This week Koan, a startup that provides objectives-and-key-results (OKR) and status-tracking software, announced that it has raised an additional $1 million, added a free tier to its service and acquired a design firm with which it has worked. Koan, which raised $3 million in seed funding last October, was co-founded by Matt Tucker, who previously […]
I’ve had Apple’s AirPod Max headphones for less than 24 hours, so there is no way I would attempt to write a review of any sort. But I do have some of those oh so popular these days “first impressions” to share. Mostly on build quality, but I’ll throw a few first listen thoughts at […]
Planet FWD, the climate-friendly food startup founded by Zume co-founder Julia Collins, is today launching its first product, Moonshot Snacks. The climate-friendly snack is carbon neutral, organic, kosher, plant-based, non GMO and has no sugar added. The crackers come in three flavors: sourdough sea salt rosemary garlic and tomato basil. A box of crackers costs $5.99. […]
Nobody likes dealing with taxes — until the system works in your favor. In many countries, startups can receive tax credits for their R&D work and related employee cost, but as with all things bureaucracy, that’s often a slow and onerous task. Boast.ai aims to make this process far easier, by using a mix of […]
LeafLink is today announcing it raised a $40 million Series C financing round, led by Founders Fund with participation from Thrive Capital, Nosara Capital, and Lerer Hippeau. This round of financing brings the total amount raised by the company to over $90 million. This financing round is Founder Fund’s largest technology investment in the cannabis […]
Only a few months after announcing its $15 million Series A round, Tel Aviv-based cybersecurity firm Hunters today announced that it has received additional growth funding from Snowflake Ventures for its Open Extended Threat Detection & Response service (XDR). With this, Snowflake’s venture arm joins existing investors M12 and U.S. Venture Partners, which led the Series A […]
Aira is the company behind one of the most exciting wireless power innovations, and now this technology could be headed into vehicles. The wireless power company just announced a strategic investment from Motherson, a Tier 1 global auto parts supplier. Aira’s technology allows companies to build a better wireless charger. Instead of a wireless charger […]
Facebook’s bad week just got worse: It’s being investigated in Germany for linking usage of its VR product, Oculus, to having a Facebook account. The tech giant raised the hackles of the VR community this summer when it announced it would be merging users of the latest Oculus kit onto a single Facebook account — […]
More than one billion people in India today have a mobile connection, thanks in part to the proliferation of low-cost Android smartphones and the world’s cheapest mobile data plans in recent years. This scale was unimaginable just three decades ago, when India had fewer than 2.5 million telephones in the country. One of the earliest […]
Instagram today is launching Shopping in Reels, its TikTok competitor. The new feature was announced in October as something the company had in the works, as part of a ongoing series of shopping-related updates to the Instagram app. With today’s launch, both businesses and creators will be able to tag products when they create Reels […]
Cleo, the London founded “financial assistant” that takes the form of an app and chatbot and now counts the U.S. as its largest market, has raised $44 million in Series B funding. Leading the round, which I understand actually closed earlier this year, is EQT Ventures. Also participating are existing investors Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe and […]
German fintech Solactive, a technology-enabled provider of indices and index solutions to the global financial services industry, has taken a $60.4m / €50 million minority investment from growth investor Summit Partners. Widely regarded as something of a disruptor in the global indexing industry, Solactive is benefitting from the ongoing and significant shift of active to […]
UK-based Orbex has raised a new $24 million funding round, led by BGF and Octopus Ventures, and including participation from existing investors High-Tech Gründerfonds, Heartcore Capital, and Elecnor S.A. This new investment help “secure the roadmap” that Orbex was already working towards regarding its launch vehicle development and deployment, which is currently targeting 2022 for […]
Productivity software has been getting a major re-examination this year, and human resources platforms — used for hiring, firing, paying, and managing employees — have been no exception. Today, one of the startups that’s built what it believes is the next generation of how HR should and will work is announcing a big fundraise, underscoring […]
Two months ago, Kubernetes observability platform Pixie Labs launched into general availability and announced a $9.15 million Series A funding round led by Benchmark, with participation from GV. Today, the company is announcing its acquisition by New Relic, the publicly traded monitoring and observability platform. The Pixie Labs brand and product will remain in place […]
This morning Candu, a software startup that provides no-code web tools for SaaS apps, announced a $5 million funding round. TechCrunch caught up with founder Jonathan Anderson and lead investor Villi Iltchev, a partner at Two Sigma Ventures, to chat about the deal. First thing: This round, a bit like Scotch, has aged. It’s from […]
The worldwide shift to virtual workplaces has been a blessing and a curse to people with hearing impairments. Having office chatter occur in text rather than speech is more accessible, but virtual meetings are no easier to follow than in-person ones — which is why real-time captioning startup Ava has seen a huge increase in […]
Another batch of complaints has been filed with European Union data protection agencies urging enforcement action against the adtech industry’s abuse of Internet users’ information to target ads. The complaints argue that behavioural ads are both harmful and unlawful. Earlier complaints over the same Real-Time Bidding (RTB) programmatic advertising issue were filed across the EU […]
Papercup, the U.K.-based AI startup that has developed speech technology that translates people’s voices into other languages and is already being used in the video and television industry, has raised £8 million in funding. The round was led by LocalGlobe and Sands Capital Ventures, alongside Sky, GMG Ventures, Entrepreneur First (EF) and BDMI. Papercup says […]
