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In a new S-1/A filing, Coursera set an initial IPO price range between $30 and $33 a share, signaling the market views its edtech business warmly ahead of its impending...

Box shares rise on report company is exploring sale

Shares of Box, a well-known content-and-collaboration company that went public in 2015, rose today after Reuters reported that the company is exploring a sale. TechCrunch previously discussed rising investor pressure...

Social shopping-focused Chums announces $3.5M raise ahead of YC Demo Day

With Y Combinator Demo Day kicking off tomorrow morning, startups in the current batch are hurrying to make a little news before they show off their recent growth to investors....

Equity Monday: Deliveroo sets IPO price range as we gear up for Y Combinator week

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...

Mithril dives into chips again with a $55M infusion to Flex Logix

The once untouchable semiconductor sector continues to attract fervent attention from VCs. The latest news this morning is that Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital has led a $55 million Series...

Nuvemshop, LatAm’s answer to Shopify, raises $90M in Accel-led Series D

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to people everywhere shopping more online and Latin America is no exception. São Paulo-based Nuvemshop has developed an e-commerce platform that aims to allow SMBs...

Swedish fintech Zaver raises $5M to bring cardless payments and BNPL to ‘durables’ sector

Zaver, a Swedish fintech that enable merchants to accept cardless payments and offer buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) as an option, has raised $5 million in new funding. The company, which began life...

Indonesian savings and investment app Pluang gets $20M in pre-Series B funding

Indonesia-based fintech Pluang announced today it has raised $20 million in a pre-Series B round led by Openspace Ventures, with participation from Go Ventures and other returning investors. The company...

Singapore-based M Capital Management closes $30.85M debut fund to invest in Southeast Asian startups

M Capital Management founding partners Joachim Ackermann (left) and Mayank Parekh (right) M Capital Management, a Singapore-based venture capital firm, announced today it has closed its debut fund, M Venture...

Tech companies predict the (economic) future

Mar 20, 2021

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. Want...

Sidekick Browser wants to be a productivity-honed ‘work OS’ on Chromium

The paradox of connected computing is how much information is made available to us in just a few clicks or taps — but also how this ocean of available data...

Fetcher raises $6.5M to automate parts of the recruiting process

Fetcher, a startup that promises to make the recruiting process easier while also diversifying the candidate pool, is announcing that it has raised $6.5 million in Series A funding. Originally...

AI fintech products are operating at scale and investor interest is maturing

Recently public unicorn Upstart announced earnings that blew the socks off of Wall Street this week. After closing on Wednesday at around $61 per share, Upstart wrapped Thursday worth $115...

Forget medicine, in the future you might get prescribed apps

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. This...

Snowflake gave up its dual-class shares. Should you?

Snowflake announced earlier this month that it would give up its dual-class shareholder structure, a corporate governance setup that often gives founders and executives superior voting rights, typically involving 10...

Real estate tech startup Offerpad to go public via SPAC merger in $3B deal

Offerpad is the latest proptech company to go public via a SPAC merger. The Phoenix, Ariz.-based company announced Thursday its plans to go public by merging with Supernova Partners Acquisition...

What eToro’s investor presentation and $10B valuation tells us about Robinhood

Amid all the news of the last few days, you might have missed that eToro, an Israeli consumer stock-trading service, is going public in the United States via a SPAC....

Homebrew backs Higo’s effort to become the “Venmo for B2B payments” in LatAm

The B2B payments space has been on fire for a while, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only fueled mass adoption of digitizing finances. In regions like Latin America, the need...

E-commerce marketing startup Yotpo raises $230M at a $1.4B valuation

Barely more than seven months after its most recent funding announcement, Yotpo is revealing that it has raised another $230 million in a Series F round that values the company...

Crypto infrastructure provider Fireblocks raises $133 million

Fireblocks has raised a $133 million Series C funding round led by Coatue, Ribbit, and Stripes. The company provides several products that let you store, transfer and issue digital assets....

Saleor scores $2.5M seed round for its ‘headless’ e-commerce platform

Saleor, a Poland and U.S.-based startup that offers a “headless” e-commerce platform to make it easier for developers to build better online shopping experiences, has raised $2.5 million in seed...

Fulfilment startup Cubyn raises €35M to expand across Europe

Cubyn, the Paris-based logistics startup that lets e-merchants outsource fulfilment and delivery logistics, has raised another €35 million in funding. The round is led by Eurazeo and Bpifrance Large Venture,...

Financial API provider Brick is building the infrastructure for open banking in Southeast Asia

The adoption of financial apps is surging in Southeast Asian markets like Indonesia, the region’s most populous country. Founded by fintech veterans last year, Brick develops APIs that make it...

Cymbio raises $7M to help brands expand to more e-commerce markets

Cymbio, a Tel Aviv-based startup focused on what it calls “brand-to-retailer connectivity,” announced today that it has raised $7 million in Series A funding. CEO Roy Avidor, who founded the...

Okay, the GPT-3 hype seems pretty reasonable

This morning TechCrunch covered an interesting round for Copy.ai, a startup that employs GPT-3 to help other companies with their writing projects. GPT-3, or Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3, is a piece...

Snap is taking a significant step into fashion e-commerce with its acquisition of Fit Analytics

“Snap, Inc. is a camera company,” Snap notes on its homepage, and while a lot of it effort up to now have been about using that camera ethos to help...

Olo prices IPO sharply above its target, valuing company as high as $4.6B

A big story in the finance world this morning is that the Nasdaq Composite index lost ground in pre-market trading while bond yields rose. The concern is that inflation could...

Pregame Y Combinator with Equity

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on...

Writing helper Copy.ai raises $2.9M in a round led by Craft Ventures

Copy.ai, a startup building AI-powered copywriting tools for business customers, announced a $2.9 million round this morning. The investment was led by Craft Ventures. Other investors took part in the...

PayFit raises $107 million for its payroll and HR platform

French startup PayFit has raised a $107 million series D funding round (€90 million). Eurazeo Growth and Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund are leading today’s round. Existing investors Accel, Frst and...

Dija acquires Cambridge-based Genie to expand its 10 minute grocery service across UK

Dija, the London-based grocery delivery startup backed by Blossom Capital, Creandum and Index Ventures, has acquired Cambridge, U.K.-based Genie, in what looks in part like an acqui-hire. The deal, for...

Squarespace raises $300M at staggering $10B valuation

Squarespace has raised $300 million in a round of funding that values the company at a staggering $10 billion valuation. New backers include Dragoneer, Tiger Global, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity...

Socure raises $100M at $1.3B valuation, proving identity verification is hotter than ever

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital adoption in a way that no one could have ever anticipated, and as more people conduct more services online and via mobile devices, businesses...

London’s Jiffy picks up £2.6M seed to enter the grocery dark store race

Another online grocery delivery and “dark store” operator breaks cover today: London-based Jiffy, which aims to deliver fresh groceries and household essentials in around 15 minutes, has raised £2.6 million...

The global inequity in venture financing is staggering

The global venture capital ecosystem is inequitable. In the United States’ mature venture capital market, an entrepreneur’s race, gender and age help determine who has access to capital. But there...

Appfire, provider of Atlassian apps, raises $100M to continue its buying spree

Appfire, a Boston-based provider of software development apps, announced Tuesday that it has received a $100 million investment from growth private equity firm TA Associates. Founded in 2005, Appfire was...

Resilience is an ambitious bet to improve cancer treatment

Meet Resilience, a new startup that wants to help cancer treatment institutes as well as cancer patients at every step of the treatment journey. It’s an ambitious project founded by...

New challenger Ikigai combines digital banking and wealth management

Ikigai, a London fintech founded by former McKinsey partners, thinks there’s room in the crowded challenger market for a new premium offering that combines digital banking with wealth management. Targeting...

Daily Crunch: Stripe valued at $95B

Stripe gets a mind-boggling valuation, Facebook promotes COVID vaccines and Elon Musk has an interesting new title. This is your Daily Crunch for March 15, 2021. The big story: Stripe...

Stripe’s epic new valuation and the value-capture gap between public and private markets

Well, it happened. Over the weekend, Stripe announced the closure of its widely reported new round of capital. The $600 million round values the payments and banking software company at...

The great Gatsby raises millions to take on Robinhood

Millennials and GenZers seem interested in investing more than ever these days. As a result, a number of startups have emerged in recent years to give them more options. One...

Customer experience startup Sprinklr files confidential S-1 with SEC

Sprinklr, a New York-based customer experience company, announced today it has filed a confidential S-1 ahead of a possible IPO. “Sprinklr today announced that it has confidentially submitted a draft...

Equity Monday: Stripe’s epic new valuation, Deliveroo’s IPO, and WeWork numbers

Should there be some law against raising three times in one year?

Mar 13, 2021

TaxDown banks ~$3M for tech that helps people get their taxes done

Madrid-based TaxDown, which automates income tax filing by calculating regional deductions due to users so they don’t have to navigate complex tax rules themselves, has raised €2.4 million (~$3M) in...

Why I’m hitting pause on ARR-focused coverage

As 2021 kicked off, I reformulated a series of posts we published last year focused on startups that had reached the $100 million ARR (annual recurring revenue) mark. In our...

Disruptel raises $1.1M to make smart TVs smarter

St. Louis-based voice assistant startup Disruptel is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding. The money comes from an impressive group of investors who seem well-aligned with...

Can you beat Google with Google’s brains?

Legl gets $7M to help law firms upgrade to digital workflows

B2B SaaS startup Legl has bagged $7M in Series A funding led by Octopus Ventures for its platform for law firms which offers tools to streamline core business processes such...

Coupang follows Roblox to a strong first day of trading

Another day brings another pubic debut of a multibillion dollar company that performed well out of the gate. This time it’s Coupang, whose shares are currently up just over 46%...

Bessemer’s 2021 cloud report provides context for soaring software startup valuations

Some well-known VC firms have spent the last few months crunching data while working to chart, graph, and map the world of venture investing. Happily for you and I, they’ve...

Hugging Face raises $40 million for its natural language processing library

Hugging Face has raised a $40 million Series B funding round — Addition is leading the round. The company has been building an open source library for natural language processing...

BlockFi lands a $350M Series D at a $3B valuation for its fast-growing crypto-lending platform

If there were any doubt about a cryptocurrency boom, we need look no further than at the explosion of growth of certain companies in the space. One such company is...

Professor Scott Galloway just raised $30 million for an online school that upskills managers fast

Scott Galloway, the New York University professor, author, and tech entrepreneur, is taking the wraps off a $30 million Series A round for his newest company, Section4, a platform for...

Chatbot startup Heyday raises $5.1M

Montreal-based Heyday announced today that it has raised $6.5 million Canadian ($5.1 million in US dollars) in additional seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Steve Desjarlais told me that the startup’s...

Welcome to Bloxburg, public investors

As Roblox began to trade today, the company’s shares shot above its reference price of $45 per share. Currently, Roblox is trading at $71.10 per share, up just over 60%...

Arist adds $2M to its seed round to grow its SMS-based training service

This morning Arist, a startup that sells software allowing other organizations to offer SMS-based training to staff, announced that it has extended its seed round to $3.9 million after adding...

There have never been more $100M+ fintech rounds than right now

We’re putting aside the IPO news cycle this morning to check in on the venture capital world and the fintech market in particular. As we all know, fintech is booming:...

How Coupang is “out-Amazoning even Amazon,” according to Goodwater Capital

Korean e-commerce giant Coupang is expected to hold one of the biggest tech IPOs of the year on March 11. The company disclosed earlier this month that it is seeking...

NFTs are changing cultural value creation

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down and focus on a...

SIP Global Partners announces first close of its $150M fund to bring U.S. startups into Japan

Japan is often under discussed as an expansion target for American startups, but in the past few years it has become a top market for companies like Slack, Salesforce, Twitter...

Cheese raises $3.6M for its digital bank aimed at the Asian-American community

Many things have accelerated in the world of fintech over the past year, not the least of which is the trend of digital banks aimed at specific communities in the...

Songclip raises $11M to bring more licensed music to social media

The team behind Songclip thinks that social media could use more music. Yes, music is a big part of the experience on a handful of apps like TikTok and Triller,...

Zego, the tech-enabled commercial motor insurer, raises $150M at $1.1B valuation

Zego, the insurtech that got its start by offering flexible motorbike insurance for gig economy workers but has since expanded with a range of tech-enabled commercial motor insurance products, has...

Jobandtalent takes $120M from Softbank to enter the US market

Spain’s Jobandtalent, a digital temp staffing agency startup which operates a dual-sided platform that matches temps with employers needing casual labor in sectors like ecommerce, warehousing, logistics and manufacturing, has...

Audience engagement startup Trufan raises $2.3M

Trufan, a startup selling tools helping marketers analyze their social followings and collect audience data, announced today that it has raised a $2.3 million seed round. Despite raising a relatively...

Capsule gets $1.5M to build ‘super simple’ decentralized social media

Capsule‘s plan to launch a super simple decentralized social media platform which is safe from censorship by Big Tech has advanced another stage: The nascent startup has closed a seed...

SeekOut finds profits and Tiger Global in its pursuit to help companies hire diverse talent

Most companies claim they want a diverse staff but at the same time, complain they don’t know how to go about recruiting more diverse candidates. Enter SeekOut — a startup...

Global-e files to go public as e-commerce startups enjoy a renaissance

Global-e, an e-commerce platform that helps online sellers reach global consumers, filed to go public this morning. The company’s F-1 filing is here, if you’d like to read along. While...

Entertainment payroll startup Wrapbook raises $27M round led by A16Z

Wrapbook, a startup that simplifies the payroll process for TV, film and commercial productions, has raised $27 million in Series A funding from noteworthy names from both the tech and...

Pegasus Tech Ventures and Japanet launch new $50M fund to bring global startups to Nagasaki

Pegasus Tech Ventures, a firm that helps corporations launch startup investment funds, announced a new partnership with Japanet today. Japanet, one of Japan’s largest television shopping companies, and Pegasus have...

Dropbox to acquire secure document sharing startup DocSend for $165M

Dropbox announced today that it plans to acquire DocSend for $165 million The company helps customers share and track documents by sending a secure link instead of an attachment. “We’re...

This Pipe-ing hot startup just raised $50M to be the ‘Nasdaq for revenue’

A little over one year ago, Pipe raised a $6 million seed round led by Craft Ventures to help it pursue its mission of giving SaaS companies a funding alternative...

M1 Finance raises another rapid-fire round after scaling its AUM to more than $3.5B

Months after raising a Series C worth $45 million, Chicago-based M1 Finance announced a new round of capital today. A Series D, the new $75 million investment was led by...

Cube raises $10M more to help companies plan their financial future

This morning Cube, a startup that builds FP&A software for the mid-market, announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A. The company previously raised a $5 million seed...

Taipei-based Influenxio gets $2M from DCM Ventures for its “microinfluencer” marketing platform

Influenxio’s team, with founder and chief executive officer Allan Ko in the center “Microinfluencers” are gaining clout among marketers. Though they may have as little as a thousand followers, microinfluencers...

Zapier buys no-code-focused Makerpad in its first acquisition

Zapier, a well-known no-code automation tool, has purchased Makerpad, a no-code education service and community. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch has covered Zapier often during its life,...

Cosi raises €20M for its ‘full-stack’ approach to short-term rentals

Cosi Group, a Berlin-based startup offering an alternative to boutique hotels and managed short-stay apartments, is disclosing €20 million in new investment. Backing the round is Vienna-based Soravia, a leading...

Vendr raises huge $60M Series A as its SaaS-purchasing service scales

This morning Vendr announced a $60 million Series A round, a huge funding event led by Tiger Global, with participation from Y Combinator, Sound Ventures, Craft Ventures, F-Prime Capital, and...

Olo’s IPO could value the company north of $3B as Toast waits in the wings

Olo, the New York-based fintech startup that provides order processing software to restaurants, shared its initial IPO price range this morning. The company’s debut comes ahead of the expected IPO...

Equity Monday: More money for fintech, Deliveroo’s IPO, and AI startups

PayPal to acquire cryptocurrency security startup Curv

PayPal has announced that it plans to acquire Curv, a cryptocurrency startup based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Israeli newspaper Calcalist originally reported the move. And PayPal has now made an...

Swiss maker of meat alternatives Planted will expand and diversify with $18M Series A

Planted, a startup pursuing a unique method of creating a vegetarian chicken alternative, has raised an $18M (CHF 17M) Series A to expand its product offerings and international footprint. With...

Praava Health raises $10.6M to increase access to quality healthcare in Bangladesh

Praava Health founder and chief executive officer Sylvana Sinha (third from left) at one of the company’s healthcare centers Before launching Praava Health, a company that combines telemedicine with physical...

Investors still love software more than life

Mar 6, 2021

A first look at Coursera’s S-1 filing

After TechCrunch broke the news yesterday that Coursera was planning to file its S-1 today, the edtech company officially dropped the document Friday evening. Coursera was last valued at $2.4...

Dan Siroker’s new startup Scribe automates Zoom note-taking

Optimizely co-founder Dan Siroker said the idea for his new startup Scribe goes back to a couple of personal experiences — and although Scribe’s first product is focused on Zoom,...

Eco raises $26M in a16z-led round to scale its digital cryptocurrency platform

‍Eco, which has built out a digital global cryptocurrency platform, announced Friday that it has raised $26 million in a funding round led by a16z Crypto. Founded in 2018, the...

The technology selloff is getting to be somewhat material

Tech stocks are getting hammered today, with previously high-flying shares of software companies taking even more damage. For a sector that has enjoyed a year in the sun, recent trading...

YC-backed Pangea discusses growth, fundraising ahead of demo day

Pangea, a marketplace startup that wants to connect college freelancers and companies in need of digital help, is seeing its growth rate accelerate as it races toward the impending Y...

Understanding how investors value growth in 2021

We’re not digging into another IPO filing today. You can read all about AppLovin’s filing here, or ThredUp’s document here. This morning, instead, we’re talking about an old favorite: software...

SoftBank makes mountains of cash off of human laziness

Indonesian logistics startup SiCepat raises $170 million Series B

SiCepat, an end-to-end logistics startup in Indonesia, announced today it has raised a $170 million Series B funding round. Founded in 2014 to provide last-mile deliveries for small merchants, the...

Backed by Blossom, Creandum and Index, grocery delivery and dark store startup Dija launches in London

Dija, the London-based grocery delivery startup, is officially launching today and confirming that it raised £20 million in seed funding in December — a round that we first reported was...

Flourish, a startup that aims to help banks engage and retain customers, raises $1.5M

It’s not uncommon these days to hear of U.S.-based investors backing Latin American startups. But it’s not every day that we hear of Latin American VCs investing in U.S.-based startups....

With $19M A round, Halo Dx combines data streams to better diagnose cancers, dementia and more

Healthcare is one of the most complex industries out there, creating frustration on the consumer side but also the opportunity for huge improvements from, in a way, rather simple methods....

Social commerce startup Elenas raises $6M and plans for international expansion

Colombian startup Elenas says it’s helping tens of thousands of women make money by selling products online. And today, it announced that it has raised $6 million in Series A...

Luxury air travel startup Aero raises $20M

Aero, a startup backed by Garrett Camp’s startup studio Expa, has raised $20 million in Series A funding — right as CEO Uma Subramanian said demand for air travel is...

Square buys majority of Tidal, adds Jay Z to its board in bid to shake up the artist economy