As the neobanking boom has matured into a collection of large digital banks, we’re slowly getting a better picture of the economics of such business efforts. Chime was early in telling the market that it was EBTIDA positive, for example, unlike less profitable European neobanks. The upcoming Nubank IPO — technically the public offering of
As access to unique sounds is becoming a competitive advantage for social apps, Snapchat announced today it’s inked a deal with NBCUniversal to give users access to licensed audio clips from various NBCU movies and TV shows. With this latest launch, users can add audio clips from fan favorites such as “Saturday Night Live” and
OctoML, a Seattle-based startup that helps enterprises optimize and deploy their machine learning models, today announced that it has raised a $85 million Series C round led by Tiger Global Management. Previous investors Addition, Madrona Venture Group and Amplify Partners also participated in this round, which brings the company’s total funding to $132 million, including
According to Facebook AI Research, the next generation of robots should be much better at feeling — not emotions, of course, but using the sense of touch. And to advance the ball in this relatively new area of AI and robotics research, the company and its partners have built a new kind of electronic skin
John S. Kim Contributor John S. Kim is the CEO of Sendbird, the leading API provider to embed chat, voice and video experiences inside of mobile apps. More posts by this contributor Social+ payments: Why fintechs need social features Netflix sees gaming as a big part of its future in the battle for consumer attention.
Years ago, Americans spent most of their disposable income on food but consistent investment in retail infrastructure has changed that. Now, they only spend 6% of their household income on food and beverages. Africa still battles with this and it is not hard to see why. The continent’s retail markets are highly fragmented and mostly made up
When online shopping, you’ve probably come across photos that spin around so you can see a product from all angles. This is typically done by taking a number of photos of a product from all angles, and then playing them like an animation. Luma — founded by engineers who left Apple’s AR and computer vision
The on-demand transport space in Africa has evolved since San Francisco-based ride-hailing firm Uber first set up operations in South Africa in 2013, setting the stage for its foray across the continent while radically transforming the entire taxi industry. Almost a decade later, Africa’s taxi industry is now dominated by tens of local and international
African e-commerce fulfilment startups backed by Y Combinator seem to be piquing investors’ interest this year for their niche e-commerce play. Summer batch graduate ShipBlu is the latest on that list and confirmed to TechCrunch that it has raised $2.4 million in seed funding. The company, founded by Ali Nasser, Ahmed ElKawass, Abdelrahman Hosny in
Kathryn Kosmides Contributor Kathryn Kosmides is a survivor of gender-based violence and the founder of nonprofit background check Garbo. Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen’s message about Instagram’s impact on teenage girls was unequivocal: Facebook’s studies found that 13% of British teens said Instagram prompted thoughts of suicide, and 17% of teen girls say Instagram makes eating
Jim Mann Contributor Jim Mann is director of acquisitions at Thrasio, a consumer goods company reimagining omnichannel commerce and consumer products. The toughest questions most entrepreneurs face will involve international expansion. Whether to, when to, where to and how to expand all involve a wealth of complex considerations. The stakes are high: Success could mean
During its big VR and AR-focused event Thursday, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a major new title headed to its VR platform that should turn a few heads. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is on the way to the Oculus Quest 2. San Andreas is Rockstar’s well-loved 2004 entry into the hit GTA
David Karandish Contributor David Karandish is founder and CEO of Capacity, an enterprise artificial intelligence SaaS company headquartered in St. Louis, MO. The global help desk automation industry is expected to grow to $11 billion by 2023 as support automation empowers companies to serve their customers more effectively. By automating repetitive tasks and FAQs, companies
Salted, a Los Angeles-based startup creating digitally native quick-service restaurant brands, brought in a new round of $16 million in Series A funding to continue its nationwide expansion. The company was founded seven years ago by CEO Jeff Applebaum, but a focus on providing healthy QSR brands and going after the $325 billion food delivery
Twitter announced last month it would soon introduce an option that allows hosts to record their live audio sessions in Twitter Spaces to make them available for replay. While the company at the time said the feature would launch in a “few months,” it’s not surprising that, given Twitter’s accelerated pace of development, the company
Grant Lee has been living in slide decks for most of his career, but it wasn’t until he was doing some advisory work last year that relied heavily on slides that he aimed to reimagine the format. “Slides were built for a different era of work,” he told TechCrunch. “They were more of a visual
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.
There’s a new venture studio in the world that looks rather different from earlier venture studios from a structural standpoint. Unlike renowned outfits like Atomic or Science or Expa that create companies that then sell equity to VCs who expect that equity to rise in value, this new studio, SuperLayer, plans to spin up consumer
Hello, and welcome to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. And have a good time. This week Mary Ann and Natasha and Alex (along with our amazing production team Grace, Chris, and Kell) took on a host of topics from the public and private markets alike. In our
Twitter is rolling out the ability for all iOS users globally to Super Follow select creators. The option was previously only available to users in the U.S. and Canada. Super Follows allow users to subscribe to accounts they like for a monthly subscription fee in exchange for exclusive content. It’s Super Following time –– everyone
Protein biochemist Dr. Jasmin Hume was working in the alternative food space when she saw an opportunity to evolve technology so that our global food industry can reduce its reliance on animals. She started Shiru in 2019, and the company uses a “precision fermentation” process to create plant-based ingredients for food companies. The result has
Today’s world is run on data, and the amount of it that is being produced, managed and used to power services is growing by the minute — to the tune of some 79 zettabytes this year, according to one estimate. Today, a company called Yugabyte, which has built an open-source distributed SQL database model to
Is Southeast Asia about to hit an inflection point for tech startups? Four hundred million people in the region already use the internet, but by year’s end, one estimate suggests that 80% of the population over the age of 15 in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam will be digital consumers. “As per
As startup funding increases around the world, The Exchange has poked its head into markets as far-flung as Southeast Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. Wherever we looked, we’ve found venture capital flowing in record quantities. The story has been largely the same inside the United States, with Boston having a solid year, along with
Lisa Gilbert Contributor Facebook may have a new name, but a rebrand won’t erase the multiple recent disclosures illustrating how destructive the company is for society — and how harmful it is for its own investors. The revelations from Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen were shocking but not surprising. According to Haugen, who worked for the
Jonathan Greechan Contributor Jonathan Greechan is CEO and co-founder of the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator, Founder Institute. More posts by this contributor Do you fit the mold for the next generation of values-driven VCs? These best practices maximize the value of your online events Earlier this year, a report from the EU showed that 42%
Brazilian grain trading marketplace Tarken secured $3.5 million in a seed round, co-led by Monashees and Maya, to continue developing its technology that connects grain buyers and sellers and operates an artificial intelligence tool for commodity pricing. Joining them was Gilgamesh Ventures and individual investors, including Kavak founder Carlos Garcia, Ualá founder Pierpaolo Barbieri, Zap
Matt Bivons Contributor Matt Bivons is CEO and co-founder of Canopy Servicing, an API-first platform for personalized and transparent lending. He previously served as VP and GM at GreenSky, and head of growth at Earnest and VaycayHero. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) is an old form of payment that is new again in a big
Edtech unicorn Udemy priced its IPO at $29 per share, the upper end of its IPO range. Using a simple share count, the company was worth around $4 billion at its IPO price and a few hundred million more if a full -diluted share count is employed in our valuation calculations. For edtech, the Udemy
Former President Trump’s new social network might be in hot water before it even launches. Mastodon, a free social media framework, alleges that Truth Social is passing open source software off as its own and has given them 30 days to fix this. If it doesn’t fix things by the end of next month, things