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Years ago, U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber and its Chinese rival Didi were locked in an expensive rivalry in the Asian nation. After a financially bruising competition, Uber sold its China-based...

Like the US, a two-tier venture capital market is emerging in Latin America

Earlier this week, The Exchange wrote about the early-stage venture capital market, with the goal of understanding how some startups are raising more seed capital before they work on their...

Mercuryo raises $7.5M for crypto-focused cross-border payments after crossing $50M in ARR

Mercuryo, a startup that has built a cross-border payments network, has raised $7.5 million in a Series A round of funding. The London-based company describes itself as “a crypto infrastructure...

Equity Live: This is what leadership smells like

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week we did something fun and different and good: a live show!...

Indian healthcare startup PharmEasy to acquire majority stake in listed firm Thyrocare for over $600 million

API Holdings, which operates the giant healthcare startup PharmEasy, said on Friday it has reached an agreement to acquire a 66.1% stake in Thyrocare, which runs a diagnostic lab chain,...

Kaszek Ventures leads a $15 million round in Chilean asset management startup, Fintual

Like other financial sectors in Latin America, the retail investing space is getting a facelift by local tech startups that are cashing in on the untapped potential for democratizing asset...

Indian online learning giant Unacademy in talks to acquire Rheo TV

Indian online learning platform Unacademy is in advanced talks to acquire Rheo TV, a less than two-year-old startup founded by two former Unacademy employees, according to three sources familiar with...

Gotrade gets $7M led by LocalGlobe to let investors around the world buy fractional shares of U.S. stocks

Stock in many American companies, like Amazon, Alphabet or Tesla, can host hundreds or thousands of dollars per share. Fractional trading, or buying part of a single share through a...

Accept.inc secures $90M in debt and equity to scale its digital mortgage lending platform

Jun 24, 2021

A lot of startups were built to help people make all-cash offers on homes with the purpose of gaining an edge against other buyers, especially in ultra-competitive markets. Accepti.inc is...

Visa to acquire open banking platform Tink for more than $2 billion

Jun 24, 2021

Visa has announced plans to acquire Tink for €1.8 billion, or $2.15 billion at today’s exchange rate. Tink has been a leading fintech startup in Europe focused on open banking...

PairTree speeds adoption process with an online, self-matching platform and $2.25M seed

Making the choice to adopt, or to find an adopting family, is a legally complex, emotionally taxing, expensive and time-consuming process. PairTree aims to make one part at least considerably...

How many lives does bitcoin have?

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive Danny, Alex, and a bunch of the...

In its first funding in 7 years, profitable fintech Lower raises $100M Series A led by Accel

Lower, an Ohio-based home finance platform, announced today it has raised $100 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel. This round is notable for a number of...

Vercel raises $102M Series C for its front-end development platform

Vercel, the company behind the popular open-source Next.js React framework, today announced that it has raised a $102 million Series C funding round led by Bedrock Capital. Existing investors Accel,...

Aircall raises $120 million for its cloud-based phone system

Aircall has raised a $120 million Series D round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Following today’s funding round, the company has reached unicorn status, which means it has a...

Viva Republica, developer of Korean financial super app Toss, raises $410M at a $7.4B valuation

Viva Republica, the Seoul-based fintech company behind Toss, a super app with more than 40 financial services, announced today it has raised $410 million at a post-money valuation of $7.4...

Airbank centralizes all your business bank accounts and financial data

Meet Airbank, a startup that is taking advantage of open banking regulation and related APIs to aggregate all your bank accounts. Focused on startups and small and medium companies, the...

The early-stage venture capital market is weird and chaotic

When SoftBank announced its first Vision Fund back in 2017, TechCrunch gawked at the size of the fundraising vehicle and its $100 million minimum check size. Noting a few of...

Australian fintech Zeller lands $50M AUD led by Spark Capital at a $400M AUD valuation

Zeller, a Melbourne-based fintech founded by former Square executives to serve small- to mid-sized businesses, has raised $50 million AUD (about $37.5 million USD) led by Spark Capital, the investment...

G2 raises $157M for its software review service

This morning G2, a company that provides an online software review and information database, announced that it has raised a $157 million Series D. Per a release the company shared...

What does Red Hat’s sale to IBM tell us about Couchbase’s valuation?

The IPO rush of 2021 continued this week with a fresh filing from NoSQL provider Couchbase. The company raised hundreds of millions while private, making its impending debut an important...

Maybe neobanks will break even after all

The Exchange is back after its brief hiatus. Anna and I have some really neat stuff planned, so stick with us every morning this week. — Alex Building a consumer-facing...

Equity Monday: China hates crypto, and the Vision Fund’s vision lives on

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...

Buy now, pay later startup Kredivo doubles its debt facility from Victory Park Capital to $200M

Kredivo announced today it has secured another $100 million debt facility from Victory Park Capital (VPC). This doubles the Indonesian digital lending and credit platform’s total warehouse financing facility from...

Vietnamese financial services app MFast gets $1.5M pre-Series A led by Do Ventures

MFast founders Phan Thanh Long and Phan Thanh Vinh MFast, a mobile app that lets Vietnamese users in remote areas access financial services, announced it has raised a $1.5 million...

GrowSari, a B2B platform for small stores in the Philippines, adds investors like Temasek’s Pavilion Capital and Tencent

Sari-sari stores are neighborhood stores in the Philippines that usually sell daily necessities and sometimes serve as community hubs, too. Today GrowSari, a startup that is digitizing sari-sari stores with...

Mediflash is a freelancer marketplace for health professionals

Jun 18, 2021

Meet Mediflash, a new French startup that wants to improve temp staffing in healthcare facilities, such as nursing homes, clinics and mental health facilities. The company positions itself as an...

Neo4j raises Neo$325M as graph-based data analysis takes hold in enterprise

Databases run the world, but database products are often some of the most mature and venerable software in the modern tech stack. Designers will pixel push, frontend engineers will add...

eqtble, a platform that uses data analytics to create healthier workplaces, raises $2.7M seed

The eqtble founders (from l to r): Ethan Veres, Gabe Horwitz and Joseph Ifiegbu. (Image: eqtble) “People are the backbone of any organization. People are more important than the product....

Internxt gets $1M to be ‘the Coinbase of decentralized storage’

Valencia-based startup Internxt has been quietly working on an ambitious plan to make decentralized cloud storage massively accessible to anyone with an internet connection. It’s just bagged $1 million in...

Unit raises $51M in Accel-led Series B to grow its banking-as-a-service platform

We’ve all heard the phrase, “Every company is a fintech.” But these days, that’s becoming more and more true as an increasing number of companies that are not even in...

On a growth tear, DuckDuckGo reveals it picked up $100M in secondary investment last year

Jun 16, 2021

Privacy tech continues cooking on gas. To wit: Non-tracking search engine DuckDuckGo has just revealed that it beefed up its balance sheet at the back end of last year with $100...

Honey Insurance launches with $15.5M AUD, the largest seed round ever for an Australian tech startup

Jun 16, 2021

When Richard Joffe moved his family to Australia in 2019, he said applying for home insurance “was like traveling back in time 30 years.” “I found the sign-up process painful,...

Solar concentration startup Heliogen basks in $108M of new funding

Sunlight is a great source of energy, but it rarely gets hot enough to fry an egg, let alone melt steel. Heliogen aims to change that with its high-tech concentrated...

Meet Nickson, the furniture-as-a-service startup that Barack Obama’s ex-financial adviser just backed

Ever toured an apartment and fell in love with the model unit? You’re not alone. Harvard Business School grad Cameron Johnson is a former institutional real estate investor and Greystar...

Edge computing startup Macrometa gets $20M Series A led by Pelion Venture Partners

Macrometa, the edge computing cloud and global data network for app developers, announced today it has raised a $20 million Series A. The round was led by Pelion Venture Partners,...

Carbyne raises $20M more so when death knocks, you don’t answer the door

Chaos and crisis are sisters, and none more so than when you dial for emergency help. A call to 911 in the United States and urgent numbers globally spins off...

Golden Gate Ventures forecasts a record number of exits in Southeast Asia

Despite the pandemic’s economic impact, Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem has proven to be very resilient. In fact, a new report from investment firm Golden Gate Ventures predicts a record number...

Upflow raises $15 million to manage your outstanding invoices

French startup Upflow has raised a $15 million Series A round. The company wants to help you chase late payments. It optimizes how you collect payments from your customers in...

Automotive marketplace Carro hits unicorn status with $360M Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2

Carro, one of the largest automotive marketplaces in Southeast Asia, announced it has hit unicorn valuation after raising a $360 million Series C led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. Other...

WordPress.com owner Automattic acquires journaling app Day One

Jun 14, 2021

Automattic is expanding its lineup of online writing platforms with its acquisition of Day One, a popular journaling app for Mac and Apple mobile devices. The app has been downloaded...

Yana’s mental health tool for Spanish speakers nears 5 million users

Jun 14, 2021

Andrea Campos has struggled with depression since she was 8 years old. Over the years, she’s tried all sorts of therapies — from behavioral to pharmacotherapy. In 2017, when Campos...

Anrok raises $4.3M to solve sales tax for SaaS companies

Jun 14, 2021

It’s easier than ever to build a product and sell it around the United States, or the world. But if you want to do so without incurring the wrath of...

Despite flat growth, ride-hailing colossus Didi’s US IPO could reach $70B

Didi filed to go public in the United States last night, providing a look into the Chinese ride-hailing company’s business. This morning, we’re extending our earlier reporting on the company...

Insurtech is hot on both sides of the Atlantic

The U.S. insurance technology market is hot, and has been for years now. Back in early 2020, to pick an example, TechCrunch reported on a wave of funding events among...

The huge TAM of fake breaded chicken bits

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. We’re closing our survey soon, so this is your last chance (probably) to...

SoftBank, Uber, Tencent set to reap rewards from Didi IPO

After years of speculation, Didi Chuxing, China’s ridesharing behemoth, finally unveiled its IPO filing in the U.S., giving a glimpse into its money-losing history. Didi didn’t disclose the size of...

Ledger raises $380 million for its crypto hardware wallet

French startup Ledger has raised a $380 million Series C funding round led by 10T Holdings. Following today’s funding round, the company has reached a valuation of $1.5 billion. Other...

What do these 4 IPOs tell us about the state of the market?

We’re digging into the final IPO prices set by fintech unicorn Marqeta and enterprise productivity unicorn Monday.com this morning. Briefly, it’s good news. A small programming note: The Exchange is...

Seven Seven Six, the new venture firm from Alexis Ohanian, closes $150 million Fund 1

In June of last year, Alexis Ohanian announced that he was leaving Initialized Capital, the venture firm he co-founded alongside Garry Tan in 2011. Nearly a year later, he’s announcing...

Fintech giant Klarna raises $639M at a $45.6B valuation amid ‘massive momentum’ in the US

Just over three months after its last funding round, European fintech giant Klarna is announcing today that it has raised another $639 million at a staggering post-money valuation of $45.6...

Can payday loans be made obsolete? With $15M more, Clair wants to find out

The world seems to move faster every year, and yet, nothing feels slower than the speed by which paychecks get distributed. In the United States, work conducted the day after...

Corporate services “super app” Osome lands $16M Series A

Osome, a startup that combines multiple corporate services for SMEs into one “super app,” has raised a $16 million Series A. The round included returning investors Target Global, AltaIR Capital...

Yousign raises $36.6 million to build a European alternative to DocuSign

French startup Yousign has raised a $36.6 million Series A funding round (€30 million). Lead Edge Capital is leading the round and eFounders is investing once again in the company....

Tata Digital to acquire majority stake in online pharmacy 1mg

Tata Digital, the subsidiary of Tata Sons, said on Thursday it is acquiring a majority stake in digital health startup 1mg, the latest in a series of investments as the...

BukuWarung, a fintech for Indonesian MSMEs, scores $60M Series A led by Valar and Goodwater

BukuWarung, a fintech focused on Indonesia’s micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), announced today it has raised a $60 million Series A. The oversubscribed round was led by Valar Ventures,...

Seoul-based Ringle raises $18M Series A for its one-on-one English tutoring platform

Many of the highest-profile English tutoring platforms focus on children, including VIPKID and Magic Ears. Ringle created a niche for itself by focusing on adults first, with courses like business...

AI startup investment is on pace for a record year

The startup investing market is crowded, expensive and rapid-fire today as venture capitalists work to preempt one another, hoping to deploy funds into hot companies before their competitors. The AI...

Branch raises $50M to offer bundled auto & home insurance via an API

Branch Insurance, a startup offering bundled home and auto insurance, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Anthemis Group. Acrew, Cherry Creek Holdings and existing...

The imbalanced landscape of hormonal health

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. For this week’s deep dive, Alex, Natasha, and Chris dug into the...

Terra raises $2.8M to build the Plaid for fitness data

This morning Terra, a recent Y Combinator graduate building an API for fitness and health data, announced that it has closed a $2.8 million round. The investment includes capital from...

Carlyle acquires 1E.com, an endpoint and hybrid working specialist, in $270M deal

Remote work was the order of the day for the past 16 months, but as we (fingers crossed) move out of the pandemic, it’s looking like a lot of people...

Pennylane raises $18.3 million for its accounting service

French startup Pennylane has raised a new $18.3 million funding round (€15 million). Interestingly, this is Sequoia Capital’s first investment in France after they announced ambitious expansion plans in Europe....

Wagely, an Indonesian earned wage access and financial services platform, raises $5.6M

Wagely founders (from l to r): Tobias Fischer, Sasanadi Ruka and Kevin Hausburg Earned wage access (EWA) platforms that allow workers to withdraw their earnings on demand instead of waiting...

Don’t trust that SPAC deck

The continuing saga of Lordstown Motor’s struggles as a public company took a new turn today as the electric truck manufacturer made yet more news. Bad news. Shares of Lordstown...

As Monday.com targets $6B+ IPO valuation, Zoom and Salesforce commit $150M

Team management software company Monday.com dropped a new IPO filing today. The latest document — an F-1/A, because the company is based in Israel — provides what could be Monday.com’s...

ISEE brings autonomy to shipping yards with self-driving container trucks

Robotaxis may still be a few years out, but there are other industries that can be transformed by autonomous vehicles as they are today. MIT spin-off ISEE has identified one...

Network security startup ExtraHop skips and jumps to $900M exit

Last year, Seattle-based network security startup ExtraHop was riding high, quickly approaching $100 million in ARR and even making noises about a possible IPO in 2021. But there will be...

Compose.ai raises $2.1M to help everyone write faster

In today’s GPT-3 world, it’s not uncommon to hear about new software services that deal with text. Compose.ai is one such company, though it built its own language model to...

BuyerAssist launches with $2M in funding to help B2B sales team keep their buyers engaged

BuyerAssist founders Shyam HN, Amit Dugar and Shankar Ganapathy Selling enterprise software is much more complicated than convincing a potential customer that your solution is the best and signing a...

Airbase raises $60M as the corporate spend market segments, matures

This morning Airbase, a corporate spend startup, announced that it has closed a $60 million Series B led by Menlo Ventures. The deal’s announcement comes after Divvy, another corporate-spend focused...

Tiger Global leads $30M investment into Briq, a fintech for the construction industry

Briq, which has developed a fintech platform used by the construction industry, has raised $30 million dollars in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global Management. The financing...

This SPAC is betting that a British healthcare company can shake up the US market

Welcome back to the week, and welcome back to The Exchange. Robinhood has yet to file its IPO, so we’re looking at other companies in the meantime. Today it’s Babylon...

Equity Monday: Jeff’s going to space, and everyone wants a piece of Flipkart

Mendel raises $18M to tease out data structure from medicine’s disparate document trove

The medical industry is sitting on a huge trove of data, but in many cases it can be a challenge to realize the value of it because that data is...

Endua creates hydrogen-powered clean energy storage, using tech from Australia’s national science agency

Hydrogen-based generators are an environmentally-friendly alternative to ones powered by diesel fuel. But many rely on solar, hydro or wind power, which aren’t available all the time. Brisbane-based Endua is...

Lightspeed buys Ecwid for $500M; NuOrder for $425M in ongoing e-commerce consolidation play

Lightspeed, has picked up two more companies in what is shaping up to be an acquisition spree for the Canadian point-of-sale software provider. The company today announced that it would...

Google’s Gradient Ventures leads $8.2M Series A for Vault Platform’s misconduct reporting SaaS

Jun 6, 2021

Fixing workplace misconduct reporting is a mission that’s snagged London-based Vault Platform backing from Google’s AI focused fund, Gradient Ventures, which is the lead investor in an $8.2 million Series...

Xometry is taking its excess manufacturing capacity business public

Xometry, a Maryland-based service that connects companies with manufacturers with excess production capacity around the world, filed an S-1 form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announcing its intent...

As buy-now-pay-later startups keep raising capital, a dive into Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm’s earnings

Venture capitalists continue to fund buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) startups, evidence of ongoing optimism regarding not only e-commerce, but the specific model for financing consumer purchases as well. Evidence of continued investor...

Equity listeners: Do you like prizes? Take our super-fun survey!!!

Hello Equity podcast family, we’re back with another survey. This is our second go-round with collecting your feedback, notes, and vibes. The first survey we conducted back in the early-days...

Amazon is now open to getting sued

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Despite it being a short week, as always, it was a busy busy...

SoftBank pours up to $150M into GBM, a Mexico City-based investment platform

Grupo Bursátil Mexicano (GBM) is a 35-year-old investment platform in the Mexican stock market. In its first three decades of life, GBM was focused on providing investment services to high...

Indonesian healthcare startup Prixa raises $3M led by MDI and TPTF

Indonesian healthcare startup Prixa has raised $3 million led by MDI Ventures and the Trans-Pacific Technology Fund (TPTF), with participation from returning investors including Siloam Hospitals Group. This brings Prixa’s...

Google shares its $2M Black Founders Fund among 30 European startups

Google has selected 30 startups to receive a share of its $2M Black Founders Fund in Europe, providing these companies with a spot of cash, some valuable cloud services, and...

Ganaz raises $7M A round to rethink how agriculture workers get hired and paid

The agriculture sector is ripe for technological improvements, but beyond satellite-based crop management and bees-as-a-service, the actual people who work in the fields should be benefiting as well. Ganaz, empowered...

The existential cost of decelerated growth

What happens to technology companies with slowing growth and a rising focus on profitability before they reach behemoth scale? How much does the market value hyper-growth? Just because a technology...

In-person work is back, and New Stand just raised $40M to help ease the transition

As more people return to the office over the next few months, companies will have to work harder than ever to make sure the environment is comfortable and inviting. One...

One Concern raises $45M from SOMPO to scale its disaster resilience platform across Japan

Climate change is intensifying across the globe, and one of the most challenging cases is Japan. In addition to lying on a major fault, the archipelago is increasingly inundated from...

Lightyear is a new stock trading app from early Wise employees

Meet Lightyear, a new London-based startup coming out of stealth today. The company is building a stock trading app with a focus on creating a truly commission-free app. In addition...

OroraTech’s space-based early wildfire warnings spark $7M investment

With wildfires becoming an ever more devastating annual phenomenon, it is in the whole planet’s interest to spot them and respond as early as possible — and the best vantage...

Confluent’s IPO brings a high-growth, high-burn SaaS model to the public markets

Confluent became the latest company to announce its intent to take the IPO route, officially filing its S-1 paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week. The company,...

Etsy asks, ‘how do you do, fellow kids?’ with $1.6B Depop purchase

The news this morning that e-commerce marketplace Etsy will buy Depop, a startup that provides a second-hand e-commerce marketplace, for more than $1.6 billion may not have made a large...

Iterative raises $20M for its MLOps platform

Iterative, an open-source startup that is building an enterprise AI platform to help companies operationalize their models, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led...

Reading the IPO market’s tea leaves

Although it’s a truncated holiday week here in the United States, there’s been a bushel of IPO news. This morning, we’re going to sort through the updates and come up...

Jeeves emerges from stealth with $131M in debt and equity and a16z as a lead investor