Berlin-based Cherry Ventures has launched its fourth fund, a €300 million ($340 million) early-stage tech fund. The Cherry IV fund will also feature a dedicated crypto and web3 strategy, building off Cherry’s existing portfolio in the space. Cherry’s portfolio includes unicorns Flink and SellerX, Infarm, as well as AUTO1 Group, FlixBus, flaschenpost, Forto, Xometry and
Tech sees differently, and can fuse multiple types of data we can’t even perceive: lidar, IR, ultrasonic, and so on. Metalenz, maker of highly compact “2D” cameras for advanced sensing, hopes to bring polarized light into the mix for security and safety with its PolarEyes tech. Polarization isn’t a quality of light that’s often paid
Greenlabs, a South Korean agtech startup, announced this week it has closed a $140 million Series C led by BlueRun Ventures, with participation from Skylake Incuvest and SK Square. The startup plans to use the Series C, which brings its total raised to $170 million to date, to expedite its global expansion, make acquisitions and
Plaid, a fintech unicorn known for its APIs that connect consumer bank accounts to financial applications, announced today that it is buying Cognito. The price is around $250 million, paid in a blend of cash and stock TechCrunch understands, though we couldn’t suss out the exact mix of each. The deal highlights where Plaid is
User onboarding has been a longstanding and persistent challenge in the world of apps. Developers grapple with design and technical constraints; publishers and users might have different priorities when it comes to engaging with a service; the content of those services is changing all the time; and perhaps most of all, people are all different
By adding some electrodes and some electronics to your earbuds, Wisear can make your music experience a lot more hands-free than before. Bite down on your own teeth twice to pause a track, or three times to skip to the next tune — without making a noise, hand gesture or much visible movement at all,
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for January 19, 2022! What a news roundup we have for you today: China’s changing venture landscape, the power of passwords, no-code startups, and why women
A SaladStop worker uses StaffAny to clock in StaffAny, a management platform for SMEs with shift workers, has raised a $3.4 million Series A led by GGV Capital. The round included participation from East Ventures, FreakOut Shinsei Fund, Far East Ventures, Farquhar Venture Capital and angel investors including Allen Shim, former CFO of Slack. The
What a roller coaster day for China’s tech industry. TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has dissolved its strategic investment team, sending worrying messages to other internet giants that have expanded aggressively by investing in other companies. At the beginning of this year, ByteDance reviewed its “businesses’ needs” and decided to “reduce investments in areas that are
Nowsta attracted venture capital for its approach to help employers better engage with their hourly workforces in this increasingly hybrid work environment. The company announced today $41 million in Series B funding in a round led by GreatPoint Ventures that brings the company’s total funding raised to date to $59 million. Joining GreatPoint in the
As the legal uncertainty in Europe clouding use of US cloud services cranks up, Google has responded by firing up its lobbying engines to call for US and European lawmakers to get a move on and come up a new rubberstamp to grease transatlantic data flows as usual as the bloc’s regulators finally start to
Australian user research software company Dovetail announced today that it has closed a $63 million Series A led by Accel. The company has now raised just over $70 million in total, and it added its new capital at a valuation that it describes as “north” of $700 million. As you can tell by the numbers,
The global startup fundraising boom has lifted nearly every sector you can name: Edtech took off during the pandemic, software in general got a lift, and even more risky and long-term wagers like space tech and biotech are seemingly doing well in today’s risk-on startup fundraising market. But no single category or niche in startup
Instagram is giving creators more ways to make money with today’s launch of Instagram Subscriptions. The feature, which was spotted hitting the App Store back in November, is now officially in early testing with a small group of U.S. creators who will be able to offer their followers paid access to exclusive Instagram Live videos
Even though consumer gaming constitutes a small fraction of its overall business, Microsoft’s announcement yesterday of its all-cash $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard proves that the technology corporation takes the sector plenty seriously. It is easy to think that Microsoft should have invested the money into other, perhaps more lucrative businesses in its
There are many ways of spinning up a startup, but it takes a particularly brave set of founders to take on a deeply entrenched industry with a small number of incumbents who have the market all sown up. You’d have to be a special flavor of bold to take on internet search for example —
Carry1st, a South African publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised a $20 million Series A extension led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). This is a16z’s first investment in an Africa-headquartered company (the firm has previously invested in Branch and Zipline, companies with some operations in Africa but headquartered in the U.S).
Wrangle raised $2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding to advance its technology that automates workflows, approvals and tickets so that a company can track work and provide call-to-action tasks within chat platforms like Slack. Bloomberg Beta and Eniac Ventures co-led the investment, with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, Hustle Fund, TDF Ventures and more
Pyxis One, now Pixis, closed on $100 million in Series C funding to continue developing what it touts as “the world’s only contextual codeless AI infrastructure for complete marketing optimization.” SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round and was joined by new investor General Atlantic, and existing investors Celesta Capital, Premji Invest and Chiratae Ventures.
Last August, Twitter introduced a new feature in select markets, including the U.S., that invited users to report misinformation they encountered on its platform — including things like election-related or COVID-19 misinformation, for example. Now the company is rolling out the feature to more markets as its test expands. In addition to the U.S., Australia
The first electric bus by Swedish-Kenyan EV startup, Opibus, has hit Kenya’s roads marking the beginning of the company’s venture into the mass transit industry. Opibus first announced plans to roll out electric public transport buses last year when it raised $7.5 million in a pre-Series A round. The startup is now running a pilot
Big banks are under a lot of pressure to modernize their services to meet demands of consumers who now view things like mobile apps that identify who and where you are; or instant, on-demand products, as table stakes — consumers that are in turn increasingly looking at neobanks to give them a better level of
The UK’s ad-fuelled boom in crypto trading looks to be headed for major speed restrictions: The country’s financial watchdog said it will beef up rules around marketing of crypto assets and could even put limits on who can invest, following government confirmation yesterday that it will extend the regulator’s remit to cover crypto. In recent
Fintech startup Revolut is rolling out stock trading in its app in the U.S. The company already lets you buy and sell shares if you’re a British user. And now, Revolut has received approval to become a licensed U.S. broker-dealer in the U.S. Revolut users will be able to trade 1,100 securities, such as shares
After a month-long “break,” Better.com CEO Vishal Garg is back at the helm of the mortgage tech company he co-founded in 2016, according to an internal memo that circulated today that has been shared with TechCrunch. In the memo, the Better board of directors said it was “moving forward with strong, dynamic CEO leadership.” The
Buy now pay later (BNPL) startups are proliferating around the world and the Philippines is no exception. Today, one of the country’s biggest BNPL providers, BillEase, announced it has raised an $11 million Series B. The round was led by BurdaPrincipal Investments, growth capital arm of Hubert Burda Media. Other participants included Centauri, a joint
A new bill seeks to dramatically reshape the online advertising landscape to the detriment of companies like Facebook, Google and data brokers that leverage deep stores of personal information to make money from targeted ads. The bill, the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, introduced by Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) in the House
After securing a $15 million Series A in August, Walnut, a company that creates sales and marketing demo experiences, is back to announce its new round of $35 million in Series B financing. Walnut’s no-code platform enables teams to create customized product demonstrations quickly, be able to integrate them into their sales and marketing processes
Yoga, personal trainers and other kinds of online coaches have a bewildering array of platforms on which they can launch their class, either in platforms specializing in verticals (PTs) or more general ones. A new UK player hopes – perhaps a little optimistically – hopes to make inroads into this market with a ‘one stop
Late last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from his position in order to give his full attention to his other company Square, now called Block, which had become increasingly invested in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency — just like Dorsey himself. Now we’re starting to see the results of Block’s embrace of crypto, as