Apeel Sciences, a food system innovation company, is out to prevent food produced globally from ending up in the landfill, especially as pressures from the global pandemic affect the food supply chain. The company just added $250 million in Series E funding, giving it a valuation of $2 billion, to speed up the availability of
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Dublin-based Evervault, a developer-focused security startup which sells encryption vis API and is backed by a raft of big name investors including the likes of Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins and Index Ventures, is coming out of closed beta today — announcing open access to its encryption engine. The startup says some 3,000 developers are on its
Danggeun Market, the publisher of South Korea’s hyperlocal community app Karrot, announced on 18 August it has raised $162 million in a Series D round of funding with a valuation of $2.7 billion. (By the way, Danggeun means carrot in Korean.) This round funding was led by DST Global, with additional participation from Aspex Management,
RaRa Delivery’s ambitious goal is to offer same-day deliveries in Indonesia without burning cash like many on-demand logistics providers. The company announced today it has raised $3.25 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge program and East Ventures. Other participants included 500 Startups, Angel Central, GK Plug and Play and angel investors
Fortnite now boasts its own version of one of the pandemic’s hottest games. Fortnite-maker Epic just introduced into the game a new limited-time mode called Impostors; it follows the hit format that sent Among Us to Twitch’s front page — and Congress — during the pandemic’s earlier days. Up to 10 people can play the
News is vital to society, but it’s also incredibly expensive to produce. As ad rates have suffered across the industry (minus a positive blip this summer), publishers have increasingly turned to paywalls to make ends meet. There’s just one problem: the open internet which allowed readers to range over the entire thought of humanity has
Growth marketing is often misconceived as a set of tactics when it’s much more: It is a process that startups need to put in place in their early days that will scale as their customer base and internal teams grow. This is where British growth agency Ascendant shines, Robyn Weatherley, head of marketing at Thirdfort,
Brazil’s startup market is reaching new heights, and its domestic stock market could benefit from the boom. According to data from KPMG, Brazilian startups raised the most capital in a single quarter in Q1 2021, when some $1.4 billion flowed into domestic technology upstarts. That record stood until the second quarter of 2021 saw $2.7
Twitter introduced a new test feature Tuesday that allows users to report misinformation they run into on the platform, flagging it to the company as “misleading.” The test will roll out starting today to most users in the U.S., Australia and South Korea. In the new test, Twitter users will be able to expand the
Among Apple’s more recent social good initiatives is the Impact Accelerator, an effort launched about a year ago intended to find and elevate minority-owned small businesses taking on sustainability and climate change. The program now has its first 15 participants, gathered from all over the country for a three-month program and a shot at an
When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, you had to figure that they had some big plans for the company, and today the CRM giant announced some initial integrations that should prove useful for Salesforce customers. Rob Seaman, SVP for Slack at Salesforce sees Slack as the communications
Enterprise Resource Planning systems have traditionally been the preserve of larger companies, but in recent years the amount of data small medium sized businesses can generate has increased to the point where even SMEs/SMBs can get into the world of ERP. And that’s especially true for online-only businesses. At the beginning of the year we
It’s no secret that Google is in the midst of a pretty massive overhaul of its Pixel division. The Pixel 6 offers the next major Hail Mary for the company’s hardware division, complete with its own custom chip, Tensor. This is not that. The new flagship won’t be available until the fall. Meantime, here’s the
Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk said Friday that he hopes to start producing cars at its new factory outside Berlin in October. He met with Armin Laschet, the center-right Union bloc’s candidate to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor in next month’s election. (Source: Bloomberg)
Fintech Brex first partnered with Weav, a developer of a universal API for commerce platforms, last summer. In March, Brex launched Instant Payouts for Shopify sellers using the startup’s technology. The results were impressive enough that by April, Brex co-founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi participated in Weav’s $4.3 million seed round as strategic angel
Unbundling financial data through APIs and driving data-driven insights with value-add products in Africa keeps getting more exciting as major players continue to raise more money for scale. Less than a year after its $3 million seed round, San Francisco- and Africa-based fintech Pngme has snapped up another $15 million for its financial data infrastructure
Hamburg’s state government has been formally warned against using Zoom over data protection concerns. The German state’s data protection agency (DPA) took the step of issuing a public warning yesterday, writing in a press release that the Senate Chancellory’s use of the popular videoconferencing tool violates the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) since
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You
Many Southeast Asian digital businesses run into obstacles when seeking early-stage growth financing. They might not want to sell equity in their company, but often struggle to secure working capital loans from traditional financial institutions. That’s where Singapore-based Jenfi comes in, providing revenue-based financing of up to $500,000 with flexible repayment plans that co-founder and
After meeting an ignominious end in 2017, the anonymous gossip app once popular with college students lives again. Yik Yak returned to the iOS App Store on Monday (sorry, Android users) under new ownership, inspiring a fresh round of interest in the long-dead social network. 📣 ICYMI: After a 4 year hiatus, Yik Yak is
Cisco announced on Friday that it’s acquiring Israeli applications-monitoring startup Epsagon at a price pegged at $500 million. The purchase gives Cisco a more modern microservices-focused component for its growing applications-monitoring portfolio. The Israeli business publication Globes reported it had gotten confirmation from Cisco that the deal was for $500 million, but Cisco would not confirm
As last week came to a close, funding news involving three major U.S. technology startups lit up on Twitter. Carta closed a $500 million Series G at a $7.4 billion price tag. Chime put together a $750 million round at a $25 billion valuation. And Discord was reported to be hunting up new cash that
Nuro doesn’t have a typical Silicon Valley origin story. It didn’t emerge after a long, slow slog from a suburban garage or through a flash of insight in a university laboratory. Nor was it founded at the behest of an eccentric billionaire with money to burn. Nuro was born — and ramped up quickly —
The pandemic was a catalyst for showing companies looking to cut costs just how much they were spending on their software tools. New York-based Tropic’s platform not only uncovers those savings, but also brings a click-and-approve approach to buying software. Today, the company announced a $25 million Series A round of funding. Canaan Partners led
Canada-based Shopistry wants to turn the concept of headless commerce, well, on its head. On Monday, the e-commerce startup announced $2 million in seed funding to continue developing its toolkit of products, integrations, services and managed infrastructure for brands to scale online. Jaafer Haidar and Tariq Zabian started Shopistry in 2019. Haidar’s background is as
If you injure your elbow, surgery can help. If you lose a leg, prostheses are available. But problems within the brain are more difficult to treat, and for stroke victims rehabilitation is largely left to the body’s own repair mechanisms. BrainQ aims to change that with a device that stimulates the damaged part of the
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy Contributor Sukhinder Singh Cassidy founded theBoardlist, a premium talent marketplace that helps diverse leaders get discovered for board and executive opportunities. A technology executive and entrepreneur, board member and investor, she has 25 years of experience founding and helping to scale companies, including Google, Amazon and Yodlee. More posts by this contributor
Kiddom, a platform that offers a digital curriculum that fits the core standards required by states, announced today that it has raised a $35 million Series C round led by Altos Ventures, with participation from Owl Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Outcomes Collective. The financing came nearly three years after Kiddom’s Series B, a $15 million
This week Danny and Alex and Chris took to Twitter Spaces to chat about the current state of the crypto economy, and hang out with friends in a live Twitter Space. We’re doing more of these, so make sure that you are following the show on Twitter. As a small programming note, I forgot to
Karl Laughton Contributor Karl Laughton is president & COO of Insightly, which makes scalable CRM software that enables companies to go beyond transactions and grow lasting customer relationships. Nearly three in 10 employees (29%) would quit their job if they were told they were no longer allowed to work remotely, according to a recent survey.