Fundings and Exits

Hey Atlanta founders! Apply now to pitch at TechCrunch Live’s Atlanta event. Next month, TechCrunch Live is shining a spotlight on the Atlanta tech ecosystem once again, in a special (but virtual) episode of TechCrunch Live taking place on June 7 at 11:00 am PT / 2:00 pm ET. TechCrunch has always received a warm

According to the founder of Singapore-based telehealth platform Ora, 90% of its patients are less than 39 years old and have not been treated for their conditions offline. That puts the onus on Ora to make sure its patients, mostly millennials who live in cities, have a good experience. Ora wants to perform with verticals

Welcome back to Found, where we get the stories behind the startups. This week Becca and Dom are joined by Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO at Samooha, a startup creating the infrastructure needed for data collaboration. Kamakshi talked about what it is like being a repeat founder in a male-dominated technical field. She talked about juggling being a parent and

A team of ex-Googlers is today launching a new digital creativity platform, Rooms.xyz, into beta testing. The startup, backed by $10 million in seed funding led by a16z, offers a browser-based tool for designing 3D spaces — or “rooms” — using drag-and-drop, editable objects or code, allowing users to express themselves through creative play as

Jenfi, a “growth-capital-as-a-service” platform, can provide online businesses with revenue-based financing in a little as a day. The Singapore-based startup announced today it has raised $6.6 million in pre-Series B funding, led by Headline Asia. Participation came from returning investor Monk’s Hill Ventures, which led Jenfi’s Series A two years ago, ICU Ventures, Granite Oak, Korea

Robin Godenrath Contributor Robin Godenrath is founding partner and managing director at Picus Capital. His focus is early-stage technology investments, particularly in HR tech, robotics, and healthcare industries. Alex Rohregger Contributor The United States and China have long been ahead of the pack when it comes to robotics funding. However, data from 2022 is showing

Smart, a London-based startup that helps employers and their employees manage and monitor their pensions, said that it has closed $95 million in Series E funding. It plans to use the capital to expand its international footprint and make acquisitions, it said. Aquiline Capital Partners, a new backer, led the investment, with previous investors Barclays,

Welcome to The Interchange! If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you’re reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, we’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week.

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior reporter Natasha Mascarenhas.  Startups Weekly readers know I love a pivot story, and now I have one of my own: I’m leaving TechCrunch! This is my last Startups Weekly issue, a newsletter that I’ve written every week for over

Precursor’s Charles Hudson wants to be cautious but not too cautious. The venture capitalist was at an AI confab last month, but he has not yet made a new AI investment during the current hype cycle. He’s one of many investors who have seen an inflection point take over a sector before, bringing in boatloads

In case you haven’t heard, you — yes you, TechCrunch readers — have a voice and a vote in the programming at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, taking place September 19–21 in San Francisco. Audience Choice voting is open now through May 17 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. Final chance: Today’s the last day you can score early-bird

For an article we’re running on her last day at TechCrunch, Natasha Mascarenhas reached out to four investors to find out whether FOMO is encouraging them to climb aboard the AI bandwagon. “Some are hiring talent to jump headfirst, others are happy to back the ‘ChatGPT for X’ spin-outs, and many are sitting in awe,

Six years ago, Yiğit Ihlamur, a former senior program manager at Google, observed that AI was surpassing human capabilities in certain areas — at least by his estimation. Equipped with this perspective, he looked into various sectors with the goal of tackling a problem that he could work on for the rest of his life.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Happy Thursday, Crunchers! It’s an exciting time to be a tech reporter, with a ton of fun stories coming down the pipe. So let’s get to it! Hasta mañana, Christine and Haje

Millions of people use sign language, but methods of teaching this complex and subtle skill haven’t evolved as quickly those for written and spoken languages. SLAIT School aims to change that with an interactive tutor powered by computer vision, letting aspiring ASL speakers practice at their own rate like in any other language learning app.

In 2007, Alan O’Herlihy, who previously worked with large SAP installations as well as retail, set out to find a way to help retailers minimize “shrinkage,” or where a store has fewer items in stock than in its recorded inventory. He settled on computer vision as the solution to the problem, and founded a company,

TechCrunch Disrupt is a global event, and the Startup Battlefield 200 cohort reflects the rich geographic genius the world has to offer. Although we’ve never had a startup from Antarctica, that’s probably just a matter of time. Right now, however, we’re looking at the countries that make up APAC and Oceania. APAC and Oceania: Join

Shares of Amplitude, Airbnb and Twilio are down sharply this morning following their earnings results yesterday. It might seem odd to group these companies together given the different sectors they operate in: Amplitude does digital product analytics, Airbnb provides a marketplace for consumer lodging rentals, and Twilio sells communications services for software products via APIs.

Much of our computer time is spent in a web browser, where we check emails, create documents, transfer files, carry out online banking, shop or stream entertainment. This leaves us vulnerable to security threats like phishing, identity theft and session hijacking, but many cybersecurity tools were created when the main threats were file viruses, worms

All Raise’s interim CEO Paige Hendrix Buckner has now dropped the “interim,” according to the nonprofit’s blog post. Hendrix Buckner joined the organization, which supports women founders and funders, as chief of staff in early 2022 and stepped in as interim CEO in January following the resignation of former CEO Mandela S.H. Dixon. Prior to

Different demographics often have different banking needs. So it’s no surprise that we have seen a flurry of financial technology startups offering banking services catered to certain populations based on factors such as age and ethnicity. For example, numerous fintech startups cater to younger users – from Greenlight to Step to Current and now, Acorns.

Despite the investor caution narrative permeating the startup world throughout the economic downturn, certain startup-types have been a little more impervious to market conditions. The global supply chain was one of the major industrial casualties of the pandemic, so it perhaps goes without saying that companies tackling issues related to the global supply chain would

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello, and welcome to a new week. Haje is off today, so it’s just me and you going through the day’s biggest stories. Let’s hit it! — Christine The TechCrunch Top 3

Jonathan Martinez Contributor Jonathan Martinez is a former YouTuber, UC Berkeley alum and growth marketing nerd who’s helped scale Uber, Postmates, Chime and various startups. More posts by this contributor Your site needs more than just one user onboarding experience 3 ways to step up your short-form video and TikTok growth strategy When scaling a

Are you a seed-stage founder who’s building a unicorn? NFX Founding Partner James Currier would like to save you some time: Startups that grow into billion-dollar companies have three basic forms of defensibility. Network effects: Your product becomes more valuable as more people use it. Embedding: Integrate your services so deeply, customers “cannot rip them

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a nuanced take on this week’s startup news and trends by Senior Reporter and Equity co-host Natasha Mascarenhas. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. It’s been a big week for tech acronyms. I woke up on Monday to news that First Republic Bank has been closed down by regulators — and JP

For the past year, everyone’s been predicting that the muted exit environment and bone-dry funding market would bring a reckoning for many late-stage companies. We’ve been seeing layoffs and cost-cutting measures across the board as companies look to shore up their balance sheets. And now, an increasing number of companies are raising money at lower

Rapid (previously known as RapidAPI), a startup that built out an API marketplace valued at $1 billion last year, has laid off another 70 employees less than two weeks after letting go of 50% of its staff, TechCrunch has learned. An affected employee who wished to remain anonymous told TechCrunch that just 42 people remain

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Fri-Yay! If you’ve got some time on your hands today, get your Disrupt tickets — early-bird savings end in 7 days! Also, it seems a little daft to pick a fight against

Most early-stage startup founders, investors, technologists and all-around aficionados recognize and appreciate a great deal. We’re flagging this one, folks, because you have just one week left to take advantage of early-bird pricing on all passes to TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, taking place on September 19–21 in San Francisco. Disrupt is the startup world’s big tent,