When we examine any year in enterprise M&A, it’s tempting to highlight the biggest, gaudiest deals — and there were plenty of those in 2020. I’ve written about 34 acquisitions so far this year. Of those, 15 were worth $1 billion or more, 12 were small enough to not require that the companies disclose the […]
Ahead of the turning of the New Year, many people are wishing they could do something about the environment. Now, a U.K. startup hopes to make our environmental impact more personal. Yayzy has now launched an iOS app (Android is coming) which literally links to your bank account to work out the environmental impact of […]
ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, is entering the health industry as it seeks to diversify a business dependent on advertising and livestreaming sales. The company, which prides itself on content algorithms, has started seeking talent in AI drug discovery across Mountain View, Shanghai and Beijing, its recruiting page shows. “We are looking for candidates to […]
Instant messaging app Telegram is “approaching” 500 million users and plans to generate revenue starting next year to keep the business afloat, its founder Pavel Durov said on Wednesday. Durov said he has personally bankrolled the seven-year-old business so far, but as the startup scales he is looking for ways to monetize the instant messaging […]
You’ve heard of challenger banks? Now meet the challenger energy suppliers. The U.K.’s Octopus Energy has attained a $2.06 billion valuation (£1.5 billion) after attracting a $200 million (£150 million) investment from Tokyo Gas, for a 9.7% stake, in order to launch a joint venture. Octopus will own 30% of the venture, with Tokyo Gas […]
Lalamove will extend its network to cover more small Chinese cities after raising $515 million in Series E funding, the on-demand logistics company announced on its site. The round was led by Sequoia Capital China, with participation from Hillhouse Capital and Shunwei Capital. All three are returning investors. According to Crunchbase data, this brings Lalamove’s […]
WeRide, one of China’s most-funded startups developing autonomous driving capabilities, said on Wednesday that it has raised a $200 million strategic round from Chinese bus maker Yutong. Mega investments aren’t uncommon at companies like WeRide developing the next-generation level 4 driving standard, which denotes that the car can handle the majority of driving situations independently without […]
TaskRabbit has reset an unknown number of customer passwords after confirming it detected “suspicious activity” on its network. The IKEA -owned online marketplace for on-demand labor said it reset user passwords out of an abundance of caution and that it “took steps to prevent access to any user accounts,” a TaskRabbit spokesperson told TechCrunch. The […]
The stimulus bill includes significant changes to copyright law and enforcement, the Biden administration may have to build a presidential Twitter following from scratch and we round up the startups that shut down this year. This is your Daily Crunch for December 22, 2020. The big story: Stimulus bill increases penalties for illegal streaming services […]
Content moderation has been a thorny topic in 2020. And when I say “thorny,” I mean in the sense of having multiple congressional hearings on the subject. Twitter and Facebook in particular have been mired in concerns around the subject, fielding complaints that they both haven’t done enough to weed out problematic content and suggestions […]
Tesla stock’s miraculously bizarre 2020 might have a gone different way had Apple’s Tim Cook agreed to a meeting in recent years, or so says Elon Musk. Reacting to Reuters’ recent news that Apple has not abandoned its electric car program and is still pursuing plans to build a physical vehicle, Musk tweeted that in […]
Bandit ML aims to optimize and automate the process of presenting the right offer to the right customer. The startup was part of the summer 2020 class at accelerator Y Combinator . It also raised a $1.32 million seed round in September from YC, Haystack Fund, Webb Investment Network, Liquid 2 Ventures, Jigsaw Ventures, Basecamp Fund, […]
NASA has finished work on a new launchpad at its Kennedy Space Center in Florida — Launch Complex 48 (LC-48), a pad that will be able to support smaller launch vehicles than either LC-39A or B, or SLC-41, which currently host SpaceX, SLS and ULA launches, respectively. It’s designed to be able to be used […]
AWS, Amazon’s flourishing cloud arm, has been growing at a rapid clip for more than a decade. An early public cloud infrastructure vendor, it has taken advantage of first-to-market status to become the most successful player in the space. In fact, one could argue that many of today’s startups wouldn’t have gotten off the ground […]
In this country, we have a longstanding peaceful transfer of power for the executive office, even in the wake of the hardest-fought elections. Certain circumstances have led many to question whether the tradition will continue come January 20. Despite his very vocal protestations, however, the current president has agreed to step aside, should all of […]
Even in a non-hell year, running a successful startup is a tremendous lift. After the events of 2020, however, no doubt many already lean businesses are hanging on by the skin of their teeth. For every company that saw increased interest in their offerings during the pandemic, there were several that simply couldn’t make it […]
MIT’s famous Media Lab, the multidisciplinary idea factory that produces many a fascinating invention and influential thinker, has found a new director in its backyard after scouring the globe for candidates. Dava Newman, MIT professor of aeronautics and astronautics and former deputy administrator of NASA under Obama, will helm the intellectual hub. The Media Lab […]
It goes without saying, but 2020 was a bad year for a lot of people. For many, it was a year of stress, sadness and anxiety. It was a year of missing friends and family; of just getting to the next day, even as each day seemed to blur into the last. As we’ve done […]
Being “underbanked” doesn’t mean that someone lacks access to financial services. Instead, it often means they don’t have traditional bank accounts or credit cards. But in markets like Indonesia, many still use digital wallets or e-commerce platforms, creating alternative sources of user data that can help them secure working capital and other financial tools. Finantier, […]
