Fika Ventures is a five-year-old, LA-based seed-stage fund that has been funding mostly business-to-business startups, as well as fintech companies and a sprinkling of healthcare IT startups — as long as they don’t involve hardware or FDA approval. The firm’s investors apparently think it’s doing a decent job. After raising $41 million for its debut […]
Microsoft is moving into the next phase of its plan to bring Xbox Cloud Gaming to as many devices as possible, bringing it to Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One consoles this holiday season.
Nearly every top investment bank is chasing Byju’s and nudging the most valuable Indian startup to seriously explore the public markets as soon as next year. Most banks have given Byju’s a proposed valuation in the range of $40 billion to $45 billion, but some including Morgan Stanley have pitched a $50 billion valuation if […]
Boston is benefiting from larger changes to the U.S. venture capital market, helping close historical gaps in its startup funding market and access funds that previously might have skipped the region.
Ispace, a Japanese space startup that aims to lead the development of a lunar economy, has unveiled its design for a large lander that could go to the moon as early as 2024. Tokyo-based ispace said this next-gen lander, dubbed Series 2, would be used on the company’s third planned moon mission. The lander is […]
We’re less than one month away from kicking off our flagship global event, TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. And we’re feeling the adrenaline rush that can only come when more than 10,000 startup icons, experts, founders, investors and makers gather to learn, inspire, connect, collaborate, compete and network. Buy your pass here and brace yourself for three […]
Paxos, the company behind the Paxos Standard stablecoin (PAX), has announced that it is changing the name of its crypto asset. Paxos Standard is now Pax Dollar, and you’ll soon be able to identify it on your favorite cryptocurrency exchange, wallet or explorer under the USDP ticker. Other than the name, USDP remains fundamentally identical […]
“In order to become a better writer, read your written words out loud.” That’s one of the first, and best, writing tips I ever received. I always found the advice ironic because it required me to change the medium of my writing to become a better writer. Still, all these years later, it’s true: Vocalizing […]
Aileen Lee is one of the most prestigious and successful venture capitalists of the past decade. Before starting her own firm in Cowboy Ventures, Lee was a partner at KPCB for more than 12 years. Her portfolio includes DocSend, Ironclad, Philz Coffee, StyleSeat and many, many more. So it should come as no surprise that […]
California is not going to resolve this issue. Congress is not going to resolve this issue because it almost never resolves anything. So the game comes down to individual states.
A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-ion batteries, are turning instead to […]
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said on Tuesday the company plans to offer free temporary housing to 20,000 Afghan refugees around the world amid the Taliban’s rise to power in Afghanistan. Chesky said the company will cover the costs for the housing, using funds from contributions to its nonprofit Airbnb.org and a specific Refugee Fund established […]
Israel-based AI healthtech company, DiA Imaging Analysis, which is using deep learning and machine learning to automate analysis of ultrasound scans, has closed a $14 million Series B round of funding. Backers in the growth round, which comes three years after DiA last raised, include new investors Alchimia Ventures, Downing Ventures, ICON Fund, Philips and […]
Waymo, the self-driving vehicle company under Alphabet, has launched a robotaxi service that will be open to certain vetted riders in San Francisco. On Tuesday, the company officially kicked off its Waymo One Trusted Tester program in the city with a fleet of all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs equipped with the company’s fifth generation of its autonomous […]
When Salesforce acquired Slack at the end of last year for almost $28 billion, the deal seemed on its face to make sense, given that the coronavirus pandemic accelerated already growing demand for tools that enable people to work remotely and that roughly 90% of Slack’s enterprise customers already used Salesforce. Today, the question is: How well are things going? […]
Walmart today announced a new delivery service business called Walmart GoLocal, which allows other merchants, both large and small, to tap into Walmart’s own delivery platform to get orders to their customers. Merchants can choose to use the service for a variety of delivery types, including scheduled and unscheduled deliveries, including same-day delivery, and they […]
The revitalization of the childcare sector would benefit from an ambitious and galvanizing “moonshot” goal, like providing universal, free childcare for all Americans.
Subscription newsletter platform kingpin Substack shared today that they’ve acqui-hired the team behind Cocoon, a subscription social media app built for close friends. We covered the Y Combinator-backed startup’s initial $3 million seed raise led by Lerer Hippeau back in November 2019, shortly before the pandemic dramatically reconfigured how people used social media to communicate […]
Last year, Instagram unveiled Shops as part of Facebook’s larger pivot toward e-commerce. Shops is front-and-almost-center on the app’s bottom navigation bar, even more readily accessible than the button to upload a new photo. Now, after testing in the U.S. earlier this month, Instagram will introduce ads on the Instagram Shop tab globally, rolling them […]
