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Canadian electric truck and bus manufacturer The Lion Electric Company said Monday it plans to become a publicly traded company via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Northern Genesis...

Vista acquires Gainsight for $1.1B, adding to its growing enterprise arsenal

Vista Equity Partners hasn’t been shy about scooping up enterprise companies over the years, and today it added to a growing portfolio with its purchase of Gainsight. The company’s software...

C3.ai’s initial IPO pricing guidance spotlights the public market’s tech appetite

On the heels of news that DoorDash is targeting an initial IPO valuation up to $27 billion, C3.ai also dropped a new S-1 filing detailing a first-draft guess of what...

Salut raises $1.25M for its virtual fitness service

This morning Salut, an app-based service that allows fitness trainers to host classes virtually, announced that it has raised $1.25 million in a new financing event. The round was led...

Equity Monday: HungryPanda raises $70M, trade tensions, and cross-border VC

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,...

DoorDash aims to add $11 billion to its valuation during public offering

This morning, DoorDash filed a new S-1 document, this time updating the market about the price it expects to command during its public offering. The food-delivery giant gave a range...

Nikola shares drop as GM pulls plug on investment deal

GM is backing away from an agreement to take a stake in electric automaker Nikola Corp, marking the collapse of a deal that has been problematic since it was announced...

Primer, the fintech helping merchants consolidate the payments stack, raises £14M Series A

Nov 29, 2020

Primer, the U.K. fintech that wants to help merchants consolidate their payments stack and easily support new payment methods in the future, has raised £14 million in Series A funding....

What to make of Stripe’s possible $100B valuation

Nov 28, 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. Welcome to a special...

Bigblue wants to automate e-commerce fulfillment in Europe

Nov 26, 2020

Meet Bigblue, a French startup that just raised a $3.6 million seed round (€3 million) to build an end-to-end fulfillment solution in Europe. If you sell products on your own...

Equity Dive: Edtech’s 2020 wakeup call

Nov 26, 2020

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, we’re doing a first-ever for the show and...

Insurtech’s big year gets bigger as Metromile looks to go public

In the wake of insurtech unicorn Root’s IPO, it felt safe to say that the big transactions for the insurance technology startup space were done for the year. After all,...

Slack’s stock climbs on possible Salesforce acquisition

News that Salesforce is interested in buying Slack, the popular workplace chat company, sent shares of the smaller firm sharply higher today. Slack shares are up just under 25% at...

Join us for a live Q&A with Sapphire’s Jai Das on Tuesday at 2 pm ET/11 am PT

Sure, we’re heading into a holiday weekend here in America, but that doesn’t mean that the good ship TechCrunch is going to slow down. We’re diving right back in next...

WeGift, the ‘incentive marketing’ platform, collects $8M in new funding

WeGift, the London-based startup that has built an “incentive marketing” platform that lets businesses easily issue e-gift cards and other digital rewards to customers, has raised $8 million in new...

New venture firm The-Wolfpack takes a fresh approach to D2C startups

The-Wolfpack’s co-founders, Toh Jin Wei, Tan Kok Chin and Simon Nichols (Image Credit: The-Wolfpack) The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the consumer, leisure and media companies hard, but a new venture...

Working to understand C3.ai’s growth story

The end-of-year IPO wave continues, this time with C3.ai moving closer to its own formal debut by updating its S-1 filing with third-quarter data. The new data provides the market...

Pay-per-mile auto insurer Metromile is heading to public markets via SPAC

Metromile, the pay-per-mile auto insurer that earlier this year laid off a third of its staff due to economic uncertainties caused by COVID-19, is taking the SPAC path to the...

Dija, a new delivery startup from former Deliveroo employees, is closing in on a $20M round led by Blossom

Dija, a new U.K. based startup founded by senior former Deliveroo employees, is closing in on $20 million funding, TechCrunch has learned. According to multiple sources, the round, which has...

As edtech grows cash rich, some lessons for early stage

Last week, Udemy, an online learning marketplace, raised $50 million at a $3.32 billion valuation, up from a $2 billion valuation earlier this year. Language learning app Duolingo raised $35...

3 new $100M ARR club members and a call for the next generation of growth-stage startups

Time flies. It was nearly a year ago that The Exchange started keeping tabs on startups that managed to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR. Our goal...

F3, a Stories-style Q&A app for Gen Z teens, raises $3.9M

F3, an anonymous Q&A app targeting Gen Z teens which blends a Tinder-style swipe-to-friend gamification mechanic, Stories-esque rich media responses and eye-wateringly expensive subscriptions to unlock a ‘Plus’ version that...

Altana raises $7M to protect supply chains from disruptions, child labor

Supply chains used to be one of those magical elements of capitalism that seemed to be designed by Apple: they just worked. Minus the occasional salmonella outbreak in your vegetable...

Industrial drone maker Percepto raises $45M and integrates with Boston Dynamics’ Spot

Consumer drones have over the years struggled with an image of being no more than expensive and delicate toys. But applications in industrial, military and enterprise scenarios have shown that...

YC-backed Cashfree raises $35.3 million for its payments platform

Cashfree, an Indian startup that offers a wide-range of payments services to businesses, has raised $35.3 million in a new financing round as the profitable firm looks to broaden its...

Relativity Space raises $500 million as its sets sights on the industrialization of Mars

3D-printed rocket startup Relativity Space has closed $500 million in Series D funding (making official the earlier reported raise), the company announced today. This funding was led by Tiger Global...

Mental health startups are raising spirits and venture capital

A spate of startups focused on mental health recently made enough noise as a group that they caught the eye of the Equity podcast crew. Sadly, the segment we’d planned...

Video mentoring platform Superpeer raises $8M and launches paid channels

Superpeer, a startup that helps experts share and monetize their knowledge online, is announcing that it has raised $8 million in additional funding. As I wrote in March, the Superpeer...

AvePoint to go public via SPAC valued at $2B

AvePoint, a company that gives enterprises using Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint and Teams a control layer on top of these tools, announced today that it would be going public via...

Cure Hydration raises $2.6M for its healthy sports drink alternative

Cure Hydration is announcing that it has raised $2.6 million in seed funding as it brings a healthier approach to the sports beverage market. Founder and CEO Lauren Picasso, whose...

Former Sequoia Partner Amy Sun has already raised millions for her stealthy startup

Former Sequoia partner Amy Sun, who left the famed venture capital firm just months ago, has already raised $3.8 million for her new startup, Daylight Labs, SEC filings show. Daylight...

Equity Monday: Good vaccine news, three rounds, and why IPOs are trending

Corporate services platform Sleek lands $4 million in new funding

Sleek, the corporate services platform that helps entrepreneurs launch and run new companies in Singapore and Hong Kong, has raised $4 million. The new funding was led by SEEDS Capital,...

Metigy gets $20 million AUD to making online marketing easier for SMEs

David Fairfull, CEO and co-founder of Metigy Metigy, a marketing platform created to help small businesses automate more of the decision making in their online ad campaigns, has raised a...

How the pandemic drove the IPO wave we see today

Nov 21, 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. I had a neat...

All IPOs should be paid for in Robux

Nov 21, 2020

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast (now on Twitter!), where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is an all-time first for the show, it’s an...

Extra Crunch roundup: A fistful of IPOs, Affirm’s Peloton problem, Zoom Apps and more

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

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