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This morning Citadel ID announced a combined $3.5 million raise for its income and employment verification service. The startup provides an API to customer companies, allowing them to rapidly verify...

Bitcoin briefly breaks the $50,000 barrier as Coinbase’s direct listing looms

The hodl-crew are having quite the moment as bitcoin passed the $50,000 mark earlier today for the first time. Data pegs the peak at just over $50,500. The price of...

Tencent backs digital rights startup Pex in $57M round

Pex, a startup aiming to giving rightsholders more control over how their content is used and reused online, has raised $57 million in new funding. The round comes from existing...

Tata Group reaches agreement to buy majority stake in BigBasket

Indian conglomerate Tata Group has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in grocery delivery startup BigBasket, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The salt-to-software giant is...

Sources: Palo Alto Networks acquired DevOps security startup Bridgecrew for around $200M

The pandemic and the world’s big shift to doing (even) more online has put an unprecedented amount of pressure on cybersecurity. Now, it looks like one of the big...

Jigsaw scores $3.7M to slow down your dating swipes

Chalk one up for Jigsaw, an “anti-superficial” dating app that has scored £2.7 million ($3.7 million) in seed funding to put toward U.S. expansion. The round is led by a...

Delivery company goPuff is in talks to acquire the UK’s Fancy

GoPuff, the U.S.-based startup that operates its own “microfulfillment” network and promises to deliver items such as over-the-counter medicine, baby food and alcohol in 30 minutes or less, is in...

Private equity firm Marlin snatches up e-commerce optimization platform Lengow

French startup Lengow has a new landlord as Marlin Equity Partners has acquired a majority stake in the company. Lengow operates a softare-as-a-service platform to optimize e-commerce listings. Terms of...

Investors’ SPAC push could revamp the private market money game

Since last year, we’ve been tracking the growing list of capitalists who got into the SPAC game. You can read an interview we conducted with Amish Jani, the co-founder of...

There is infinite money for stock-trading startups

Feb 13, 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....

Coupang files for mega US IPO

Feb 12, 2021

Earlier today, South Korean e-commerce and delivery giant Coupang filed to go public in the United States. As a private company, Coupang has raised billions, including capital from American venture...

Will ride-hailing profits ever come?

Feb 12, 2021

Uber and Lyft lost a lot of money in 2020. That’s not a surprise, as COVID-19 caused many ride-hailing markets to freeze, limiting demand for folks moving around. To combat...

Does SoftBank have 20 more DoorDashes?

Feb 12, 2021

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...

TechCrunch’s favorites from Techstars’ Boston, Chicago and workforce accelerators

Building off TechCrunch’s coverage of the recent 500 Startups demo day, we’re back today to talk about some favorites from three more accelerator classes. This time we’re digging into Techstars’...

South African VC firm Knife Capital gets first commitment for its $50M fund, to invest in 10-12 Series B rounds

Knife Capital, a South African venture capital firm, is raising a $50 million fund for startups looking to raise Series B financing. With Knife Fund III called the African Series...

Robinhood’s pain is Public’s gain as VCs rush to give it more money

Public.com, a social-focused free stock trading service, is nearing the close of a Series D just two months after raising a $65 million Series C, sources familiar with the matter...

As more insurtech offerings loom, CEO Dan Preston discusses MetroMile’s SPAC-led debut

MetroMile began trading as a public company yesterday. Its exit from the private market was accelerated by its decision to combine with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Such...

Reduct.Video raises $4M to simplify video editing

The team at Reduct.Video is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of videos created by businesses. The startup’s technology is already used by customers including Intuit, Autodesk, Facebook, Dell, Spotify,...

Treinta announces $500k+ in funding for its microbusiness financial app

Treinta, a startup that is part of the Winter 2021 Y Combinator cohort, announced this morning that it has raised north of half a million dollars for its bookkeeping and...

Tillit, a fintech offering buy now, pay later for B2B purchases, is closing in on investment from Sequoia

Tillit, a fintech startup that is building something akin to buy now, pay later for B2B purchases , looks set to become Sequoia’s next European investment, TechCrunch has learned. According...

2up launches ahead of Valentines Day to help gamers find one another

People don’t often equate gaming with dating, but maybe they should. As gaming continues to grow in popularity, particularly in the wake of the pandemic, a new startup called 2up...

Sweden-based digital bank Northmill raises $30M

Northmill Bank, the Sweden-based challenger that has around 200,000 customers across three European countries, has raised around $30 million in new funding. Leading the round is M2 Asset Management, the...

Bumble prices IPO at $43 per share

This afternoon Bumble priced its IPO at $43 per share, ahead of its raised IPO range of $37 to $39 per share. Bumble filed to go public in mid-January, and...

Scalarr raises $7.5M to fight mobile ad fraud

Scalarr, a startup that says it uses machine learning to combat ad fraud, is announcing that it has raised $7.5 million in Series A funding. The company was founded by...

These 3 enterprise deals show there’s plenty of action in smaller acquisitions

Since the start of the year, I’ve covered nine M&A deals already, the largest being Citrix buying Wrike for $2.25 billion. But not every deal involves a huge price tag....

How will investors value MetroMile and Oscar Health?

Last night, MetroMile and SPAC INSU Acquisition Corp. II completed their combination, putting the per-mile auto insurance startup up for regular trading today for the first time. In the wake...

Accessibility overlay startup AccessiBe closes $28M series A

If you want to make your website accessible right now but lack the resources for the kind of serious revamp it would take, an “accessibility overlay” may take the pressure...

Level closes $1.5M to provide financial services to gig workers

This morning Level, a Seattle-based startup that offers credit to gig-economy workers, announced that it has raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round. Level intends to provide various services to gig-economy...

Nobl9 raises $21M Series B for its SLO management platform

SLAs, SLOs, SLIs. If there’s one thing everybody in the business of managing software development loves, it’s acronyms. And while everyone probably knows what a Service Level Agreement (SLA) is,...

Powder raises $14 million for its social app for game clips

Meet Powder, a French startup that helps you share video clips of your favorite games, follow people with the same interests and interact with them. The company has raised a...

Ramp secures $150M debt line from Goldman Sachs as the corporate spend market grows

This morning Ramp, a startup that competes in the corporate spend market, announced that it has secured a $150 million debt facility with Goldman Sachs. Ramp previously raised a $30...

NeuReality raises $8M for its novel AI inferencing platform

NeuReality, an Israeli AI hardware startup that is working on a novel approach to improving AI inferencing platforms by doing away with the current CPU-centric model, is coming out of...

Podz turns podcasts into a personalized audio newsfeed

Podz is the latest startup trying to solve the problem of podcast discovery, with backing from investors like M13, Katie Couric and Paris Hilton. “Even though podcasts have gained a...

‘Knowledge hacking’ app Uptime raises $16M

Uptime, the self-described “knowledge hacking” app, has raised $16 million in seed funding, after officially launching on iOS in January. Positioned as a “micro-learning” platform,” Uptime presents five-minute “knowledge hacks”...

With AI translation service that rivals professionals, Lengoo attracts new $20M round

Most people who use AI-powered translation tools do so for commonplace, relatively unimportant tasks like understanding a single phrase or quote. Those basic services won’t do for an enterprise offering...

Nigeria’s IROKO plans to go public on the London Stock Exchange AIM in 2022

IROKO, a Nigerian-based media company, could file to go public in the next 12 months on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) Alternative Investment Market. Founded by Jason Njoku and Bastian...

Daily Crunch: Reddit raises $250M

Reddit raises more funding, Shopify expands payments to Facebook and a study suggests that the Apple Watch might be able to predict COVID diagnoses. This is your Daily Crunch for...

Encrypted data handling startup DataFleets acquired by LiveRamp for over $68M

LiveRamp has acquired DataFleets, a fresh young startup that made it possible to take advantage of large volumes of encrypted data without the risk or fuss of decrypting or transferring...

Are SAFEs obscuring today’s seed volume?

Just over a year ago in our coverage of the 2019 venture capital market, we noted that “United States-demarcated angel and seed deals dipped in 2019.” Our reporting concerning the...

nextmv raises $8M Series A to increase accessibility to its automation optimization tech

Nextmv, a platform that optimizes and tests decision models for logistics companies, announced the close of an $8 million Series A round earlier today. FirstMark, an existing investor, doubled down...

Monte Carlo raises $25M for its data observability service

This morning Monte Carlo, a startup focused on helping other companies better monitor their data inflows, announced that it has closed a $25 million Series B. The round, which was...

Hyper casual game publisher Homa Games raises $15 million

French startup Homa Games has raised a $15 million seed round led by e.ventures and Idinvest Partners. The company has built several in-house technologies that can take a game from...

SentinelOne to acquire high-speed logging startup Scalyr for $155M

SentinelOne, a late-stage security startup that helps customers make sense of security data using AI and machine learning, announced today that it is acquiring Scalyr, the high-speed logging startup for...

‘Headless’ e-commerce platform Fabric raises $43M

Fabric, a startup powering e-commerce for companies like GNC and ABC Carpet and Home, has raised $43 million in Series A funding. The announcement comes less than four months after...

Finch Capital launches third fund to invest in European fintech at Series A and B

Finch Capital, the early-stage fintech VC with a presence in London and Amsterdam, has raised a third fund. Targeting a final close of €150 million, the fund has already secured...

Hoxton Farms raises £2.7M seed to produce animal fat without animals

Hoxton Farms, a U.K. startup that wants to produce animal fat without using animals, has raised £2.7 million in seed funding. The round is led by Founders Fund, the Silicon...

Bangladesh-based Maya, a startup focused on accessible healthcare, raises $2.2 million seed round

Based in Bangladesh, Maya is dedicated to making it easier for women to get healthcare, especially for sensitive issues like reproductive and mental health. The startup announced today it has...

Oscar Health’s IPO filing will test the venture-backed insurance model

Late Friday, Oscar Health filed to go public, adding another company to today’s burgeoning IPO market. The New York-based health insurance unicorn has raised well north of $1 billion during...

InEvent raises $2M for its virtual conference platform

InEvent, a startup powering virtual and hybrid events, is announcing that it has raised $2 million in seed funding from Storm Ventures. That’s just tiny fraction of the $125 million...

With a higher IPO valuation, is Bumble aiming for Match.com’s revenue multiple?

The IPO frenzy is not letting up, Bumble informed the world this morning. Per a new SEC filing, the dating company raised its target IPO price range, indicating that its previous...

Equity Monday: Tesla buys bitcoin, Nexthink raises, and Bumble

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...

Getaway, a startup building tiny cabins, raises $41.7M

Getaway CEO Jon Staff said that while the startup’s offerings weren’t designed with a pandemic in mind, they turned out to be well-suited for a time when people were eager...

What are these rich people doing pumping crappy assets?

Feb 6, 2021

How the GameStop stonkathon helped Robinhood raise $3.4B last week

Feb 5, 2021

Robinhood has shown an impressive ability to raise enormous amounts of capital in the past few weeks to ensure it has the funds needed to allow users to trade and,...

Twinco Capital scores €3M for its supply chain finance solution

Feb 5, 2021

Twinco Capital, a Madrid and Amsterdam-based startup making it easier to access supply chain finance, has raised €3 million in funding. Leading the round is Spanish VC fund Mundi Ventures,...

A lake house architect, a Miami VC, and homeowner walk into a wine bar

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. The good...

Why one Databricks investor thinks the company may be undervalued

The recent Databricks funding round, a $1 billion investment at a $28 billion valuation, was one of the year’s most notable private investments so far. For Databricks signaled its IPO...

moka.care is a European mental health care solution for employees

Meet moka.care, a French startup that has built several services that should help you improve your psychological well-being. The company sells its solution to employers directly. They can then offer...

Barclays adds itemised digital receipts to its banking app in partnership with fintech Flux

Flux, the London fintech that has built a technology platform for banks and merchants to power itemised digital receipts and more, has seen its lengthy pilot with Barclays bear fruit....

AI Dungeon-maker Latitude raises $3.3M to build games with ‘infinite’ story possibilities

Latitude, a startup building games with stories are generated by artificial intelligence, is announcing that it has raised $3.3 million in seed funding. The idea of an AI-generated story might...

Metalenz reimagines the camera in 2D and raises $10M to ship it

As impressive as the cameras in our smartphones are, they’re fundamentally limited by the physical necessities of lenses and sensors. Metalenz skips over that part with a camera made of...

HubSpot acquires media startup The Hustle

Marketing software company HubSpot is acquiring The Hustle, the business and tech media startup behind the popular newsletter of the same name Axios broke the news of the deal and...

Tovala, the smart oven and meal kit service, heats up with $30M more in funding

With more of us spending significant amounts of time at home because of Covid-19, our attention has turned increasingly to how and what we eat. Today, one of the startups...

Aflorithmic nabs $1.3M for AI-driven personalized audio-as-a-service

London and Barcelona based audio-as-a-service SaaS startup Aflorithmic has scooped up $1.3 million in seed funding from Crowd Media Holdings, an Australia-based company focused on influencer-based ‘social commerce’ and marketing....

GajiGesa, a fintech startup serving underbanked Indonesian workers, raises $2.5 million seed round

GajiGesa, a fintech company that offers Earned Wage Access (EWA) and other services for workers in Indonesia, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Defy.vc...

Venture capital is going to get even bigger, faster, and more expensive this year

The venture capital market has skewed later and larger in recent quarters, something you might have felt in the rapid recent pace of new unicorn formation. December was a hot...

Box acquires eSignature startup SignRequest for new content workflows

Box announced this morning that it has agreed to acquire eSignature startup SignRequest for $55 million.The acquisition gives the company a native signature component it has been lacking and opens...

Evinced raises $17M to speed up accessibility testing for the web

Making and keeping the web accessible is a full-time job, and like any other development role, accessibility tools need to evolve to keep up with the times. Evinced is a...

Lightspeed and Max Levchin bet on Balance to bring B2B payments into the digital world

Consumer payments is by no means a solved problem (I’ll trigger one hundred blockchain people if I say otherwise), but it sure as heck a pretty improved one. Checkout is...

Beam raises $9.5 million to build a web browser that collects ideas

Beam has raised a $9.5 million Series A round. The company is working on a new web browser that completely rethinks the way you start a web session and browse...

Good Eggs raises $100M and plans to launch in Southern California

Grocery delivery startup Good Eggs is announcing that it has raised $100 million in new funding, and that it’s planning to launch in Southern California in either the summer or...

Embedded finance startup Banxware raises €4M seed

Embedded finance — the idea of offering financial products where customers are already congregating via white label solutions and APIs – isn’t an entirely new concept. In fact, in one...

BukuWarung, a startup digitizing Indonesia’s SMEs, raises new funding from Rocketship.vc

BukuWarung, an Indonesian startup focused on digitizing the country’s 60 million small businesses, announced today it has raised new funding from Rocketship.vc and an Indonesian retail conglomerate. The amount was...

Hourly job-matching startup Landed raises $1.4M

Landed, a startup aiming to improve the hiring process for hourly employers and job applicants, is officially launching its mobile app today. It’s also announcing that it has raised $1.4...

Alloy raises $4M to build out its e-commerce automation service

Alloy Automation, a startup that was part of the Y Combinator Winter 2020 cohort, announced today that it has closed $5 million across two rounds, the most recent of which...

Bumble IPO could raise more than $1B for dating service

On the heels of private companies Robinhood and Databricks each raising $1 billion or more yesterday, Bumble is out with a new IPO filing this morning indicating that it wants...

Omnispace raises $60M to fuse satellites and 5G into one ubiquitous network

5G has been on a tear the last few years as wireless operators and smartphone manufacturers have made a marketing push touting higher bandwidth and lower latency for users. Yet,...

Battery companies are the latest SPAC target as EVs get a huge regulatory boost

Batteries are the latest landing pad for investors. In the past week alone, two companies have announced plans to become publicly traded companies by merging with special purpose acquisition companies....

Trading app Public drops payment for order flow in favor of tips

Soon all tech news will be fintech news, all fintech news will be trading platform news and all trading platform news will concern the business mechanics of such services. So,...

Databricks raises $1B at $28B valuation as it reaches $425M ARR

Another hour, another billion-dollar round. That’s how February is kicking off. This time it’s Databricks, which just raised $1 billion Series G at a whopping $28 billion post-money valuation. Databricks...

Telemedico gets $6.6M to grow the reach of its digital health SaaS

Poland-based Telemedico has closed a €5.5 million (~$6.6M) Series A round of funding. The round is led by Flashpoint Venture Capital, Uniqa Ventures, PKO VC, Black Pearls VC (an existing...

Robinhood’s long weekend brings a total of $3.4 billion to its balance sheet

Popular, highly-scrutinized trading app Robinhood has raised $2.4 billion to its balance sheet from shareholders, as first reported by the Wall Street Journal and then confirmed by the company. The...

Weights & Biases raises $45M for its machine learning tools

Weights & Biases, a startup building tools for machine learning practitioners, is announcing that it’s raised $45 million in Series B funding. The company was founded by Lukas Biewald, Chris...

Robinhood’s Q4 2020 revenue shows a return to growth

Deeply-funded fintech company Robinhood has been the world’s most-discussed startup over the last week. After the discount trading pioneer found itself in the midst of a battle between hedge funds...

Equity Monday: Rich tech folks chat rich tech things on rich tech app funded by rich tech investors

Rapid7 acquires Kubernetes security startup Alcide for $50M

Rapid7, the Boston-based security operations company, has been making moves into the cloud recently and this morning it announced that it has acquired Kubernetes security startup Alcide for $50 million....

DesignCrowd raises $10 million AUD to grow its DIY platform, BrandCrowd

DesignCrowd announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.6 billion USD) in pre-IPO funding. The capital will be used on hiring and product development, with the goal of...

English learning app ELSA lands $15 million Series B for international growth and its B2B platform

Speaking is one of the hardest parts of learning a new language, especially if you don’t have someone to practice with regularly. ELSA is an app that helps by using...

Ben raises $2.5M seed to fix employee benefits for SMEs

Ben, a London-based employee benefits and rewards platform, has raised $2.5 million in funding. The seed round is led by Cherry Ventures, and Seedcamp. A number of angel investors with...

Rising African venture investment powers fintech, cleantech bets in 2020

Jan 29, 2021

As a turbulent week in the capital world, we’re taking a look at something a bit slower-moving: venture capital trends in Africa during 2020. The Exchange has long explored quarterly...

Chefclub raises $17 million to expand its food media brand beyond social networks

Jan 29, 2021

French startup Chefclub announced earlier this week that it has raised a $17 million funding round led by First Bridge Ventures. SEB Alliance, the venture arm of kitchen appliance maker...

Why calendar invites are worth $3B

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 hopped online for our weekly show, sans Gamestop news (which you can...

After soaring above $23B, Qualtrics’ founder and CEO reflect on a stellar debut

Amidst all of the the sturm und drang of l’affaire GameStop, Qualtrics went public today. After pricing its stock above its raised IPO range, the company received a warm welcome...

Coinbase is going public via direct listing

Coinbase plans to go public by way of a direct listing, the company announced in a blog post today. The cryptocurrency exchange was founded in 2012 and allows users to...

Robinhood stops the games

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture-capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week the team — Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace — recorded a bonus Equity Shot to help...

Workday nabs employee feedback platform Peakon for $700M

Workday started the work day with some big news today. It’s acquiring employee feedback platform Peakon for $700 million in cash. One thing we have learned during the pandemic is...

Robinhood restricts trading in GameStop after retail brouhaha shakes markets

Update: Robinhood has made public note of the changes, stating that “in light of recent volatility” it is “restricting transactions for certain securities to position closing only, including $AMC, $BB,...

Qualtrics prices IPO at $30 per share, above its upgraded target range

Last night, Qualtrics priced its IPO at $30 per share, selling 50.4 million shares in the process. Notably, the company’s IPO price was harder to chase down than usual, with...

Fintech darling Nubank raises blockbuster $400M Series G at $25B valuation