Enterprise

Jaka Robotics, a Chinese startup that makes collaborative robots, has just pulled in a hefty Series D funding round of over $150 million from a lineup of heavyweight investors to help it expand globally. The round is led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek, TrueLight Capital, Softbank Vision Fund II, and Prosperity7 Ventures, a growth

Traditionally, U.S. private market investors who adopted environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) frameworks — the very few thus far — did so to evaluate a potential company or investment on how it approached areas like sustainability or diversity. But now, in the post-Roe era, as controversial conservative legislation sweeps the nation, some VC investors

Netflix’s app on iOS now has a signup button that will redirect you to its site so you can subscribe to one of its plans with the company paying no App Store fees. This change comes after Apple said in March that “reader” apps — ones that provide digital content like books and videos —

Omni wants to be the human resources platform to rule them all—or at least all HR-related tasks. The software enables HR teams to digitize employee records, automate administrative tasks like employee onboarding and time-off management, and integrate employee data from different systems. Based in Singapore, it is currently active there and in Indonesia, and plans

As venture funding continues to slow, founders are scrambling to extend their runways, regardless of how much cash they already have in the bank. But the startups that need the cash infusions the most are running into the most trouble. Last week, I wrote about the current state of bridge financing after multiple pre-seed investors started getting

Welcome to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s inspired by the daily TechCrunch+ column where it gets its name. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. When I visited London recently, I found it hard to spend even one pound in cash: Cashless transactions were more than encouraged — they

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at a crossover episode for meme investing. This week, we’re talking about Musk dumping tokens while holding onto others. You can get this newsletter in your inbox every week by subscribing on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. Dumping favor A weekly dispatch from the desk of TechCrunch crypto

After it was rumored to be in play earlier this month, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that One Medical has found a new home. After a torrid public offering, the value of the American consumer healthcare and technology company had fallen below its IPO price, and it was an obvious target for the

Disney+ strays farther from its family-friendly image with the addition of “Deadpool,” “Deadpool 2” and “Logan” arriving to the streaming service today, July 22. Alongside Disney’s announcement yesterday, the company invited users to revisit their parental control settings due to the sexual and violent nature of these films. While the films have previously been available

Popular video calling and messaging app JusTalk claims to be both secure and encrypted. But a security lapse has proven the app to be neither secure nor encrypted after a huge cache of users’ unencrypted private messages was found online. The messaging app is widely used across Asia and has a booming international audience with

Luisa Rubio Arribas Contributor Luisa Rubio Arribas is the head of Wayra X, Telefónica’s digital innovation hub offering funding, connections and expertise to mass-market-ready B2C startups. As venture capital flows continue to fluctuate, founders have to double down on the terms they agree on. While it can be tempting to overlook certain terms for the

Facebook-parent Meta, which counts India as its largest market by users, is gearing up to make its third startup investment in the South Asian market. The American social media group, which invested in social commerce Meesho in 2019 and online learning platform Unacademy in 2020, is in talks to back the early-stage startup Better Opinions,

“Buy now, pay later” (BNPL) startups have gained traction by targeting consumers, but BNPLs for businesses are also starting to take off. One example is Fairbanc, which is based in Singapore but focused on Indonesia. It allows small businesses to take out short-term credit to purchase fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) inventory. Fairbanc announced today it

For a long-time, distributed work for VCs looked like a split-HQ between two cities in different parts of the world. Now, it may look like “the cloud.” Andreessen Horowitz, a venture firm turned registered investment advisor, says that its “headquarters will be in the cloud” going forward, according to a blog post written by founding

Karti Chidambaram, an Indian lawmaker, has called for an investigation into the finances of Byju’s, the country’s most valuable startup, for not submitting its statements for the financial year that ended in March 2021, which he alleged violates a local law, and other “loopholes.” Chidambaram, a Member of Parliament for Sivaganga in the Lok Sabha,

Baidu, the Chinese search engine giant that has plowed money into AI and autonomous vehicle technology, unveiled Wednesday a new all-electric robotaxi that it plans to deploy at scale across China. Baidu will add the Apollo RT6 EV – a cross between an SUV and a minivan that comes with a detachable steering wheel –

Fresh off a $17.4 million fundraise in May, GetHenry announced it is changing its name to Cycle, reflecting both the fact that the company makes bicycles and tricycles, and highlighting the company’s green sustainability ambitions. “The new name and strong brand identity fit with our mission to decarbonise the commercial transportation sector. We are focusing

Xiaomi said on Wednesday it has shipped over 200 million smartphones in India to date, demonstrating just how large of a presence it has marked in the world’s second largest phone market in just eight years. The Chinese giant, which began selling smartphones in India in 2014, revealed the figure at a media conference on

In today’s earnings call, Netflix confirmed the reports that have been circulating since last week that it is renegotiating deals to allow the streamer to put content on its cheaper advertising-supported plan, the arrival of which on the platform has been moved to early 2023. “The vast majority of what people watch on Netflix we

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced today that the company is introducing a new searchable and dynamic map experience on Instagram. The updated map experience will allow users to explore popular tagged locations around them and filter location results by specific categories including restaurants, cafes and beauty salons. Prior to this update, the map experience on

Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t be introducing a previously announced new policy that would effectively ban developers from selling open source software on the Windows app store. Section 10.8.7 of its Microsoft Store Policies document, which was updated in mid-June and had been due to come into effect on Saturday (July 16), had said

Gbike, a South Korea-based micromobility Gcooter operator, is acquiring Hyundai Motor’s shared micromobility sharing platform ZET as it wants to increase its market share and create technological synergies via ZET’s fleet management system.  Gbike CEO Walter Yoon told TechCrunch that the deal, which is its first acquisition, will be completed in early August. The financial terms of

On August 23, the price of ESPN+ will jump from $6.99 to $9.99 per month, and the annual plan is going up from $69.99 to $99.99. The steep 43% increase is the second subscription price hike in a little more than a year. The company confirmed the news to TechCrunch and said that subscribers will

India’s central bank wants to ban cryptocurrencies, the government told the parliament on Monday, raising more uncertainty about the future of the nascent virtual digital asset in the world’s second largest internet market. Nirmala Sitharaman, the minister of finance in India, said Monday that the Reserve Bank of India has expressed concerns about the “destabilising

Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at web3 without web2’s winners. This week, we’re looking at a crossover episode for meme investing. You can get this in your inbox every Thursday afternoon by subscribing on TechCrunch’s newsletter page. power to the pumpers A weekly dispatch from the desk of TechCrunch crypto editor

You’d be hard pressed to find a game that doesn’t include some form of microtransactions these days, especially in mobile games. It just makes sense for gaming companies — an immensely lucrative source of revenue, the microtransactions market was worth at $60 billion in 2021, and projected to hit $106 billion by 2026. Typically offered

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week’s startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. At this point, it’s clear that no one agrees on anything. Half my sources say that early-stage venture completely is uncorrelated to the public stock market, while the other half say that

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap the most read TechCrunch stories from the last seven days. Want it in your inbox? Sign up here! The most read story on the site this week was, once again, unfortunately, about layoffs — this time at Microsoft. While the company plans

Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column, Perceptron, aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence — and

If you’re feeling confused about the state of startup investing, join the club. Public company shares have been relentlessly hammered in recent months amid rising fears of a recession, yet startup funding seems as brisk as ever and, more surprising, to us, VCs are still routinely announcing enormous new funds as they have for many