TechCrunch

Trading platforms are being valued more like high-margin video games than software stocks.

Amazon is expanding customer deliveries via electric cargo vehicle to San Francisco, making the Bay Area the second of 16 total cities the company expects to bring its Rivian-sourced EVs to in 2021.  San Francisco’s unique terrain and climate were a couple of the reasons Amazon said it chose the city for its second round […]

In cybersecurity, nothing is “unhackable.” Security bugs are an unavoidable consequence of an online world, but how companies receive and respond to hackers can make or break them. Get it right, and you build bonds with the security and hacker community and improve your security by fixing flaws before malicious actors do. Get it wrong […]

The tech industry should be more vigilant than ever in opposing discriminatory state-level anti-LGBTQ legislation that would target workers and their families.

Nvidia’s cloud gaming service GeForce Now has announced some changes when it comes to subscription plans. Starting today, paid memberships now cost $9.99 per month, or $99.99 per year — they are now called ‘Priority’ memberships. If you’re an existing ‘Founders’ member, you’ll keep the same subscription price as long as you remain a subscriber. […]

The B2B payments space has been on fire for a while, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only fueled mass adoption of digitizing finances. In regions like Latin America, the need for innovation in the sector is even more paramount than in the United States with so many people still relying on outdated processes. One Mexico […]

OpenReel, a startup that makes it easier for teams to record videos remotely, has raised $19 million in Series A funding. CEO Lee Firestone told me that he and CTO Joe Mathew first started a video agency together, but when they were given “a pretty significant project” that involved remote production, they weren’t satisfied with […]

Before we get too far into this week’s roundup, I want to kick things off with an interview we haven’t published anywhere else. Earlier this week, we noted that Ford will be deploying some 100 researchers and engineers to the new $75 million facility at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. The automaker told TechCrunch […]

The running line from any acquired company CEO is that the company can do so much more with resources of the company that acquired it than it could on its own. Just seven months after being acquired, Drone, co-founder Brad Rydzewski says that his company really has benefited greatly from being part of Harness, and […]

Security compliance may not be the hottest conversation starter, but it’s a critical and often grueling process that companies have to endure every year to show that their security practices are up to par. It’s a burden that bogs down startups more than others, and so it’s fitting that startups are trying to find a […]

Sentry, the company that helps developers catch bugs before they result in downtime, has added support for React Native, Android and Xamarin to its Performance Monitoring software. The company, which reached unicorn valuation in its last funding, also updated its Flutter SDK with support for new languages. App monitoring platform Sentry gets $60 million Series […]

The team at Google’s Area 120 in-house incubator says the idea for ThreadIt came well before COVID-19 made remote work a necessity for large swaths of the globe. Of course, the pandemic certainly accelerated interest in the product among the team behind it. “It’s adjusted the lens through which everyone sees it,” Keller Smith, general […]

YouTube Shorts, the company’s short-form video experience and TikTok rival, is launching today in the U.S. The feature allows creators to record, edit and share short-form video content that’s 60 seconds or less in length, optionally set to popular music. At launch, YouTube has deals with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group […]

Kosta Eleftheriou, a co-founder of the Fleksy keyboard app later sold to Pinterest in an acqui-hire deal, has been calling attention to Apple App Store issues like fake reviews, ratings and subscription scams, as well as malicious clone apps, after his own app, FlickType, was targeted by scammers. Now, the developer is taking the next […]

Five years ago, entrepreneur Dan Sommer bet big on the adult learning space when he was building out Trilogy Education, an online and in-person bootcamp in collaboration with universities to train workforces on the latest tech skills. In 2019, Sommer sold that company for $750 million to 2U in one of the largest edtech exits […]

SecurityScorecard has been helping companies understand the security risk of its vendors since 2014 by providing each one with a letter grade based on a number of dimensions. Today, the company announced a $180 million Series E. The round includes new investors Silver Lake Waterman, T. Rowe Price, Kayne Anderson Rudnick and Fitch Venture, along […]

Barely more than seven months after its most recent funding announcement, Yotpo is revealing that it has raised another $230 million in a Series F round that values the company at $1.4 billion (post-money). “Our round, in my eyes, it’s all about celebrating the future of e-commerce,” co-founder and CEO Tomer Tagrin told me. “Brands […]

In February, London-listed telecom, Airtel Africa, said it was looking to sell a minority stake in its mobile money business in a bid to raise cash and sell off some assets. The firm seems to have found an investor as it announced that The Rise Fund, the global impact investing platform of investment firm TPG, […]

Asteya, a Miami-based disability insurance startup that is geared toward small business owners and gig workers, launched today with a seed round of $10 million. Co-founder and CEO Alex Williamson, who was Bumble’s chief brand officer, describes Asteya as an “income insurance” startup.  The announcement comes on the heels of Bumble’s IPO last month, signaling […]

Fireblocks has raised a $133 million Series C funding round led by Coatue, Ribbit, and Stripes. The company provides several products that let you store, transfer and issue digital assets. In particular, Fireblocks provides custody to institutional investors — it currently stores $400 billion in cryptocurrencies. BNY and Silicon Valley Bank are also participating in today’s […]