Europe

Meet Thynk, a new company that wants to build the definite enterprise software solution for the hospitality industry. The startup just raised a $13 million Series A round. This round was led by Singular, with a New-York based fund managed by Itai Tsiddon and Belgian investment firm CNP (Groupe Frère) also participating. Fly Ventures, an existing shareholder

Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the end of last month — when it said it suspected the AI chatbot service was in breach of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and ordered the U.S.-based company to stop

As Gen Z turns into their early-to-mid 20s, a new generation of business owners is coming online. Many of these new entrepreneurs do the vast majority of work on their phones. This is especially true in emerging markets like Latin America, where SMEs comprise 99.5% of firms in the region. In Mexico, for instance, 97.4%

French startup Graneet is building an all-in-one software-as-a-service product focused on small construction companies. And it has grown quite a lot since I first covered the company as the company has tripled its revenue over the past six months. That’s why the startup raised a €8 million Series A round ($8.7 million at today’s exchange

When The Exchange wrote about Sweden’s startup scene at the end of last month, we said we’d revisit the Nordics this week. Well, a promise is a promise. But after spending hours watching YC’s Winter 2023 Demo Day pitches this week, we also couldn’t help but try to connect the dots: Are Scandinavian startups making

Elon Musk’s Twitter could be on the hook for a pipeline of multimillion-dollar penalties for failing to take down illegal hate speech in Germany. Fines could even stack up to billions if the federal government acts on the scores of cases of content moderation inaction that have already been reported to it and German courts

Yfood, one of the direct-to-consumer food tech startups that has emerged over the last decade around the concept of meal replacement drinks, is bulking up. Nestlé, the food and drink behemoth, has acquired 49.95% of the company’s shares, with the option to buy Yfood’s outstanding shares over the next few years. The financial terms of

In the Netherlands, central heating boilers will be banned by 2026 and its government has incentivized the installation of heat pumps. Meanwhile, the U.K. government estimates that heating buildings accounts for 25% of the U.K.’s greenhouse gas emissions. It passed the Energy Security Bill, and is aiming to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by

French startup Forest Admin is launching a cloud-based version of its product. The company helps you create flexible back-end admin panels for operations teams. Essentially, Forest Admin helps development teams spend less time on back office tools so that they can focus on the actual product. With the cloud version, companies just have to integrate

Germany’s antitrust authority has today confirmed Apple meets its test for special abuse controls — having so-called “paramount significance for competition across markets”. The designation stands for five years. “The company holds a dominant, or at least powerful, position on all vertically related levels based on its smartphones, tablets and smart watches as well as

In a major win over opaque algorithmic management in the so-called gig economy an appeals court in the Netherlands has found largely in favor of platform workers litigating against ride-hailing giants Uber and Ola — judging the platforms violated the drivers’ rights in a number of instances, including when algorithms were involved in terminating driver

TikTok has been issued with a fine of £12.7 million (~$15.7M) for breaching U./K. data protection law, including rules intended to protect children. The privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), announced today that it found the video sharing site “did not do enough” to check who was using their platform and failed to take

Facebook and Instagram users in the European Union objecting to Meta’s behavioral advertising can easily ask for their data not to being used for its consentless tracking-and-profiling thanks to a free tool provided by privacy rights not-for-profit, noyb. According to noyb, an online form Meta is planning to offer EU users wanting to exercise their

In an early FAFO test for Elon Musk, Germany could be set to fine Twitter for repeatedly failing to comply with a social media hate speech takedowns law, aka the NetzDG, which requires swift removal of illegal content like hate speech. The Federal Justice Office (BfJ) announced the move in a press release today —

Meet Zealy, a French startup that you may already know under the name Crew3. Zealy helps web3 (and web2) companies engage with their communities by giving them tasks that they can achieve in exchange for various rewards. The company just changed its name to Zealy, which indicates a larger focus beyond web3 companies. Last year,

Good news for Apple in the UK where a competition appeals court on Friday quashed a decision by the antitrust regulator to open an investigation of the iPhone makers’ mobile browser and cloud gaming service. The Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) ruled the regulator failed to stick to established statutory timeframes for such investigations — basically,

U.S.-based savings and investing startup Acorns has acquired London-based GoHenry, a startup focused on providing money management and financial education services to 6-18 year-olds in an all-equity deal, the two companies announced today. The combined valuation of the company, as well as further financial terms, were not disclosed. When Acorns last raised funding, $300 million

In a major blow to shared micromobility companies Lime, Dott and Tier, Paris has voted to ban rental e-scooters from their streets. Many in the industry fear the move in Paris, where free-floating scooters initially took off in 2018, will have ripple effects in other cities. Paris has been one of the most heavily regulated

A dozen years ago, Groupon shot to fame popularizing the online group buying format, confidently rejecting a $6 billion acquisition offer from Google and instead going public with a $17.8 billion market cap. The company today says it has 14 million active users, but almost consistently for the last decade, its financial position has been

No, it’s not an April Fools’ joke: OpenAI has started geoblocking access to its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in Italy. The move follows an order by the local data protection authority Friday that it must stop processing Italians’ data for the ChatGPT service. In a statement which appears online to users with an Italian IP

The lower chamber of the French parliament, the National Assembly, passed a cross-party bill that aims to introduce some new requirements for social media influencers. This is a preliminary vote as the bill will move to the Senate, but there’s a high probably that it will be adopted in a few weeks as all the

We’re an impatient bunch here at TechCrunch+, so while we await tidied quarterly venture reports from major startup databases, we’re also running our own queries to get early looks at the state of the fundraising world. As it’s the last day of the first quarter, we’re too antsy to wait any longer to see what’s

French startup Ledger has added more money to its Series C funding round. The company designs and manufactures so-called hardware wallets to secure crypto assets. In 2021, the company raised €356 million ($385 million at today’s exchange rate). And the company is adding another €100 million ($108 million) in new funding. This is an extension

Stripe competitor Checkout.com announced last month that Céline Dufétel was appointed as its new president. She had previously served as the London-based fintech startup’s CFO and COO for about 18 months before her promotion. In her expanded role, which still includes serving as the company’s COO, Dufétel oversees all operational and go-to-market teams, including finance

After major privacy enforcement finally hit Meta’s tracking ads business in Europe earlier this year, the tech giant has confirmed it will be changing the legal basis it claims for microtargeting users in the region. It’s still not going to ask people for their up-front consent to its data-fuelled behavioral advertising. But it will have to

Effy is at a crossroads. The energy renovation company based in France is doing well, but it is addressing a market that is much bigger than anticipated. That’s why it is making a bet. The company just closed a €20 million funding round (roughly $22 million at today’s exchange rate) from Felix Capital. This is

The UK isn’t going to be setting hard rules for AI any time soon. Today, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a white paper setting out the government’s preference for a light-touch approach to regulating artificial intelligence. It’s kicking off a public consultation process — seeking feedback on its plans up to

AI is riding high on a curve of hype, which means some of the practical questions that might grow louder over time — the many costs (financial and social), the business models — may not be the most front of mind right now. Today a startup called Fetch.ai is announcing $40 million in funding in

Payments remains one of the most fragmented of online services, a situation that is only compounded when your business trades internationally. A UK startup called Paytrix says it has raised $18.3 million in funding to build out a solution to fix this: a single platform — and single contract — that lets its customers manage

Microsoft is the latest tech giant to be caught in the cross-hairs of Germany’s antitrust authority. The Federal Cartel Office (FCO), aka the Bundeskartellamt, has announced it’s opened a proceeding to determine whether special abuse measures can be applied to the company’s business in Germany — citing Microsoft’s extensive digital ecosystem which it noted cuts across