TechCrunch Startup News

This morning Hopin, a virtual events platform and video-focused software service, announced that it has closed a $400 million Series C. The new capital values Hopin at $5.65 billion. Both numbers match prior TechCrunch reporting that the company was targeting a $400 million raise at a valuation of between $5 billion and $6 billion. Andreessen […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As demand for cloud native applications is growing, Yugabyte, makers of the cloud native, open source YugabyteDB database are seeing a corresponding rise in demand for their products, especially with large enterprise customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rapid growth of e-commerce in Indonesia, especially during the pandemic, is placing increasing demands on its supply chain infrastructure. But the country’s logistics industry is highly fragmented, with companies usually relying on multiple providers for one shipment, and many warehouses are still concentrated around major cities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s not yet fire season thankfully, which affords some breathing room for firefighters and emergency responders to begin planning out how to confront the increasingly complex and unwieldy task of preventing and responding to fires in the American West. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

According to an amended S-1 filing, South Korean e-commerce leader Coupang expects to price its initial public offering between $27 to $30 per share, potentially raising up to $3.6 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As building in public continues to gain popularity with early-stage startup founders, Murmur, coming out of stealth today, wants to leverage that natural transparency to a louder frequency. Founded by Aaron Dignan, Murmur helps startups create work agreements based on the policies of other startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Because news of its SPAC-fueled public market debut wasn’t enough, Rocket Lab also unveiled a new class of rocket it has in development on Monday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Atlassian platform is chock full of data about how a company operates and communicates. Atlassian launched a machine learning layer, which relies on data on the platform with the addition of Atlassian Smarts last fall. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Aquarium, a startup from two former Cruise employees, wants to help companies refine their machine learning model data more easily and move the models into production faster. Today the company announced a $2.6 million seed led by Sequoia with participation from Y Combinator and a bunch of angel investors including Cruise co-founders Kyle Vogt and Dan Kan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning MealMe.ai, a food search engine, announced that it has closed a $900,000 pre-seed round. Palm Drive Capital led the round, with participation from Slow Ventures and CP Ventures. TechCrunch first became familiar with MealMe when it presented as part of the Techstars Atlanta demo day last October, mentioning it in a roundup of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Maze has closed a $15 million Series A funding round led by Emergence Capital. The company lets you run user tests at scale so that you can get feedback before rolling out a design update or test copy. When you have a lot of users, you don’t want to roll out some changes before testing […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harbor, an app that gamifies emergency preparedness, has today announced the launch of a premium tier that includes features like an emergency button called HarborHELP that it has built in partnership with home-security company ADT. The premium subscription also includes a family plan, which lets paying users add up to 12 other users to the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index is off 2.34% after falling yesterday. Shares of Tesla are off more than 6% today, now mired in a bear-market correction after reaching new all-time highs earlier this year. Apple stock is worth $122.02 per share, down from over its recent highs of more than $145. After a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Archer Aviation, the electric aircraft startup that recently announced a deal to go public via a merger with a blank-check company, plans to launch a network of its urban air taxis in Los Angeles by 2024. The announcement comes two months after the formation of the Urban Air Mobility Partnership, a one-year initiative between Los […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Based in Singapore, ErudiFi wants to help more students in Southeast Asia stay in school by giving them affordable financing options. The startup announced today it has raised a $5 million Series A, co-led by Monk’s Hill Ventures and Qualgro. ErudiFi currently works with more than 50 universities and vocational schools in Indonesia and the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning Creatio, a Boston-based software company, announced that it has raised $68 million. Volition Capital, a growth-equity fund, led the round. The deal was a minority investment in the startup. The deal is notable not merely thanks to its sheer size, but because up until today Creatio had bootstrapped. That’s according to founder and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite the market impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retail investing is increasing in Indonesia, especially among people aged 18 to 30. Today, investment platform FUNDtastic announced it has raised a $7.7 million Series A to tap into that demand, with plans to launch new products for retail investors, reports DealStreetAsia. The round was led by […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AccountsIQ, a financial management software (FMS) startup founded by a team of chartered accountants (when accountants want to be entrepreneurs, you know startups are a thing), has raised €5.8 million in funding. Backing the Dublin-based company, which targets mid-sized businesses that operate multi-entities, is Finch Capital, the fintech focussed VC that recently outed its third […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, that software is offered as a cloud service should be pretty much considered a given. Certainly any modern tooling is going to be SaaS, and as companies and employees add services, it becomes a management nightmare. Enter Torii, an early stage startup that wants to make it easier to manage SaaS bloat. Today, the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Update: There’s an entire second session of this? My lord. Today the House Financial Services Committee dragged the CEO of Reddit, a Cato wonk, social media icon DeepFuckingValue, the CEO of Citadel Kenneth Griffin, a hedgefund bro who got whomped by DeepFuckingValue, and the CEO of Robinhood Vlad Tenev, who got womped when individual investors […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Massachusetts-based Locus Robotics today announced a $150 million Series E. The round, led by Tiger Global Management and Bond, brings the firm’s total to around $250 to date, and values the robotics company at $1 billion. Locus is notable for a more modular and flexible solution for automating warehouses than many of its competitors (see: […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This morning Ally.io, a software startup with a focus on the OKR (objectives and key results, in case you’ve somehow avoided being exposed) goal-setting technique, announced that it has closed $50 million in new capital. The Series C round was led by Green Oaks Capital, Madrona Capital, and its Series B lead, Tiger Global. Ally […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nate Faust has spent years in the e-commerce business — he was a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com), co-founder and COO at Jet (acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion) and then a vice president at Walmart. Over time, he said it slowly dawned on him that it’s “crazy” that 25 years […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 bitcoin, the world’s best-known cryptocurrency, has historically proven a reasonable proxy for consumer interest in the cryptocurrency space, and for trading activity amongst blockchain-based assets. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fronted, the London-based fintech aiming to make life easier for renters, including lending the cash needed for a deposit, has finally launched. In March, its founders took the decision to “hibernate” the nascent business after the first lockdown and with the pandemic taking hold. But, now with regulatory approval from the FCA and rents falling […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 talks to acquire the U.K.’s Fancy Delivery, TechCrunch has learned. According to sources, terms of the acquisition are still being fleshed out, and the deal […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Notion, the online workspace startup that was last year valued at over $2 billion, is currently offline after a DNS outage knocked the site off the internet. The collaborative online office and document service was not loading as of around 9am ET on Friday, preventing anyone who relies on the service from accessing their cloud-stored […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloud monitoring platform Datadog has announced that it plans to acquire Sqreen, a software-as-a-service security platform. Originally founded in France, Sqreen participated in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in 2016. Sqreen is a cloud-based security product to protect your application directly. Once you install the sandboxed Sqreen agent, it analyzes your application in real time to find […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 million Series B in late December 2020, after raising a $23 million Series A earlier in the same year. TechCrunch spoke with Ramp co-founder and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 is launching to help gamers connect both on and off screen. The app was founded by sibling duo Stephanie and Lincoln Smith, who have been […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Monzo, the U.K. challenger bank with just shy of 5 million customers, has recruited a new U.S CEO to head up its efforts states-side, TechCrunch has learned. Carol Nelson, who previously spent ten years as CEO of Cascade Bank and prior to that was a long time senior vice president of Bank of America, will […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 $14 million Series A round led by Serena. Powder wants to build the video infrastructure for social gaming. While many communities of gamers already share […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fintech startup Klarna is turning its mobile app into a banking app in Germany. Customers living there can now open a consumer bank account and get a Visa debit card. For now, Klarna is launching bank accounts for a limited number of users. The company expects to roll it out more broadly in the coming […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 it. LiveRamp, an enterprise data connectivity platform itself, paid more than $68M for the company, a huge multiple on DataFleet’s $4.5M seed announced just last […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 co-led by GGV and Redpoint, comes mere months after its September Series A that was worth $15 million. Accel led the company’s Series A and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 that online events platform Hopin raised last fall — in fact, a recent Equity episode suggested that Hopin might be the fastest growth story of […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry Stebbings, the podcaster-turned-VC, is stepping down as a partner of Stride, the London-based venture capital firm he co-founded with Fred Destin, formerly of Accel. In a series of tweets, Destin said that Stebbings won’t be involved in Stride’s second fund (though he’ll remain a partner in fund one), and will instead be focusing on […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 a breeze with modern tools ranging from Stripe and PayPal to Fast and Rapyd to Apple and Google Pay. If you happen to need financing, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Virtual health and wellness platforms have grown increasingly popular throughout the pandemic, but a new startup wants to focus that effort exclusively on senior citizens. Bold, a digital health and wellness service, plans to prevent chronic health problems in older adults through free and personalized exercise programs. Co-founded by Amanda Rees and her partner Hari […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 reported that it values the startup at around $27 million. HubSpot declined to comment on the deal price, and while tweeting about the acquisition, The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet Cajoo, a new French startup that has raised a $7.3 million (€6 million) funding round. The company wants to make it easier to order groceries from your phone and receive them 15 minutes later. It is launching in Paris today. “I left Bolt around mid-August and I’m launching a company with two co-founders focused […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 the web. The startup is founded by Dom Leca and Sébastien Métrot. Dom Leca previously worked on Sparrow, an email app with an opinionated design. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nearly a year ago, the spread of COVID-19 ended the daily commute for millions of Americans, an abrupt change that sent the ridesharing industry into a free fall. Hip, which connected commuters with third-party bus and shuttle operators via an app, was just one of the many mobility-as-a-service startups that watched its clientele and revenue […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 brought $4 million to the company in October of 2020. The new funds were raised at a $16 million pre-money, $20 million post-money valuation, Alloy […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 private startup raised $1 billion on Friday, meaning that it has raised $3.4 billion in a handful of days as it seeks to support a […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 is a data-and-AI focused company that interacts with corporate information stored in the public cloud. News of the new round began leaking last week. Franklin […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 Groupe SEB, Korelya Capital and Algaé Ventures are also participating. Chefclub has been building a major media brand on social media platforms. It has attracted […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

German startup Trade Republic is rolling out its app and service in France this week. This is a significant expansion move as Trade Republic has only been available in Germany and Austria so far. Trade Republic lets you buy and sell shares or exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from your phone with low, transparent fees. The company […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Storetasker is an online marketplace focused on connecting Shopify merchants with developers and other experts who can help grow their business. The product is now owned by the startup previously known as Lorem. Co-founder and COO Charlie Fogarty explained that while Lorem originally had a broader mission of connecting small businesses and developers, “We realized […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 a formal press release in scarce supply. SEC filings indicate that the company “anticipate[s]” a price of $30 per share, and reports from media and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices