Smol is a startup that delivers eco-friendly laundry capsules and dishwasher tablets on subscription through letterboxes, which undercut the price of the leading brands, to people’s homes. It’s now raised £8 million in a Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital with participation from JamJar Investments. The funding will see smol push into new […]
Consolidation continues apace in the world of e-commerce, and today it was the turn of the classified ads market. Today, eBay announced that it had reached a deal to sell off its Classifieds business unit to Adevinta, a Norway-based classified ads publisher majority owned by Norwegian publisher Schibsted. The deal is valued at $9.2 billion, […]
Plum, the London and Athens-based fintech that offers a ‘smart’ money management app to help you improve your “financial resilience,” has raised a further $10 million in funding, as it gears up for European expansion. The new round is led by Japan’s Global Brain, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which has participated […]
A number of on-demand ride hailing companies are feeling the strain from reduced business, with many consumers still reluctant to travel, and especially to travel in surroundings that might increase the risk of spreading or catching the novel coronavirus. But today, one of the startups in the space is announcing a significant round of funding to […]
In what could be a starting gun for the commercialization of the cell-based meat business, upstart cultivated meat company Higher Steaks said it has managed to produce samples of its first products — bacon strips and pork belly made in a lab from cellular material. With the revelation, Higher Steaks, a bootstrapped Cambridge, UK-based company, […]
You’ve heard of e-bike and e-scooter rentals startups spreading across cities. But today three veterans of the startup world will launch what appears to be a brand new take on the “e-revolution” sweeping cities in the wake of the global pandemic: subscription e-bikes, or, if you will, ‘EaaS’ or ‘E-bikes-as-a-Service”. The previous founders of Soundcloud […]
Amazon’s annual sales holiday, Prime Day, has typically been a global event — one so big, it often crashes the Amazon retail website. This year, however, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the retailer’s plans. Today, Amazon officially confirmed reports that it will delay Prime Day in the U.S. until sometime later this year. It will […]
Indonesia-based ride-hailing company and “super app” Gojek said today that it has named a new chief technology officer. Severan Rault, who previously held leadership positions at Amazon and Microsoft, takes over the role from Ajey Gore, who announced last month he was leaving for personal reasons. In a statement, the company said Rault will oversee […]
A new policy-focused nonprofit that emerged from the recent wave of big tech scrutiny is calling for members of Facebook’s Oversight Board to either step up or step down. In an open letter, Accountable Tech urges the five U.S.-based Facebook Oversight Board members to “demand the Board be given real authority” or quit their positions. […]
Founded by former Apple engineers, a new app called Struck wants to be the Tinder for the Co-Star crowd. In other words, it’s an astrology-based matchmaker. But it took close to 10 attempts over several months for the startup to get its app approved by Apple for inclusion in the App Store. In nearly every […]
SpaceX has managed a first – catching both halves of the fairing used on one of its Falcon 9 rocket launches, according to CEO and founder Elon Musk. The fairing is a two-piece protective cover that surrounds the cargo on the launch vehicle as it ascends through Earth’s atmosphere on its way to space. SpaceX […]
Vaccine researchers have some good news, Google Maps adds end-to-end bikesharing directions and Roblox launches a new virtual event platform. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 20, 2020. The big story: COVID-19 vaccine trials show promise Two vaccine trials — one conducted at the University of Oxford, and another by researchers in Wuhan — both […]
Chris Cowart, the longtime IDEO product designer, Singularity University faculty member and consultant to a variety of venture firms and tech projects, is joining the food preservation technology developer Treasure8 as its new chief innovation and strategy officer, according to a post on LinkedIn. “In the last three years food has come to the fore […]
SpaceX has completed another successful launch, this time on behalf of Lockheed Martin and its client South Korea. The payload is ANASIS-II, a dedicated military communications satellite (South Korea’s first), which the nation will use to help safeguard its national security. The Falcon 9 carrying the ANASIS-II lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at […]
In an interview with Axios, Mark Zuckerberg shot down suspicions that Facebook is giving President Trump lenient treatment on the platform as part of a closed-door agreement. “I’ve heard this speculation, too, so let me be clear: There’s no deal of any kind,” Zuckerberg told Axios. “Actually, the whole idea of a deal is pretty […]
Carnegie Mellon today showed off new research into the world of robotic navigation. With help from the team at Facebook AI Research (FAIR), the university has designed a semantic navigation that helps robots navigate around by recognizing familiar objects. The SemExp system, which beat out Samsung to take first place in a recent Habitat ObjectNav […]
Clover Health, the medicare advantage health insurance provider for older Americans, said it will triple its geographic coverage through an expansion to eight states. The company is adding Mississippi to its roster of states covered under its insurance plans and will expand its footprint in a number of states it already operates within. The company […]
One reason some venture capitalists and founders don’t enter edtech is because the space has a sluggish stereotype, thanks to red tape, slow sales cycles, and, in America, a fragmented customer base. But data suggests that edtech’s reputation is not entirely earned. Byju’s is India’s second-most-valuable company. Since 2013, there have been 300 acquisitions in […]
