CockroachDB was intended to be a global database from the beginning. The founders of Cockroach Labs wanted to ensure that data written in one location would be viewable immediately in another location 10,000 miles away. The use case was simple, but the work needed to make it happen was herculean. The company is betting the
Facebook’s lead regulator in the European Union must “swiftly” investigate the legality of data-sharing related to a controversial WhatsApp policy update, following an order by the European Data Protection Board (EDPB). We’ve reached out to the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) for a response. Updated terms had been set to be imposed upon users of
Arcc, a coworking space in Singapore available for bookings on Deskimo Part of Y Combinator’s current batch, Deskimo wants to make finding coworking spaces easier. Its on-demand booking app is currently available in Singapore and Hong Kong, with plans to enter more markets after Demo Day. Its founders are former Rocket Internet executives who say
Easy Eat AI, a Singapore-based startup that wants to “transform restaurants into technology companies,” announced today it has raised $5 million in funding. Easy Eat AI offers an operating system for restaurants that lets them digitize all parts of their business, from inventory and customer orders to delivery, and gain AI-based data analytics to improve
We knew DMs were on the way to Clubhouse and today the new feature landed, spicing up the audio-only app with a text-based chat feature. Clubhouse’s new direct messaging system, called “Backchannel,” gives users an oft-requested way to start conversations behind the scenes on the social audio app. Backchannel offers both one-on-one messaging as well
Simpplr, a modern platform for building intranet sites (or ’employee communications and enablement platforms,’ as the company calls it), today announced that it has raised a $32 million Series C round led by Tola Capital. Norwest Ventures, which led the company’s Series B round last year, as well as Salesforce Ventures and George Still Ventures
French startup Wecasa has raised a $17.7 million funding round (€15 million). Blisce is leading the funding round with existing investors Serena, ISAI and Frédéric Mazzella also participating. The company has been building a marketplace for home care and wellness. Over the past few years, Wecasa has kept adding new verticals. The startup originally specialized
While retail investors grew more comfortable buying cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2021, the decentralized application world still has a lot of work to do when it comes to onboarding a mainstream user base. Phantom is part of a new class of crypto startups looking to build infrastructure that streamlines blockchain-based applications and provides
Venture capital price discipline is out the window; venture funds are looking to make faster, earlier deals; and more unicorns were minted in the last three months than during any quarter in history. It’s a busy time for startups and their financial backers. Now weeks into July, it’s increasingly clear that 2021 is shaping up
WhatsApp is finally pushing an improvement to a key feature that even the Facebook-owned instant messaging service acknowledges has been a top request from users for years. On Wednesday, WhatsApp said it is rolling out a limited public beta test for its improved multi-device capability. The update enables WhatsApp users for the first time to
Anthony Cimino Contributor Anthony Cimino, head of policy at Carta, works with policymakers and innovators to drive economic opportunity through expanding equity ownership and private market liquidity. The increasing regulation of ESG (environmental, social, governance) disclosure reporting may have started in the public markets, but will almost certainly have downstream effects for private market actors
When it comes to tough environments to build new technology, firefighting has to be among the most difficult. Smoke and heat can quickly damage hardware, and interference from fires will disrupt most forms of wireless communications, rendering software all but useless. From a technology perspective, not all that much has really changed today when it
It’s been fascinating to watch the development of Eventtus, a startup I came across many years ago on my travels in the Middle East, finding them at the Rise-Up Summit in Cairo in 2012. Then, it was two young women who’d taken the Silicon Valley startup culture to heart and created their own take on
As mobile developers build apps, they push them out into the world and problems inevitably develop, which engineers have to scramble to fix. Mobile.dev, a new startup from a former Uber engineer, wants to flip that story and catch errors before the app launches. Today, the company emerged from stealth with a beta of their
Unybrands is the latest e-commerce aggregator to pick up a significant investment, this time closing $300 million in growth capital from Crayhill Capital Management. The Miami-based company, which created a platform for e-commerce businesses looking to scale their operations on and off Amazon, was founded in 2020. It previously raised a $25 million seed round
There are far fewer annoying things than managing one’s passwords. There are a bunch of companies out there to help you attempt to do that. And there’s also a number of companies that want to go a step further and eliminate the password completely. One such company, Stytch, just raised $30 million in a Series
Anyone, an audio app that’s building a ‘marketplace for advice’ one five-minute phone call at a time, is launching new versions of its iOS and Android apps today* and beginning to large-scale onboarding after operating in a limited closed beta for the past six months. The app — which was founded around 18 months ago
Financial services-as-a-service — where entities like neobanks, retailers and others can create and sell their own financial products by way of a few lines of code and APIs — has been one of the bigger trends in the world of fintech in recent years, with embedded finance on its way to being a $7.2 trillion
Life insurance — financial protection you buy against your death — may not read like the liveliest of industries on paper. But a life insurance startup that believes it can turn that stigma around, by infusing the concept with gamification and a push towards wellness and health — and change the life insurance industry in
Syfe founder Dhruv Arora Investment apps in Southeast Asia are attracting a lot of funding, and now some are raising fast follow-on rounds, too. For example, Indonesian robo-advisor app Bibit raised $65 million in May just four months after a $30 million growth round. Now Singapore-based Syfe is announcing that it has closed a $40
Great Question’s user dashboard Customer research is invaluable for software companies, but there are many obstacles, like finding the right group of people to survey. Great Question wants to make building and talking to their own panels accessible to all companies, no matter their size. The startup, which recently completed Y Combinator’s summer 2021 program,
The online chat platform Discord is buying Sentropy, a company that makes AI-powered software to detect and remove online harassment and hate. Discord currently uses a “multilevel” approach to moderation, relying on an in-house human moderation team as well as volunteer mods and admins to create ground rules for individual servers. A Trust and Safety
Revel is turning to an app that gamifies energy use to keep its fleet of more than 3,000 electric mopeds charged without putting a strain on New York City’s power grid. Electricity is the key ingredient for the Brooklyn-based startup, which has more recently expanded beyond shared electric mopeds and into e-bike subscriptions, fast-charging infrastructure
Boopathy Rajendran Contributor Boopathy Rajendran is the senior vice president and heads global delivery and services at Vuram, a hyperautomation services company specializing in low-code enterprise automation. Reliance on a single technology as a lifeline is a futile battle now. When simple automation no longer does the trick, delivering end-to-end automation needs a combination of
It’s clear that there is an enormous and growing appetite amongst consumers to switch to products and services which address some of the biggest issues of our era, whether it be climate change or problems with society. So we’ve seen the rise of ethical investing apps, or ways to reduce our carbon footprint, or shop
On a recent episode of Extra Crunch Live, Retail Zipline founder Melissa Wong and Emergence Capital investor Lotti Siniscalco joined Managing Editor Jordan Crook to walk attendees through Zipline’s Series A deck. Interestingly, the conversation revealed that Wong declined an invitation to do a virtual pitch and insisted on an in-person meeting. “She was one
Indian food delivery startup Zomato said on Tuesday evening that it has raised $562.3 million from its anchor investors ahead of IPO opening on Wednesday. Zomato, which counts Ant Financial has already secured nearly 45% of the $1.3 billion it plans to raise through the IPO, the 12-year-old Gurgaon-headquartered startup revealed in a filing to
If you’re tired of sending brilliant takes into the Twitterverse only to be met with wave after wave of reply guys, a new Twitter feature could give you some relief. Starting today, anyone on Twitter will be able to adjust who can reply to individual tweets after they’ve been sent. Previously, you could limit who
Oakland-based Mighty Buildings, which is on a quest to build homes using 3D printing, robotics and automation, has raised a $22 million extension to its Series B round of funding. The additional capital builds upon a $40 million a raise the company announced earlier this year, bringing its total funding since its 2017 inception to
ZoomInfo announced this morning it intends to acquire conversational sales intelligence tool Chorus.AI for $575 million. Shares of ZoomInfo are unchanged in pre-market trading following the news, per Yahoo Finance data. Sales intelligence, Chorus’s market, is a hot space that uses AI to “listen” to sales conversations to help improve interactions between salespeople and customers.