Startups

Alternative assets, from bottles of fine wine to non-fungible tokens to even fractional shares of physical art, are becoming a mainstream form of modern investing. As consumers diversify their portfolios away from traditional public equities, New York-based startup Aqua is betting that the future may look a little more private. Co-founded by Rohan Marwaha and

German medical device maker Ottobock today announced that it has entered into a deal to acquire Bay Area-based exoskeleton startup SuitX. The deal is one that makes sense for Ottobock, which builds its own exoskeletons, along with prosthetics and orthotics. SuitX is a spinout from UC Berkeley’s Robotics and Human Engineering Lab, founded by mechanical

Everyone’s set of teeth are different enough that orthodontics has traditionally been part artistry, part medical witchcraft. In the late 1990s, Invisalign changed the industry with customizable aligners, but it turns out that aligners only serve 30% of orthodontics patients. For the rest, there hasn’t been much in the way of innovation — until LightForce

Hello and welcome back to Max Q. It feels odd to be living in a time when companies are announcing their plans to develop commercial space stations and yet, here we are! Read on for news from Sierra Space, Blue Origin, Boeing and others on their plans for a station, called Orbital Reef. Plus this

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You

Years ago, Americans spent most of their disposable income on food but consistent investment in retail infrastructure has changed that. Now, they only spend 6% of their household income on food and beverages. Africa still battles with this and it is not hard to see why. The continent’s retail markets are highly fragmented and mostly made up

When online shopping, you’ve probably come across photos that spin around so you can see a product from all angles. This is typically done by taking a number of photos of a product from all angles, and then playing them like an animation. Luma — founded by engineers who left Apple’s AR and computer vision

African e-commerce fulfilment startups backed by Y Combinator seem to be piquing investors’ interest this year for their niche e-commerce play. Summer batch graduate ShipBlu is the latest on that list and confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding. The company, founded by Ali Nasser, Ahmed ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny in

Jim Mann Contributor Jim Mann is director of acquisitions at Thrasio, a consumer goods company reimagining omnichannel commerce and consumer products. The toughest questions most entrepreneurs face will involve international expansion. Whether to, when to, where to and how to expand all involve a wealth of complex considerations. The stakes are high: Success could mean

David Karandish Contributor David Karandish is founder and CEO of Capacity, an enterprise artificial intelligence SaaS company headquartered in St. Louis, MO. The global help desk automation industry is expected to grow to $11 billion by 2023 as support automation empowers companies to serve their customers more effectively. By automating repetitive tasks and FAQs, companies

There’s a new venture studio in the world that looks rather different from earlier venture studios from a structural standpoint. Unlike renowned outfits like Atomic or Science or Expa that create companies that then sell equity to VCs who expect that equity to rise in value, this new studio, SuperLayer, plans to spin up consumer

Is Southeast Asia about to hit an inflection point for tech startups? Four hundred million people in the region already use the internet, but by year’s end, one estimate suggests that 80% of the population over the age of 15 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will be digital consumers. “As per

Matt Bivons Contributor Matt Bivons is CEO and co-founder of Canopy Servicing, an API-first platform for personalized and transparent lending. He previously served as VP and GM at GreenSky, and head of growth at Earnest and VaycayHero. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is an old form of payment that is new again in a big

Amit Anand Contributor Amit Anand is a founding partner of Jungle Ventures and an early pioneer and leader in the development of Southeast Asia’s venture capital industry. More posts by this contributor Investors are doubling down on Southeast Asia’s digital economy With Grab’s announcement of its imminent Nasdaq listing and GoJek merging with Tokopedia to

Terran Orbital, a leading manufacturer of small satellites, is going public in a merger with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Tailwind Two Acquisition Corp. The deal has a post-transaction enterprise value of $1.58 billion and will furnish the company with around $470 million. Of those funds, $345 million will come from Tailwind Two’s contribution, plus

International travel is slowly opening up again, but that also means business and leisure travelers alike will once again have to think about visa restrictions as they take to the air. Nobody has ever enjoyed the process of applying for a visa, but Atlys promises to take the hassle out of the process. The company

Biotech startup Immunai has been on a roll when it comes to funding. The company that set out to create an atlas of the human immune system in 2018 had raised about $80 million by February 2021. On Wednesday, the company announced another significantly larger round: a $215 million series B.  Immunai has been building

Chris Legg Contributor Chris Legg serves as a senior managing director at Progress Partners and as a general partner at Progress Ventures, the firm’s venture capital arm. Mergers and acquisitions activity is at an all-time high — global mergers and acquisitions have already broken 2020 levels with about $4.4 trillion worth of deals as of

Gringo, a Brazilian startup that has built an app aimed at supporting drivers in a variety of ways, has raised $8 million in a new round of funding. Kaszek led the financing, which also included participation from GFC and OneVC. Kaszek also led the company’s seed round in 2020. The latest investment brings its total

Union54, the first Zambian startup backed by Y Combinator, has gotten another major venture capital firm on its term sheet: Tiger Global. The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the VC juggernaut led its just-completed $3 million seed round, coming only two months after graduating from Y Combinator’s summer batch. San Francisco-based venture capital firm Runa

Zolve, a neobanking startup that aims to help immigrants in the U.S. gain access to financial services, said on Wednesday it has raised $40 million in a new financing round as it begins to roll out its offerings. Partners of DST Global led the Bangalore-headquartered startup’s Series A financing round. The round, which values the

Bridgit, a “workforce intelligence” technology company that is focused on the construction industry, announced today that it has raised $24 million in Series B funding. Camber Creek and Storm Ventures co-led the financing, which brings the Toronto-based startup’s total raised to more than $35 million. Nine Four Ventures also put money in the round, along

Rhinoceros beetles are one of the greatest threats to oil palm crops, attacking plants while they are young and potentially lowering a farm’s yield for years. They also affect workers’ health, since pesticides need to be sprayed frequently. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Poladrone wants to change the way farms use pesticides with a combination of

Radio has long been described as the most intimate of media. Quips about putting radio on the internet aside, the persistent popularity of podcasting and the cockamamie climb of Clubhouse shows that audio-based platforms will continue to echo around the upper echelons of the ecosystem for a while yet. Joining the fray is Heart to

Selfbook, a hotel payment software startup, announced today that it has raised $25 million in a Series A round of funding led by Tiger Global Management. Valia Ventures, Fin Venture Capital, early Stripe employee turned investor Lachy Groom and “strategic” angel investors also participated in the financing, which values the company at $125 million and

Justos, a startup that says it will be the first insurance company in Brazil to use data when determining rates, has raised a $35.8 million Series A round of funding led by Ribbit Capital. SoftBank’s Latin American Fund and GGV participated as new investors, in addition to existing backers Kaszek, BigBets, Nubank CEO David Velez

In less than seven days, Lunchclub co-founder Vlad Novakovski had a sizable term sheet in hand from Lightspeed Ventures, despite his startup not looking to raise at the time. How did that happen? A sticky product experience with the customer feedback and growth to back it up made the startup an investment opportunity Lightspeed’s Nicole

Co-founded in 2007 by Yasser Bashir, Arbisoft falls on the larger end of the spectrum of software development partners that our readers have recommended in our ongoing survey. Today, the company has a few hundred employees distributed across Pakistan, Australia, Texas and Malaysia, but it continues to service startups of all sizes, says Bashir. Omri

When Zillow announced that it was hitting pause on its iBuying operations earlier this week, the news sent shockwaves through the real estate industry. Zillow blamed the pause on labor and supply constraints that were hampering its ability to quickly renovate and efficiently turn over its housing inventory. The announcement sent Zillow’s stock plummeting 10%

Early-stage entrepreneurs who are eager to ship usually spend more time calculating their startup’s monthly burn rate than selecting an optimal development environment. As a result, technical debt starts to accumulate. And accumulate. TechCrunch Senior Writer Romain Dillet interviewed Jill Wetzler, VP of Engineering at Pilot, and Preeti Somal, EVP of Engineering at HashiCorp, to