims to make the process less intimidating through a platform designed to allow individuals to invest in single-family rental homes not just in the cities
Tesla broke ground on its “Megafactory,” a new production facility in California, so christened because it will produce the company’s large-scale battery system Megapack. News of the previously unannounced factory was confirmed by the Lathrop Mayor Sonny Dhaliwal in a Facebook post that was deleted and re-posted. “We are proud to be the home of
Spotnana emerged from stealth Thursday with $41 million in its pocket and an open global platform targeting the $1.4 trillion business travel industry. The Bay Area company’s investment includes a $34 million Series A, co-led by ICONIQ and Madrona Venture Group with participation from Decibel and Mubadala Capital, and a previous undisclosed $7 million seed
Startups have spent the last decade trying to offer every variation of Airbnb that they can imagine. But Ukio thinks it has found a way through the ever-growing tangle of housing rental competitors — and regulators — right as remote work becomes the norm. It offers rentals of one month or longer, featuring a turnkey
Amazon has launched Prime Video Channels in India, allowing its customers to subscribe to eight streaming services including Discovery+ and Mubi from one hub, the latest in a series of efforts by the U.S. giant to win customers in the South Asian nation. The new offering makes it easier for users to login and pay