Startups

Alvaro Gutierrez Contributor Alvaro Gutierrez is co-founder and CEO of Barkibu, which uses data to make pet care better, more affordable, and personalized. Alvaro began his career providing acquisition financing for M&A at JP Morgan before co-founding Spanish pet retail giant Kiwoko, which in turn acquired 12 other companies and was eventually sold 5x. When

Namibian business-to-business e-commerce startup JABU confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised a $3.2 million financing round. The seed round, which was closed last year, welcomed investors such as Afore Capital, Y Combinator, FJ Labs, Quiet Capital, Kli Capital, Pareto Capital and unnamed angels. As a last-mile distribution e-commerce company, JABU joins a list of

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: Will the H-1B lottery

There’s always fun tech for pet owners at CES, and 2022 is no different. But a handful of gadgets this year are taking care to treat dogs and cats not just as beloved furry friends but as intelligent animals with their own processes, emotions, and even a desire to express themselves. At the most basic

James Avery Contributor James Avery is the founder and CEO of Kevel and has over a decade of experience in the ad tech industry. He is also an expert on software engineering and API technology. In January 2020, Google announced plans to eliminate third-party cookies, heralding a massive shake-up for digital advertising and the internet

No one wants to be the maintenance worker who has to hike through half a mile of damp hallways just to check the pressure gauge on a valve somewhere. LiLz makes it possible to keep an eye on such inconvenient physical interfaces remotely with a clever and practical application of machine learning. The Japanese (specifically

Seoul Robotics, an AI-based perception software company, wants to turn first- and last-mile logistics hubs for automotive and trucking into mind hives, wherein one sensor tower controls the movements of a fleet, like a conductor of an orchestra, guiding hundreds of vehicles into place. After two years of piloting its tech with BMW, the startup

Liquid Death, a water brand that began life in 2018 with a funny video to first test the concept, has grown deadly serious about its growth prospects. The L.A.-based outfit, which sells canned mountain water from the Alps that will “murder your thirst,” has just landed $75 million in Series C funding led by the

Chris Jacob Contributor Chris Jacob serves as global vice president, Threat Intelligence Engineers at ThreatQuotient and previously held leadership roles at SourceFire, Fidelis Cybersecurity and Webroot. Threat intelligence has been a part of cyber defense processes in the private sector for nearly a decade now. Many threat intelligence teams were initially composed of classically trained

Abstra, which has developed a no-code tool for designers and programmers to build professional apps, has raised $2.3 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Latin America Fund. Bruno Vieira Costa founded Rio de Janeiro-based Abstra in March of 2020. Costa graduated from college in 2018 and already has one startup sale under his

New Zealand, a country of 5 million people in the South Pacific, has witnessed a shifting tech startup landscape over the last couple of years. While some major global companies like Xero, Rocket Lab, LanzaTech and Seequent have shined a spotlight on New Zealand’s startup scene, the country historically hasn’t had access to much venture

The future of lidar is uncertain unless, as Voyant hopes to do, its price and size are reduced to fractions of their current values. As long as lidars are sandwich-sized devices that cost thousands, they won’t be ubiquitous — so Voyant has raised some cash to bring its smaller, cheaper, more easily manufactured, yet still

GlobalBees, which raised one of the largest Series A financing rounds in India earlier this year, has entered the unicorn club as the New Delhi-headquartered firm scales its Thrasio-like house of brands. Premji Invest, the investment firm controlled by Indian tycoon Azim Premji, led the nine-month-old startup’s Series B financing round, the young firm disclosed

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: What’s allowed between a

Autonomous trucking startup TuSimple has completed its first autonomous truck run on open public roads without a human in the vehicle, according to the company. TuSimple’s Autonomous Driving System (ADS) navigated 100% of the 80-mile run along surface streets and highways between a railyard in Tuscon, Arizona and a distribution center in Phoenix, which took

As someone who covers Southeast Asia startups and funding stories, the best word I can think of to describe 2021 is “whoa!” This was the year that global investors not only started to pay close attention to the region’s tech ecosystems, but also began putting real money into them. Backed by international LPs, Southeast Asia-focused

Industry veteran Jitendra Gupta’s consumer-focused neobank Jupiter has raised about $86 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore-based startup gears up to offer its customers lending and wealth management services. Tiger Global, QED and Sequoia Capital India co-led the two-year-old startup’s Series C round, Gupta told TechCrunch in an interview. The new round values

Skio, a startup that aims to take the pain out of selling subscriptions for brands on Shopify, has raised $3.7 million in a seed funding round. Kennan Davison, an engineer who previously worked at Hulu and Pinterest, founded the startup in April. He describes Skio as a fintech and an infrastructure company as a pivot

As we get closer to the end of the year, we’re running more stories that look back at topics we examined in depth over the last several months, and several that offer well-informed predictions for the year ahead. This week, Bill Taranto, president of Merck’s Global Health Innovation Fund, wrote a TechCrunch+ article that explored

Dwana Franklin-Davis Contributor Dwana Franklin-Davis is a lifelong technologist currently serving as the CEO of Reboot Representation, a coalition of tech companies pooling their philanthropic resources to double the number of Black, Latina and Native American women receiving computing degrees by 2025. Ruthe Farmer Contributor Ruthe Farmer is the founder and CEO of the Last

After seven years in the production of electronic gadgets, under his company Imose Technologies, Osayi Izedonmwen took leave to explore an idea that he had toyed with for some time — an edtech startup, Teesas, which now offers video classes and other digital educational material for learners in Nigeria. Teesas, which was launched less than

New Zealand, a country of just under 5 million people, has historically flown under the radar of venture capitalism. A geographically isolated country with a “no worries!” culture and an economy based on raw materials, Aotearoa hasn’t stood out to investors in the Asia-Pacific region, especially not when they could set their sights on larger

Charlie Graham-Brown Contributor Charlie Graham-Brown is the partner and Chief Investments Officer of Seedstars, a Swiss-based group with a mission to impact people’s lives in emerging markets through technology and entrepreneurship. He leads the group’s venture capital fund, Seedstars International, which invests in seed-stage startups across emerging markets. Daniela Moreno Contributor Daniela Moreno is the

Jamie Viggiano Contributor Jamie Viggiano is the chief marketing officer at Fuel Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in consumer, SaaS and infrastructure businesses. More posts by this contributor Carve out a place for your brand with a positioning statement Create target customer personas to develop successful growth strategies It’s not enough to identify

Berlin-based language learning service Babbel was supposed to IPO on the Frankfurt stock exchange in late September. But only a few days before the initial listing the company pulled the plug with an eye on the developing Evergrande debt crisis that made the global stock markets very nervous. It has yet to announce a new

Sophie Alcorn Contributor Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: How to maneuver the

Jamie Viggiano Contributor Jamie Viggiano is the chief marketing officer at Fuel Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in consumer, SaaS and infrastructure businesses. More posts by this contributor Create target customer personas to develop successful growth strategies Start building your brand book with a visioning workshop It’s human nature to reflexively categorize and

Ampla Technologies, a startup which provides financing to small-to-medium sized consumer-facing businesses, announced today it has raised $40 million in a Series A round of funding co-led by VMG Partners and Forerunner Ventures. Existing backer Core Innovation Capital also put money in the round. In conjunction with the equity investment, Ampla has also secured $250

With traction metrics that would make any startup CFO foam at the mouth, TikTok influencer marketing platform Ubiquitous is making a big splash in the chaotic market of influencer marketing. It’s one of the fastest-growing segments of advertising and marketing, but one that brings some unique challenges; working with influencers directly is labor-intensive, but results

Jamie Viggiano Contributor Jamie Viggiano is the chief marketing officer at Fuel Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm investing in consumer, SaaS and infrastructure businesses. More posts by this contributor 5 questions startups should consider before making their first marketing hire To create successful growth strategies, relevant marketing campaigns and products that deliver real value