As impressive as the cameras in our smartphones are, they’re fundamentally limited by the physical necessities of lenses and sensors. Metalenz skips over that part with a camera made of a single “metasurface” that could save precious space and battery life in phones and other devices… and they’re about to ship it. The concept is […]
The early-stage carbon offset API developer Patch could be another one of Andreessen Horowitz’s early bets on climate tech. According to several people with knowledge of the investment round, former OpenTable chief executive and current Andreessen Horowitz partner Jeff Jordan is looking at leading the young company’s latest financing. Such an investment would be a […]
Google today announced the launch of Apigee X, the next major release of the Apgiee API management platform it acquired back in 2016. “If you look at what’s happening — especially after the pandemic started in March last year — the volume of digital activities has gone up in every kind of industry, all kinds […]
Marketing software company HubSpot is acquiring The Hustle, the business and tech media startup behind the popular newsletter of the same name. Axios broke the news of the deal and reported that it values the startup at around $27 million. HubSpot declined to comment on the deal price, and while tweeting about the acquisition, The […]
Here in the U.S., we take for granted the ability to invest and trade in the stock market. So while we can get in an uproar about the various ways Robinhood may or may not be acting responsibly, it can be easy to forget that not everyone in the world has the same access to […]
Google is introducing features that will allow users to take vital health measurements using just the camera they already have on their smartphone, expanding to a whole new group of people health and fitness features typically only available on dedicated wearables. Beginning next month, and available initially on Google Pixel phones exclusively (but with plans […]
Class, launched less than a year ago by Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen, integrates exclusively with Zoom to offer a more customized classroom for students and teachers alike. The inaugural product, Class for Zoom, uses both management and instruction tools to bolster the video conferencing call experience. Formerly named ClassEDU, the startup announced today that it […]
Electric bike sales boomed in 2020, a phenomenon driven by the COVID-19 pandemic and the disruption it delivered consumers’ daily lives. Now, Rad Power Bikes is reaping those rewards and using them to double its workforce and scale globally. The Seattle-based startup said Thursday it has raised $150 million from institutional investors including Morgan Stanley’s […]
Monkey, a financial marketplace for receivables in Latin America, has raised $6 million in Series A funding. Quona Capital and Kinea Ventures co-led the round. The São Paulo-based startup was founded in 2016 by a trio that includes former Citi investment banker Gustavo Müller, Bruno Oliveira (who worked in strategic planning for Telefonica) and Felipe […]
London and Barcelona based audio-as-a-service SaaS startup Aflorithmic has scooped up $1.3 million in seed funding from Crowd Media Holdings, an Australia-based company focused on influencer-based ‘social commerce’ and marketing. It’s taking a 10% stake in Aflorithmic, per a press release, where it says the strategic investment is aimed at enabling it to offer FaceTime […]
Most Indians can’t access credit from formal financial institutions because they don’t have a credit score of any form to prove their creditworthiness. As an alternative, they look at informal institutions such as pawn shops or more recently, apps that offer loans without any paperwork but could charge interest rates as high as 1,000% and […]
We talk a lot these days about the future of work and the proliferation of new and better tools for distributed workforces, but companies focused on developing fleet management software — even if they have not really been viewed as “tech startups” — have been working on this problem for many years already. Today, one […]
It’s been a year since I covered ManoMano, the French e-commerce platform focused on DIY, home improvement and gardening products. And 2020 has been a successful years as the company’s gross merchandise volume doubled to €1.2 billion ($1.45 billion at today’s rate). ManoMano’s sales are also accelerating as the company reported a 50% increase in […]
Relationships can be messy, including between startup founders and their venture investors. But in a case that takes messy to an extreme, an insurtech company in Santa Monica, Calif. called Sure is alleging that its Series A investor used privileged information to launch a very similar, New York-based startup called Boost. Sure further assets that […]
Affirm, Afterpay, Klarna, Quadpay. These are some of the big global players in the buy now, pay later (BNPL) movement. They allow shoppers to purchase products online and pay in installments with nominal or no fees, and have become more prominent due to how the pandemic accelerated e-commerce market growth around the world. Credit card […]
Until now General Catalyst has been better known as a US VC which makes occasional forays into European territory. But that changes with the news today that Chris Bischoff, an experienced London-based investor, joins as Managing Director of its new London office. Bischoff brings with him an extensive track record of investment across the US […]
Meet Cajoo, a new French startup that has raised a $7.3 million (€6 million) funding round. The company wants to make it easier to order groceries from your phone and receive them 15 minutes later. It is launching in Paris today. “I left Bolt around mid-August and I’m launching a company with two co-founders focused […]
While China bans cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings, the government is set to leverage the underpinning technology — often without the decentralized part. Blockchain, for instance, could help track the shipment of luxury goods and authenticate court evidence. In the process of adopting blockchain applications in its own interest, China also wants to become […]
Storyblok, a ‘headless’ CMS for developers and marketers to deliver content, has raised an $8.5 million Series A funding round led by Mubadala Capital, alongside existing Storyblok investors firstminute capital and 3VC. The Austria-founded company’s platform counts Pizza Hut, Adidas, UPC, Greggs, Decathlon and others among its roster of clients, alongside many thousands of solo […]
Mobile Premier League (MPL) has raised $95 million in a new financing round, just five months after it secured $90 million as the two-and-a-half-year-old Bangalore-based esports and gaming platform looks to grow in international markets. The new $95 million round, a Series D, was led by Composite Capital and Moore Strategic Ventures and gave the […]
