Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. If you just read the headlines, you’d be excused for thinking that venture capital investment into financial-technology companies is at an all-time high. Big deals this year like Plaid’s $5.3 billion dollar exit to Visa,
Facebook’s AI tools are the only thing standing between its users and the growing onslaught of hate and misinformation the platform is experiencing. The company’s researchers have cooked up a few new capabilities for the systems that keep the adversary at bay, identifying COVID-19-related misinformation and hateful speech disguised as memes. Detecting and removing misinformation
Atlassian announced today that it was acquiring Halp, an early stage startup that enables companies to build integrated help desk ticketing and automated answers inside Slack. The companies did not disclose the purchase price. It was a big day for Halp, which also announced its second product today called Halp Answers. The new tool will
Target Global is backing a €1 million support fund for tech talent in Spain laid off or furloughed as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The aim is to provide pre-seed financing to help crisis-hit tech workers switch gears and build out a startup concept over the next four to six months, covering living expenses
Jul.25 — Bloom Energy hit the public market July 25, marking the first alternative energy company to IPO in a year and a half. Bloomberg’s Alex Barinka reports. The stock rose over 66% in it’s first day of trading.
It’s been a few years since August introduced any new hardware, but its August Wi-Fi Smart Lock, which it debuted at CES this year, is now available. This is the new flagship in the August lineup, replacing the August Smart Lock Pro as the latest and greatest feature-packed connected lock from the company, and it
Quibi founder Jeffrey Katzenberg is admitting that the short-form video service’s launch hasn’t gone the way he’d hoped — and he knows what to blame for its issues. “I attribute everything that has gone wrong to coronavirus,” Katzenberg said in an interview with The New York Times. “Everything. But we own it.” Back in April,
The current state of our COVID-19 world has underscored more than ever before the need for reliable delivery and e-commerce services: consumers sheltering in place are shopping more than ever online and getting items brought directly to their homes; and retailers urgently need platforms that can help them manage, sell and bring their goods to
The retirement wars are heating up. As millions of baby boomers leave their jobs in the coming years and transition into retirement, there is a huge competition for who will manage their savings. On one hand are traditional wealth managers, firms like Edward Jones, who either employ full-time human financial advisors or empower independent contractors
Instagram Lite, the two-year old version of the Instagram app aimed at emerging markets, has quietly disappeared. The previously highly-ranked app vanished from the Google Play charts on April 13 in the countries where it was active, including Kenya, Mexico, Peru and the Philippines. Existing Instagram Lite users have been directed to the main Instagram
In an episode of Extra Crunch Live last week, Roelof Botha expressed excitement not only about the shift to teleconference platforms like Zoom, but the apps and bots that may spring up on top of the Zoom ecosystem. Interestingly, Zoom just announced the results of its Marketplace App competition, with Docket taking first place. Docket
PlayPlay, the Paris-based startup behind a video creation tool that enables comms, marketing and social media teams to produce high-quality video content “in minutes”, has raised €10 million in funding. Leading the Series A round is Balderton Capital, with participation from Point Nine, and Kerala Ventures. Founded in 2017 by ex-Eurosport social media director Thibaut
When Zach Sims first started pitching his coding startup, Codecademy, he framed it to investors as a corporate tutoring company. That was intentional, despite the fact that edtech is a $5 trillion business. “It was much easier for investors to understand instead of an education company,” he said, noting that the industry has long been
Small- to medium-sized businesses are one of the most important parts of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many have trouble securing growth capital from traditional financial institutions. Validus wants to fix the financing gap with its peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects accredited lenders with SMEs. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $20 million
Haje Jan Kamps is a founder, photographer and journalist who logged time as a TechCrunch writer years ago and who has since launched a platform for virtual conferences called Konf. In a recent catch-up with him about work and life during COVID-19, we wound up talking at some length about Facebook, which is seeing record
Enterprise search has always been a tough nut to crack. The holy grail has always been to operate like Google, but in-house. You enter a few keywords and you get back that nearly perfect response at the top of the list of the results. The irony of trying to do search locally has been a
Aug.21 — Amazon.com Inc. today opened its largest campus building globally in the south Indian city of Hyderabad as it prepares for a furious expansion and battle with nemesis Walmart Inc. in one of the world’s fastest-growing retail markets. Bloomberg’s Brad Stone has more on “Bloomberg Technology.”
We recently interviewed Jon McNeill to learn more about his newest project, a startup studio called DeltaV Ventures. But we also wanted to hear about what it’s like to work inside of Tesla and Lyft. McNeill spent two-and-a-half years as the carmaker’s president, heading up global sales, marketing, delivery and government relations before heading to
Consumer fintech startups were massively successful in 2019, attracting millions of new users and disrupting traditional retail banks and financial services with mobile-first, consumer-oriented products. Despite the economic downturn in public markets and the massive wave of cuts at public and private companies in recent weeks, fintech startups have been raising a ton of money.
Twitter on Monday announced it will begin to add warning messages and labels to tweets spreading disputed or misleading information about COVID-19. The labels will direct users reading these tweets to a Twitter-curated page or to external resources that offer additional information and context about the claims being made in the tweet. The warnings, meanwhile,
As a number of startups get back into fundraising in earnest, one that is on a growth tear has closed a substantial debt round to hold on to more equity in the company as it inches to being cash-flow positive. MemSQL — the relational, real-time database used by organisations to query and analyse large pools
Hummingbird Bioscience, a startup focused on developing new treatments for cancer and other diseases, announced today it has added $6 million to its previously announced Series B, bringing the round’s total to $25 million. The extension was led by SK Holdings, and included participation from returning investors including Heritas Capital and SEEDS Capital, the investment
Vochi, a startup operating out of Belarus that’s created a “computer vision”-based video editing and effects app for mobile phones, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Ukraine-based Genesis Investments (backer of BetterMe and Jiji). It follows pre-seed funding in April 2019 from Bulba Ventures, where Vochi founder and CEO Ilya
Primer, a U.K. fintech that wants to help merchants consolidate their payments stack and easily support new payment methods in the future, has quietly raised £3.8 million in funding. Leading its £3.2 million seed round is Balderton Capital — which mostly does Series A — with participation from Taavet Hinrikus, who co-founded and previously led
May.08 — Byron Allen, Entertainment Studios chief executive officer, comedian and onetime TV host, discusses his investment in Sinclair Broadcast Group’ acquisition of Fox’s regional sports networks, and his company’s plans to buy four TV stations in Indiana and Louisiana. He speaks on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Sep.05 — Scott Galloway, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, discusses WeWork’s targeted initial public offering valuation with Bloomberg’s Romaine Bostick, Joe Weisenthal and Caroline Hyde on “Bloomberg Markets: What’d You Miss?”
Jan.14 — Rick Yang, NEA general partner and head of consumer investing, discusses Plaid Inc.’s agreement to be acquired by Visa Inc. for $5.3 billion and his views on the valuations in the fintech space. He speaks with Bloomberg’s Romaine Bostick, Scarlet Fu and Sonali Basak on “Bloomberg Markets: The Close.”
Aug.02 — Lab-grown diamonds, made for decades as an inexpensive alternative to mined stones for industrial purposes, are cracking the consumer market. In recent years, the technology to produce gem-quality stones has improved dramatically and is shaking up the $80 Billion dollar diamond industry. Diamond wafers are also being developed to power the future of
Nov.30 — George Hotz, Comma.ai founder, discusses self-driving car technology and regulations with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on “Bloomberg Technology.”
Jan.29 — Pierre Ferragu, New Street Research analyst, discusses Tesla Inc.’s better-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and China strategy with Bloomberg’s Paul Allen and Taylor Riggs on “Bloomberg Markets.”