Rocio Wu Contributor Rocio Wu is a second-year MBA candidate at Harvard Business School and a venture capitalist. For the past month, VC investment pace seems to have slacked off in the U.S., but deal activities in China are picking up following a slowdown prompted by the COVID-19 outbreak. According to PitchBook, “Chinese firms recorded
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More departures are taking place at Bó, the digital bank developed by RBS-owned Natwest. Following the departure of Bó CEO Mark Bailie in January, the latest to seek a new opportunity is chief product officer Ollie Purdue, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, Purdue is joining Antler, the company builder and early-stage venture capital firm
Sonos has launched its first in-house music streaming offering: Sonos Radio, a digital streaming radio service that includes both existing radio stations from TuneIn and iHeartRadio, as well as its own original programming through three new products including two ad-free offerings and one ad-supported option. The original streaming options from Sonos include Sonos Sound System;
The pandemic may feel all-encompassing at the moment, but Confluent announced a $250 million Series E today, showing that major investment continues in spite of the dire economic situation at the moment. Today’s round follows last year’s $125 million Series D. At that point the company was valued a mere $2.5 billion. Investors obviously see
Looking for good news despite all the market gloom Alex Wilhelm 7 hours Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. This morning we’re hunting up “green shoots” for software companies. Green shoots is financial slang for positive signals that could point to
Facebook has already come under fire for hosting groups organizing anti-quarantine protests in response to government lockdowns amid the coronavirus outbreak, and those promoting fake coronavirus cures and misinformation. Now it’s trying to figure out what to do with the growing number of COVID-19 community groups on its platform worldwide. In hopes of better educating
Seattle-based Pulumi has quickly made a name for itself as a modern platform that lets developers specify their infrastructure through writing code in their preferred programming language — and not YAML. With the launch of Pulumi 2.0, those languages now include JavaScript, TypeScript, Go and .NET, in addition to its original support for Python. It’s
In the time many of us live in now, we all know our online media consumption is — to state the obvious — going through the roof. Subsequently, the amount of data pertaining to online marketing is, equally, reaching stratospheric heights and in recent years tech companies like Datorama and Funnel.io, SuperMetrics and Adverity have appeared to
Samsung Electronics announced today that its blood pressure monitoring app for Galaxy Watches has been approved by South Korean regulators. Called the Samsung Health Monitor, the app will be available for the Galaxy Watch Active2 during the third quarter, at least in South Korea, and added to upcoming Galaxy Watch devices. TechCrunch has contacted Samsung
Disruptor Beam, the mobile gaming startup behind Star Trek Timelines, has a new name and a new business. It’s now calling itself Beamable, and it’s selling a set of tools to help game developers add commerce and social functionality to their titles. The company’s direction became clear earlier this year when it sold Timelines to
The best founders seek out great mentors and guidance from folks who know best, but during the coronavirus pandemic, asking for help when it’s needed is critical for all entrepreneurs. Ureeka, a startup founded by Melissa Bradley, David Jakubowski and Rob Gatto, is looking to provide that mentorship and guidance through their platform, which just
Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a brief jumpstart for your week. Regular Equity episodes still drop each and every Friday morning, so if you’ve listened to the show over the years, don’t worry — we’re only adding. In fact, last week’s show (with Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas) was a blast,
Facebook Avatars, which lets users customize a virtual lookalike of themselves for use as stickers in chat and comments, is now available across Europe, the company said today. The social giant’s Avatars, a clone of Snapchat’s popular Bitmoji, was first unveiled last year. The feature, which Facebook sees as an expression tool, is aimed at
For better or worse, digital identity management services — the process of identifying and authenticating users on networks to access services — has become a ubiquitous part of interacting on the internet, all the more so in the recent weeks as we have been asked to carry out increasingly more of our lives online. Used
As people move into months of sheltering in place, many are doubling down on cooking at home. But not everyone is always happy about it. Today, a company that makes products that can help them bypass at least some of that effort but still eat nutritiously is announcing a fundraising to continue growing its business.
VanMoof is releasing a new generation of its electric bike. In many ways, the VanMoof S3 and its smaller version the VanMoof X3 are refined versions of the VanMoof Electrified S2 and X2. It features an updated motor, hydraulic brakes and a familiar design. If you’re not familiar with VanMoof bikes, the company has been
After being forced to quickly shift plans and stage a remote demo day last month following the outbreak of COVID-19 stateside, Y Combinator announced today that they will officially be fully moving their next batch to a remote format. In a post today on Y Combinator’s site, YC CEO Michael Seibel announced the move. “We
Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Late last week a Chinese company called Kingsoft Cloud filed to go public in the United States. The cloud infrastructure business intends to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol “KC,” with J.P. Morgan, UBS
Levi’s is leveraging its advertising partnership with TikTok to connect online shoppers with the denim brand amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced retailers to close their doors — including most of Levi’s own stores. The company announced today its success as one of the first retailers to use TikTok’s “Shop Now” buttons that allow consumers
Vestiaire Collective just closed another big round of funding in the middle of an economic crisis — the round closed in early April. The startup raised $64.2 million (€59 million) and the company has raised more than $240 million over the year, according to Crunchbase. Vestiaire Collective operates a marketplace of pre-owned fashion items. Users
A lot of startups have answered the call for more personal protective equipment (PPE) and other essentials to support healthcare workers in their efforts to curb the spread and impact of COVID-19. One of those is direct-to-consumer 3D-printed eyewear brand Fitz, which is employing its custom-fit glasses technology to build protective, prescription specs to frontline
Building a startup is hard enough. But COVID-19, our generation’s worst plot twist, gives new meaning to uncertainty and stress. No one had “pandemic” on their early-stage startup’s radar, which begs the question: How do you move your business forward in unprecedented times? It’s a huge challenge, and we’ve worked hard to find a way
Movie ticketing company Fandango has agreed to buy Walmart’s on-demand video streaming service, Vudu, for an undisclosed sum. The video service today reaches more than 100 million living room devices across the U.S., including smart TVs, Blu-ray players, game consoles and other over-the-top streaming devices, as well as Windows 10 and Mac computers, and iOS
Facebook confirmed this week that it will be pulling down a number of posts promoting stay-at-home protests. CNN was the first to report the news, which finds the social media giant pulling down events in a variety of different states, including California, Nebraska and New Jersey. The news follows a spike in events across the
It would be easy to assume that Verizon’s purchase last week of video-conferencing tool BlueJeans was an opportunistic move to capitalize on the sudden shift to remote work, but the ball began rolling last June and has implications far beyond current work-from-home requirements. The video-chat darling of the moment is Zoom, but BlueJeans is considered
Research institutes Inria and Fraunhofer have shared details on their contact-tracing protocol that could be used by the French and German governments in the coming weeks. It is named ROBERT for ROBust and privacy-presERving proximity Tracing protocol. Inria and Fraunhofer are members of the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) project. On Friday, PEPP-PT said that
Facebook has expanded Fundraisers to India and is working with several additional state governments to provide authoritative information about the coronavirus to more people in the country, it said today. Fundraisers, which was available in the U.S. and Europe prior to Monday’s announcement, allows people to collectively contribute towards the community. The social juggernaut, which
Meet Leverice: A team messenger and collaboration platform that’s aiming to compete with b2b giants like Slack by tackling an issue that continues to plague real-time messaging — namely, ‘always-on’ information overload. This means these tools can feel like they’re eating into productivity as much as aiding it. Or else leave users stressed and overwhelmed
French startup Alan has raised a $54.4 million (€50 million) Series C funding round. Temasek is leading the round with existing investors (such as Index Ventures) also participating. Overall, Alan has raised $136 million (€125 million) over the past four years. Alan has built a health insurance product for the French market. The company first
After mounting pressure from the U.K. tech startup ecosystem, and much debate, the British government today unveiled plans for a new “Future Fund” designed to ensure high-growth companies — namely, startups — across the U.K. receive enough investment to remain viable during the coronavirus crisis. Initially, the U.K. government is pledging a total of £250