Cacheflow doubles valuation while raising $10M, proving that the venture market is far from dead

Cacheflow, a startup building tools for the software sales closing process, announced this morning that it closed $10 million in new capital. Cacheflow CEO and co-founder Sarika Garg told TechCrunch that the new capital doubled her company’s valuation, added prior lead investor Glenn Solomon (GGV) to its board and brought new investor Crystal Huang (GV) … Read more

Kodiak Robotics wins $50M to help US Army build AVs for recon, surveillance

Autonomous trucking technology company Kodiak Robotics won a $49.9 million contract from the the U.S. Department of Defense to help the Army automate future ground vehicles to conduct high-risk missions like reconnaissance and surveillance. The two year contract, which was awarded by the DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) on behalf of the Army’s Robotic Combat … Read more

Oda, the Norwegian grocery delivery startup, raises a fresh $151M, but at a lowered valuation of $353M

Online grocery delivery, a booming business at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, has definitely come down to earth with the shifts in the economy, public health and technology investing. Oda, one of the bigger players in online grocery delivery in Europe with operations in its home market of Norway as well as Finland and … Read more

Snapchat’s latest Bitmoji Drop features exclusive Adidas merch, but there’s a price tag

Snapchat announced today that it’s partnering with Adidas to launch a new Bitmoji Fashion Drop, giving users access to exclusive merchandise for a limited time. The partnership will allow users to use Snap Tokens to purchase an exclusive Adidas track jacket for their Bitmoji. Snap Tokens, which were first introduced in 2020, can be purchased … Read more

MetalSoft aims to help manage server infrastructure through automation

It’s tough in the current economic climate to hire and retain engineers focused on system admin, DevOps and network architecture. In a recent Gartner survey, IT executives cited talent shortages as the top barrier to adopting emerging technologies. Unfortunately for execs, at the same time recruiting is posing a major challenge, IT infrastructure is becoming … Read more

Kodiak gets $50 million to develop self-driving reconnaissance vehicles for the US Army

Image: Kodiak Robotics Kodiak Robotics, the autonomous truck startup, will receive $49.9 million to help the US Army develop self-driving vehicles for reconnaissance, surveillance, and other “high-risk” missions. The Mountain View, California-based company, which primarily builds self-driving systems for freight trucks, will develop the vehicles for the US Army’s Robotic Combat Vehicle program. The collaboration … Read more

African fintech unicorn Chipper Cash lays off about 12.5% of staff

Chipper Cash, an African cross-border payments company valued at $2.2 billion last year, has laid off a portion of its workforce. Yesterday, a few affected and non-affected employees took to LinkedIn to reveal the news. TechCrunch has learned from sources that over 50 employees were affected across multiple departments; the engineering team took the biggest … Read more

MergeStat channels open source and SQL to bring ‘operational analytics’ to software engineering

A new open source startup is setting out to help software development teams glean deeper insights from their codebases, using SQL to query all the data sources they use in the software building process. MergeStat, as the startup is known, has flown under the radar until now, but with plans to launch a commercial product … Read more

Robinhood banks on retirement to slow user attrition

Retail trading app Robinhood is entering the retirement game. The Menlo Park, California-based company today launched a waitlist for its new offering, Robinhood Retirement, which it describes as the “first and only” individual retirement account (IRA) with a 1% match on every eligible dollar contributed. The move is a big bet on the part of … Read more