Community banks and credit unions aim to be the heart of the, well, communities, they serve. But without the big budgets of larger institutions, keeping up technology-wise can be a challenge. And not only are they competing with legacy players, there is also a slew of digital banks that have emerged in recent years, as […]
Pulumi was one of the first of what is now a growing number of infrastructure-as-code startups and today, at its developer conference, the company is launching version 3.0 of its cloud engineering platform. With 70 new features and about 1,000 improvements since version 2.0, this is Pulumi’s biggest release yet. The new release includes features […]
Founded almost a decade ago, Octopus Deploy has grown to serve 25,000 organizations, including Microsoft, NASA, Xero, Disney and Stack Overflow, through bootstrapping. Today the company announced its first outside investment. Insight Partners has taken a minority stake in Octopus Deploy for $172.5 million and will help the automated enterprise software deployment company embark on […]
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a landmark bill aimed at easing restrictions placed on the cannabis industry. The SAFE ACT (Secure and Fair Enforcement) banking act provides safe harbor for financial institutions to work with cannabis operators. If passed by the Senate and approved by President Biden, this bill would allow the cannabis industry […]
A startup that enables businesses to set up and manage their billing, subscription, revenue operations and compliance has become the newest firm to earn the much coveted unicorn status. Chennai and San Francisco-headquartered Chargebee said on Tuesday it has raised $125 million in its Series G financing round led by Sapphire Ventures and existing investors […]
The FoodTech industry is effectively now going into fast food. Sweetgreen in the US is a ‘fast-casual’ restaurant chain that serves healthy “bowl food”. It’s raised $478.6M. A similar firm is Sweetfin. Both employ a lot of tech in their back-end to improve efficiencies. Into this area has come European startup Poke House, which is […]
The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has given the go ahead to local startup sees.ai, which is developing a beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) command & control solution to aid data capture for industrial use-cases, to trial a concept for routine BVLOS operations — the first such authorization for a U.K. company, the regulator said today. The test […]
Venmo is adding support for cryptocurrency, starting today. The company says it will begin to roll out the ability for Venmo’s more than 70 million users to buy, hold and sell cryptocurrencies directly in the app, similar to the support Venmo parent company PayPal added late last year. Initially, Venmo will support four types of […]
Tesla is working on vehicles tailored to Chinese consumers as complaints about the quality of its electric vehicles send shock waves through the internet in the country. The American EV giant is mulling new products that will be designed from the ground up for China, Grace Tao, a vice president at Tesla, told 21st Century […]
“Challenger” startups in banking and insurance have upended their industries, and picked up significant business, by building more customer-friendly tools and services — more personalized, easier to access, and usually competitively priced — than those typically provided their bigger, incumbent rivals. Now, a startup out of Romania that is building tools to help the incumbents […]
Earlier this year we covered the launch of Heights, a new supplements startup in an increasingly hot category. Feel, is a year-old UK startup with another twist on this world: pure nutritional supplements. It’s now closed a $6.2 million investment, led by Fuel Ventures, with participation from TMT Investments, Sova VC, Richard Longhurst (founder of […]
In the past ten years, an investment team led by Christian Winter, Jan Sessenhausen, Helmut Klawitter and Wilken Engelbracht worked principally with German family offices, investing in startups such as Klarna, Zalando and Delivery Hero that went on to be worth around €80 billion in total. Today they are launching a VC firm of their own, Cusp Capital, with €300 million ($361m) […]
Qapita, a Singapore-based fintech that provides capitalization table and employee stock ownership plans (ESOP) management software, has raised $5 million in pre-Series A funding. The round was led by MassMutual Ventures, with participation from Endiya Partners and angel investors including Avaana Capital founder Anjali Bansal and Udaan co-founder Sujeet Kumar. Vulcan Capital and East Ventures, […]
One after another, Chinese tech giants have announced their plans for the auto space over the last few months. Some internet companies, like search engine provider Baidu, decided to recruit help from a traditional carmaker to produce cars. Xiaomi, which makes its own smartphones but has stressed for years it’s a light-asset firm making money […]
Dott has raised a new $85 million Series B funding round — this round is a mix of equity and asset-backed debt financing. Belgium-based investment company Sofina is leading the investment. Dott is a micromobility startup that is better known for its colorful electric scooters that you can find across several European cities. The company […]
Singapore-based fintech Hashstacs Pte Ltd (STACS) announced today it has raised $3.6 million USD in pre-Series A funding. The company develops blockchain platforms that can work with financial institutions’ existing infrastructure, and its core technology is also used in GreenSTACS for environmental, social and governance (ESG) investments. The round was led by Wavemaker Partners, which […]
Indonesian startup CoLearn started as a chain of physical tutoring centers and was in the process of shifting to a hybrid offline-online model when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The team sensed that remote learning would permanently change how students want to be tutored and decided to focus completely on its app, which launched in August […]
Fintech startup Payhawk has raised a $20 million funding round. QED Investors is leading the round with existing investor Earlybird Digital East also participating. Payhawk is building a unified system to manage all the money that is going in and out. Essentially, companies switching to Payhawk can replace several services they already use and that […]
Facebook reveals its Clubhouse competitor, Parler will return to Apple’s App Store and a helicopter flies on Mars. This is your Daily Crunch for April 19, 2021. The big story: Facebook announces new audio products Yes, these products include new Clubhouse-style Live Audio Rooms, as well as the ability for podcasters to share long-form audio, […]
Surprise! It’s another Apple Event. Gone are the days of getting a few weeks’ notice before these events now that they’re entirely virtual (at least until 2022, most likely). Instead, the company just dropped the news last week. Thankfully, there have been plenty of rumors leading up to tomorrow’s big event — and perhaps even […]
