TechCrunch Startup News
3,836 episodes — Page 46 of 77
Audit Sight takes on new capital to eliminate all of the back and forth between auditors, companies
The company intends to build out several SaaS applications and is poised to roll out its first two modules for revenue and accounts receivables by the end of the year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AirGarage, a full-stack parking operator, raises $12.5M in round led by a16z
Parking can often feel almost laughably old-fashioned, with some lots still hiring an attendant to collect fees and check for valid tickets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Customer engagement platform Batch raises $23 million after years of bootstrapping
If you’ve been working in the French tech ecosystem, you may remember a startup called AppGratis. The app discovery and promotion startup basically had to stop operating overnight following a long and nasty fight with Apple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoftBank-backed Flock Freight is the freight industry’s newest unicorn
The global shipping and freight industry has never been more in the spotlight, as the pandemic and other disruptions have led to enormous supply chain bottlenecks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Credo AI launches out of stealth with $5.5 million to help companies with “ethical AI”
There are many in the world of AI who worry about its implications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Vertical Oceans aims to grow sustainable shrimp in huge ‘aqua towers’ inside cities
John Diener, the CEO of an aquaculture nutrition and genetics company, would visit hundreds of shrimp farms as part of his job. But gradually he became frustrated by some of the environmentally unsustainable practices used in many locations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Frozen coffee startup Cometeer raises $35M Series B and launches its product in earnest
Gloucester, Massachusetts-based Cometeer has been around for nine years. In that time, the company has built up a mad scientist’s lair worth of coffee scientists, equipment and processes to jolt some fresh life into the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dance Church raises $4.7M to get your bootie back on the (virtual) dance floor
Our DJ, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy dancefloor come, thy steps be done, on earth, as it is at Dance Church. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
VC Lab introduces free fund formation documents to make startup investing cheaper and easier
There may be plenty of funding for some startups these days. But plenty of companies will tell you otherwise. VC Lab, an accelerator for venture capital firms, wants to create investors who will back the rest of the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Founded by ex-Braintree and PayPal execs, Pagos raises $10M to offer API-driven payment intelligence
Pagos, a payment intelligence infrastructure startup founded by former Braintree and PayPal execs, has raised $10 million in seed funding. Started earlier this year, the remote-first Pagos is building a data “platform” and API-driven micro-services that it says can integrate with any payment stack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Space Perspective raises $40M Series A for stratospheric balloon rides
The successful commercial launches of Blue Origin, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic have officially ushered in a new era of space tourism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Reliable Robotics lifts $100M to take autonomous cargo planes where none have gone before
When flying cargo from one part of the world to another, you typically need a pilot for two parts: The take-off and the landing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cannabis commerce company Dutchie doubles valuation following new funding round
The industry will continue to see adoption across all areas, especially as more people are educated on finding the right product and modality and more states legalize cannabis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ScienceIO leaves stealth with millions to structure health data
Years before he co-launched a stealthy business to fix the messy world of health data, Gaurav Kaushik was slowly connecting the dots on how better visualization could impact health outcomes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jow raises $20 million for its meal and grocery planning service
French startup Jow has raised a $20 million funding round led by Eurazeo. Jow wants to make it easier to cook at home by taking care of menu ideas and helping you manage your online orders of groceries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
VanMoof teases new high-speed electric bike
E-bike manufacturer VanMoof recently raised a $128 million funding round. And the company is already using some of that cash to develop a brand new product — the VanMoof V. This is a new product in the VanMoof lineup, a high-speed bike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ThoughtFull gets $1.1M seed to make mental health support more accessible in Southeast Asia
Depression and anxiety were taking a serious toll on peoples’ well-being even before COVID-19, and the pandemic prompted more interest (and venture capital) in mental health startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Varda Space Industries will send its first space factory to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket
Varda Space Industries, a startup that wants to build in-space manufacturing facilities, will be sending its first spacecraft to orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2023. The actual spacecraft — the startup’s first to go to orbit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mobile gaming startup Homa Games raises $50 million
Just days after Voodoo acquired Beach Bum, another French mobile gaming company has news to share. Homa Games is raising a $50 million Series A round led by Northzone. The company partners with indie game studios and acts as a publisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Alpha Paw brings in $5.2M to carve out its niche in the pet wellness space
Alpha Paw offers pet products for dogs and cats like food and supplements that are customized with pet breed in mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tiger Global in talks to lead over $100M investment in India’s Slice
A number of high-profile investors are chasing to invest in Slice, a fintech startup that is attempting to expand the market for credit cards in India. Tiger Global is in advanced stages of talks to lead a round of over $100 million in the Bangalore-based startup, sources familiar with the matter told me. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft acquires Ally.io, OKR startup that raised $76 million
Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Ally.io, a software service that helps companies measure their progress against OKRs or objectives and key results, a common way the management measures both individual and company progress. The two firms did not share the purchase price. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MindLabs gets $3.5M seed to make mental wellness engaging
Making sure mental wellness is part of your routine can be difficult, especially if you are already busy and stressed. MindLabs wants to make it easier with a combination of on-demand or live video classes and community features. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
BeeHero’s precision pollination platform wings its way to $19M in new funding
Move over, precision agriculture — precision apiculture is what’s on the minds of all future-focused farmers. BeeHero has been growing fast since its debut and seed round last year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Goldman Sachs spinoff Juven to back African high-growth companies with large checks
Mauritius and U.K.-based investment company Juven went live today with plans to fund growth-stage technology and consumer companies in Africa. The one-year-old firm is looking to invest large checks in companies “that have proven business models, strong revenue traction and large addressable markets,” it said in a statement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Podcastle raises $7M for its all-in-one platform for podcast production and publishing
Both Anchor and Descript have made their names as being among the most significant Podcast creation platforms of recent times, but hoving into the rear-view mirror recently has been Podcastle, an all-in-one platform that can cover off recording, production and publishing, all on the one platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YC grad Wasp land $1.5M seed to help developers build web apps faster
It seems that a lot of startups are trying to help developers reduce the complexity involved in coding an app. Last week we covered the seed round for RunX, a company that helps developers code back-end cloud resources more quickly. Today, Y Combinator Winter 2021 graduate Wasp announced a $1.5 million seed round to help […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ladder raises $100M on a $900M valuation for a platform selling flexible term life insurance
Life insurance has had a new lease on life in the era of insuretech, and today one of the companies building a business out of rethinking everything. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Komunidad, a Philippines-based environmental intelligence platform, lands seed round
The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. While working in IT, Felix Ayque began compiling cyclone reports and sending them as email alerts to communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ProductWind raises $1.67M to connect your brand with hundreds of influencers
Brands wanting to get into influencer marketing can use ProductWind's platform to set up campaigns with hundreds of influencers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Climate volatility helps agtech platform Semios raise $100M round led by Morningside
One of the greatest challenges for farmers today is the increasing volatility in the climate, leading to unpredictable weather patterns, making growing conditions challenging. If farmers can’t grow crops, then our food security is as risk. Gradually, the field of agtech is attempting to address this issue. There are increasing numbers of FaaS (farming as […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mobile gaming company Voodoo acquires Beach Bum
French startup Voodoo has made a significant acquisition in the casual mobile gaming market. The company is acquiring Beach Bum, a game studio based in Israel and specialized in tabletop and card games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spudsy bags $3.3M to turn ‘ugly’ sweet potatoes into snacks
Spudsy is on track to save 1 million of these so-called flawed sweet potatoes by the end of 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Starfish Space raises $7M for in-orbit servicing space tug
Satellite servicing company Starfish Space has closed $7 million in funding to accelerate the development of a space tug vehicle that can extend the life of spacecraft and get rid of orbital debris. Servicing satellites used to be nigh impossible, due to the extreme costs associated with going to orbit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tonic.ai raises $35M Series B to help engineers create synthetic data sets
When engineers are building software, they often run into issues around testing it without using actual customer data. Creating a meaningful test set can be time-consuming and challenging. Tonic.ai, a startup that helps engineers create synthetic data sets is trying to fix that, and today the company announced a $35 million Series B. Insight Partners […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Federated Genomic data startup Lifebit raises $60M round led by Tiger Global
Genomic data is considered to be the key to unlocking so-called “precision medicine”. Some estimates suggest that by 2025, 500 million human genomes will have been sequenced, but only a fraction of it is being utilized for drug discovery and precision medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Indonesian ID and data verification startup Verihubs gets $2.8M led by Insignia Venture Partners
For many financial institutions in Southeast Asia, verifying new customers takes a week or two, said the founders of Verihubs. The startup cuts that time down to as little as five seconds, using AI-based identity authentication technology and APIs that let companies continue verifying returning customers through SMS, WhatsApp or flash calls. Verihubs announced it […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YC-backed Malloc wants to take the sting out of mobile spyware
Mobile spyware is one of the most invasive and targeted kinds of unregulated surveillance, since it can be used to track where you go, who you see and what you talk about. And because of its stealthy nature, mobile spyware can be nearly impossible to detect. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Singapore-based logistics startup Ninja Van secures $578M Series E
Ninja Van, a Singapore-based logistics startup, has closed a $578 million Series E round to support its operations infrastructure and technology systems growth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Robotic farming firm Iron Ox raises $53M
Bay Area-based autonomous farming startup Iron Ox this week announced a $53 million round. The Series C, led by Breakthrough Energy Venture, brings the firm’s total funding up to $98 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Loyal raises $27M, aims to give dog owners more time with their pets
Loyal is building an animal pharmaceutical company that is developing therapeutics aimed at extending both lifespan and healthspan for dogs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nosh uses AI to help people and businesses cut down on their food waste
When founder Somdip Dey was a computer science masters student at the University of Manchester, his parents got in a terrible car accident. He sent all of his money back to his parents in India to help with their medical bills, but then he faced a problem familiar to too many. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Crypto asset management platform Cobo bags $40M Series B
Cobo, a Singapore-based crypto asset management platform, raised a $40 million Series B to accelerate the development of decentralized finance as a service (DFaaS). The round was co-led by DST Global, A&T Capital and IMO Ventures. The company will use its proceeds for the development of DeFi as a service (DFaaS) infrastructure and its existing […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sunday raises $100 million for its fast restaurant checkout flow
Sunday, a startup that didn’t exist just a few months ago, has raised a $100 million Series A funding round. Today’s funding round is led by Coatue with participation from partners of DST Global. Investors in the restaurant, hospitality and tech industries are also participating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tatum lets you interact with blockchains using API calls
Meet Tatum, a blockchain infrastructure startup that wants to make it much easier to develop your own blockchain-based product. The company operates a platform-as-a-service product so that you don’t have to manage your own nodes and learn how to interact with each client. Tatum is participating in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. While blockchain […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Alan acquires Jour and launches mental health service Alan Mind
French startup Alan is better known for its health insurance products — they now insure 200,000 people. But it has been slowly building a superapp for your health and expanding with new services. Today, the company announced its first acquisition ever with the acquisition of Jour for $20 million. This is going to be the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Near Space Labs closes $13M Series A to send more Earth imaging robots to the stratosphere
The decreasing cost of launch and a slew of other tech innovations have brought about a renaissance in geospatial intelligence, with multiple startups aiming to capture higher-quality and more frequent images of Earth than have ever before been available. Most of these startups, however, are focused on using satellites to collect data. Not so for […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fivetran hauls in $565M on $5.6B valuation, acquires competitor HVR for $700M
Fivetran, the data connectivity startup, had a big day today. For starters it announced a $565 million investment on $5.6 billion valuation, but it didn’t stop there. It also announced its second acquisition this year, snagging HVR, a data integration competitor that had raised over $50M, for $700 million in cash and stock. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flippa raises $11M to match online asset and business buyers, sellers
Flippa uses a proprietary business valuation tool and algorithm to match online business owners to qualified buyers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ketch raises another $20M as demand grows for its privacy data control platform
Ketch's OTC enables developers to embed security and governance into a piece of data as they build software. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices