A group of nearly two dozen investors including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firm Fidelity has invested over $7.1 billion to back the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who is also an investor in Tesla, delivered the largest
Shopify today announced that it will acquire Deliverr, a San Francisco, California-based ecommerce fulfillment startup, for $2.1 billion in cash and stock. The deal, rumors of which were reported in April by Bloomberg, is the largest acquisition in Shopify’s history, and Shopify founder and CEO Tobi Lütke says that it will enable the company to
The European Union’s flagship reform for tackling Big Tech platform power, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), will come into force in early 2023, Commission EVP Margrethe Vestager has said — rowing back from an earlier suggested timeframe of this fall. But she also implied that enforcements against unruly Internet “gatekeepers” could flow soon after the
Autonomous vehicle technology company Aurora Innovation has unveiled a fleet management system that can be used to help optimize operations for the startup’s trucking and ride-hailing products. Aurora announced the platform, named Aurora Beacon, alongside its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday, during which the company presented investors with a series of milestones on its path
Tactic, a startup that helps businesses manage — and simplify — cryptocurrency finances, is emerging from stealth today with $2.6 million in seed funding. Founders Fund and finance automation startup Ramp co-led the raise for Tactic, an eight-person outfit based in New York City. Elad Gil and Figma co-founder Dylan Field also participated in the
Twitter returned to the Digital Content NewFronts this evening to pitch its upcoming premium video content slate to advertisers, as it had in previous years. But this time around, the company is faced with a group of media buyers who are worried about the future of the social network as a “brand-safe” platform for their
AutoRabit, which provides CI/CD tools for Salesforce customer dev teams, today announced that it raised $26 million in a Series B funding round led by Full In Partners, bringing the startup’s total raised to $52.5 million. CEO Meredith Bell says that the new cash will be put toward product development and expanding the size of
Germany-based rental car giant Sixt has confirmed it’s been hit by a cyberattack that has caused widespread disruption to its global operations. According to a statement from Sixt, which has more than 2,000 locations across more than 110 countries, the company first detected “IT irregularities” on April 29, before subsequently confirming the cyberattack and containing
Moysle, a mobile device management platform for Apple devices, today announced that it raised $196 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners with participation from StepStone Group and previous investors including Elephant and Album VC. CEO Alcyr Araujo says that the round, which comes as Moysle introduces a new product, Apple
Alon Laniado Contributor Alon Laniado founded tech-enabled human services startups Fitmate Coach and PathMotion. Previously, he was a Bain & Co. strategy consultant and a U.K. Treasury policy adviser designing employment schemes. Utilizing AI and other automation tools to enhance the delivery of human services can make exclusive services like career coaching available to more
Average startup valuations are in decline, new data indicates. In March, The Exchange parsed a dataset from Carta, a unicorn whose software helps companies manage their cap table, which showed early indications that the startup valuation market was changing. A look at Carta’s full Q1 data collated by its head of insights, Peter Walker, clarifies
Consumer and business file storage and sharing service Dropbox will report its first-quarter earnings tomorrow, and for the former unicorn and present-day public company, the stakes appear quite high. Dropbox is coming off a year of growth stuck in the low teens, with growth forecasted to prove even slower growth in 2022. The performance Dropbox
Keyboard startup Fleksy has launched a new self-serve SDK to expand its reach for indie developers wanting to add custom keyboard software to their apps. The Barcelona-based mobile keyboard software maker has been pursuing a white label licensing approach to selling its customizable keyboard tech for several years but it’s now looking to expand its
If drones are to take over any of the numerous tasks they are supposed to, they’re going to have to get a lot smarter — and learn to work together. In a demonstration of both of these things, Chinese researchers show off a swarm of drones collectively navigating a dense forest they’ve never encountered. We’ve
TikTok is introducing a new way to lure advertisers to its platform by giving them the ability to showcase their brands’ content next to the best videos on TikTok. Ahead of its NewFronts presentation to advertisers scheduled for this afternoon, TikTok announced the launch of TikTok Pulse, a new contextual advertising solution that ensures brands’
Folk, the next-generation CRM started by European startup studio eFounders, is going live today. If you’ve paid attention to TechCrunch, I’ve already covered Folk in the past. Since then, the product has evolved a bit and is now ready for prime time. “The biggest SaaS [software-as-a-service] category is CRM. The highest valuation in the SaaS
Meet Getlife, a Madrid-based startup that just raised $6.3 million (€6 million) in seed funding. The company wants to make it easier to access life insurance products in Europe. For instance, there’s no medical exams needed to subscribe to Getlife. There are many reasons why you would want to subscribe to a life insurance product.
Databases are growing at an exponential rate these days, and so when it comes to real-time data observability, organizations are often fighting a losing battle if they try to run analytics or any observability process in a centralized way. Today a company called Edge Delta that’s built an observability platform from a different perspective —
Google has announced a package of additional controls for users of its productivity suite, Google Workspace (neé G Suite), in Europe — which it’s rolling out by the end of this year and next. It says these extra control will enable organizations — both public and private sector — to “control, limit, and monitor transfers
The more of our world we share with robots, the more important it is to help them find their way. Founded in 2016, navigation is at the heart of what London-based SLAMcore does. In fact, it’s right there in the name — SLAM being a common robotics acronym for “Simultaneous localization and mapping.” The company
As the use of AI becomes more common throughout the enterprise, the demand for products that make it easier to inspect, discover and fix critical AI errors is increasing. After all, AI is costly — Gartner predicted in 2021 that a third of tech providers would invest $1 million or more in AI by 2023
Spotify announced today it will become the first music streaming brand to have an official presence within Roblox, with the launch of “Spotify Island,” a place where artists and fans will gather to play interactive quests, unlock exclusive content and buy artist merchandise. The new Spotify Island destination in Roblox will actually consist of a
Okra Solar walked away with the trophy and a giant check at our 2019 Shenzhen Hardware Battlefield event. It’s a moment happily eternalized in a new press release announcing the renewable energy startup’s $2.1 million new round (it’s a nice photo. I used it on this post, too). Clearly we’re not the only ones who
When robotic process automation company UiPath filed to go public in March 2021, the startup had just closed a $750 million round that helped it clinch a $35 billion valuation. Although its initial IPO price range was slightly below that figure, post-debut, it bounced back to a $43 billion valuation at $90 per share. As
Bunq, a European challenger bank based in Amsterdam, has announced that it plans to acquire Tricount, a popular mobile app to manage group expenses. Bunq isn’t disclosing the terms of the transaction and the acquisition is pending regulatory approval. Tricount is a simple yet effective way of tracking expenses as a group. For instance, if
Dating app giant Match is getting a new CEO. Just over two years after assuming the top exec position, Match CEO and 16-year employee Shar Dubey is stepping down. The company announced today, alongside its first-quarter earnings, Shar Dubey will resign as an officer of Match Group but will remain on the company’s board and
Will Y Combinator one day fund 1,000 companies per batch? Its president, Geoff Ralston, doesn’t think that’s impossible. But for the tech press, the possibility creates a conundrum: We can do our best to pick favorites, but we can’t cover every single promising startup in its early days. This situation, it turns out, creates an
Lumos, a startup that wants to provide an end-to-end solution for enterprises to manage all of the SaaS apps their employees use, is coming out of stealth today. The company plans to take on the SaaS management market by combining security features like role-based access control that IT departments need with the self-service capabilities that
Just ahead of its presentation to media ad buyers later this week at the 2022 NewFronts, Twitter acknowledged in a new SEC filing that its core advertising business could now be at risk as a result of the Elon Musk takeover, in addition to employee hiring and retention efforts and other factors. While Musk’s vision for
Battery technology company Sila announced the purchase of a new facility in Washington state that will see its next-generation battery chemistry in hundreds of thousands of electric vehicles by the end of 2026, according to the company. The 600,000-square-foot factory in Moses Lake, Washington, will start producing automotive-scale quantities of Sila’s battery tech by the