TechCrunch Startup News
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Vietnam-based Anfin makes stock investing accessible
Based in Vietnam, Anfin wants to turn more people into stock investors with features like fractional trading and in-app communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Platform.sh secures $140M for web app development tools
The growing complexity of web infrastructure is a challenge that many organizations face today. When building and deploying web apps, IT teams must grapple with an array of choices, from selecting which backend system to use to deciding which framework to code in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Redwood Materials partners with Toyota to recycle batteries in US
Redwood Materials, the lithium-ion battery recycling startup founded by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel, is partnering with Toyota to collect, refurbish and recycle batteries and battery materials that can be sent to the Japanese automaker’s upcoming North Carolina battery plant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mono aims to be ‘first bankingless bank’ for Latin America’s small businesses
Mono is building a fully digital bank with accounts that can be opened in around 15 minutes versus an average of two weeks at an incumbent bank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Marc Lore’s food delivery startup Wonder raises $350M at a $3.5B valuation
New York-based Wonder, a mobile restaurant delivery service led by Marc Lore, has raised $350 million in Series B funding. The company is now worth about $3.5 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Brain data startup Rune Labs gets FDA clearance for Apple Watch-based Parkinson’s tracker
Rune Labs, a precision neurology company in San Francisco, announced that its StrivePD software ecosystem for Parkinson’s disease has been granted 510(k) clearance by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin using the Apple Watch to collect and measure data from Parkinson’s patients. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Indian esports fantasy startup FanClash raises $40 million
Millions of Indians each year assemble virtual sports teams, placing their hopes on the players they pick to perform exceedingly well in real-world matches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Zoovu lands $169M to drive online product discovery experiences
The competition in ecommerce has become fiercer as the pandemic drives shoppers online. At the same time, customers have grown to expect better experiences. According to helpdesk software vendor HiverHQ, 32% of consumers want customer service to be both more responsive and empathetic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tabnine raises $15.5M for AI that autocompletes code
Tabnine, a startup creating an “AI-powered assistant” for software developers, today closed a $15.5 million funding round co-led by Qualcomm Ventures, OurCrowd, and Samsung NEXT Ventures with participation from existing backers Khosla Ventures and Headline Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Edtech company Pok Pok raises $3M to expand its digital play experiences for kids
Pok Pok, a Toronto-based edtech company, has announced that it raised $3 million in seed funding to expand its play-based learning experiences for kids. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cube, which wants to help finance teams plan better and faster, lands $30M after seeing 400% ARR growth
Cube, a startup that wants to help companies “plan their financial future,” has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round led by Battery Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Onymos raises $12M to provide plug-in features for apps
Onymos, a “feature-as-a-service” platform for app development, today announced that it closed a $12 million Series A round led by Great Point Ventures with participation from Benhamou Global Ventures, Engineering Capital, and Industry Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
EV SPAC Faraday Future now has the attention of the DOJ
Amid an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission into inaccurate statements to investors, Faraday Future has received a preliminary request for information from the U.S. Department of Justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Boulder Care takes in funding as its opioid telehealth program yields industry-leading retention rates
The company is serving several thousand patients and growing its footprint as a value-add employee benefit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Charm Therapeutics applies AI to complex protein interactions, locking down $50M A round
The world of AI-powered drug discovery keeps expanding as the capabilities of machine learning grow. One approach that seemed unthinkable just a few years ago is simulating the complicated interplays of two interlocking molecules. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Maze raises $40M to help facilitate software product research
Product research generally involves determining whether an idea for a new product might be successful and how to best develop and sell that product. It’s a straightforward process, in theory, but the basic definition belies the barriers that can crop up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Luminai (formerly DigitalBrain) gets $16M investment for customer support RPA-like tool
The founders of DigitalBrain have quite a back story, a pair of immigrants living in a hacker house in San Francisco, the two paid bills for a time by competing at hackathons and winning. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
HYCU locks down additional funding to grow its cloud data protection business
Hybrid Cloud Up Time (HYCU), a self-described “backup-as-a-service” company for customers managing hybrid and multi-cloud environments, today announced that it raised $53 million in a “majority equity” Series B round led by Acrew Capital with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Atlassian Ventures, and Cisco Investments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TestBox nabs $10M seed to expand platform for software purchase testing
TestBox, an early stage startup, has a goal of making it easier to test software you want to purchase in your own environment. What’s more, it comes pre-populated with synthetic data that is similar to yours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Proper raises $4.3M seed round to help other fintechs wrangle data
What’s one of the hottest areas within fintech today? Funny enough, it’s fintech for fintechs (say that a few times fast). Fintech startups have absolutely proliferated in the past few years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Former Better.com exec alleges company misled investors ahead of SPAC
One of Better.com’s former executives has filed a lawsuit against the online mortgage lender, alleging that the company and its CEO Vishal Garg misled investors when it attempted to go public via a SPAC, reports the Wall Street Journal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Magical makes $35M appear to move data between webpages
It’s the belief of some analysts that the market for robotic process automation, which leverages AI to automate certain software tasks, is headed toward consolidation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Child care startup Kinside raises $12M Series A in a round led by mothers
Finding and affording child care is one of the biggest challenges parents face. Kinside makes the process easier by not only providing a marketplace of verified carers, but also helping parents tap into their flexible spending accounts (FSA) and other benefits to afford care. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Opal secures $10M for dynamic access management
Opal, a platform that decentralizes access management for enterprise customers, today announced that it raised $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Greylock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Agtech robotics firm FarmWise just raised another $45 million
The rest of the startup universe may be struggling to bring in funds, but it’s still a good time to get a robotic raise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Temasek’s Pavilion Capital backs South Korean AI chip maker Rebellions with $50M investment
Global venture capital firms are pouring money into the semiconductor startups developing the next generation of chips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mexico City’s Kolors wants to disrupt intercity busing in Latin America
Kolors, a Mexico City-based startup, says its platform that connects intercity bus riders with bus drivers is like “if Uber and Southwest Airlines had a baby.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sanlo, a startup that offers app and game developers access to financial tools and capital, raises $10M
Sanlo, a San Francisco-based fintech startup that offers small to medium-sized game and app companies access to tools to manage their finances and capital to fuel their growth, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Konvoy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chainguard raises $50M to guard supply chains
Chainguard, a startup that focuses on securing software supply chains, announced today that it has raised a $50 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chick-fil-A taps Refraction AI for autonomous delivery pilot
When Refraction AI was founded in 2019, its goal was to use robotics to bring down the cost of last-mile delivery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Car-sharing startup Turo expands to New York and France
Peer-to-peer car sharing company Turo is expanding to New York State and France in June, the company said on Wednesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
One AI raises $8M to curate business-specific NLP models
Whether to power translation to document summarization, enterprises are increasing their investments in natural language processing (NLP) technologies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Strong Compute raises $7.8M seed round to speed up ML training pipelines
Strong Compute, a Sydney, Australia-based startup that helps developers remove the bottlenecks in their machine learning training pipelines, today announced that it has raised a $7.8 million seed round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meta and Google’s Gradient back LatAm startup OlaClick
More than 80% of food delivery orders in Latin America are still made over phone calls and settled with cash. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mintlify taps AI to automatically generate documentation from code
Mintlify, a startup developing software to automate software documentation tasks, today announced that it raised $2.8 million in a seed round led by by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from TwentyTwo Ventures and Quinn Slack, Sourcegraph’s co-founder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Betastore gets $2.5M to solve stock-outs, financing challenges for informal retailers in West and Central Africa
About 80% of household retail in sub-Saharan Africa is delivered through informal channels, which perennially face several challenges like stockouts, leading to an instability in earnings, and a lack of attractiveness to financiers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Foursquare founder banks funding for mystery 3D social network startup
The excitement around web3 and the metaverse have pulled plenty of entrepreneurs who defined the first generation of native mobile apps to begin questioning what’s next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoftBank leads $150M round for Firework’s shoppable video
Firework provides tools for retailers and consumer brands to tap into their own customer data to build engaging video experiences across their own digital properties and social channels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hugging Face collaborates with Microsoft for new AI-powered Azure service
Fresh off a $100 million funding round, Hugging Face, which provides hosted AI services and a community-driven portal for AI tools and data sets, today announced a new product in collaboration with Microsoft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Astroforge raises $13M seed round for asteroid mining ambitions
Although we’ve long understood that asteroids are not simply the rubble of the universe, but potentially profitable stores of precious minerals, humanity has never been able to unlock this value. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bowery opens a new vertical farm in Pennsylvania
When I wrote my big TC1 on Bowery Farming late last year, there was a lot of talk of the company’s third commercial farming site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MainStreet’s valuation could fall 60% to $200 million amid investor recapitalization pursuit
Weeks after laying off about 30% of its staff, MainStreet is said to be raising another round of funding at a $200 million valuation, sources tell TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Klarna lays off 10% of its workforce
Swedish payment giant Klarna is going to cut hundreds of jobs in the coming days. Today’s news comes a few days after the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was going to cut its valuation in order to raise fresh capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Carbon capture is headed for the high seas
Unless you live near a port, you probably don’t think much of the tens of thousands of container ships tearing through the seas, hauling some 1.8 billion metric tons of stuff each year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FloorFound grabs more capital to grow its oversized recommerce business
What makes FloorFound stand out from its competitors is its approach to putting retailers, which often struggle with how to effectively do returns, at the center of recommerce. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dig emerges from stealth to help organizations secure their data in public clouds
Dig, a Tel Aviv-based cloud data security startup, has emerged from stealth with an $11 million investment to help organizations protect data stored in public cloud environments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ChargeLab’s software layer to power ABB’s EV chargers in North America
ChargeLab, a Toronto-based startup that builds software to operate and optimize electric vehicle charging equipment for fleets and commercial customers, has raised a $15 million Series A round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Joby Aviation acquires Avionyx to accelerate aerospace software certification
Joby Aviation, a California-based company developing electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) for commercial passenger service, announced the acquisition of Avionyx, an aerospace software engineering firm, on the TechCrunch Sessions: Mobility stage on Wednesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jungle Ventures closes a $600M fund, bringing its total assets under management to over $1B
Singapore-based venture firm Jungle Ventures is digging deeper into Southeast Asia and India with the close of its fourth fund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Palette sells a sales commission tool for modern sales teams
Meet Palette, a software-as-a-service startup that is going to be particularly interesting if you’re also running a software-as-a-service startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices