Venmo is going after small businesses. The mobile-payments app announced today it’s piloting a new feature called Business Profiles, which offers small sellers and other sole proprietors the opportunity to have a more professional profile page on its platform. Sellers can share key business details like address, phone number, email, website and more. By adopting […]
T-Mobile today announced that it has closed a deal that divests Sprint’s pre-paid businesses, including Boost and Virgin Mobile. The news finds Dish entering the wireless carrier game in earnest, courtesy of the $1.4 billion deal. The whole thing was, of course, a key part of T-Mobile’s bid to merge with Sprint. It was a […]
Meet Envision, a new startup accelerator. The group, built and run by a collection of students and recent graduates, just closed the application process for its first cohort of startups. Its goal isn’t merely to find some companies and give them a boost, however. According to Annabel Strauss and Eliana Berger, two co-founders of Envision, […]
The first wave of AR startups offering smart glasses is now over, with a few exceptions. Google acquired North this week for an undisclosed sum. The Canadian company had raised nearly $200 million, but the release of its Focals 2.0 smart glasses has been cancelled, a bittersweet end for its soft landing. Many AR startups […]
Instagram Stories has grown to become one of Facebook’s best products to date. As of last year, roughly half of Instagram’s users — or 500 million people — were interacting with Stories on a daily basis. That’s nearly double the entire daily active user base of all of Snapchat, which first popularized the Stories format. […]
Google’s SmartReply, the four-year-old, A.I.-based technology that helps suggest responses to messages in Gmail, Android’s Messages, Play Developer Console and elsewhere, is now being made available to YouTube Creators. Google announced today the launch of an updated version of SmartReply built for YouTube, which will allow creators to more easily and quickly interact with their fans […]
We’re excited to announce that we’ve added Extra Crunch support in Ireland, Portugal and Greece. That adds to our existing support in Europe as we are already in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the U.K. Portugal’s 10 million citizens are no strangers to startup investment, with the country totting […]
BMW today announced a number of updates to its in-car software experience during a VR press event, complete with a virtual drive through Munich to show off some of these features. These new updates will come to most recent BMWs that support the company’s Operating System 7 later this year — and new cars will […]
Ahead of its expected IPO pricing later today, SoftBank -backed insurtech startup Lemonade has raised its expected price range. After initially targeting $23 to $26 per share in its debut, Lemonade now intends to sell its equity for $26 to $28 per share. The Exchange is a daily look at startups and the private markets […]
A few months back, Google announced plans to reopen some U.S. offices after the July 4th holiday. But the best-laid plans, and all of that. Things have obviously not been going great in terms of the United States’ battle with COVID-19, and Google once again finds itself proceeding on the side of caution. As was […]
Tesla hits a financial milestone, Discord is now valued at $3.5 billion and we unpack the ??? phenomenon. Here’s your Daily Crunch for July 1, 2020. 1. Tesla blows past Toyota to become most valuable automaker in the world In 10 years, Tesla has gone from public market newbie to the most valuable automaker in […]
Jüsto, the Mexico City-based, delivery-only grocery store chain, has raised another $12 million in financing as it looks to expand its now pandemically relevant business of “dark stores” across the country. The COVID-19 pandemic is changing consumer habits and increasing the use of delivery services across the world, and consumers in Mexico are no different. […]
“The Moving Forward Act reads like a $1.5 trillion validation of our fund’s thesis — that upgrading cities and related infrastructure is key to fighting the existential threat of climate change and improving lives,” said Stonly Baptiste, co-founder and partner at venture capital fund Urban Us. Democrats in Congress are wrestling with the twin problems […]
Twitch had already broken viewership records in the first quarter of 2020 amid coronavirus lockdowns, surpassing 3 billion total hours watched in a single quarter for the first time. In the second quarter, it appears that Twitch has broken that record and several others once again. According to a new report from Streamlabs and Stream […]
Meet Point, a new challenger bank in the U.S. that has been available as a private beta for the past year. Today, the company is announcing new fundraising — later this month, the company is launching a major new version of its service and opening its doors to everyone. There’s a waitlist for now. Point […]
IAC and Match Group announced that they have completed a “full separation.” Previously, Match Group (which owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, PlentyOfFish and Match itself) was a publicly traded company, with digital holding company IAC as its majority shareholder. Last year, the companies announced a plan that would see IAC’s ownership of Match distributed to IAC’s […]
European startup studio eFounders has looked back at the first half of 2020 to share some metrics about its portfolio companies. The startup studio that is focused on building software-as-a-service enterprise startups has now launched 25 companies in total. Those startups have raised $148 million in 2020 alone. You may remember that the portfolio of […]
The robotics category has been building to a kind of critical mass in recent years, but the past six months of the COVID-19 pandemic have pushed many otherwise wary investors over the top. Today, Shenzhen-based Pudu Robotics announced that it has completed a $15 million Series B, with Beijing food services group, Meituan as the […]
While many investors say sheltering in place has broadened their appetite for funding companies located outside major hubs, one firm is doubling down on backing startups in America’s heartland. Launched in 2016 by Brett Brohl, The Syndicate Fund rebranded to Bread & Butter Ventures earlier this month (a reference to one of Minnesota’s many nicknames). […]
