Delhi Police, controlled by India’s central government, on Monday evening searched two offices of Twitter — in the national capital state of Delhi and Gurgaon, in neighboring state of Haryana — to seek more information about Twitter’s rationale to label one of the tweets by ruling partly BJP spokesperson as “manipulated media.” An hour into
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Aurora Solar had one of those pitches that seemed obvious in retrospect. Instead of going to a house and measuring its roof manually for a solar panel installation, why not use aerial scans and imagery of the whole region? That smart play earned them a $20M A round, a $50M B round, and now only
On the heels of expanding its marketing call analytics platform last year to provide more insights to help those in sales, e-commerce and customer experience, Invoca is making its first acquisition to widen the net of companies that it targets. The company has acquired DialogTech, a startup that builds tools for marketers to analyze inbound
Emitwise, a startup that claims its AI platform can measure greenhouse gas emissions from companies and their supply chains, has added to its seed funding round by $3.2 million, bringing its total seed funding raised to $6.6 million. ArcTern Ventures led the $3.2m raise. Also participating were Angel investors including Peter Harrison, the CEO of
SiriusXM is leaning into TikTok. The satellite radio company and Pandora parent today announced a partnership with the social video platform to power several new initiatives, including a TikTok channel on SiriusXM, hosted TikTok playlists on Pandora, and re-airings of Pandora LIVE events on TikTok. The hosted playlists on Pandora are the first of the
In February, Nigerian fintech startup Mono announced its acceptance into Y Combinator and, at the time, it wanted to build the Plaid for Africa. Three months later, the startup has a different mission: to power the internet economy in Africa and has closed $2 million in seed investment towards that goal. The investment comes nine
British artificial intelligence (AI) company, Faculty has raised £30 million ($42.5M) in growth funding from the Apax Digital Fund (ADF). The startup has now raised a total of £40m ($56.6M) to date. In April this year, the company announced it had won a contract to work with the UK’s NHS to better predict its future
TikTok today is introducing a feature that will allow creators to deal with online abuse in an easier way. The company is launching new tools that will allow creators to bulk delete comments and block users, instead of having to moderate comments one-by-one. The update may be somewhat controversial, as it allows creators to curate
As decentralized currencies have taken off in recent months, there’s been renewed attention around DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, as a means of bringing together groups of investors who can deploy capital as a unit while voting collectively on those investments. In the spirit of blockchain, they aim to bring greater transparency to investment decision-making.
An initial analysis of Robinhood’s Q1 2021 payment for order flow (PFOF) revenues sourced from company filings shows that the free-trading unicorn had a strong start to the year. Given the raucous trading activity of the first quarter, that news is not a surprise. The aggregate revenue data helps explain how Robinhood was able to
The coveted blue badge may soon be within your reach. Twitter announced today it will begin rolling out its new verification application system, which allows public figures and other accounts of high public interest to distinguish themselves with a checkmark that indicates they are who they say they are — like a government official, journalist,
White Star Capital, better known as a VC which, in its time, has backed the likes of Digg, launchrock, Meero, Summly, and Tier, among others, is moving into the hot world of crypto and blockchain with a new $50M Digital Asset Fund. The special-vehicle fund will specialize in investing in crypto-networks and blockchain-enabled businesses and
It’s hard enough to talk about your feelings to a person; Jo Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of Wysa, is hoping you’ll find it easier to confide in a robot. Or, put more specifically, “emotionally intelligent” artificial intelligence. Wysa is an A.I powered mental health app designed by Touchkin eServices, Aggarwal’s company that currently maintains
I am not a smart man. Earlier today I tweeted about $ASS, a cryptocurrency named after a dog. In this case, Australian Shepherds. And after doing that obviously stupid thing, my Twitter feed became chock-full of ass-related imagery, memes, and $ASS coin stans breathing on me. It’s all very annoying as I run Tweetdeck on
Snap wants users to get a more personal view of the world around them. While products like Google Maps and Apple Maps have long-relied on data partners to juice the quality of their contextual insights, Snap is hoping it can give users a more hands-on approach to mixing and matching third-party tie-ins to its Snap
Buzzy US startup Pipe — which claims to be the “Nasdaq for revenue” — has just raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation? The secret for the hype? It gives SaaS companies a way to get their revenue upfront, by “pairing them with investors on a marketplace that pays a discounted rate for the
Yousuf Khan Contributor Yousuf Khan is a partner at Ridge Ventures. Prior to joining Ridge, he was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, CIO and Vice President of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage, Qualys and Hult International Business School. More posts by this contributor Customer advisory
TaniHub Group, an Indonesian startup that helps farmers get better prices and more customers for their crops, has raised a $65.5 million Series B. The funding was led by MDI Ventures, the investment arm of Telkom Group, one of Indonesia’s largest telecoms, with participation from Add Ventures, BRI Ventures, Flourish Ventures, Intudo Ventures, Openspace Ventures,
Ethan Choi Contributor Ethan Choi is a partner at Accel, where he invests in SaaS companies that are redefining workflow and collaboration, enterprise automation and e-commerce infrastructure. He also focuses on consumer internet companies and online marketplaces. In 2016, more than 20 years after Amazon’s founding and 10 years since Shopify launched, it would have
We live in a world where companies have to send out ‘gifts’ to individuals. Chocolate bars. Bottles of wine. You name it. Companies are gifting it. But right now, that operation is buried in a marketing department on a spreadsheet, as is mostly pretty disorganized. A handful of startups realized it could be done better
For this morning’s edition of The Exchange, Alex Wilhelm studied information recently released by mobile gaming studio Jam City as it prepares to go public in a $1.2 billion blank-check deal with DPCM Capital. “Jam City is a bit like Zynga, but unless you are a mobile-gaming aficionado, you might not have heard of it,”
While it would be nice to write about something other than yet another tech company looking to list via a SPAC, the deals keep dropping, so our more traditional fare of covering startup trends will remain on hold for at least one day more. This morning, we’re looking at the Jam City deal to merge
With vaccination rates slowing in the U.S., the White House is getting creative about getting shots in arms. Beyond protecting yourself and others from from a deadly disease, the latest incentive to get vaccinated could help you find love (or get laid). The White House COVID-19 response team announced Friday that a number of popular
Britive, an early stage startup that is trying to bring privileged access control to a multi-cloud world, announced a $10 million Series A this morning. Crosslink Capital led the investment with participation from previous investors Upfront Ventures and One Way Ventures. The company helps automate permissioning across multiple cloud vendors and software services, whether that
BuffaloGrid, a startup that provides phone charging and digital content to people in off-grid environments, is teaming up with the Techfugees refugee non-profit to provid free educational content and device charging to displaced people across East Africa and the Middle-East. The initial service will see solar-powered ‘BuffaloGrid Hubs’ deployed in refugee camps across Kenya and
May.19 — Cathie Wood, chief executive officer and chief investment officer at Ark Investment Management, says Bitcoin is “on sale” right now, although it is not necessarily at a bottom. She speaks with Bloomberg’s Carol Massar at The Bloomberg Businessweek event.
Melbourne O’Banion Contributor Melbourne O’Banion is co-founder and CEO of digital life insurance company Bestow. An estimated 41 million Americans say they need life insurance but have yet to purchase coverage. Despite this awareness among consumers, the Life Insurance Marketing and Research Association estimates a $12 trillion coverage gap, with about 50% of millennials planning
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was good fun not only because we had the whole team together to record, but also because we are still basking in the endless glory of our winning a Webby earlier this week. Frankly we are still
The Indian government has expressed strong objection to Twitter for classifying certain tweets by Indian politicians as “manipulated media,” according to a notice leaked to journalists Friday. The notice comes two days after Twitter labeled a tweet from Sambit Patra, the spokesperson of India’s ruling party BJP, as “manipulated media.” In the tweet, Patra had
The podcasting world remains one of the most vibrant formats in media (and I am not just saying that since the Equity crew won a Webby yesterday for our not-that-humble podcast). Its openness, diversity, freedom, and ease-of-authoring has broadened the medium to all sorts of hosts on every subject imaginable. We experience that dynamism and