French startup Sorare originally launched a fantasy football (soccer) game. This year, the company is expanding to new sports. After partnering with Major League Baseball earlier this year, the company is announcing a new partnership with the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Basketball Players Association (NBPA). Thanks to this multi-year partnership, Sorare will launch
In addition to the Apple Watch Series 8, Apple unveiled a brand new Apple Watch model at its press conference. The Apple Watch Ultra has been specifically designed for intense sports tracking. It is a larger model with better battery life. It also has a different body that should resist extreme weather conditions. The case
“Morbius” was one of the most talked-about films of the summer for internet denizens, but not for the reason you’d think. Now, “Morbius” is getting its third (yes, third) act as it debuts on Netflix for viewers in the U.S. and India. A new installment in the Marvel Comics Universe, “Morbius” was probably expected to
Hamburg-based Localyze is gearing up to launch in North America in the coming months — powered by a fresh raise of $35 million in Series B funding that’s being announced today, a little over a year after it disclosed a $12M Series A. The Series B is led by US VC fund, General Catalyst. Other
A kiryana owner with one of SnappRetail’s point-of-sale devices The number of global retailers, department stores and supermarkets operating in Pakistan is increasing, which spells convenience for consumers, but trouble for kiryanas, or small general stores. According to a report by the State Bank of Pakistan, general stores’ growth will slow down, especially in urban
Google announced today it is expanding its options for eco-friendly routing on Google Maps to 40 more countries across Europe. Eco-friendly routes, first introduced to U.S-based users last year, offer to show more fuel-efficient routes instead of the fastest ones. Users can see the eco-friendly route marked with a leaf label. To adjusts settings for
Companies like Redwood Materials (raised $792M), Li-Cycle, (Canada, raised $667.7M) and Green Li-ion (Singapore $15M) have made a name for themselves in recycling batteries. The activity of recycling existing lithium batteries remains one of the hardest nuts to crack as the world tries desperately to move to more renewable, clean, sources of energy. Right now
Somehow, we all became livestreamers during the pandemic, even if it just meant rearranging our office shelves for a better Zoom background. But the pandemic was also a boon for those catering to clients with slightly more advanced needs, such as those who needed dedicated hardware, be that fancy streaming lights, capture cards or entire
Why work with brands like Hollister and Dunkin’ Donuts when you can just sell your own clothes and coffee? For most influencers, that’s not a serious consideration — you need quite a bit of capital and a dedicated audience to churn out high-quality products that sell well. But the D’Amelio family aren’t just any social
Mike Novogratz, the founder and chief executive officer of Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd., shares his price targets for Bitcoin and Ethereum, talks about confidence in the crypto space and if the US will go into a recession. He’s on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
A lot of important data gets lost along the sales pipeline because sales teams use multiple tools, including email, Zoom and WhatsApp, to talk with buyers. Nektar.ai wants to solve the problem of data leakage with its sales productivity platform, which helps SaaS revenue teams manage information across different channels by integrating with different apps
Corporations have been dealing with IT operations and security management since the coronavirus pandemic that has changed the way in which people work — remote or hybrid work — and accelerated the market opportunity. Josys, spun off from its parent company Raksul last year, launched its automated management IT devices and SaaS application in September
Applications in the metaverse often feel like more of a marketing gimmick than something that a critical mass of consumers would use, let alone pay for. But turn to the enterprise and there appears to be a very lucrative opportunity that’s well into finding traction. Today, one of the early movers in building solutions for
On August 9, Joe Biden signed into law the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022. The move marked a victory for a presidential administration in dire need of a win and the culmination of a hard-fought, months-long battle that ended with broad bipartisan support. Among the chief criticism leading up to the bill’s passage were
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. Hey, hey, hey! It’s going to be a busy week for the TC crew this week. We’re excited about the Apple event, and Y Combinator has its demo day. Alex welcomes you
Sam DeBrule Contributor Sam DeBrule is co-founder and head of marketing of Heyday, the AI-powered research assistant that helps you retain more of what you learn. Whether you’re building a product at an early-stage startup or fine-tuning an already built-out product at a larger company, there is a straightforward process that can help you improve
Lessons from startups that reached the $1B revenue threshold Alex Wilhelm 7 hours Once upon a time, reaching a $1 billion valuation was a Big Deal. But the shine that a so-called unicorn valuation conferred on a startup eroded as more and more private companies reached the threshold — often with less and less to
European trading platform Bitpanda originally started as a cryptocurrency exchange. Over the past few years, it has expanded to other asset types, such as stocks, ETFs and precious metals. And now, users can buy and sell commodities, such as natural gas, oil, aluminum and wheat. The timing of this release lines up with important fluctuations
As we’re sitting here, getting ready for Apple’s big show, Google went ahead and sent out invites for the next big Pixel event. The big reveal is happening in Brooklyn, on October 6, starting at 10AM PT. What do we expect? Well, the company has already gave us a preview of the Pixel 7 when it
Backed by investors including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CDC Group, Cropin is set on digitizing the agricultural industry. Today, the company announced the launch of Cropin Cloud, a cloud platform with integrated apps. Founded in 2010, Cropin’s other products are live in 92 countries, it is partnered with over 250 B2B customers
Lightyear, a Dutch startup developing a long-range hybrid solar-powered car, today announced that it has raised €81 million ($81 million) as it prepares to begin production of its first vehicle in the coming months. While recent history is littered with examples of prototype solar-powered vehicles, the burgeoning electric car movement has so far been mostly
The vegan food market was pegged as a $27 billion industry last year, a figure that’s expected to more than double within a decade. This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the major food and beverage incumbents such as Nestlé, which launched a plant-based dairy line under the Wunda brand last year, while rival Unilever has been
Binance, the issuer of the world’s third-largest stablecoin, said on Monday it will convert customers’ holdings in three rival stablecoins USD Coin (USDC), Pax Dollar (USDP) and True USD (TUSD) into its own stablecoin (BUSD) on September 29 to “enhance liquidity and capital-efficiency for users” in a move that has baffled many enthusiasts. As a
As well as the traditional carbon offset resellers and exchanges such as Climate Partner or Climate Impact X the tech space has also produced a few, including Patch (US-based, raised $26.5M) and Lune (UK-based, raised $4M). Now, Ceezer, a B2B marketplace for carbon credits, has closed a €4.2M round, led by Carbon Removal Partners with
It’s a long weekend here in the United States, meaning office workers, at least, get a three-day break from the dreaded meeting. We wanted to take this time to offer up an impassioned defense of … email. Hear us out. It’s conventional wisdom that meetings are killers of productivity and morale and happy work environments.
Hello and welcome back to Max Q. Happy Labor Day! Due to the scheduling of the newsletter, I’ll have finished writing this by the time NASA makes the second launch attempt of the Artemis I mission. By now, you probably already know how it all went down anyway! In this issue: SpaceX lands more astronaut
Tailor, a Japan-based back-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform, said today it has raised $4.3 million in seed funding from Y Combinator and Global Brain. Founded in 2021 by Yo Shibata and Misato Takahashi, Tailor provides a headless ERP platform, meaning an ERP without a front end, instead delivering data from back-office systems like finance
Fermentation has a long, rich history in food production, from beer and wine to yogurt and cheese, leavened bread and coffee, miso and tempeh, sauerkraut and kimchi, to name just a few of the tasty things we can consume thanks to a chemical process thought to date back to the Neolithic period. But if this
This February, Africa and emerging market-focused Nestcoin raised a pre-seed round to build, operate and invest in its web3 applications, including crypto content platform Breach Club and gaming guild Metaverse Magna (MVM). Nine months after its launch last December, the latter has completed a seed sale token round of $3.2 million at a $30M fully
To mark down your portfolio or not mark down your portfolio? That is a question many venture capitalists are grappling with right now. But first, what does that mean? VCs keep a running tab of the value of each fund and entire portfolio based on the prior valuations each company raised at. The value of