Uber has had a good result against litigation in the Netherlands, where its European business is headquartered, that had alleged it uses algorithms to terminate drivers — but which the court has rejected. The ride-hailing giant has also been largely successful in fending off wide-ranging requests for data from drivers wanting to obtain more of […]
From the point of view of a consumer, customer service sometimes feels like a monolith, but behind the scenes it can be a very fragmented business, with dozens of companies providing various different tools to help agents do their jobs. Today, a startup founded by three Stripe alums that has set out to build a […]
For the last few years, ByteDance, the parent company of short video app TikTok, has been working to diversify its revenue streams beyond advertisement and find more ways to monetize its hundreds of millions of users. One area it is targeting is gaming, which has historically been a lucrative business in China’s internet economy. China […]
Luminar Technologies has deepened ties with Volvo Cars to develop and eventually sell an automated driving system for highways to other automakers. The partnership, announced Thursday, is between Luminar and Volvo’s self-driving software subsidiary Zenseact. The two companies are combining their tech to create what Luminar founder and CEO Austin Russell described as a “holistic […]
B2B SaaS startup Legl has bagged $7M in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures for its platform for law firms which offers tools to streamline core business processes such as customer onboarding, due diligence and payments. Existing investors Backed, Samaipata and First Round Capital, and angels including Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (ex CPO and COO GoCardless), Al Giles […]
The artist Beeple scores a huge NFT sale, Twitter Spaces are coming soon and Seth Rogen’s weed startup launches in the U.S. This is your Daily Crunch for March 11, 2021. The big story: NFT artwork sells for $69M For the first time, auction house Christie sold a digital-only artwork: “Everydays — The First 5000 […]
GM’s venture arm invested in battery startup SolidEnergy Systems five years ago. Now, GM is tapping the MIT spinout to help it pack more energy into its batteries, the latest in a string of moves by the automaker aimed at accelerating its shift to electric vehicles. GM president Mark Reuss, who announced the partnership Thursday […]
Today, the auction of an NFT digital art collage from a relatively unrecognized digital artist ended with a purchase price above $69 million. The work, called “Everydays — The First 5000 Days,” chronicled several years’ worth of daily sketches from the artist Mike Winkelmann — known online as Beeple. Unlike every other work the auction […]
Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship.
Volkswagen, once a dabbler in electric vehicles, is now betting its future on the technology. And the new Volkswagen ID.4 — a five-passenger, fully electric crossover with a starting price of $33,995 (before federal or state incentives) — is its first global effort to make EVs a mainstream product and part of its larger goal […]
Gather helps people, well, gather in virtual spaces for any reason, whether it be for weddings, magic conventions, or, just a regular day at work. Over the past few months, as remote workers look for better ways to interact with each other, the startup has quietly amassed more than 4 million users, and today, an […]
The alternative asset market showed promise pre-pandemic but amid a broader rally among traditional asset classes, the number of investors searching for and promoting value in the space has exploded. That has, in turn, promoted a pretty major influx of VC dollars into startups building platforms that wrangle these buyers into specific communities. Enter, Alt. […]
Pakistan has banned TikTok again in the country after reviewing a complaint that said the popular video app hosted immoral and objectionable content. A high court in the city of Peshawar on Thursday ordered the nation’s telecom authority — Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) — to ban TikTok. In a statement Thursday evening, Pakistan Telecom Authority […]
We’re just a few weeks out from the first TC Early Stage 2021 event on April 1-2. This two-day bootcamp helps early-inning founders develop core entrepreneurial skills for startup success. We’re talking essential topics led by experts in their field. Case in point. Intellectual property is your bread and butter — you need to safeguard it and […]
So, this is going to sound like a cop out (because, honestly, it kind of is), but the through line for the past week’s robotics investments is variety. That is to say that this week’s round of funding is all over the place in terms of verticals, which is probably an overall positive sign of […]
Coursera’s S-1 dropped last Friday, giving us a glimpse of the financial impact that COVID-19 had on a large edtech company. We worked through the numbers on the day the filing happened, but here are the core data points: Coursera’s 2020 revenue came to $293.5 million, up 59% from the year prior. During the same […]
We know that a lot of elements go into the formation of a startup ecosystem. When your city is outside of the major coastal tech centers, it takes a deliberate effort to get such a system off the ground. For Indianapolis, Indiana, it started with the creation of ExactTarget in 2000. When that company was […]
The popularity of video and other streamed content like podcasts is continuing to grow at a breakneck speed, and today a startup called Epidemic Sound, a marketplace to source the background music for that media, is announcing a huge round of funding to scale along with it. The Stockholm-based startup has raised $450 million from […]
