Enterprise automation startup JIFFY.ai announced today it has raised $18 million in Series A funding for product development and expansion into new markets around the world. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from Rebright Partners and W250 Venture Fund. A roster of executives from tech companies also invested, including AssetMarket chief
When it comes to Twitter tweaks, the focus in the last several months seems to have been more on working on ways to make its platform less prone to being abused by people who use it to spread false and misleading information and harassment, and generally weaponise it for aims that are ultimately harmful. But
No business is immune to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve seen Airbnb — a company particularly susceptible to this Black Swan event — go through an insane design sprint. Even enterprise collaboration tools have felt it, with Box readjusting its product road map to focus on how the tool worked for remote employees.
IQM Finland Oy (IQM), a European startup which makes hardware for quantum computers, has raised a €15M equity investment round from the EIC Accelerator program for the development of quantum computers. This is in addition to a raise of €3.3M from the Business Finland government agency. This takes the company’s funding to over €32M. The
London-based startup Codat has raised a $10 million funding round from Index Ventures. If you’ve ever tried to apply for a loan for your small business or filled out an application for an insurance product, you know it can be a long and painful process. Codat is building an API that connects with all the
Alkemics, the Paris-based platform that lets brands collaborate and launch products with retailers, has picked up €21 million in a Series C funding. It follows €20 million raised in 2016. Backing the round is growth-stage fund Highland Europe. Existing investors Cathay Innovation, Index Ventures, SEB Alliance and Serena Capital also participated. The new investment comes
Margaret Sessa-Hawkins Contributor Margaret Sessa-Hawkins is a MapLight contributor and journalist who focuses on the influence of deceptive online political messaging. Ann M. Ravel Contributor Ann M. Ravel is the Digital Deception Project Director at MapLight and previously served as chair of the Federal Election Commission. More posts by this contributor For true transparency around
Figma is one of the fastest-growing companies in the world of design and in the broader SaaS category. So it goes without saying that we’re absolutely thrilled to have Figma CEO Dylan Field join us at Early Stage, our virtual two-day conference on July 21 and 22, as a speaker. You can pick up a
French startup iBanFirst has raised a $23.8 million (€21 million) Series C round from Elaia and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund. Previous investors include Serena, Breega and Xavier Niel. iBanFirst lets you pay suppliers and get paid by clients all around the world in dozens of currencies. iBanFirst was in the process of raising its funding
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk took to the stage Thursday to unveil his new “Cybertruck,” an electric pickup truck. But, things didn’t go as planned when they tested out the “Tesla armor glass.”
Consolidation in the world of on-demand food ordering and delivery continues apace. Today, Just Eat Takeaway — the European company that only just got its own $7.8 billion merger approved by regulators in April of this year — officially announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Grubhub in the US for an enterprise value
Planck, an AI-based data platform for insurance underwriting, announced today that it has raised a $16 million Series B led by Team8 Capital. All of the startup’s existing investors—Viola FinTech, Arbor Ventures and Eight Roads—also participated, while Nationwide and Hannover Digital Investments joined as strategic investors. Based in New York, Planck provides large insurance companies
A new Twitter test feature aiming to “promote informed discussion” will nudge users to read before they retweet. The company describes the test as a step to help people be more aware of what they’re sharing in a broader effort to inspire “healthier conversations” on the platform. Sharing an article can spark conversation, so you
When you think about startup hubs, Tulsa, Oklahoma is probably not the first city that comes to mind. A coalition of business, education, government and philanthropists are working to foster a startup ecosystem in a city that’s better known for its aerospace and energy companies. These community leaders recognized that raising the standard of living
Following the launch of Inbox.ai in March — its “Slack for external communications” — Amsterdam-headquartered MessageBird is continuing to place big bets on a messaging-first future. Not content with building a platform for customer service teams that lets them communicate with customers on a channel of their choosing, including all of the most popular messaging
Everyone needs a webcam these days, whether for business meetings or the distant socializing accomplished via video calling — but if you’re like most, you’re using the built-in camera on your laptop or some piece of junk from years ago. But if you happen to have a nice big-brand camera, it’s easy to set it
After a series of developer previews, Google today released the first beta of Android 11 and with that, it is also making these pre-release versions available for over-the-air updates. This time around, the list of supported devices only includes the Pixel 2, 3, 3a and 4. If you’re brave enough to try this early version
Reports this morning indicate that Uber, the American ride-hailing giant with a global footprint, will lose out on its attempt to buy Grubhub, an American food ordering and delivery service. Uber competes with Grubhub domestically with its Uber Eats service; a tie-up between the two could have given Uber suffocating market share in the United
Today M1 Finance, a Chicago-based fintech startup focused on consumer finance, announced that it has closed a $33 million Series B. Left Lane Capital led the round, with participation from Clocktower Technology Ventures and Jump Capital. The firm has raised around $54.5 million to date. M1 Finance caught TechCrunch’s attention earlier in the year when
Platforms still aren’t doing enough to tackle disinformation related to the coronavirus crisis, the European Commission said today. In a Communication it is pressing tech platforms to produce monthly reports about their efforts in this area, asking for more detailed data on actions being taken to promote authoritative content; improve users’ awareness; and limit coronavirus
One of the huge challenges companies like enterprise SaaS vendors face with new customers is getting customer data into their service. It’s a problem that Flatfile founders faced first hand in their jobs, and they decided to solve it. Today, the company announced a healthy $7.6 million seed investment to expand on that vision. The
Babylon Health, a UK AI chatbot and telehealth startup which has been valued in excess of $2BN, has suffered an embarrassing data breach after a user of the app found he was able to access other patients’ video consultations. “Why have I got access to other patients video consultations through your app?” tweeted Rory Glover
The Huawei P40 Pro+ has already been on the market in China for a few days now. And in spite of various legal woes, the handset is set for international available on June 25. Given…everything the company is dealing with, it should come as no surprise that availablity outside of its home country will be
This is one [expletive deleted] tough time to be an early-stage startup founder. But giving up simply isn’t part of startup DNA. Instead, it’s time to do whatever it takes to catch the eyes and imagination of investors, media and other tech and business influencers. Here’s an easy way to begin. Apply to be a
It’s a winner-takes-all economy. More and more labor markets act as lotteries, where a couple of “superstar” workers make extremely outsized returns relative to their peers — who may well have started from the exact same starting line. In the tech world, two JavaScript engineers can potentially earn billions of dollars in differential compensation by
Facebook News, the social network’s dedicated section devoted to journalism, is today launching for all users in the U.S. The feature was first introduced in October 2019 as a limited test in the U.S. The product represents Facebook’s much-debated new effort in wooing publishers to its platform with the promise of increased distribution. In addition to
The IBM Cloud is currently suffering a major outage, and with that, multiple services that are hosted on the platform are also down, including everybody’s favorite tech news aggregator, Techmeme. It looks like the problems started around 2:30pm PT and spread from there. Best we can tell, this is a worldwide problem and involves a
Dec.27 — Gene Munster, Loup Ventures managing partner, discusses his top tech predictions for 2020 with Bloomberg’s Taylor Riggs on “Bloomberg Technology.”
BLCK VC Contributor BLCK VC is a nonprofit focused on empowering Black investors and increasing diversity in venture capital. We won’t sit here as we have for so many years with strong faces and encouraging words and pretend that we’re not tired. We’re tired because we’ve spent yet another week mourning our Black brothers and
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This time around we’re recording what we call an Equity Shot, a single-topic show that we pull together whenever there’s a news item of sufficient weight that it demands we break our regular cadence and record a little