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
Valence, a growing teamwork platform, today announced that it raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Insight Partners. Co-founder and CEO Parker Mitchell said that the tranche will be used to triple the size of the company’s team to 75, expand its sales footprint (particularly in Europe), and build out Valence’s product
When it comes to building databases and other backend software development, different organizations and developers do not always speak the same language. Today a startup called Prisma that’s built a platform — based around a server-side library — that lets users write in the languages that are most intuitive to them, but lets that work
Welcome back to Found where we get into the stories behind the startups. Thor Fridriksson is, as Jordan calls him, the Kind of Mobile Gaming. With mega-viral games like Trivia Royale and QuizUp, he knows the secret sauce to make a popular game, but the code he hasn’t cracked is how to make a super
Traceable AI, a startup offering services designed to protect APIs from cyberattacks, today announced that it raised $60 million in a Series B round led by IVP with participation from BIG Labs, Unusual Ventures, Tiger Global Management, and several undisclosed angel investors. The new capital values the company at more than $450 million post-money, and
Truist — one of the nation’s largest financial institutions — has acquired Long Game, a 12-person fintech startup that has raised over $20 million in venture capital, executives have told TechCrunch exclusively. As of June 2021, Charlotte, N.C.-based Truist was the 10th largest bank, with $509 billion in assets. It was formed in 2019 as
TC Sessions: Mobility is quickly approaching. Join us on May 18-19 in San Mateo, California and online on May 20 for a deep dive featuring the best, brightest and most intriguing founders, engineers, investors, regulators and technologists dedicated to transforming the way we move people and packages around the globe. Pro Tip: Buy a General
Norway’s Pangea Trust, through its equity crowdfunding platform Connect, is unlocking diaspora remittance inflows as funding source for early and growth-stage startups in Africa. Remittances from abroad reached $45 billion in 2021, with Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Zimbabwe leading the list of recipient countries. And as annual inflows grow, Pangea’s country director and CEO
Payments remains a very fragmented business around the world: depending on where you’re buying or selling something (and whether you are selling online or offline) you will have different “standard” payment methods, currencies and settlement schemes and more. Today, a startup called Kevin that’s taking one piece of that puzzle — payments made from account
People in the Global South are often subject to terrible fluctuations in their currencies, as well as hyperinflation. At the same time, many are unbanked, but still able to access a crypto wallet. A way for these populations to access more stable currencies would be by accessing Stable Coins which are pegged to the US
Gooood [your time of day] startup fans! It’s a brand new week and we’re flippin’ psyched that it’s… wait, it is May? How’d that happen? In any case – May 2nd 2022, here we go. Spring is a good time to do a bit of a spring clean; we loved Zack’s guide to how to
Augmented reality (AR) can help customers shopping online preview products before making a purchase, and is a growing area of investment for e-commerce businesses. According to a recent survey of 16,000 Snapchat users in 16 markets, 92% of Gen Zers want to use AR and VR for online shopping. Now, a South Korean augmented reality
Stellantis will spend $2.8 billion (CAD $3.6 billion) to increase production of electric vehicles at two of its Canadian plants, the company said on Monday. The funding is a portion of the $35.5 billion Stellantis dedicated to electric vehicles and new software over the next year in its push to move away from internal combustion
LinearB, a startup that helps engineering leaders optimize the workflow of their development teams, today announced that it has raised a $50 million Series B round led by Tribe Capital. New investor Salesforce Ventures, as well as existing investors Battery Ventures and 83North, also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to
Twitter’s work on its forthcoming Edit button is continuing. While several people last month already spotted the in-development “Edit Tweet” menu option, what we didn’t yet know was how edited tweets would appear to users viewing them on Twitter, or how the edited tweet’s original text could be read. Now, we’re able to see what
After a week of making headlines, one-click-checkout startup Bolt has issued a public response to questions about how it’s faring in the competitive space. CEO Maju Kuruvilla issued a blog post today acknowledging that the company “has become very popular in the media these past few months.” In case you missed it, last week the
The pace at which startups raise rounds worth $100 million or greater is slowing, according to early data. Looking at historical periods stretching back a year, TechCrunch’s analysis of Pitchbook data shows Q2 2022 is on pace to undershoot the first quarter’s tally of so-called mega-rounds. And data from Crunchbase shows a similar decline. When you
A Chinese provider of hydrogen used in fuel cell vehicles is considering a NASDAQ debut early next year via a SPAC merger that would land it a $1 billion valuation after listing. If the deal with its undisclosed suitor goes through, Shenzhen State Fuel Cell Corporation (SFCC) will become the latest in a long line
Accern, which uses AI to analyze online conversations around particular companies, trends, and industries, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series B round led by Mighty Capital alongside Tribe Capital, Shasta Ventures, Gaingels and Fusion Fund and others. CEO Kumesh Aroomoogan says that the new capital will be put toward “product-led growth,”
The European Commission has shared the preliminary findings of an antitrust case focused on Apple Pay on iOS devices. According to antitrust investigators, Apple abused its dominant position as competitors can’t provide NFC-enabled contactless payments on the iPhone to develop other mobile wallets and compete fairly with Apple Pay. The Commission says NFC is a
QED incubated this auto financing company in 2016 and Kevin Bennett became CEO in 2018 and soon after raised its first seed round. It started as MotoRefi, and rebranded in November 2021 to Caribou. But the mission remains: Transforming consumers’ financial relationship with their cars. Since the founding, Bennett has raised $74 million for the
Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities says Elon Musk will own Twitter within 24 hours. He says Musk will then likely turn Twitter into a subscription model. Ives speaks on “Bloomberg The Open.”