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DoorDash, Affirm, Roblox, Airbnb, C3.ai and Wish all filed to go public in recent days, which means some venture capitalists are having the best week of their lives. Tech companies...

Kea raises $10M to build AI that helps restaurants answer the phone

Kea is a new startup giving restaurants an opportunity to upgrade one of the more old-fashioned ways that they take orders — over the phone. Today, Kea is announcing that...

A16z is now managing $16.5 billion, after announcing two new funds

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has closed a pair of funds totaling $4.5 billion, the firm confirmed in a blog post this morning. The firm has raised $1.3 billion for an early-stage...

What is Roblox worth?

With Roblox joining the end-of-year unicorn stampede toward the public markets, we’re set for a contentedly busy second half of November and early December. I hope you didn’t have vacation...

Onit acquires legal startup McCarthyFinch to inject AI into legal workflows

Onit, a workflow software company based in Houston with a legal component, announced this week that it has acquired 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield alum McCarthyFinch. Onit intends to use the...

Wish files to go public with 100M monthly actives, $1.75B in 2020 revenue thus far

This morning Wish, a well-known mobile ecommerce startup, filed to go public. It joins Affirm, Airbnb, and Roblox in filing this week as many well-known and valuable private companies look...

FireEye acquires Respond Software for $186M, announces $400M investment

The security sector is ever frothy and acquisitive. Just last week Palo Alto Networks grabbed Expanse for $800 million. Today it was FireEye’s turn snagging Respond Software, a company that...

Roblox files to go public

Roblox, the child-friendly gaming company, filed to go public today. Its listing comes one day after the lending company Affirm initiated its own public offering and a mere two days after...

Fintech unicorn Affirm has a lot of eggs in one basket

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week wound up being incredibly busy. What else, with...

Transfr raises $12M Series A to bring virtual reality to manufacturing-plant floors

The coronavirus has displaced millions of workers across the country. In order to recover, companies must focus on re-skilling their workforces in a measured and sustainable way. However, training and...

Lime touts a 2020 turnaround and 2021 profitability

Micromobility company Lime says it has moved beyond the financial hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, reaching a milestone that seemed unthinkable earlier this year. In short, the company is...

Inside Affirm’s IPO filing: a look at its economics, profits and revenue concentration

Last night Affirm filed to go public, herding yet another unicorn into the end-of-year IPO corral. The consumer installment lending service joins DoorDash and Airbnb in filing recently, as a...

Near acquires Teemo to expand its data business into Europe

Two companies in the data business are teaming up, with Near announcing that it has acquired French startup Teemo. Near founder and CEO Anil Mathews told me that his company...

ZenBusiness snags $55M Series B for its incorporation and growth platform for micro businesses

Starting a small company used to be simple. Get some space on Main Street, put out a shingle, and begin plying your trade. Then the regulatory state came, and so...

Datafold raises seed from NEA to keep improving the lives of data engineers

Data engineering is one of these new disciplines that has gone from buzzword to mission critical in just a few years. Data engineers design and build all the connections between...

Juni, the banking platform for e-commerce and online marketing companies, raises €2M seed

Juni, a Swedish pre-launch startup that’s building a banking app and platform for e-commerce and online marketing entrepreneurs, has raised just over €2.1 million in seed funding. Leading the round...

Affirm files to go public

Affirm, a consumer finance business founded by PayPal mafia member Max Levchin, filed to go public this afternoon. The company’s financial results show that Affirm, which doles out personalized loans...

IBM is acquiring APM startup Instana as it continues to expand hybrid cloud vision

As IBM transitions from software and services to a company fully focussed on hybrid cloud management, it announced its intention to buy Instana, an applications performance management startup with a...

Farmstead, a grocery startup with a focus on software, raises $7.9M

Farmstead, a startup that operates an online grocery business while also selling software to other grocers, is announcing that it has raised $7.9 million in Series A funding. While there’s...

Abacus.AI raises another $22M and launches new AI modules

AI startup RealityEngines.AI changed its name to Abacus.AI in July. At the same time, it announced a $13 million Series A round. Today, only a few months later, it is...

Nestlings wants to help international students navigate a messy higher-ed environment

The admissions process for international students applying to colleges is outdated. For starters, there is no Common App, the one-stop application that U.S. students are able to use to apply...

Kerry Washington backs jewelry startup Aurate

Actress Kerry Washington has made an investment of undisclosed size in direct-to-consumer jewelry startup Aurate. This isn’t Washington’s first startup investment — she’s also backed The Wing, Community and Byte. In...

Malaysia-based inventory management platform Food Market Hub raises $4 million from Go-Ventures, SIG

Food Market Hub co-founders Anthony See and Shayna Teh Many restaurants still rely on spreadsheets to track their inventory of produce, meat and other ingredients. But using manual methods often...

Resellee wants to become the Pinduoduo of Southeast Asia

Launched in the Philippines, social commerce startup Resellee wants to recreate the success of Pinduoduo, one of China’s fastest-growing e-commerce companies, in Southeast Asia. A major part of Resellee’s business...

Yubo could be the next big social app as it raises $47.5 million

French startup Yubo is the biggest social media app you’ve never heard of — unless you’re a teen. With a focus on young people under 25, the company has managed...

Relativity Space is raising a massive $500M round at $2.3B valuation

Rocket printer Relativity Space is raising a $500 million D round, valuing the launch provider at $2.3 billion, as reported by CNBC and confirmed to TechCrunch by sources familiar with...

5 questions from Airbnb’s IPO filing

Airbnb filed to go public yesterday, offering the world a look into its financial performance over the past several years. The company’s S-1 detailed an expanding travel giant with billions...

Mati reshapes online trust and reputation with a Plaid-like API

Meet Mati, a startup that recently raised a $13.5 million Series A round to build a digital reputation API that could change the way you interact with online services. Mati...

EdgeQ raises $51 million to fuse AI compute and 5G within a single chip

5G. Edge. Open. Programmable. AI. No, it’s not bingo at your local silicon chip enthusiast meetup, and no, I am not trying to game Google’s search algorithms (well, maybe just...

Spacemaker, AI software for urban development, is acquired by Autodesk for $240M

Autodesk, the U.S. publicly listed software and services company that targets engineering and design industries, has acquired Norway’s Spacemaker, a startup that has developed AI-supported software for urban development. The...

Cooper raises $2M to build a professional network centered on introductions

In a period of social distancing, making new professional connections feels harder than ever. So Amsterdam-based Cooper is building a network that’s all about making and receiving introductions. “Everything that...

PingCAP, the open-source developer behind TiDB, closes $270 million Series D

PingCAP, the open-source software developer best known for NewSQL database TiDB, has raised a $270 million Series D. TiDB handles hybrid transactional and analytical processing (HTAP), and is aimed at...

Equity shot: Airbnb’s IPO is finally here

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today we have an Equity Shot for you about Airbnb’s S-1 filing, as...

The VC and founder winners in Airbnb’s IPO

After a tumultuous year for the travel industry, Airbnb’s long-awaited IPO filing just dropped. One thing is clear: there is still plenty of juice left in the home-sharing platform, and...

Baidu to acquire Joyy’s Chinese live streaming service YY for $3.6B

Baidu said on Monday it is acquiring Joyy’s live streaming service YY Live in China for $3.6 billion in an all-cash deal as the Chinese internet giant makes further push...

Airbnb files to go public

Airbnb filed to go public today, bringing the well-known unicorn one step closer to being a public company. The financial results show a company on the rebound, but smaller than...

The DOJ has approved Mastercard’s acquisition of Finicity

Federal regulators have approved Mastercard’s acquisition of Salt Lake City-based startup Finicity, which provides open-banking APIs. The deal is expected to go for $825 million. “We were notified that the...

Will edtech empower or erase the need for higher education?

The coronavirus has erased a large chunk of college’s value proposition: the on-campus experience. Campuses are closed, sports have been paused and, understandably, students don’t want to pay the same...

Unpacking the C3.ai IPO filing

The last thing I recall thinking about C3.ai (C3) was seeing its billboards outside San Francisco and asking myself what the hell the company actually did and how much it...

Equity Monday: C3.AI files to go public and Vision Fund 2 leads $100M round

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 big news,...

KKR, Rakuten to acquire most of Walmart’s stake in Japanese supermarket chain Seiyu

Walmart announced today it will sell most of its shares in Seiyu, the Japanese supermarket chain it acquired 12 years ago, to KKR and Rakuten. The deal values Seiyu at...

Reliance Retail buys Urban Ladder for $24.4 million

Nov 15, 2020

Reliance Retail has acquired a majority stake in furniture and decor platform Urban Ladder, making a broader push into e-commerce as the largest retail chain in India gears up to...

As COVID surges, what can data tell us about Airbnb’s recovery?

Nov 14, 2020

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here. DoorDash filed to go...

How COVID-19 accelerated DoorDash’s business

DoorDash filed to go public today, publishing numbers that showed rapid growth, enhanced profitability and an improving cash flow record which helped explain how the company had grown to a...

Getaround tops up $25M debt financing to its $140M Series E

Silicon Valley peer-to-peer car rental startup Getaround has secured a $25 million loan from Horizon Technology Finance Corporation. The financing announcement comes one month after Getaround raised $140 million from...

Fintech VC keeps getting later, larger and more expensive

The venture capital market appears to be getting later, larger and more expensive. As a result, fintech — one of its hottest and most-funded sectors — is evolving in a...

Kyklo raises $8.5M to bring electrical distributors online

Kyklo, a startup that helps wholesale distributors of electrical and automation products launch e-commerce stores, is announcing that it has raised $8.5 million in seed funding. The industry may sound...

DoorDash files to go public

After filing earlier this year, DoorDash dropped its public S-1 filing this morning, bringing clarity to its numbers and moving it closer to a public debut that should happen before...

Personal finance startup Truebill raises $17M

Truebill, a startup offering a variety of tools to help users take control of their finances, announced today that it has raised $17 million in Series C funding. When I...

Th O’s r ptinal, th dllrs r mndtry

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The full Equity crew was on hand to debate the...

As public investors reprice edtech bets, what’s ahead for the hot startup sector?

Reports on November 9 that a COVID-19 vaccine looks incredibly effective moved the market. Software stocks sold off and long-suffering industries hammered by the pandemic saw their fortunes rise. It was...

Livestorm raises $30M for its browser-based meeting and webinar platform

Video communication startup Livestorm announced today that it has raised $30 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Gilles Bertaux told me that the company started out with a...

How SoftBank’s Vision Fund turned losses into gold this summer

It’s hard to think back to the Vision Fund era today, given the oddities that 2020 has brought. But SoftBank’s gravity-bending investment vehicle only stopped investing last September, ending its...

Sales CRM Pipedrive takes majority investment from Vista Equity Partners to reach unicorn status

Pipedrive, the sales CRM tool for small and medium-sized businesses, is the latest European company to reach unicorn status. Founded in Estonia and now headquartered in New York, the company...

Railsbank, the Banking-as-a-Service, raises $37M in growth funding

Railsbank, the London-headquartered Banking-as-a-Service platform, has raised $37 million in new growth funding. Leading the round is MiddleGame Ventures and Ventura Capital, which are both existing investors in Railsbank ....

Join us for a live Q&A with Bessemer’s Byron Deeter next Tuesday at 3 p.m ET, noon PT

The Extra Crunch Live series rolls along with a big new installment next week as Jordan Crook and Alex Wilhelm will welcome Bessemer Venture Partners‘ Byron Deeter to the conversation....

Square and PayPal earnings bring good (and bad) news for fintech startups

Earnings season is racing past us, with the big ride-hailing companies’ numbers in, all of the Big Five having wrapped their reporting and lots of SaaS numbers in the market. But...

Palo Alto Networks to acquire Expanse in deal worth $800M

Palo Alto Networks has been on buying binge for the last couple of years, and today it added to its haul, announcing a deal to acquire Expanse for $800 million...

Inside Silicon Valley’s SPAC psychology

Jim Cook Contributor Share on Twitter Jim Cook is the CFO Leadership Coach at Velocity Group, the current CFO at Orbital Insight and was on the founding teams and growth...

E-commerce startup Heroes raises $65M in equity and debt to become the Thrasio of Europe

Heroes, a European e-commerce business operating a similar model to unicorn Thrasio in the U.S. — with a strategy of acquiring and scaling high performing Amazon businesses — has raised...

5 VCs discuss the future of SaaS and software after Pfizer’s vaccine breakthrough

Monday’s news that a COVID-19 vaccine candidate looks to be incredibly effective gave investors reasons to believe in a better future. Perhaps COVID-19 won’t be with us for years, investors...

Tailscale raises $12 million for its WireGuard-based corporate VPN

Tailscale has raised a $12 million funding round. Accel is leading the round with Heavybit and Uncork Capital also participating. The company is building a better corporate VPN by leveraging...

Hopin raises $125M for its online events platform on the back of surging growth

This morning Hopin, a startup that provides online events software, announced that it has closed a $125 million Series B round of capital. The new funds come mere months after...

E-scooter startup Tier raises $250 million round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2

Berlin-based micro-mobility startup Tier has raised a significant Series C round of $250 million. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 is leading the round, which proves that the Vision Fund team is...

Hong Kong insurtech startup Coherent gets $14 million Series A led by Cathay Innovation

Based in Hong Kong, Coherent helps insurance providers go digital. With their services more relevant than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, the startup announced it has raised $14 million in...

The race to be China’s top fintech platform: Ant vs Tencent

As Ant Group seizes the world’s attention with its record initial public offering, which was abruptly called off by Beijing, investors and analysts are revisiting Tencent’s fintech interests, recognized as...

Adobe acquires marketing workflow startup Workfront for $1.5B

Adobe just announced that it is acquiring marketing workflow management startup Workfront for $1.5 billion. Bloomberg first reported the sale would be happening earlier today. Workfront was founded back in...

Cookware startup Great Jones raises $1.75M as it expands into bakeware

Great Jones is expanding into a new area of the kitchen tomorrow, with what co-founder and CEO Sierra Tishgart described as the startup’s biggest launch since it released its first...

What happens to high-flying startups if the pandemic trade flips?

So much can change in a day. This morning, news that a trial COVID-19 vaccine candidate had an effective rate of more than 90% shook the financial world. The Pfizer...

Equity Monday: Vaccine news scrambles the stock market, shakes up startups

Positive vaccine news punishes pandemic-boosted companies like Zoom, Peloton, Etsy

Stock markets worldwide are soaring on news that a vaccine candidate is 90% effective at preventing COVID-19, and could start coming to market in a matter of months. This is...

Singapore-based sales productivity platform Nektar raises $2.15 million seed round

Nektar co-founders Abhijeet Vijayvergiya and Aravind Ravi Sulekha Singapore-based Nektar.ai, a productivity platform for sales teams, has raised $2.15 million in seed funding. Founded earlier this year, Nektar has been...

Here comes the next IPO wave

Nov 7, 2020

This is The TechCrunch Exchange, a newsletter that goes out on Saturdays, based on the column of the same name. You can sign up for the email here. Are you tired? I...

Software companies are reporting a pretty good third quarter

Nov 6, 2020

What a difference a week makes. This time last week, in the wake of earnings from tech’s five largest American companies and early results from other software companies, it appeared...

Challenger bank Starling is out raising a new £200M funding round

Nov 6, 2020

Starling founder Anne Boden recently told TechCrunch that the U.K. challenger bank is on track to be profitable by Christmas, but this doesn’t mean it isn’t out raising additional capital...

Inside fintech startup Upstart’s IPO filing

While the world awaits the Airbnb IPO filing that could come as early as next week, Upstart dropped its own S-1 filing. The fintech startup facilitates loans between consumers and...

The volcano method for understanding the fintech revolution

The Department of Justice moved to block the long-impending Visa-Plaid deal today. The transaction was announced in early 2020, making the decision by the government to try and scuttle its...

Reposite streamlines the most tedious tasks for travel agents

Meet Reposite, a software-as-a-service startup that wants to help travel agents of all kinds deal with their daily tasks. While the travel agency industry is huge, most people who work...

4 questions as Airbnb’s IPO looms

Almost on command after we asked yesterday if a rash of technology IPOs were about to land, news broke that Airbnb plans to drop its S-1 filing early next week with...

Singapore-based digital business assistant Osome raises $3 million

Osome’s founding team, Anton Roslov, Victor Lysenko and Konstantin Lange Osome, a Singapore-headquartered business assistant app that digitizes accounting and compliance tasks, has raised $3 million. An extension of Osome’s...

Vivid Money raises $17.6 million for its European challenger bank

German fintech startup Vivid Money has raised a $17.6 million Series A funding round (€15 million). Ribbit Capital is leading the investment. Today’s funding round gives Vivid Money a valuation...

As tech stocks rally, bring on the IPOs

Nov 4, 2020

During yesterday’s tense voting and this morning, shares of American-listed technology companies are shooting higher. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite is up around 3.35% this morning, more than double what the...

Intel has acquired Cnvrg.io, a platform to manage, build and automate machine learning

Nov 4, 2020

Intel continues to snap up startups to build out its machine learning and AI operations. In the latest move, TechCrunch has learned that the chip giant has acquired Cnvrg.io, an...

Pulled Ant Group IPO costs Alibaba nearly $60B in market cap

News today that Ant Group’s IPO is suddenly on hold in both Shanghai and Hong Kong caused a sell-off of Alibaba shares. This afternoon, equity in sister-company Alibaba is off...

4 takeaways from fintech VC in Q3 2020

Fintech has been a key startup story in recent quarters, with leading players in the genre raising titanic rounds at eye-popping valuations. Consider companies like Robinhood, and its epic capital...

China postpones Ant’s colossal IPO after closed-door talk with Jack Ma

The Shanghai stock exchange announced postponing Ant Group’s colossal initial public offering, a day after Chinese regulators weighed a slew of new fintech rules and summoned Jack Ma and other...

Indonesian logistics platform Logisly raises $6 million Series A to digitize truck shipments

Indonesia’s logistics industry is very fragmented, with several large providers operating alongside thousands of smaller companies. This means shippers often have to work with a variety of carriers, driving up...

NerdWallet acquires small business loan marketplace Fundera

Financial guidance company NerdWallet announced at the end of last week that it has acquired Fundera. New York City-based Fundera was co-founded in 2013 by Jared Hecht, who previously co-founded...

Booming edtech M&A activity brings consolidation to a fragmented sector

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to force teachers, students and parents to adopt new technologies, edtech’s total addressable market has massively grown in the last several months. The shift has...

Coupa Software snags Llamasoft for $1.5B to bring together spending and supply chain data

Coupa Software, a publicly traded company that helps large corporations manage spending, announced that it was buying Llamasoft, an 18 year old Michigan company that helps large companies manage their...

TVision raises $16M to measure viewer attention on connected TVs

TVision is building what its team hopes will become the standard for measuring streaming viewership — and to accelerate those efforts, it’s raised $16 million in new funding. The New...

Pandemic’s impact disproportionately reduced VC funding for female founders

The last few quarters did not play out as as expected for venture capitalists or entrepreneurs; instead of a pandemic-fueled recession that cauterized the flow of private investment into startups,...

Twilio wraps $3.2B purchase of Segment after warp speed courtship

It was barely a month ago we began hearing rumors that Twilio was interested in acquiring Segment. The $3.2 billion deal was officially announced three weeks ago, and this morning...

Email creation startup Stensul raises $16M

Stensul, a startup aiming to streamline the process of building marketing emails, has raised $16 million in Series B funding. When the company raised its $7 million Series A two years...

Equity Monday: Edtech and insurtech stay red-hot