Embedded banking has been on a growth tear in the last several years as companies turned to APIs to embed financial services like credit, payments and deposits to grow their revenues. Now, with the tech funding landscape in significant turmoil, a company in the embedded finance market has raised a growth round that underscores the pressure
The TechCrunch newsroom fears only one thing: the coming of April 1. Because, I’m just going to say it, the tech industry isn’t very funny. But Google Japan’s ongoing series of ridiculous keyboards, where they completely commit to the joke, suggests we may have found the first known exception. The latest is the “Gboard Bar
YouTube’s Premium paid subscription includes benefits like ad-free viewing, video and song downloads for offline consumption, and background plays. Now, it might also be shifting video streaming in 4K resolution (currently free for all users) to the premium tier. Over the weekend, users across Reddit and Twitter noted that YouTube had been asking them to
Some purchases provide near-instant time to value (TTV), like buying an umbrella on a rainy day, or hiring a glazier to replace a broken window. Cybersecurity startups, however, often experience long TTV, as enterprise customers often require several sales calls and a bespoke onboarding process. To boost adoption and reduce churn, VC Ross Haleliuk shares
It is typical for consumers to purchase more food items than they need and then throw them away because they either forgot about it or the food expired. It is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food items are wasted yearly, an approximate $1 trillion loss. Recelery, a pantry tracker app and online marketplace, aims
Car rental company Sixt said Tuesday it intends to purchase more than 100,000 electric vehicles from Chinese automaker BYD for its European fleet between now and 2028. Sixt has initially only committed to buying “several thousand” EVs, the first of which will be delivered this year, the company said in a statement. Sixt said it
Demo shows promise as EU revives talk of space-based solar power Tim De Chant 9 hours In our wireless world, wires are still the best way to move electricity from A to B. Wires are almost always cheaper and easier, at least from a technical perspective, but there are instances where wires may not be
Seems Google couldn’t wait until Thursday to announce all of its upcoming hardware. In a pair of blog posts this morning, the company announced two additions to its Nest line of smart home products: a new Nest Doorbell and the Nest WiFi Pro. The latter amps up the company’s dead-simple mesh Wi-Fi offering. The top-line
Disney+ today relaunched as a native app on PlayStation 5 (PS5) consoles, which now supports PS5 capabilities like 4K HDR (High-Dynamic Range) streaming. The company also relaunched Star+, Disney+’s streaming service for Latin American subscribers. PS5 users experienced various issues with the old Disney+ app, which was designed for PS4 compatibility. Subscribers reported crashes, log-in
Euler Motors, an Indian startup that designs and builds commercial electric vehicles, has raised $60 million in a new funding round as it works to ramp up its production capacity and broaden its offerings. Singapore’s sovereign fund GIC led the New Delhi-headquartered startup’s Series C funding. Blume Ventures, Athera Venture Partners, QRG, ADB Ventures and
For the average individual living in Lagos — Nigeria’s most populous city, with over 20 million people — apartment hunting is an extreme sport. Not only is rent expensive — low- to middle-income housing can cost between $1,000 and $5,000 yearly — but renters must also pay a year in advance, sometimes even two before
Golden State Warrior and four-time NBA champion Draymond Green will take the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 in San Francisco — and get ready for a plot twist. He will bring his popular podcast, “The Draymond Green Show,” to the Disrupt stage with a very special guest — himself. Turning the tables, Green
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. Oc-flippin-tober? You’ve got to be mock-tobering us. It’s a sobering experience, though, to see the who-ber year fly by like that! Ahem. Forgive the incoherence, we are entering TechCrunch Disrupt silly season
Zenskar, a startup that is aiming to help SaaS companies automate their billing workflows, has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round. Headquartered in New York and Bengaluru, Zenskar is building a platform for SaaS companies to generate bills for their complex pricing plans — whether they are based on usage-based pricing, subscriptions, nuanced
Google is spinning up a new, online-only startup accelerator centered around the elusive circular economy. The effort is Google’s latest to help environmentally focused startups grow, while potentially hooking them on its cloud products in the process. In the broadest of strokes, the circular economy represents a colossal shift in how humanity makes and uses stuff.
The UK government has confirmed another pause to draft digital legislation under new prime minister Liz Truss’ reshuffled cabinet — saying the data reform bill it had introduced in recent months is on hold while ministers take another look. The paused bill contained a package of amendments to the UK’s data protection regime, which remains based
Today, Spotify released the first two episodes of the new original podcast “Kim Kardashian’s The System: The Case of Kevin Keith,” narrated by reality TV star Kim K and true-crime producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi. The series will be available worldwide and is free for all Spotify listeners. The podcast will have eight episodes in total
Welcome to Q4, friends. If you were hoping to begin the final chunk of 2022 with good news, tough. We’re starting the quarter off with rough data instead. Sure, we’re waiting on data dumps from CB Insights, PitchBook, and Crunchbase about Q3 venture capital aggregates, but one particular bellwether indicator that we track here at
We’re just a few short weeks away from the first in-person TechCrunch Disrupt in three years. The agenda is absolutely bursting with expert insight and information from the leading voices in the early-stage startup universe. We want to take a moment to highlight a session led by our title sponsor, AT&T, who helps more than
In the latest quick commerce headspinner, Deliveroo is experimenting with expanding its rapid grocery business by opening a new type of ‘dark store’ in Central London. As well as functioning as a mini warehouse where Deliveroo staff pick orders for couriers operating on its platform to collect and deliver locally to app users, the new
An antitrust win for Amazon and Apple in Italy where an appeals court has cancelled a multimillion dollar penalty the pair were hit with last year for alleged collusion following an investigation into the reselling of Apple and (Apple-owned) Beats kit on Amazon’s Italian e-commerce marketplace. The original €203M (total) penalty had already been reduced
Entertainment platform Fandom announced today its acquisition of seven entertainment and gaming brands from media company Red Ventures, including online publications Comic Vine, Cord Cutters News, GameFAQs, GameSpot, Giant Bomb, Metacritic, and TV Guide. While the financials of the deal were not disclosed in the official announcement, Fandom told TechCrunch that the deal cost somewhere
Prosus Ventures has called off the $4.7 billion acquisition of BillDesk it announced last year, the European technology giant’s largest acquisition, saying “certain conditions precedent” were unfulfilled in a surprising move a month after the proposed acquisition received approval from the local antitrust watchdog. “Certain conditions precedent were not fulfilled by the 30 September 2022
New York-based insurance giant Lemonade is officially launching in the U.K., its fourth market in Europe and fifth overall, with a little help from one of the oldest and largest insurance providers in the U.K. Lemonade, for the uninitiated, emerged into the trillion-dollar insurance space back in 2015, with a new take on how consumers
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, I’ll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous
It takes a veritable army to make TechCrunch Disrupt — which takes place October 18–20 in San Francisco — the well-oiled experience that savvy startuppers have come to know and love. And we couldn’t do it nearly as well without our incredible volunteers. If you’re looking for a no-budget way to experience Disrupt up close
For decades, the answer to when fusion power would arrive was like the punchline to an oft-repeated joke — it was always 10 or 20 years away. Now, it might actually be on the cusp of commercialization. No, really. If that refrain sounds all too familiar, it’s because, well, something like that was written 10
As companies aim to cut costs and reel in spending amid uncertain macroeconomic conditions, Form Bio thinks it is actually the perfect time to launch its platform. The software company was developed at Colossal Biosciences — known for its goal to bring extinct critters like the wooly mammoth back to life — and is now
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. More companies are adopting product-led growth (PLG), in which the product itself does most of the selling, and usage-based pricing (UBP) — meaning users
Venture capital has been on a roller coaster this year. It came into 2022 riding the wave of the strongest year for venture deployment on record, just before the stock market plummeted and dragged venture down with it. As the third quarter comes to a close, things have started to get really interesting — again.