Jul.06 — Uber Technologies Inc. agreed to buy Postmates Inc. for $2.65 billion to expand in food delivery after the coronavirus pandemic cratered demand for ride-hailing, its main business, and an earlier attempt to acquire Grubhub foundered. Scott Kessler of Third Bridge appears on “Bloomberg Technology.”
admin
Electric vehicle startup Fisker Inc. said Wednesday it has raised $50 million, much needed capital that will go toward funding the next phase of engineering work on the company’s all-electric luxury SUV. The startup is aiming to launch the Fisker Ocean SUV in 2022. The Series C funding round was led by Moore Strategic Ventures
At first glance, Colvin — which recently announced that it has raised a $15 million Series B — might look like just another flower and plant delivery company, but co-founder and CEO Andres Cester said the startup has a much grander vision. “We were born with the ambition the company that would redesign global flower trade,”
Auditors were not impressed by Facebook’s civil rights work, Tinder tests video chat and a new nasal spray could reduce the risk of COVID-19 transmission. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 8, 2020. The big story: Facebook faces blistering civil rights audit The results are out in a multi-year audit of Facebook’s approach to civil
A deep tech startup building cryptographic solutions to secure hardware, software, and communications systems for a future when quantum computers may render many current cybersecurity approaches useless is today emerging out of stealth mode with $7 million in funding and a mission to make cryptographic security something that cannot be hackable, even with the most sophisticated
College in the United States is expensive and, for many, comes with massive student debt. The price tag has led to the increase of coding bootcamps and alternative schooling options to help students gain employment, and a salary, without taking on millions of dollars in debt. In Europe, the picture looks vastly different: A majority
A new product developed by Harvard professor of the Pracice of Biomedical Engineering David A. Edwards is set to launch this fall, and claims to be able to provide a nearly 100 percent reduction in the particles present in exhaled air – thus reducing the potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2 both into, and out of, the
Permutive is announcing that it has raised $18.5 million in Series B funding, as the London-based startup works to help online publishers make money in a changing privacy landscape. CEO Joe Root, who co-founded the company with CTO Tim Spratt, noted that publishers are facing increasing regulation while web browsers are phasing out support for
Black Lives Matter may be the largest movement in U.S. history, according to four different polls cited recently by the New York Times that suggest anywhere from 15 million to 26 million people in the U.S. have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others since Floyd’s death in late May. Blavity,
Karma Automotive has raised a $100 million lifeline from outside investors, as reported by Bloomberg, with the struggling electric vehicle maker’s fortunes likely buoyed by the current market optimism on other EV companies including Tesla. Karma is the reincarnated version of Fisker Automotive, which previously faced bankruptcy before being acquired by Wanxiang Group in 2014.
For the second time in less than 24 hours, an enterprise company bought an early stage startup. Yesterday afternoon DocuSign acquired Liveoak, and this morning Slack announced it was buying corporate directory startup Rimeto, which should help employees find people inside the organization who match a specific set of criteria from inside Slack. The companies
Nauta Capital, the pan-European venture capital firm that invests in B2B technology startups at seed and Series A, is launching its fifth fund. The new vehicle has an initial close of €120 million and is expected to surpass the VC’s 2016 fund, which topped out at €155 million. With offices in London, Barcelona and Munich, Nauta Capital
Now is a great time to be dipping back into creative projects you’ve had on hold, including editing archives of photos you promised you’d get back to ‘later.’ There are a number of different gadgets designed to help make that process easier, but one of the more accessible is the TourBox, a $169 hardware controller
Tinder announced this morning it will begin to test video chat in its mobile dating app with some members in select worldwide markets, including in the U.S. The feature, which allows Tinder matches to go on “virtual” dates when both opt in, will first be available to users in Virginia, Illinois, Georgia and Colorado in
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Is immigration happening? Who
K Fund is officially outing its fund II today, which sits at €70 million, up from €50 million the first time around. The remit remains the same, however: targeting Spanish startups with an international outlook, the seed-stage firm plans to invest from €200,000 to €2 million, writing first checks in 25-30 companies. A portion of
As scores of startups look to cash in on the content void that ban on TikTok and other Chinese apps has created in India, a big challenger is ready to try its own hand. Instagram said on Wednesday it is rolling out Reels — a feature that allows users to create short-form videos (up to
Nvidia today announced that its new Ampere-based data center GPUs, the A100 Tensor Core GPUs, are now available in alpha on Google Cloud. As the name implies, these GPUs were designed for AI workloads, as well as data analytics and high-performance computing solutions. The A100 promises a significant performance improvement over previous generations. Nvidia says
LeanIX, the enterprise architecture software company founded out of Bonn in Germany, has closed $80 million in Series D funding. The round is led by new investor Goldman Sachs Growth. Previous investors Insight Partners and DTCP also followed on. The Series D brings LeanIX’s total funding to over $120 million. The company says it will
Oct.29 — Adam Jonas, Morgan Stanley Analyst, discusses climate change and electric vehicles. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Taylor Riggs on “Bloomberg Technology”.
We’re excited to announce that Extra Crunch is now available to readers in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. That adds to our existing support in the U.S., Canada, UK, and select European countries. You can sign for Extra Crunch here. Latin America has always caught the eye of big tech. For companies like Facebook, Amazon, and
A few years back, startups focusing on artificial intelligence had a whiff of bullshit about them; venture capitalists became inured to young tech companies claiming that their new AI-powered product was going to change the world as hype exceeded product reality. But in the time since, AI-powered startups have matured into real companies, with investors
Tesla’s 2014 acquisition of SolarCity turned the electric vehicle manufacturer into the undisputed largest player in residential solar, but that lead has steadily eroded as its major competitor, Sunrun, surged ahead with more aggressive plans. Now with the $3.2 billion dollar acquisition of the residential solar installation company, Vivint Solar, Sunrun looks to solidify its
Even in the best of times, finding a notary can be a challenge. In the middle of a pandemic, it’s even more difficult. DocuSign announced it has acquired Liveoak Technologies today for approximately. $38 million, giving the company an online notarization option. At the same time, DocuSign announced a new product called DocuSign Notary, which
Connect Ventures, the London-based seed-stage VC that was an early investor in Citymapper and Typeform announced a new $80 million fund last month to continue investing in “product-led” founders. Launched back in 2012, when there was a shortage of institutional capital at seed stage in Europe and micro VC was a novelty in the region,
Samsung’s next big Unpacked event is scheduled for August 5. As is the trend these days, the unveiling will be online-only, following in the footsteps of big virtual events from the likes of. Microsoft and Apple. It’s Samsung’s first crack at the format. The company just made it under the pre-COVID-19 shutdown wire back in
Yesterday evening Palantir, the quasi-secretive data mining and analysis firm, publicly announced that it has privately filed to go public. The disclosure came in the wake of Palantir raising new capital, taking on hundreds of millions of dollars before its planned public offering. According to Crunchbase data, Palantir has raised billions while private, making its
Business is the foundation, of, well, business. For startups, finding a working business model and honing it through decision-making, smart hires, and relentless focus on the right metrics can be the difference between building a scalable company and collapsing into the next Luckin Coffee. Given how important business performance and finance is, it’s not uncommon
Replenysh has been kicking since 2016, but up til now, the Orange County, California startup hasn’t done much press. That changes today, as the company announces that it has raised a $2 million seed round with the fairly lofty goal of transforming recycling in the U.S. A press release outlining Replenysh’s plans offers up plenty
Zoom announced a new Hardware as a Service offering today that will run on the ServiceNow platform. At the same time the company announced a deal with ServiceNow to standardize on Zoom and Zoom Phone for its 11,000 employees in another case of SaaS cooperation. For starters, the new Hardware as a Service offering allows