The European Union’s flagship reboot of long-standing ecommerce rules — aka the Digital Services Act (DSA) — has now been published in the bloc’s Official Journal. You can find the full (and final) text of DSA here. Le Digital Services Act (#DSA) est publié aujourd’hui au Journal Officiel! Ce texte majeur fera d’Internet un espace … Read more
The issue of women startup founders not receiving equitable venture funding is a shortfall of the West: It’s here, everywhere in the U.S., and over there, all throughout Europe. It’s hard to say that some of these metrics represent investors simply pulling back when data shows the bias has historical precedence. Even in 2008, all-women … Read more
Streamlined Ventures, led by Ullas Naik, secured $140 million in new capital commitments for its two newest funds. This brings the total funds managed to eight with the assets under management reaching about $325 million. Institutional investors, family offices and high net worth individuals pumped $102 million into the firm’s fifth seed fund, which targets … Read more
Healthcare benefits are great, but navigating them often isn’t. HealthJoy wants to make the experience more seamless for employees, while helping HR departments reduce the number of underutilized benefits. The Chicago-based company announced today it has raised $60 million in Series D funding, led by Valspring Capital with participation from Endeavor Vision and CIBC Innovation … Read more
ELSA, the English-language learning app known for its speech recognition technology, is launching a new product called the Speech Analyzer. The assessment platform plugs into communication tools like Zoom and analyzes conversational speech to suggest areas for improvement, including pronunciation, pacing and vocabulary. It is meant to act like a language coach to help people … Read more
Cutting your own carbon footprint isn’t easy, even for the most motivated person. Tracking, tallying, investigating, researching. For Sanchali Pal, though, that was part of the fun. Pal, who had been working in international development, wanted to start trimming her footprint. “I started building an Excel spreadsheet of the carbon emissions in my life, starting … Read more
SGNL.ai, a company developing enterprise authorization software, today announced that it raised $12 million in seed funding led by Costanoa Ventures with participation from Fika Ventures, Moonshots Capital and Resolute Ventures. CEO Scott Kriz said the proceeds will be used to develop the company’s core products and hire the initial team, as well as work … Read more
Navina, a company developing AI-powered assistant software for physicians, today announced that it raised $22 million in Series B funding led by ALIVE with participation from Grove Ventures, Vertex Ventures Israel and Schusterman Family Investments. Bringing the startup’s total raised to $44 million, inclusive of a grant from the Israeli Innovation Authority, the proceeds will … Read more
Five years ago the blockchain was blossoming in the enterprise, or so many companies had us believe. Back then, companies like SAP and IBM were trying to build blockchain practices, but while the technology sounded good to solve myriad problems in the enterprise, it never really took off. Fast forward to 2022 and the blockchain … Read more
Digital payments are gaining momentum in Latin America, and startups like Mexico-based mattilda are putting their spin on streamlining financial and administrative processes for private schools while also offering credit backed by future school fees. The company was founded in 2022 by José Agote, Jesús Lanza, Juan Pablo Bravo, Adrián Garza and Ileana Gómez. Agote, … Read more
Networking and cybersecurity firm Versa today announced that it raised $120 million in a mix of equity and debt led by BlackRock, with participation from Silicon Valley Bank. CEO Kelly Ahuja tells TechCrunch that the proceeds, which bring Versa’s total capital raised to $316 million, will be put toward go-to-market efforts and scaling the company. … Read more
Cinchy, a startup that provides a data management service for enterprise customers, today announced that it raised $14.5 million in Series B funding led by Forgepoint Capital with participation from IVP, SUV, Techstars and Mars. Bringing the company’s total raised to $24 million, the capital will be put toward scaling Cinchy’s outreach and continuing to … Read more
Accel has backed a startup named Mason based in India and the U.S. that has built a commerce engine for sellers around the world to help them sell products online without paying the exorbitant ‘Amazon tax.’ The California-based startup, which has its R&D headquarters in Bengaluru, is claimed to allow sellers to have their D2C … Read more
The UK government has denied a fresh parliamentary delay to the Online Safety Bill will delay the legislation’s passage. The legislation is a core plank of the government’s 2019 manifesto promise to make the UK the safest place in the world to go online, introducing a regime ministers want to will drive a new era … Read more
YouTube announced today that it will certify channels of licensed health professionals like doctors, nurses, or therapists who produce health-related content. Last year, the company introduced a label noting that the info on the channel is from a certified healthcare professional. Plus, it showed videos from these approved channels in a new carousel called “From … Read more
India’s Udaan has raised $120 million in convertible notes and debt led by existing shareholders and bondholders, a top executive told employees in an email Thursday seen by TechCrunch, as the business-to-business e-commerce startup works to being ready for the public markets in 12-18 months. The new financing brings the startup’s overall funding in convertible … Read more
Last month, Egyptian B2B e-commerce platform Capiter made headlines after founders Mahmoud Nouh and Ahmed Nouh were ousted by its board as CEO and COO. The reasons were unclear, as both parties didn’t publicly comment on the situation; however, from various local news outlets, they ranged from mismanagement of funds to failure to report to … Read more
Samsung Electronics has appointed Jay Y. Lee as the executive chairman to lead the world’s largest smartphone and memory chipmaker, two months after the heir received a presidential pardon that erased the 54-year-old’s criminal record. Last year, Lee was paroled from prison after serving 18 months in jail for bribing former South Korean president Park … Read more
Redstone and EnjoyVenture have combined forces to create Human Impact Capital (HIC), Germany’s first dedicated scial impact VC fund. The fund will deploy cash into digital business models focusing on health, education and “living,” and explicitly invests to have an impact along sustainable development goals. To HIC, this means “No Poverty, Good Health and Wellbeing, … Read more
Elon Musk told Twitter employees Wednesday that he’s not planning on laying off 75% of staff when he takes over the company, Bloomberg reports, citing “people familiar with the matter.” This is a walk back from what Musk reportedly said last week. The celebrity executive denied the previously reported number when he addressed employees at … Read more
Smartphone shipment is often seen as the bellwether of China’s consumer spending, and right now, the picture isn’t very rosy. The world’s largest market for smartphones shipped 175.1 million handsets between January and August, marking a sharp 22.9% decline year-over-year, according to research from a state-backed institution. In August alone, shipments dropped 21.9% year-over-year. The … Read more
India’s Money View is in talks to raise a new round of funding at a unicorn valuation, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in a boost to the local fintech community that has been rattled by the central bank’s stringent guidelines and funding crunch in recent months. Apis Partners is deliberating leading a … Read more
2050 is an important year for climate tech, with the Paris Agreement calling for emissions to reach net zero by then. In a conversation with GenZero’s Frederick Teo for SOSV’s Climate Tech Summit, we talked about realistic paths to hitting that goal and how startups can tackle what Teo called one of the most existentialist … Read more
On today’s quarterly earnings call, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was on the defensive when it comes to the company’s investment in the metaverse. Once again, the company lost more than $3 billion dollars to its Reality Labs division this quarter, and Meta’s net income took a big hit. Since rebranding from Facebook to … Read more
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Wednesday, and we’re excited to bring you another round of our esteemed Daily Crunch newsletter. There’s a wide variety of morsels, nuggets, and other bite-sized delights, so let’s go! — Christine and … Read more
A follow-up to the Quest 2, Meta is launching another consumer-grade virtual reality headset next year. The company announced this during today’s Q3 earnings call, in which the company marked yet another $3 billion quarterly loss to its metaverse investments. But CFO David Wehner says that some of this continued cost can be explained via … Read more
As the third-quarter earnings drumbeat continues, we learned more about the state of global supply chains, global consumer appetite for big-ticket items and the future of self-driving technology. After the bell this afternoon, Ford beat Wall Street analyst revenue estimates of $36.25 billion, per Yahoo Finance, with automotive Q3 2022 top line of $37.2 billion, … Read more
Earlier this year, Meta posted its first quarterly revenue decline. Once again, Meta’s financials aren’t inspiring much faith in its investors this quarter. Meta’s revenue declined 4% year over year to hit $27.7 billion; but Meta CFO David Wehner pointed out on the earnings call today that some of this decline is owed to inflation. … Read more
In tech, emerging trends usually elicit excitement and surprise, whether it’s the hot new sector that every venture capitalist is clamoring for a stake in, or the rise of a new technology you haven’t heard of. Until you only hear of it. This year, however, one of the biggest trends to form inside tech was … Read more
“There’s a big wave of innovation in managing cloud costs,” Team8 co-founder and managing partner Liran Grinberg told TechCrunch as part of our latest cloud investor survey. Having noticed tailwinds for the wave of B2B startups that offer cloud cost-optimization solutions, and cloud management more broadly, we were curious to know where VCs thought the … Read more