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Last night Datto priced its IPO at $27 per share, the top end of its range that TechCrunch covered last week. The data and security-focused software company had targeted a...

Mine raises $9.5M to help people take control of their personal data

TechCrunch readers probably know that privacy regulations like Europe’s GDPR and California’s CCPA give them additional rights around their personal data — like the ability to request that companies delete...

How Yext reinvented itself on its way to going public

Last week, Yext CEO Howard Lerman dropped by Extra Crunch Live for a chat about his former startup, pivoting and becoming the CEO of a public company. Yext, which focuses...

Syte, an e-commerce visual search platform, gets $30 million Series C to expand in the U.S. and Asia

Syte’s cofounders, chief executive Ofer Freyman, chief revenue officer Lihi Pinto-Fryman and chief operating officer Idan Pinto Tel Aviv-based visual search and product discovery platform Syte, already used by brands...

MindLabs raises £1.4 million for its new platform, a “Peloton for mental health”

Ideally, mental wellness should be considered part of a healthy daily routine, like exercise. But even exercise is difficult to turn into a regular habit. Peloton addressed physical fitness by...

Synthetaic raises $3.5M to train AI with synthetic data

Synthetaic is a startup workign to create data — specifically images — that can be used to train artificial intelligence. Founder and CEO Corey Jaskolski’s past experience includes work with...

Root targets $6B+ valuation in pending IPO, a boon for insurtech startups

This morning Root Insurance, a neo-insurance provider that has attracted ample private capital for its auto-insurance business, is targeting a valuation of as much as $6.34 billion in its pending...

As startups accelerate in record Q3, Europe and Asia rack up huge VC results

Venture capital activity in Europe and Asia saw a strong return to form in Q3, data indicates. The two continents enjoyed more venture capital investment into their local startups than...

There’s a housing crisis, and Abodu wants to solve it fast with quality backyard homes

Housing prices have soared in many markets across the United States over the past decades as populations have grown, square footage has increased, and new unit construction has languished. Houses...

Perch raises $123.5M to grow its stable of D2C brands that sell on Amazon

While Amazon gradually builds out its own-branded line of products, third-party sellers continue to account for a significant part of the transaction volume and growth on its marketplace — by...

Eat Just partners with Proterra to launch a new subsidiary in Asia

Eat Just, the plant-based food startup, is launching a new Asian subsidiary through a partnership with Proterra Investment Partners Asia. The agreement includes building Eat Just’s first factory in Asia,...

Intel agrees to sell its NAND business to SK Hynix for $9 billion

SK Hynix, one of the world’s largest chip makers, announced today it will pay $9 billion for Intel’s flash memory business. Intel said it will use proceeds from the deal...

Juniper Networks acquires Boston-area AI SD-WAN startup 128 Technology for $450M

Today Juniper Networks announced it was acquiring smart wide area networking startup 128 Technology for $450 million. This marks the second AI-fueled networking company Juniper has acquired in the last...

Late-stage deals made Q3 2020 a standout VC quarter for US-based startups

Remember back in March when the VC game was done for the year, checkbooks were snapping shut and startup layoffs led the headlines? So much for all that. Q3’s venture...

Are VCs cutting checks in the closing days of the 2020 election?

Before the 2016 election, Vice Ventures founder and general partner Catharine Dockery was bullish about the future of recreational cannabis in the United States. “We saw quite a bit more...

Singapore tech-based real estate agency Propseller raises $1.2 million seed round

Propseller, a Singapore-based real estate agency that combines a tech platform with in-house agents to close transactions more quickly, announced today it has raised $1.2 million in seed funding. The...

Alibaba Group will spend $3.6 billion to take control of Chinese supermarket giant Sun Art

Alibaba Group said today it will spend about $3.6 billion to take a controlling stake in Sun Art, one of China’s largest big-box and supermarket chains. After the transaction is...

VCs reload ahead of the election as unicorns power ahead

Oct 17, 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. It was...

Three views on the future of media startups

Oct 17, 2020

The Equity crew this week chewed through a trio of media stories, each dealing with private companies and their successes. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Axios was growing...

Lawmatics raises $2.5M to help lawyers market themselves

Lawmatics, a San Diego startup that’s building marketing and CRM software for lawyers, is announcing that it has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. CEO Matt Spiegel used to practice...

Datto sets initial IPO price range, indicating a valuation of around $4B

It was just a few weeks ago that Datto, what TechCrunch called a “backup and disaster recovery firm,” filed to go public. This week the firm set an initial range...

How COVID-19 and the resulting recession are impacting female founders

Last week The Exchange dug into recent data concerning the amount of venture capital raised by female founders. As a refresher, the numbers were not good. In Q3 2020, PitchBook...

Miniso, the Japanese-looking variety store from China, sees shares jump in US IPO

Investors are jumping aboard a value store chain that is bringing Japanese-inspired lifestyle goods to consumers around the world. The company, Miniso, raised $608 million from an initial public offering...

Daily Crunch: Stripe acquires Nigeria’s Paystack

Stripe makes a big acquisition, Google rolls out search improvements and Snapchat adds a TikTok-y feature. This is your Daily Crunch for October 15, 2020. The big story: Stripe acquires...

Small business payments and marketing startup Fivestars raises $52.5M

It’s a difficult time for small businesses — to put it mildly. And Fivestars CEO Victor Ho said that many of the big digital platforms aren’t really helping. Ho argued that...

When was the last time you worked out your soul?

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

Alpaca raises $10M Series A for its API-powered equities trading service

This morning Alpaca, a startup that helps other companies add commission-free equities trading to their own products, announced a $10 million Series A. The new capital event was led by...

News that Calm seeks more funding at a higher valuation is not transcendental thinking

Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that meditation app Calm is looking into raising $150 million more at a valuation of around $2.2 billion, more than double its last private price. This...

Application security platform NeuraLegion raises $4.7 million seed led by DNX Ventures

A video call group photo of NeuraLegion’s team working remotely around the world Application security platform NeuraLegion announced today it has raised a $4.7 million seed round led by DNX...

Stripe acquires Nigeria’s Paystack for $200M+ to expand into the African continent

When Stripe announced earlier this year that it had picked up another $600 million in funding, it said one big reason for the funding was to expand its API-based payments...

South Korean startup Cochlear.ai raises $2 million Series A to detect the sounds missed by speech recognition

Sit quietly for a moment and pay attention to the different sounds around you. You might hear appliances beeping, cars honking, a dog barking, someone sneezing. These are all noises...

Gogoro’s Eeyo 1s e-bike goes on sale in France, its first European market

Gogoro announced today that its Eeyo 1s is now available for sale in France, the smart electric bike’s first European market. Another model, the Eeyo 1, will launch over the...

Sanity, a platform to build and manage content flows on sites, raises $9.3M from Ev Williams, Threshold and more

There are more than 2 billion websites in existence in the world today, millions of apps, and a growing range of digital screens where people and businesses present constantly changing...

M1 Finance closes $45M Series C mere months after it raised its $33M Series B

Just months after it announced a $33 million Series B, Chicago-based M1 Finance today disclosed a $45 Series C. The new financing event was led by Left Lane Capital, the...

Databricks crossed $350M run rate in Q3, up from $200M one year ago

The Exchange regularly covers companies as they approach and crest the $100 million revenue mark. Our goal in tracking startups growing at scale is to scout future IPO candidates and better...

Coa wants to bring an emotional workout into your fitness regimen

When’s the last time you worked out your soul? A mid-spin pep talk at SoulCycle might make you shed a tear, but not in the way that the co-founders of...

Engageli comes out of stealth with $14.5M and a new approach to teaching by video remotely

Zoom, Microsoft Teams and Google Meet have become standard tools for teachers who have had to run lessons remotely since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. But they’re not apps...

Spendesk raises another $18 million for its corporate card and expense service

French startup Spendesk has added $18 million to its Series B round. The company already raised $38.4 million as part of its Series B last year, which means that it...

Join Yext’s Howard Lerman for a live Q&A today at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

Today’s the day! This afternoon at 2 pm ET/11 am PT, Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join TechCrunch for a live chat. The conversation is part of our continuing Extra...

Is the Twilio-Segment deal expensive?

The Twilio-Segment acquisition was the biggest story of the weekend, and in our current IPO lull, it is the most-discussed deal of the moment. So it hasn’t been a surprise...

Hong Kong and New York-based Easyship joins Shopify Plus’ tech partner program

Easyship, a logistics startup that allows e-commerce sellers to add multiple carriers to their stores, announced it has joined the Shopify Plus Technology Partner Program. Easyship is headquartered in Hong...

Malaysian on-demand work platform GoGet lands $2 million Series A

GoGet, a Malaysian on-demand work platform, announced today that it has raised a $2 million Series A led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The platform currently has 20,000 gig workers, who...

With thousands of subscribers, The Juggernaut raises $2 million for a South Asian-focused news outlet

As paid newsletters grow in popularity, Snigdha Sur, the founder of South Asian-focused media company The Juggernaut, has no qualms about avoiding the approach entirely. In October 2017, Sur started...

Yotascale raises a $13M Series B to help companies track and manage their cloud spends

These days when you found a startup, you don’t go out and buy a rack of servers. And you don’t build an in-house datacenter team. Instead, you farm out your...

2020 IPO report card: Are tech’s newest public companies meeting expectations?

As the American election looms and the IPO cycle slows some, it’s a good time to review how well the public offerings we have seen thus far have performed. The...

Equity Monday: Twilio buys Segment, and Airkit raises $28M for its low-code platform

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,...

AC Ventures announces the first close of its $80 million fund for Indonesian startups

As one of the world’s most populated countries, with a fast-growing internet economy, Indonesia offers plenty of opportunity for startups. AC Ventures wants to tap into that with its $80...

Twilio is buying customer data startup Segment for between $3B and $4B

Oct 11, 2020

Sources have told TechCrunch that Twilio intends to acquire customer data startup Segment for between $3 and $4 billion. Forbes broke the story on Friday night, reporting a price tag...

Venture capital gets less diverse in 2020

Oct 10, 2020

Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading....

YCharts sells to PE firm in all-cash transaction as it looks to pass $15M ARR this year

Oct 9, 2020

This morning, YCharts, a financial data and charting service, announced that it has been purchased by LLR Partners, a private equity firm. The companies are dubbing the transaction a “growth...

Funding for female founders falls to 2017 levels as pandemic shakes up the VC market

Oct 9, 2020

So much for progress. New data out this week from PitchBook indicates that the number of rounds raised by female-founded and co-founded companies fell year-over-year, with dollars invested in those...

Join Yext’s Howard Lerman for a Q&A October 13 at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

Oct 9, 2020

Heading into the third quarter and earnings season, TechCrunch is excited to announce that Yext CEO Howard Lerman will join us for a live Q&A next Tuesday as part of...

Affirm files confidentially to go public

This afternoon Affirm, a startup focused on providing point-of-sale credit to consumers making online purchases, announced that it has filed to go public. The filing is confidential, so there’s little...

Instacart raises $200M more at $17.7B valuation

Instacart announced today that it has raised $200 million in a new funding round featuring prior investors. D1 Capital and Valiant Peregrine Fund led the investment. Instacart is now worth...

Greycroft, Lerer Hippeau and Audible back audio measurement startup Veritonic

Veritonic is announcing that it has raised $3.2 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft, with participation from Lerer Hippeau and Amazon-owned audiobook service Audible. CEO Scott Simonelli, who...

Delivery startup goPuff raises $380M at a $3.9B valuation

GoPuff is a Philadelphia-headquartered startup that delivers products like over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol (basically, the stuff you’d buy at a convenience store) in 30 minutes or less. Yakir...

Understanding Airbnb’s summer recovery

New numbers concerning Airbnb’s summer performance were reported this week, with The Information adding to the performance figures that Bloomberg previously detailed earlier this year. Airbnb announced that it filed...

Betaworks and Betalab unveil their first four startups working to ‘fix the internet’

Back in March, startup studio Betaworks announced that was partnering with James Murdoch’s Lupa Systems to create a new program called Betalab, which would fund and mentor early-stage startups that...

Lanturn, a Singaporean tech-enabled corporate services provider, raises $3 million seed round

Running a small to medium-sized business means a small staff needs to juggle a plethora of tasks, like bookkeeping, tax records and regulatory filings. Singaporean startup Lanturn streamlines their workload...

Zira raises $3.1M for its shift-scheduling service that helps manage hourly workers

Oct 7, 2020

This morning Zira raised $3.1 million in a seed round. The startup provides software that helps businesses schedule their hourly workforce in a more intelligent manner. Software often fails to...

Unqork’s $207M Series C underscores growing enterprise demand for no-code apps

Oct 7, 2020

This week, Unqork, a startup that helps other companies build business apps with a no-code platform, raised a $207 million Series C. The new capital valued the firm at around...

A quick peek into Opendoor’s financial results

As investing whirlwind Chamath Palihapitiya continues to make headlines with his full-court press to take private tech companies public via SPACs while markets are hot, one of his targets has...

Why startups are going public now

After all those years of startups not going public, 2020 is a little bit different. It feels like more companies are filing, and more companies are seeing their debuts through....

Tone raises $4M to help e-commerce brands text with their customers

While many companies are using chatbots and other forms of automation to manage their communication with customers, Boston-based Tone is betting that humans will remain a key part of the...

Tokyo-based virtual reality game developer Thirdverse gets $8.5 million Series A

Thirdverse, the virtual reality game developer behind “Swords of Gargantua,” has raised $8.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by JAFCO, with participation from Presence Capital, Sisu...

Ÿnsect, the makers of the world’s most expensive bug farm, raises another $224 million

Ÿnsect, the startup building the world’s most high tech bug colony, have added $224 million in equity and debt to an already impressive $148 million cash haul as it looks...

Cryptocurrency wallet BRD reaches 6 million users, driven by growth in Latin America and India

Mobile cryptocurrency wallet BRD announced today that it now has more than six million users worldwide, thanks to strong growth in India and Latin America. With this momentum, the company...

Faraday Future plans to go public through a SPAC deal

Faraday Future, the electric vehicle startup with a messy and complicated past, is planning to go public through a special-purchase acquisition company (SPAC) deal. The company’s chief executive Carsten Breitfeld...

Six favorite Techstars startups ahead of its next rush of demo days

With TechCrunch Disrupt happening last month, I fell behind on watching accelerator demo days. It’s time to correct that oversight. In August and September, the Techstars network of startup accelerators...

Printing giant Vistaprint acquires 99designs

Vistaprint announced today that its parent company Cimpress has acquired freelance design marketplace 99designs. The companies say that 99designs will become part of Vistaprint while also operating as a separate...

Equity Monday: Ola, DeFi, and how to turn cooler cabinets into ads

Cooler Screens raises $80M to bring interactive screens into cooler aisles

Cooler Screens, which replaces the glass doors in store cooler aisles with interactive digital displays, is announcing that it has raised more than $80 million in Series C funding. The...

Accel VCs Sonali De Rycker and Andrew Braccia say European deal pace is ‘incredibly active’

Oct 4, 2020

The other week TechCrunch’s Extra Crunch Live series sat down with Accel VCs Sonali De Rycker and Andrew Braccia to chat about the state of the global startup investing ecosystem....

Digging into the next wave of tech IPOs

Oct 4, 2020

After taking five consecutive business days off from my work laptop — and to shout at my personal laptop while losing games on Dominion online — I am back. I...

Writer pens a $5M seed round for its AI style guide that flags bias and tone

Oct 2, 2020

Anyone who writes online or in a word processor has likely gotten used to the inevitable squiggly line denoting a misspelled word or clumsy phrase. But what if you use...

Zynga completes its acquisition of hyper-casual game maker Rollic

Oct 2, 2020

Zynga announced in August that it would be acquiring Istanbul-based Rollic, developer and publisher of hyper-casual gaming hits like Go Knots 3D and Tangle Master 3D. Today, it says the...

With $18M in new funding, Braintrust says it’s creating a fairer model for freelancers

Braintrust, a network for freelance technical and design talent that launched over the summer, is announcing that it has raised $18 million in new funding. Co-founder and CEO Adam Jackson...

SAP continues to build out customer experience business with Emarsys acquisition

SAP seemed to be all in on customer experience when it acquired Qualtrics for $8 billion in 2018. It continued on that journey today when it announced it was acquiring...

Macrometa, an edge computing service for app developers, lands $7M seed round led by DNX

As people continue to work and study from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in edge computing has increased. Macrometa, a Palo Alto-based that provides edge computing infrastructure for...

Allbirds CEO Joey Zwillinger on the startup’s $100 million round, profitability, and SPAC mania

As people spend less time out in the world and more time daydreaming about when a vaccine will arrive, lifestyle shoes are only gaining traction. One obvious beneficiary is Allbirds,...

Lots of happy people as Palantir and Asana spike on first day of trading

The markets are closed and the verdicts are in: investors liked what they saw in Palantir and Asana . The two companies, which debuted this morning in dual (and duel)...

Dustin Moskovitz discusses Asana’s first trading day

It’s a big day for Asana, the work management tool that debuted on the NYSE this morning in a direct listing. Founded back in 2009 by Dustin Moskovitz and Justin...

Golden raises $14.5M to build a wiki-style database of tech knowledge

Golden is announcing that it has raised $14.5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by previous investor Andreessen Horowitz, with the firm’s co-founder Marc Andreessen joining the...

The roadmap to startup consolidation in Southeast Asia is becoming clearer

While Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystems are still young compared to those in China or India, it has matured over the last five years. Unicorns like Grab, Gojek and Garena are...

Asana up 37% and Palantir up 50% as both direct listings hit the public markets

Two direct listings in one day. Lots to talk about. Asana started trading just a bit after noon Eastern today, quickly zooming to roughly about $29 a share in early...

Vista-owned backup and recovery company Datto files to go public

When Vista Equity Partners acquired backup and disaster recovery firm Datto in 2017, it was easy to think that was the end of the company’s story. It would be comfortably...

Element acquires Gitter to get more developers on board with the open Matrix messaging protocol

Some interesting news for lovers of open, decentralized communications tech: Element, the company behind the eponymous Matrix -based Slack competitor (formerly known as Riot) has acquired developer-focused chat platform, Gitter,...

Emjoy picks up $3M to get more women tuned into sexual self-care

Barcelona-based Emjoy, an audio app for women that sells a narrative of sexual self-care and empowerment, has picked up $3 million in seed funding led by JME Ventures, with existing...

The joke is on consumers as Liquid Death raises $23 million more

In what began as a kind of funny, savvy marketing stunt that has since gained traction, a nearly three-year-old, Santa Monica-based startup that sells water from the Austrian Alps under...

E-scooter startup Neuron Mobility adds $12M to its Series A for expansion in Australia and New Zealand

Neuron Mobility, a Singapore-based e-scooter rental startup, announced today that it has added $12 million to its Series A. Led by Square Peg, an Australian venture capital firm and GSR...

Palantir’s reference price values it at roughly $16 billion

Palantir is preparing for its public debut tomorrow morning on the NYSE after 17 years, and now we are getting some data on how the company’s shares are being valued...

Online course platform Thinkific raises $22M

It’s been a big year for online learning companies — and it sounds like Thinkific is no exception. The Vancouver-based startup is announcing that it has raised $22 million in...

Travel activities platform KKDay raises $75 million Series C as it focuses on “staycations”

With lockdowns around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit the travel industry especially hard. In Asia, however, several startups are adapting by focusing on domestic activities (or “staycations”) instead...

Multis is a business bank account for cryptocurrencies

Meet Multis, a French startup that is building business bank accounts, except that it lets you store, send and receive cryptocurrencies. The startup just raised a $2.2 million seed round....

Exotec raises $90 million for its warehouse robots

French startup Exotec has raised a $90 million Series C round led by 83North, with existing investors Iris Capital and Breega also participating. Other existing investors include 360 Capital. The...

Indonesian fintech startup BukuWarung gets new funding to add financial services for small merchants