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Robinhood priced its public offering at $38 per share last night, the low end of its IPO range. The company was worth around $32 billion at that price. But once...

Why Latin American venture capital is breaking records this year

Today we’re wrapping our multi-week exploration of the global venture capital market’s second-quarter performance. We’ve gone around the world, working to better understand the geyser of cash flowing into today’s...

Colombia’s Merqueo bags $50M to expand its online grocery delivery service across Latin America

Merqueo, which operates a full-stack, on-demand delivery service in Latin America, has landed $50 million in a Series C round of funding. IDC Ventures, Digital Bridge and IDB Invest co-led...

Acrew Capital, Jeff Bezos back Colombia-based proptech La Haus’ $100M debt, equity round

La Haus, which has developed an online real estate marketplace operating in Mexico and Colombia, has secured $100 million in additional funding, including $50 million in equity and $50 million...

Student labor marketplace Pangea closes $2M seed round

Pangea, a Providence, Rhode Island-based startup that connects youthful talent and businesses in need of freelance labor, announced this morning that it has closed an oversubscribed $2 million seed round....

GGV Capital gave this real estate startup founder a term sheet 48 hours after meeting

Realm, which aims to help homeowners maximize the value of their property with its data platform, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by GGV Capital. Existing backers...

Employee engagement platform Culture Amp raises $100M at a $1.5B valuation

Culture Amp was founded in 2009 to let companies conduct anonymous employee surveys, but since then, its focus has expanded to helping employers turn the data they collect into action....

Japanese sneaker platform SODA raises $56.4M, accquires rival Monokabu

Just half a year after leading SODA’s Series B, SoftBank Ventures Asia is raising its bet on the Tokyo-based sneaker resell platform. The early-stage venture capital arm of SoftBank Group...

INKR draws in $3.1M to make more comics accessible to worldwide audiences

Digital comics platform INKR’s team INKR is a digital comics platform that crosses cultural and language divides, enabling creators to reach global audiences with its proprietary localization technology. Previously bootstrapped,...

Duolingo’s IPO pricing is great news for edtech startups

While the Chinese technology market digests a new regulatory landscape impacting the country’s edtech market in a sharply negative manner, U.S. education technology companies have something to cheer about: Duolingo’s...

QuotaPath raises $21.3M in Insight Partners-led round to help sales teams better track commissions

QuotaPath, which has developed a commission-tracking solution for sales and revenue teams, has raised $21.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Insight Partners. Existing backers ATX Ventures,...

China’s regulatory crackdown is good news for startups aligned with CCP goals

Watching the Chinese technology sector over the last week has been a fascinating exercise. The Chinese government took on entire industries like edtech while also coming down on individual companies...

Search API startup Algolia raises $150 million at $2.25 billion valuation

Algolia has raised a $150 million Series D funding round at a post-money valuation of $2.25 billion. Compared to the Series C round from October 2019, the company’s valuation has...

Contentful raises $175M at a $3B valuation from Tiger for its content delivery service

Contentful this morning announced a $175 million Series F round of capital, led by Tiger Global, valuing the unicorn at around $3 billion. Contentful, formerly known as a UI-free content...

Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital leads $20M investment in Brazilian healthcare startup Pipo Saude

Pipo Saude, a startup that developed a platform that sells and manages healthcare benefits for Brazilian companies, has raised $20 million in a Series A round of funding. Joshua Kushner’s...

Shikho, an edtech startup focused on Bangladesh’s students, gets $1.3M seed

In Bangladesh, students often rely on after school learning centers for study help or test preparation, but many of the best ones are concentrated in major cities. Edtech startup Shikho...

Monte Carlo’s Barr Moses will join us at TC Sessions: SaaS

Monte Carlo’s Barr Moses joins the data panel at TC Sessions: SaaS. See you there! As the clock ticks down on TechCrunch’s upcoming SaaS-focused event, we’re excited to announce that...

African startups join global funding boom as fintech shines

The Exchange is on a trip around the world, poking our heads into various startup markets to better understand how different geographies are faring during a historic boom in venture...

No-code Bubble raises $100M to make technical co-founders obsolete

Among Silicon Valley circles, a fun parlor game is to ask to what extent world GDP levels are held back by a lack of computer science and technical training. How...

Crypto infra startup Fireblocks raises $310M, triples valuation to $2.2B

Fireblocks, an infrastructure provider for digital assets, has raised $310 million in a Series D round of funding that tripled the company’s valuation to $2.2 billion in just over five...

Accel doubles down on 1Password, which just raised $100M more at a $2B valuation

Toronto-based 1Password is one of those rare companies that is a) profitable and b) transparent enough to share financials. And today, the company announced that it raised $100 million in...

iAngels raises $55 million, anchored by the European Investment Fund, for first institutional fund

iAngels, the private investment platform founded and helmed by Mor Assia and Shelly Hod Moyal, has today announced the close of its first institutional fund. The firm has raised $55.5...

Rocketium raises $3.2M to help creative teams create massive marketing campaigns

In between A/B testing, customizing targeted ads and formatting for different digital platforms, some design teams are tasked with campaigns that include thousands of images, videos and other visual content....

Indonesia-based grocery app HappyFresh reaps $65M led by Naver Financial and Gafina

HappyFresh, the on-demand grocery app based in Indonesia, announced today it has raised a $65 million Series D. The round was led by Naver Financial Corporation and Gafina B.V., with...

Freightify lands $2.5M to make rate management easier for freight forwarders

Freight forwarders often keep track of rates on spreadsheets they email to customers, but the pandemic has made that difficult because prices are constantly fluctuating. Freightify, a startup that refers...

Duolingo boosts IPO price target in boon to edtech startups

U.S. edtech company Duolingo released a revised IPO price range this morning, boosting its potential per-share value to $100 after initially targeting a range that topped out at $95 per...

How to prepare for M&A, your most likely exit avenue

Ben Boissevain Contributor Share on Twitter Ben Boissevain has 30 years of corporate finance experience at firms including White & Case and Barclays Bank, and 20 years of experience in...

Glyphic Biotechnologies raises $6M to accelerate protein sequencing by orders of magnitude

The whole human proteome may be free to browse thanks to DeepMind, but at the bleeding edge of biotech new proteins are made and tested every day, a complex and...

As China shakes up regulations, tech companies suffer

The Exchange spent a little time on Friday ruminating on the impact of then-rumored regulation in China targeting its edtech sector. News that the Chinese government intended to crack down...

Equity Monday: China boosts pressure on its tech sector as Duolingo’s IPO looks to raise a few more bucks

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market...

Mark Cuban-backed Eterneva raises $10M to turn your loved one’s ashes into diamonds

The loss of a loved one is perhaps one of the most traumatic things a person can experience. When it comes to memorializing someone after their death, most people think...

Sproutl is an online marketplace for gardeners founded by former Farfetch executives

Meet Sproutl, a marketplace for gardeners living in the U.K. The startup founded by former Farfetch executives has raised a $9 million seed round. It wants to make gardening more...

China Roundup: Kai-Fu Lee’s first Europe bet, WeRide buys a truck startup

Jul 24, 2021

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch’s China Roundup, a digest of recent events shaping the Chinese tech landscape and what they mean to people in the rest of the world. Despite...

Mint’s first PM raises millions for Monarch, an Accel-backed money management platform

Jul 23, 2021

Monarch, a subscription-based platform that aims to help consumers “plan and manage” their financial lives, has raised $4.8 million in seed funding. Accel led the round, which also included participation...

China’s expected edtech clampdown may chill a key startup sector

Jul 23, 2021

News that China’s government may force domestic tutoring-focused companies to go nonprofit is taking a huge bite out of the value of several technology companies. Bloomberg notes that the value...

Duolingo’s bellwether IPO

Jul 23, 2021

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We were smaller team this week, with Natasha and Alex together with Chris to sort...

VOCHI raises additional $2.4 million for its computer vision-powered video editing app

VOCHI, a Belarus-based startup behind a clever computer vision-based video editing app used by online creators, has raised an additional $2.4 million in a “late-seed” round that follows the company’s...

Canada’s startup market booms alongside hot global VC investment

Continuing our global look into the torrid pace of venture capital investment in the second quarter, today we turn to Canada. While many markets have posted impressive results, like the...

Indonesian B2B marketplace GudangAda raises more than $100M in new funding

GudangAda founder and chief executive officer Stevensang GudangAda, a Jakarta-based marketplace that brings wholesalers closer to retail stores and other buyers, announced it has closed a Series B of more...

Indonesia “sea-to-table” platform Aruna hooks $35M led by Prosus and East Ventures Growth Fund

When Aruna’s founders first met at university, they wanted to find a way to use their studies in information technology to help family members who were running small fisheries. Indonesia...

What Robinhood’s warnings about crypto trading say about Coinbase’s near-term future

Is the trading boom of 2020 and 2021 slowing? That’s a question The Exchange has had on its mind since Robinhood released its latest IPO filing. The popular U.S. consumer-focused...

Spendesk raises $118 million for its corporate spend management service

French startup Spendesk has announced earlier today that it has raised a $118 million funding round (€100 million) led by General Atlantic. Overall, the company has raised $189 million (€160...

Epic Games acquires Sketchfab, a 3D model sharing platform

New York-based startup Sketchfab has been acquired by Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Sketchfab has been building a platform to upload, download, view, share, sell and...

Spreadsheet.com wants to put apps in your spreadsheets

An old rule of thumb for building a startup is to find a group of professionals who use spreadsheets to do their work and then build an app to replace...

Valoreo raises $30M more to acquire e-commerce brands across LatAm

Just over five months after securing $50 million in debt & equity, Valoreo has closed on a $30 million Series A funding round. Mexico City-based Valoreo aims to invest in,...

Byju’s acquires reading platform Epic for $500 million in US expansion push

Byju’s said on Wednesday it has acquired California-headquartered reading platform Epic for $500 million, the latest in a series of moves from India’s most valuable startup as it deepens its...

Austin-based Fetch Package secures $60M in equity & debt after tripling ARR in 2020

Fetch Package, a last-mile package delivery company for apartment communities, has raised $50 million in a Series C round of funding and closed on a $10 million venture debt facility....

Yapily raises $51 million for its open banking API by focusing on infrastructure

Fintech startup Yapily has raised a $51 million Series B funding round led by Sapphire Ventures. The company has been working on a single, unified open banking API for several...

Pivot Bio rakes in $430M round D as modified microbes prove their worth in agriculture

Pivot Bio makes fertilizer — but not directly. Its modified microorganisms are added to soil and they product nitrogen that would otherwise have had to be trucked in and dumped...

The European VC market is so hot it may skip its summer holiday

The startup market is having a moment around the world, but few regions can brag as much as Europe when it comes to venture capital investment. Yes, the United States...

Titan, a platform aimed at the ‘everyday investor,’ valued at $450M as a16z leads $58M Series B

Titan, a startup that is building a retail investment management platform aimed at the new generation of “everyday investors,” has closed on $58 million in a Series B round led...

Sundae closes on $80M for residential real estate marketplace

Sundae, a residential real estate marketplace that pairs sellers of dated or damaged property with potential buyers, has raised $80 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Fifth...

Employment Hero gets $140M AUD Series E led by Insight Partners, grows valuation to $800M AUD

Employment Hero co-founders Ben Thompson and Dave Tong Four months after announcing its last round, Employment Hero has closed another $140 million AUD (about $103 million USD) in funding. The...

Mural raises $50M Series C after tripling its ARR in the last year

This morning Mural, a startup that builds digital collaboration software with a focus on visual presentation, announced that it has closed a $50 million Series C. The new capital, co-led...

Duolingo’s IPO could cast golden halo on edtech startups

Edtech giant Duolingo set an initial price range for its impending IPO today. The unicorn expects to price in its public debut at $85 to $95 per share, selling 3,700,000...

The Zoom-Five9 deal is a big bet for the video conferencing company

Zoom, a well-known video conferencing company, will buy Five9, a company that sells software allowing users to reach customers across platforms, and record notes on their interactions. As TechCrunch noted...

Colombian on-demand delivery startup Rappi raises ‘over’ $500M at a $5.25B valuation

Rappi, a Colombian on-demand delivery startup, has raised “over” $500 million at a $5.25 billion valuation in a Series G round led by T. Rowe Price, the company announced late...

LeagueApps raises $15M to be the ‘operating system’ for youth sports organizations

Youth sports are an integral part of our communities, bringing families together and helping kids all over gain confidence and skills. Most of us don’t think about all the work...

Robinhood targets IPO valuation up to $35B amid warning that crypto incomes are slipping

Robinhood released an S-1/A filing detailing its first IPO price range this morning. The company first filed to go public in early July after raising billions earlier in the year....

Recapped lands $6 million for collaborative sales software that gets the customer in the mix

Recapped, a startup building collaborative sales software, announced the close of a $6.3 million seed round today. The deal was led by Charles River Ventures. Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, CoFound, AirAngels,...

Equity Monday: Zoom buys Five9 as Robinhood sets IPO price range

Carlyle to acquire live broadcasting and streaming tech outfit LiveU for over $400M, say sources

Streaming is the name of the content game these days, and now one of the companies that builds tech to do this from anywhere in the world is getting acquired....

Blackstone acquires majority stake in Simplilearn for $250 million

Blackstone is acquiring a majority stake in Bangalore and San Francisco-headquartered edtech startup Simplilearn for $250 million. Simplilearn operates an eponymous online bootcamp to help people learn data science, AI,...

Zoom buys cloud call center firm Five9 for $14.7 billion

Zoom is taking advantage of the impressive rise in its stock price in the past year to make its first major acquisition. The popular video conferencing firm, which was valued...

ServiceMax promises accelerating growth as key to $1.4B SPAC deal

ServiceMax, a company that builds software for the field-service industry, announced yesterday that it will go public via a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in a deal valued at...

Digital lending platform Blend valued at over $4B in its public debut

Mortgages may not be considered sexy, but they are a big business. And if you’ve refinanced or purchased a home digitally lately, you may or may not have noticed the...

Visualping raises $6M to make its website change monitoring service smarter

Visualping, a service that can help you monitor websites for changes like price drops or other updates, announced that it has raised a $6 million extension to the $2 million...

India poised for record VC year as unicorns head for decisive IPOs

In case you’ve not been paying attention, we’ll say it again: The global venture capital industry is on fire. The second quarter of 2021 was the largest single three-month period...

Reliance Retail acquires controlling stake in Just Dial for $469 million

Reliance Retail said on Friday it has acquired a controlling stake in 25-year-old Indian search and discovery firm Just Dial for $469 million. The Indian retail giant, which leads the...

Cleo Capital’s Sarah Kunst explains how to get ready to raise your next round

TechCrunch virtually sat down with venture capitalist and Cleo Capital managing director Sarah Kunst at our latest Early Stage event last week. Kunst joined us to chat about preparing for...

American Express taps startup BodesWell for expansion into financial planning

American Express is branching out into financial planning, with a little help from a seven-person startup called BodesWell. This week, the credit card giant launched a pilot of its first...

Revolut’s 2020 financial performance explains its big new $33B valuation

News broke this morning that Revolut, a U.K.-based consumer fintech player, raised a Series E round of funding worth $800 million at a valuation of $33 billion. Those figures are...

Abodu raises $20M to build prefabricated backyard homes

The need for more affordable housing has never been more urgent as a shortage in the U.S. housing market persists. Startups attempting to help address the shortage in a variety...

What impact will Apple’s buy now, pay later push have on startups?

Bloomberg broke news earlier this week that Apple, the consumer hardware giant with a rising services focus, is building a buy now, pay later (BNPL) service that will integrate with...

Play2Pay raises $13M to convert mobile user engagement into bill payment

The gamification of payments is not a new concept. A number of companies are attempting to combine gamification and payments in creative ways. And today, one such company, Play2Pay, has...

Singapore-based Tinvio raises $12M Series A to build financial services for supply chain merchants

First created to give supply chain merchants a streamlined way to communicate with buyers, Tinvio is now preparing to launch financial services, including financing and credit card issuing. The Singapore-based...

Easy Eat AI raises $5M to help Southeast Asian restaurants digitize their operations

Easy Eat AI, a Singapore-based startup that wants to “transform restaurants into technology companies,” announced today it has raised $5 million in funding. Easy Eat AI offers an operating system...

YC-backed Deskimo, an on-demand coworking space app, launches in Singapore and Hong Kong

Arcc, a coworking space in Singapore available for bookings on Deskimo Part of Y Combinator’s current batch, Deskimo wants to make finding coworking spaces easier. Its on-demand booking app is...

You can see fires, but now Qwake wants firefighters to see through them

When it comes to tough environments to build new technology, firefighting has to be among the most difficult. Smoke and heat can quickly damage hardware, and interference from fires will...

How to make the math work for today’s sky-high startup valuations

Venture capital price discipline is out the window; venture funds are looking to make faster, earlier deals; and more unicorns were minted in the last three months than during any...

Your funding round isn’t special, but you might be

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, Alex and Natasha and Danny decided it was time to chat about funding...

Acelerate raises $14.44M Series A to turn existing restaurants into cloud kitchens

Acelerate, a software company looking to help restaurants make the most out of their infrastructure, is today announcing the close of a $14.44 million Series A financing led by Sequoia...

Ex-Plaid employees raise $30M for Stytch, an API-first passwordless authentication platform

There are far fewer annoying things than managing one’s passwords. There are a bunch of companies out there to help you attempt to do that. And there’s also a number...

Backed by $5M led by General Catalyst, Evvy launches a vaginal microbiome test to support women’s health research

Another US femtech startup has joined the race to build up data-sets to support research into and understanding of a range of health issues that can affect women. Evvy has...

Cardless raises $40M to help more brands launch custom credit cards

Many consumers use their credit cards to rack up rewards to be used toward travel. But what if you’re a sports fan, and using your credit card could lead to...

Next Gen Foods to launch its plant-based chicken in the U.S. after raising a $20M seed extension from investors like GGV

Singapore-based Next Gen Foods will bring its plant-based chicken alternative to the United States after raising a $20 million seed extension. Investors included GGV Capital, agriculture and food tech-focused Bits...

Wecasa raises $17.7 million for its home care and wellness marketplace

French startup Wecasa has raised a $17.7 million funding round (€15 million). Blisce is leading the funding round with existing investors Serena, ISAI and Frédéric Mazzella also participating. The company...

Gourmey is a cell-based poultry startup working on lab-grown foie gras

Meet Gourmey, a new French startup that recently raised a $10 million founding round in equity and debt. The startup is working on meat grown in laboratories from animal cells....

Great Question gets $2.5M seed round to make customer research easier

Great Question’s user dashboard Customer research is invaluable for software companies, but there are many obstacles, like finding the right group of people to survey. Great Question wants to make...

Investment app Syfe raises $29.6M Series B led by returning investor Valar Ventures

Syfe founder Dhruv Arora Investment apps in Southeast Asia are attracting a lot of funding, and now some are raising fast follow-on rounds, too. For example, Indonesian robo-advisor app Bibit...

Zomato raises $562 million from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Indian food delivery startup Zomato said on Tuesday evening that it has raised $562.3 million from its anchor investors ahead of IPO opening on Wednesday. Zomato, which counts Ant Financial...

Mighty Buildings lands $22M to create ‘sustainable and affordable’ 3D-printed homes

Oakland-based Mighty Buildings, which is on a quest to build homes using 3D printing, robotics and automation, has raised a $22 million extension to its Series B round of funding....

Investors don’t expect the US startup funding market to slow down

Now in the opening weeks of the third quarter, The Exchange is taking a look back at the Q2 2021 venture capital market. Data indicate that it was incredibly active,...

Cadoo gets $1.5M to gamify fitness with betting challenges

Cadoo, a US-startup that’s gamifying fitness by turning it into a betting opportunity, using the prospect of winning (or losing) cold hard cash to motivate people to get off the...

ZoomInfo drops $575M on Chrous.ai as AI shakes up the sales market

ZoomInfo announced this morning it intends to acquire conversational sales intelligence tool Chorus.AI for $575 million. Shares of ZoomInfo are unchanged in pre-market trading following the news, per Yahoo Finance...

Carsome Group will acquire iCar Asia in a deal worth $200M