Meet Vivid, a new challenger bank launching in Germany that promises low fees and an integrated cashback program. The two co-founders Alexander Emeshev and Artem Yamanov previously worked as executives for Russian bank Tinkoff Bank. Vivid doesn’t try to reinvent the wheels and is building its product on top of well-established players. It relies on […]
Email is one of those things that no one likes but that we’re all forced to use. Superhuman, founded by Rahul Vohra, aims to help everyone get to inbox zero. Launched in 2017, Superhuman charges $30 per month and is still in invite-only mode with more than 275,000 people on the waitlist. That’s by design, […]
Later today, TechCrunch’s Extra Crunch Live series is sitting down with Plaid CEO Zach Perret. Extra Crunch members can tune in at 10 a.m. PDT/1 p.m. EDT/5 p.m. GMT. The livestream links and scheduling links are below for your use. Extra Crunch Live has previously spoken with investors like Sequoia’s Roelof Botha, business celebrity Mark […]
Rocket Lab is set to demonstrate a key element of its value prop with newly-awarded missions set for a Spring 2021 launch timeframe: The rocket company will be flying two back-to-back missions for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office from its Launch Complex 1 facility in New Zealand, using its existing launch pad and one that’s […]
This morning Chilean company Copec announced a corporate venture capital (CVC) fund, dubbed Wind Ventures. Wind will write checks worth between $1 million and $10 million into Series A, B, and C rounds, with an eye on startups that fit into the categories that its parent company works in, namely energy, retail, and mobility. According […]
TechCrunch is focusing a bit more on the Boston-area startup and venture capital ecosystem lately, which has gone pretty well so far. In fact, we had originally intended on releasing this regional investor survey as a single piece, but since so many VCs took part, we’re breaking it into two. The first part deals with […]
The European Commission has reiterated its commitment to pushing ahead with a regional plan for taxing digital services after the US quit talks aimed at finding agreement on reforming tax rules — ramping up the prospects of a trade war. Yesterday talks between the EU and the US on a digital services tax broke down […]
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani has found yet another high-profile firm to write a massive check to his telecom venture Reliance Jio Platforms at the height of a global pandemic. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, said on Thursday it will invest $1.5 billion in Jio Platforms for a 2.32% stake […]
Amazon said on Thursday it has expanded its Flex delivery program to more than 35 cities in India, one of its key overseas markets, as the e-commerce giant looks to scale its delivery capability to service the growing number of orders. The e-commerce giant, which completed seven years in the country this month, launched the […]
Hoxton Ventures, the London-based early-stage VC firm best known for backing British unicorns Babylon Health, Darktrace and Deliveroo, is announcing its second fund, which has closed at a little less than $100 million. That’s more than twice the size of the firm’s $40 million debut fund back in 2013, when new VCs setting up shop […]
French startup Bellman has raised a $4.5 million (€4 million) seed extension round led by Lakestar with existing investors Connect Ventures and Financière Saint-James also participating. Bellman is focused on improving residential building management. But the startup doesn’t think you can replace this job with software altogether. Instead, Bellman thinks it can greatly improve the […]
Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com’s shares rose 5.7% after opening at HKD $239 (about USD $30.80) during their first day of trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange. JD.com had originally priced the shares for the secondary offering at $226. JD.com issued 133 million new Class A ordinary shares as part of the secondary offering and […]
Investor Chamath Palihapitiya made part of his fortune at Facebook, where he was a vice president for more than four years, leaving one year before its 2012 IPO. Though he has voiced concerns numerous times since about his former employer, he also believes it has played an active role in enabling users to report and […]
Fly Ventures, the Berlin-based VC that invests in seed-stage European startups within enterprise and deep tech, has raised a new €53 million fund. The firm writes initial cheques of between €500,000 and €1.3 million, and says it is on the hunt for startups developing “novel, advanced technology at the cutting edge of their respective sectors.” […]
DroneBase, a Los Angeles-based provider of drone pilots for industrial services companies, has raised $7.5 million during the pandemic to double down on its work with renewable energy companies. While chief executive Dan Burton acknowledged that the company was fundraising prior to the pandemic, the industrial lockdown actually accelerated demand for the company’s services. Even […]
BizCapital, an online lender based in Brazil, has raised $12 million from a clutch of investors including the German development finance institution, the corporate venture capital fund of MercadoLibre and existing investors Quona Capital, Monashees, Chromo INvest and 42K Investments. “This latest round reinforces investors’ confidence in BizCapital’s ability to innovate in the Latin American […]
Geek+, a Beijing-based startup that makes warehouse fulfillment robots similar to those of Amazon’s Kiva, said Thursday that it has closed over $200 million in a Series C funding round. That bumps total capital raised by the 5-year-old company to date to nearly $390 million. The new round, completed in two parts, was separately led […]
Back in November of last year, Twitch rolled out a beta build of Twitch Studio — a free, straightforward broadcasting app meant to be the first step for anyone curious about streaming on the service. At launch, it was PC only. Today, however, they’re opening up the beta to Mac users. Twitch is pretty open […]
The alchemy for a successful startup can be hard to parse. Sometimes, it’s who you know. Sometimes it’s where you go to school. And sometimes it’s what you do. In the case of La Haus, a startup that wants to bring U.S. tech-enabled real estate services to the Latin American real estate market, it’s all […]
Hertz, which filed for bankruptcy last month, halted its $500 million stock offering Wednesday after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission told the rental company it would review its controversial plan to sell shares that could soon be wiped out completely. Hertz disclosed Monday that it would issue a $500 million stock offering following approval […]
