Buy-now-pay-later services have become so ubiquitous that BNPL may as well just be another way to say ‘debt.’ But in Mexico, where BNPL platform Aplazo operates, a large underbanked population makes BNPL more like an alternative to cash. The four-year-old Mexican fintech startup facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer
Fast consumption and waste generation run rampant in all industries, but it’s particularly true around baby equipment. Tiny humans get big fast, and parents might be nervous to buy used items (“Is that high chair really sanitized?”) and are often too stressed out to think about what to do with the equipment the little tyke
At the start of the year, Tesla’s Supercharger team was tasked with the impossible. “We were on an exponential path,” a former team member told TechCrunch, adding that the new targets were “super-duper crazy.” Despite the bottlenecks that such expectations can create, “every time they upped the metric, we met it.” Then, one day in
In the third episode of “Creative Dialogues,” an interview series produced by the filmmaking division of generative AI startup Runway, multimedia artist Claire Hentschker expresses a fear that AI will commoditize the artistic process to the point where art homogenizes, regressing to a sort of derivative sameness. “Are you getting this increasingly narrower average of
Meesho, a leading e-commerce startup in India with about 150 million transacting users, has secured $275 million in a new funding round, the company disclosed in a securities filing. The new funding is part of a larger financing round that is likely to include secondary transactions and balloon to over $500 million, people familiar with
Bluesky is now allowing users to personalize their main Discover feeds. The social network is rolling out an updated version of its app that lets users offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so they can better customize it using “Show more like this” and “Show less like this” buttons in a post’s menu to choose
Back in September 2021, Cloudsmith raised $15 million in Series A funding for its cloud platform that manages companies’ software supply chains. At the time, that was the largest Series A round for a Northern Ireland company since 2005, so it definitely got something right! I was delighted to look over Cloudsmith’s deck to see
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Look, I know this is our startups weekly newsletter, and as the most valuable company in the world, Apple is kind of the ultimate “not a
Scarcely five months after its founding, hard tech startup Layup Parts has landed a $9 million round of financing led by Founders Fund to transform composites manufacturing. Lux Capital and Haystack also participated. The breakneck pace is more than a subtle indication that investors’ appetite for tech-focused solutions to the woes of the American industrial base
Smart ring maker Oura is launching two new features focused on heart health, the company announced on Friday. The first claims to help users get an idea of their cardiovascular age, while the second feature aims to estimate their cardio capacity. Depending on a person’s results, Oura will offer strategies on how to sleep, move,
Groww, an Indian investment app, has become one of the first startups from the country to shift its domicile back to India from the U.S., signaling a broader trend among the local startup community. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, which allows consumers to buy shares and mutual funds, made the transition in March, its co-founder and chief
When Class founder Michael Chasen was in college, he and a buddy came up with the idea for Blackboard, an online classroom organizational tool. His original company was acquired for $1.64 billion in 2011. Chasen later developed Class, a Zoom add-on, during the pandemic to help teachers make better use of Zoom in a classroom
Paris-based Mistral AI, a startup working on open source large language models — the building block for generative AI services — has been raising money at a $6 billion valuation, three times its valuation in December, to compete more keenly against the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources. We understand
TabaPay has abandoned its plans to purchase the assets of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse, TabaPay confirmed to TechCrunch today. Synapse says the problem is banking partner Evolve Bank & Trust. And Evolve says it is not involved, and not to blame. Meanwhile, another player in the saga, Mercury, says Synapse’s allegations have “no merit.” Synapse’s
For cancer patients, medicines administered in clinical trials can help save or extend lives. But despite thousands of trials in the United States each year, only 3% to 5% of eligible patients enroll in investigations of new treatments. Triomics, a generative AI startup, claims it can significantly reduce the time it takes doctors to match
Here’s a tidbit of startup history that may not be widely known outside of the tech firms themselves: The first versions of popular Android apps, like Twitter, were built by Google itself. That revelation came about via a new podcast with Twitter’s former senior director of product management, Sara Beykpour, now the co-founder of the
On Thursday, Reddit is rolling out a new policy aimed at balancing its desire to license its content to larger tech companies, like Google, and protecting users’ privacy. The newly announced “Public Content Policy” will now join Reddit’s existing privacy policy and content policy to guide how Reddit’s data is being accessed and used by
Line Man Wongnai, an on-demand food delivery service in Thailand, is considering an initial public offering on a Thai exchange or the U.S. in 2025, the company’s CEO and co-founder, Yod Chinsupakul, said in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch. Line Man Wongnai has yet to finalize where it will launch the IPO, but a dual-listing
Apple can generally be relied on for clever, well-produced ads, but it missed the mark with its latest, which depicts a tower of creative tools and analog items literally crushed into the form of the iPad. Many, including myself, had a negative and visceral reaction to this, and we should talk about why. It’s not
For the founders of Atlan, a data governance startup, data has always been at the heart of what they do, even before they launched the company. In fact, co-founders Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka got their start building India’s national data platform called SocialCops. So it probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that they have
Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous. Lucid Bots came on the scene in 2018 with its Sherpa line of drones to clean windows in tall places, and now it’s back to take on more labor-intensive tasks. The Charlotte, N.C.-based company, which was part of Y Combinator’s 2019 cohort,
Mushrooms continue to be a big area for alternative proteins. Canada-based Maia Farms recently raised $1.7 million to develop a blend of mushroom and plant-based protein using biomass fermentation. There’s also MyForest Foods and Fable Food. Then there’s Meati Foods, which claims it’s like no other alternative protein. The company makes cutlets and steaks from
Monzo has raised another £150 million ($190 million), as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally — particularly in the U.S. The new round comes just two months after Monzo raised £340 million ($425 million), meaning the London-based company has now raised north of $610 million in 2024, and $1.5 billion since its inception nine
Close to a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Matteo Shapira co-founded a company, Replay, that created a video format for 360-degree replays — the sorts of replays that have become part and parcel of major sports broadcasts. Replay caught the attention of Intel, which acquired the company in 2016 for a reported $175 million, and
We’ve all seen them. The inspector with a clipboard, walking around a building, ticking off the last time the fire extinguishers were checked, or if all the lights are working. They work in the TICC (Testing, Inspection, Certification and Compliance) space, and they literally tick boxes. And while the job may seem simple enough to
Autonomous, AI-based players are coming to a gaming experience near you, and a new startup, Altera, is joining the fray to build this new guard of AI agents. The company announced Wednesday that it raised $9 million in an oversubscribed seed round, co-led by First Spark Ventures (Eric Schmidt’s deep-tech fund) and Patron (the seed stage
With venture totals slipping year-over-year in key markets like the United States, and concern that venture firms themselves are struggling to raise more capital, founders might be worried. After all, if private-market investment doesn’t perk up in the coming quarters, we could be on track for yet another year of declines in total startup investment
Private social networking is making a comeback. Gratitude Plus, a startup that aims to shift social media in a more positive direction, is expanding its wellness-focused, personal reflections journal to include support for families who want to stay in touch even when physically distant. The startup, whose name reflects its core offering of a gratitude
Platform is a word that gets tossed around a lot in technology circles, so much so that it’s often misused. But here’s the basic business school definition: A platform is a company or business model that creates more value for participants than it captures for itself. Consider that some of the most successful companies in
Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company had spent nine years working on chemical processes that could turn old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news was the team had finally cracked it: CleanFiber’s technology pumped out insulation — really good insulation. It had fewer contaminants and produced less dust than other cellulose
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- …
- 498
- Next Page »