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 […]
France’s data protection agency, the CNIL, has slapped Google and Amazon with fines for dropping tracking cookies without consent. Google has been hit with a total of €100 million ($120M) for dropping cookies on Google.fr and Amazon €35M (~42M) for doing so on the Amazon .fr domain under the penalty notices issued today. The regulator […]
The rise of U.S.-China tensions has accelerated the bifurcation of global technology, with the two superpowers each working on their own tech systems. While the rift might be discouraging cross-border investment and business expansion between the rivals, the countries that are in-between — like those in Southeast Asia and Europe — are still finding opportunities. […]
A startup that is improving the way construction and real estate companies in India procure materials and handle logistics for their projects has received the backing of three new investors. Mumbai-headquartered Infra.Market said on Thursday it has raised $20 million in a Series B financing round. The round was led by Evolvence India Fund, Sistema […]
Demand for contactless payments and e-commerce has grown in South Korea during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is good news for payment service operators, but the market is very fragmented, so adding payment options is a time-consuming process for many merchants. CHAI wants to fix this with an API that enables companies to accept over 20 […]
LabCorp has now become the first company to receive approval to sell its COVID-19 test kit over-the-counter without a prescription, according to a statement from the company. One of the largest diagnostics testing companies in the U.S., LabCorp could be a significant competitor to companies like EverlyWell, which received approvals for its at-home testing kits […]
The WSJ is reporting that Airbnb is expected to price its IPO at either $67 or $68 per share. The American hospitality unicorn raised its IPO price target earlier this week, from $44 to $50 to $56 to $60. While we’re still waiting for official pricing, Airbnb is worth $41 billion at its IPO price, […]
Facebook faces big antitrust lawsuits, DoorDash and C3.ai go public and YouTube announces new election misinformation policies. This is your Daily Crunch for December 9, 2020. The big story: FTC and 48 state AGs sue Facebook The Federal Trade Commission filed an antitrust lawsuit against Facebook today, as did 48 attorneys general representing 46 states. […]
Arrival, the U.K. electric vehicle startup that plans to become a publicly traded company through a merger with special purpose acquisition company CIIG Merger Corp., has picked Charlotte for its North American headquarters. The company said it will add 150 new employees to support the headquarters and invest about $3 million in office space in […]
SpaceX is one step closer to replacing its Falcon line of active duty spacecraft: Its Starship prototype “SN8” achieved a major milestone in the ongoing spacecraft’s development program, flying to a height of around 40,000 feet at SpaceX’s development facility in southern Texas. One of the Starship’s three Raptor engines cut off around two minutes […]
A new robot created by researchers at Northwestern University looks and behaves like a tiny aquatic animal, and could serve a variety of functions, including moving things place to place, catalyzing chemical reactions, delivering therapeutics and much more. This new soft robot honestly looks a heck of a lot like a lemon peel, but it’s […]
In light of artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Timnit Gebru’s exit from Google last week, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to staffers, obtained by Axios, saying the company would investigate “the circumstances that led up to Dr. Gebru’s departure, examining where we could have improved and led a more respectful process.” Last week, Gebru […]
