Standard Energy, a vanadium ion battery developer, announced today it has raised a $8.9 million Series C from SoftBank Ventures Asia. The South Korea-based company says its batteries’ advantages over lithium ion include less risk of ignition and the ease of sourcing vanadium. The latter is an important selling point, as electric vehicle makers face
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Slice, a startup that helps independent pizzerias build an online business, has raised another $40 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Cross Creek, with participation from KKR, GGV Capital and Primary Ventures, as well as Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo and former COO Adam Bain (through their firm 01 Advisors). Last
Workflow automation has been one of the key trends this year so far, and Zoho, a company known for its suite of affordable business tools has joined the parade with a new low code workflow product called Qntrl (pronounced control). Zoho’s Rodrigo Vaca, who is in charge of Qntrl’s marketing says that most of the
Wire, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service, has raised a $21 million Series B funding round led by UVC Partners. As the company said a couple of years ago, the company is focusing on the enterprise market more than ever. While Wire started as a consumer app, it never managed to attract hundreds of
Before a startup can achieve product-market fit, founders must first listen to their customers, build what they require and fashion a business plan that makes the whole enterprise worthwhile. The numbers will tell the true story, but when it happens, you’ll feel it in your bones because sales will be good, customers will happy and
Coinbase, the American cryptocurrency trading giant, has set a reference price for its direct listing at $250 per share. According to the company’s most recent SEC filing, it has a fully diluted share count of 261.3 million, giving the company a valuation of $65.3 billion. Using a simple share count of 196,760,122 provided in its
Facebook’s self-styled ‘Oversight Board’ (FOB) has announced an operational change that looks intended to respond to criticism of the limits of the self-regulatory content-moderation decision review body: It says it’s started accepting requests from users to review decisions to leave content up on Facebook and Instagram. The move expands the FOB’s remit beyond reviewing (and
Meroxa, a startup that makes it easier for businesses to build the data pipelines to power both their analytics and operational workflows, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Drive Capital. Existing investors Root, Amplify and Hustle Fund also participated in this round, which together with the
The race is on for companies building e-commerce empires by rolling up smaller, promising businesses that sell via Amazon and other marketplaces and growing by using some economies of scale to operate them as one. In the latest development, Berlin Brands Group has raised $240 million that it says it will be using to acquire
Startup Alley — the very name conjures up images of early-stage startups demonstrating game-changing products, platforms and services to thousands of Disrupt attendees and industry influencers. It’s where you’ll find envelope pushing and boundary breaking going down. If you’re busy shoving envelopes and busting down boundaries, don’t miss your chance to exhibit in Startup Alley
As expected, Southeast Asian super-app Grab is going public via a SPAC, or blank check company. The combination, which TechCrunch discussed over the weekend, will value Grab on an equity basis at $39.6 billion and will provide around $4.5 billion in cash, $4.0 billion of which will come in the form of a private investment
Facebook confirmed it’s testing a video speed-dating app called Sparked, after the app’s website was spotted by The Verge. Unlike dating app giants such as Tinder, Sparked users don’t swipe on people they like or direct message others. Instead, they cycle through a series of short video dates during an event to make connections with
Artificial intelligence technology holds a huge amount of promise for enterprises — as a tool to process and understand their data more efficiently; as a way to leapfrog into new kinds of services and products; and as a critical stepping stone into whatever the future might hold for their businesses. But the problem for many
French startup Biloba has raised a $1.7 million funding round (€1.4 million) a few months after launching its pediatrics app that lets you chat with a doctor whenever you have a question. In addition to raising some money, the startup also recently added in-app prescriptions. Biloba’s concept is surprisingly simple. It’s a mobile app that
Are you 100% sure that your children are brushing their teeth properly? A New York-based startup called Willo has been working for several years on a device that should transform the tooth-brushing experience for children. Willo isn’t a new toothbrush — electric or not. It’s an oral care device that doesn’t look like a toothbrush
Students, government employees, and members of non-profit organizations can get access to Extra Crunch at a discounted rate of $50/year (plus tax). That’s 50% off our annual price point. You’ll also be grandfathered in at the discounted price for future years until you cancel. How to claim the discount: Use a government, non-profit, .edu or
Pine Labs said on Tuesday it has acquired Southeast Asian startup Fave in a deal valued at $45 million as the Indian firm looks to strengthen its consumer-focused offerings in the domestic and international markets. Fave helps an offline merchant connect and retain customers by using gift cards and vouchers. The startup allows merchants to accept
Microsoft agreed today to acquire Nuance Communications, a leader in speech to text software, for $19.7 billion. Bloomberg broke the story over the weekend that the two companies were in talks. In a post announcing the deal, the company said this was about increasing its presence in the healthcare vertical, a place where Nuance has
“You wanted me to record this?” asks Saul Klein, LocalGlobe founding partner. “Just in case you say anything interesting,” I quip back. “I won’t be doing most of the talking, so maybe someone will say something interesting,” Klein replies poker-faced, before grinning. Once again, I’ve agreed to an ensemble-style interview with multiple members of the
A startup tapping into the concept of the circular economy, where people don’t buy items outright but pay an incremental amount to use them temporarily, has raised some funding to scale its business in Europe and beyond. Grover, a Berlin-based startup that runs a subscription model where people can rent out consumer electronics like computers,
Apr.08 — Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley head of global auto and shared mobility research, says investors need to own Tesla stock and he thinks the automaker will benefit greatly from the U.S. infrastructure package. He speaks on “Bloomberg Markets.”
Decentralized finance startup MOUND, known for its yield farming aggregator Pancake Bunny, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Binance Labs. Other participants included IDEO CoLab, SparkLabs Korea and Handshake co-founder Andrew Lee. Built on Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain for developing high-performance DeFi apps, MOUND says Pancake Bunny now has more than
Son Nguyen, founder and chief executive officer of Dat Bike Dat Bike, a Vietnamese startup with ambitions to become the top electric motorbike company in Southeast Asia, has raised $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures. Made in Vietnam with mostly domestic parts, Dat Bike’s selling point is its ability to compete
You hear so much about data these days that you might forget that a huge amount of the world runs on documents: a veritable menagerie of heterogeneous files and formats holding enormous value yet incompatible with the new era of clean, structured databases. Docugami plans to change that with a system that intuitively understands any
In the earliest stages of building a startup, it can be hard to justify focusing on anything other than creating a great product or service and meeting the needs of customers or users. However, there are still a number of surefire measures that any early-stage company can and should put in place to achieve “people
One of the best parts of TechCrunch Disrupt is the Startup Battlefield competition, and one of the most important pieces of the Startup Battlefield is our lineup of expert judges — they’re the ones the founders are trying to impress. Once the demos and presentations are done, the judges need to think quickly and ask
A few months back, robotic process automation (RPA) unicorn UiPath raised a huge $750 million round at a valuation of around $35 billion. The capital came ahead of the company’s expected IPO, so its then-new valuation helped provide a measuring stick for where its eventual flotation could price. UiPath then filed to go public. But
EcoCart, a company pitching consumers on ways to offset their carbon emissions for free at select merchants (with a browser extension!) has raised $3 million in financing from Base10 Partners. Brands pay the company a commission to drive traffic to their websites under a standard affiliate marketing model and EcoCart uses a portion of the
When Microsoft announced it was acquiring Nuance Communications this morning for $19.7 billion, you could be excused for doing a Monday morning double take at the hefty price tag. That’s surely a lot of money for a company on a $1.4 billion run rate, but Microsoft, which has already partnered with the speech-to-text market leader
Cybersecurity training startup Hack The Box, which emerged originally from Greece, has raised a Series A investment round of $10.6 million, led by Paladin Capital Group and joined by Osage University Partners, Brighteye Ventures, and existing investors Marathon Venture Capital. It will use the funding to expand. Most recently it launched Hack The Box Academy.