With prices ranging from $15 to $50, the strawberries grown by the vertical farming startup Oishii aren’t going to be found in just any grocery store. Instead, the nearly five year-old startup is taking what its co-founder Hiroki Koga called the Tesla approach and targeting the highest end of the market in a New York […]
SpaceX now has 60 more Starlink satellites in orbit – it launched its latest full complement of the internet broadband spacecraft early this morning from Cape Canaveral in Florida. Just last Thursday, SpaceX launched its last batch of 60, and this past week it also confirmed that it’s expanding its beta of the Starlink internet […]
Primary care startup Forward Health is looking to expand its tech-powered, personalized healthcare model across the U.S., and will use a new $225 million Series D raise to help make it happen. The new capital comes from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, SoftBank, Mark Benioff – and recording artist The Weeknd – among others. I spoke […]
Three and a half years after launching Google Pay in India, the Android-maker is paving the way to tap its users’ transaction data for monetization purposes — though it plans to give them ample warning, and the option to opt-out. Google said on Thursday that it will roll out an update to Google Pay next […]
Taavet Hinrikus, the first employee of Skype and co-founder of fintech giant Wise (formerly TransferWise), is teaming up with Teleport co-founder and current Topia CPO Sten Tamkivi to create a new investment vehicle. Both are already seasoned investors — Hinrikus is one of Europe’s bona fide super angels, with over 100 investments to his name […]
The traditional process of buying, insuring and financing cars across emerging markets can be challenging, and it defeats the purpose of building an all-around car shopping experience. Today, FlexClub, a South African company, has been provided with $5 million to improve drivers’ experience in these markets. FlexClub was founded in 2019 by Marlon Gallardo, Rudolf […]
mPharma, a Ghanaian health tech startup that manages prescription drug inventory for pharmacies and their suppliers, today announced its expansion to Ethiopia. The company was founded by Daniel Shoukimas, Gregory Rockson and James Finucane in 2013. It specializes in vendor-managed inventory, retail pharmacy operations and market intelligence serving hospitals, pharmacies and patients. In Africa, the pharmaceutical […]
Snyk, a developer of application security technology, is now worth $4.7 billion after a new fundraising and secondary sale that totaled $300 million. In all, investors have poured $470 million into the company after this new investment, which was led by Accel and Tiger Global, with participation from a host of existing investors including Addition, […]
Montreal-based Heyday announced today that it has raised $6.5 million Canadian ($5.1 million in US dollars) in additional seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Steve Desjarlais told me that the startup’s goal is to allow retailers to support more automation and more personalization in their online customer interactions, while co-founder and CMO Etienne Merineau described it […]
Apple is making a big investment in Germany, Russia takes aim at Twitter and Roblox goes public. This is your Daily Crunch for March 10, 2021. P.S. Don’t forget to sign up for TC Early Stage 2021, a virtual event focused on operations and fundraising that we’re holding on April 1 and 2! Apple announces […]
Last month Jeff Bezos announced he would step down as CEO of Amazon later this year, moving into the executive chairman role, while passing the baton to AWS CEO Andy Jassy. Could Marc Benioff, co-founder, chairman and CEO at Salesforce be the next big-name executive to make a similar move? A Reuter’s story published on […]
The U.S. Department of Defense is setting up a working group to focus on climate change. The new group will be led by Joe Bryan, who was appointed as a special assistant to the Secretary of Defense focused on climate earlier this year. The move is one of several steps that the Biden administration has […]
A newly launched Mac app called Superpowered aims to make it easier to stay on top of all your Zoom calls and Google Meets, without having to scramble to find the meeting link in your inbox or calendar app at the last minute. Instead of relying on calendar reminders, Superpowered offers a notification inbox for the […]
Actor Terry Crews is going in on the blockchain. With the help of social currency startup Roll, Crews is launching his own social currency, $POWER. But first, let’s break down what that means. Anyone can create a social currency, which hundreds of creators have already done via Roll, to change their relationships with fans and […]
Facebook has challenged the FTC’s antitrust case against it using a standard playbook that questions the agency’s arguably expansive approach to defining monopolies. But the old reliable “we’re not a monopoly because we never raised prices” and “how can it be anti-competitive if we never allowed competition” may themselves soon be challenged by new doctrine […]
As we look ahead to a hybrid work world, we must find new ways to continue supporting employee productivity and creativity. It’s only when we’re able to fully realize passive collaboration virtually that we’ll have unlocked the full potential of remote and hybrid work situations.
As Roblox began to trade today, the company’s shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Currently, Roblox is trading at $71.10 per share, up just over 60% from the reference price that it announced last night. That effort finally set a directional value of sorts on Roblox’s shares before it floated on […]
British electric vehicle subscription service Onto has partnered with Shell to give its users access to charging stations in preparation for a wave of new EVs coming to market over the next several years. The partnership, which Shell announced Tuesday, will give Onto customers access to more than 3,400 Shell Recharge charge points in the […]
Twitter says it’s running a test with a small subset of iOS and Android users to “give people an accurate preview” of what an image will look like without the trial and error that process involves now. As it stands now, the platform automatically crops images to make them display in a more condensed way […]