Startups

Max Schireson Contributor Max Schireson, the former CEO of MongoDB, is an executive-in-residence at Battery Ventures, where he helps advise the firm’s cloud and data portfolio companies on a variety of strategic and tactical business issues. More posts by this contributor Tracking the explosive growth of open-source software The Money In Open-Source Software “Are you

Joby Aviation, a California-based company developing electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) for commercial passenger service, announced the acquisition of Avionyx, an aerospace software engineering firm, on the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility stage on Wednesday. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal, but Joby did say that it was an acqui-hire, which

For years, scientists and engineers predicted that lithium-ion batteries would get a boost if they could just add more silicon. In the lab, the prediction held, but only for a short period of time. The material had a downside — it became brittle after repeated charging. Sila seems to think it’s solved the problem. The

Ardy Esmaeili Contributor More posts by this contributor What US startup founders need to know about the R&D tax credit When it comes to remote employment, employees and employers both face a plethora of benefits and pitfalls. While the cultural pros and cons have been covered, considerations from a setup and maintenance standpoint largely haven’t

It’s Tuesday, May 17, 2022, and we are currently in the midst of an existential crisis; aren’t we all, when we are being very honest with ourselves, a little bit spambot at heart?  Tomorrow, TC Sessions: Mobility kicks off. Last chance saloon to buy tickets for our in-person event Wednesday and Thursday, or the virtual

Instabug, a startup that aims to help mobile developers monitor, identify and fix bugs within apps, has raised $46 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners. The raise comes just over two years after the startup raised $5 million in a seed round led by Accel, which doubled down on its investment

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. It’s Monday the 16th of May, and I’m back once again, like a renegade master. I’m fantastically over-caffeinated and at a standing desk today, so for the occasion, it’s a dancing desk.

Russ Heddleston Contributor Russ Heddleston is Head of Commercial, DocSend at Dropbox. More posts by this contributor Essential steps to thriving and surviving while fundraising Pre-seed round funding is under scrutiny: Is VC pandemic posturing here to stay? Every journey to entrepreneurship is unique. I find the world of startups fascinating because the desire to

African merchants encounter many challenges when it comes to international shipping ranging from logistics and customs to hidden and excessive charges. Digital freight forwarders on the continent have grown to tackle these supply chain issues. In some way, they are taking after the likeness of an $8 billion company and a market leader in the

Uber Eats is launching two autonomous delivery pilots in Los Angeles on Monday with Serve Robotics, a robotic sidewalk delivery startup, and Motional, an autonomous vehicle technology company. The new programs are a part of a range of new products Uber is launching across its ride-hail and delivery platforms, which are being announced on Monday

Welcome back to The Interchange, the weekly TechCrunch series that looks at the latest — and what’s ahead — in the global fintech industry. It’s an incredible time to be a financial technology journalist. Besides the fact that over 20% of all venture dollars last year went into fintech startups, I am particularly excited about

Jamie Hale Contributor Jamie Hale is the CEO and co-founder of Ladder. He has also worked as a partner at Aldenwood Capital and at Jasper Ridge/Oak Hill Investment Management. Like many legacy markets poised for change, the insurance industry has already seen its first wave of innovation. Similar in many ways to the initial novelty

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. This may be your first time reading this newsletter — if so, welcome! If not, you already know that Alex created it. And if

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. Hey Jane, a digital health startup that scales access to abortion pills, makes sense. It’s a direct-to-consumer pharmacy that aims to meet consumers where they are, which is especially important as the

Attention mobility startups, professionals, investors and enthusiasts! You have just 48 hours remaining to save $200 on TC Sessions: Mobility 2022, our first in-person mobility event since 2019. The event takes place on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California with online analyst commentary on May 20. It’s the must-see mobility event of the year, and

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. It’s Friday the 13th, and I hope nothing nefarious happened to you today. At least the weekend is here! At the very least, you can catch up on the latest Terraform Labs

The ongoing market correction and the cratering of several leading crypto tokens are erasing wealth so quickly, you can almost hear it. Companies in other industries are on a hiring spree, but startups like Robinhood, Better.com and Peloton are laying off thousands as FAANG companies slow down their recruiting and look for places to save

As wind energy gains ground in the U.S., SkySpecs is using drones and AI to detect future equipment failures before they grind those giant turbine blades to a halt. The company, which works with wind farms to monitor the health of turbine blades from above, has locked down a fresh $80 million Series D round

Rachel B. Goodman Contributor Nathaniel M. Lacktman Contributor Nathaniel M. Lacktman is a partner at Foley & Lardner and chair of the law firm’s national Telemedicine & Digital Health Industry Team. More posts by this contributor Telemedicine startups can survive and thrive under renewed regulation It may seem counterintuitive, but one of the reasons some

Michael Broughton was the first in his family to go to college. But he almost didn’t, when he had trouble securing the necessary financing to pay his tuition. The experience stuck with him, and when he met Ayush Jain at the University of Southern California, the pair bonded over their belief that credit access should

A few months after raising $1 billion, payments startup Checkout.com has announced that it plans to acquire French startup Ubble, which operates a remote identity verification service. The deal should close later this year and Checkout.com isn’t disclosing the terms of the deal. With this acquisition, Checkout.com is adding a new product to its suite

Zeals, a Tokyo-based startup that lets businesses communicate with their customers via its chat application, said Thursday it has secured $27.2 million (3.5 billion yen) in equity and $11.6 million (1.5 billion yen) in debt. The latest round brings its total funding raised to $41.4 million, the company said without disclosing its valuation. JIC Venture

Indoor navigation was something we heard about a lot after the launch of the iPhone and during that first wave of location-based apps. But the technology has quietly evolved over the last few years and may now be more important than ever. Oriient, which powers the platform that Instacart shoppers use to gather their orders

Mobile penetration in Africa is growing impressively at about 46% as more people come online for the very first time. In turn, this has increased the market opportunity for startups, especially fintechs and e-commerce, which try to provide various solutions to meet the financial needs of the populace. But to do that, these businesses must

Canoo’s first-quarter earnings shows a company burning through cash, no near-term revenue and a warning that it may not have enough money to stay in business. Shares of Canoo, which were down 5% Tuesday, fell another 17.5% in after-market trading following the release of its earnings. It has since recovered and is now down more

Adam Oliner, co-founder and CEO of Graft used to run machine learning at Slack, where he helped build the company’s internal artificial intelligence infrastructure. Slack lacked the resources of a company like Meta or Google, but it still had tons of data to sift through and it was his job to build something on a

Arianee has raised a $21 million Series A round (€20 million) in a round led by Tiger Global. The company issues digital ownership and authenticity certificates on behalf of partner brands. For instance, a luxury and fashion brand can replace the authenticity card that you get with your new watch or handbag with a digital

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PT, subscribe here. Monday, May 9, is upon us, and today is a day of browser-cache-powered drama in the form of a Wordle word The New York Times decided was too controversial, but still existed

Jess Lee, a partner at Sequoia Capital, has sat on both sides of the table. The Hong Kong native, Stanford graduate, and former Googler ran and sold the venture-backed outfit Polyvore before being recruited into the world of venture capital, where she’s spent the last six years. Because she herself pitched many investors (and, she

Egyptian fintech Paymob, which enables merchants to accept digital payments online and in-store, announced today it has raised $50 million in Series B funding. PayPal Ventures, the global corporate venture arm of PayPal, New-York-based venture capital Kora Capital, and London-based Clay Point led the round. New participating investors include Helios Digital Ventures, British International Investment