Cyber Monday online sales hit a record $11.3B, driven by demand, not just inflation, says Adobe

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Expectations for this year’s holiday spend online were lukewarm, but initial activity — driven by deep discounts — has bucked predictions. Cyber Monday pulled in $11.3 billion in sales online according to figures from Adobe Analytics, which tracks seasonal e-commerce activity. This is 5.8% more than consumers spent on the same day last year (when … Read more

Solana-focused crypto wallet Phantom adds Ethereum and Polygon support

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Solana-centric crypto wallet Phantom is expanding its support to two other blockchains, Ethereum and Polygon, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. By adding support for Ethereum and Polygon, Phantom is expanding users’ access from only Solana to all three of the ecosystems, Brandom Millman, CEO and co-founder of Phantom, said to TechCrunch. “We want to bring … Read more

‘Co-warehouse’ company Saltbox closes $35M Series B

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Coworking and warehouse space company Saltbox announced today the closing of a $35 million Series B led by Cox Enterprises and Pendulum Holdings. The news comes more than a year after Saltbox closed a $10.6 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $56 million. As TechCrunch previously reported, Saltbox — which was founded in … Read more

Why some tech CEOs are rooting for Elon Musk

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Kristen Radtke / The Verge; Getty Images After a long weekend away, today let’s talk about the largely positive reception that Elon Musk’s radical remaking of Twitter is getting from tech CEOs — and whether those views are likely to change if the fight that Musk is picking with Apple erodes even more value from … Read more

Pearpop raises $18M at a $300M valuation to scale its social collaboration marketplace

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Pearpop, a marketplace for social collaborations, announced today that it has raised an extension to its 2021-era Series A funding round. The company has added $18 million to its Series A, bringing its valuation to $300 million. Since its launch in October 2020, Pearpop has raised $34 million in funding. The new investment includes funding … Read more

Software supply chain security is broader than SolarWinds and Log4J

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Dan Lorenc Contributor Share on Twitter Dan Lorenc is CEO and co-founder of Chainguard. Previously he was staff software engineer and lead for Google’s Open Source Security Team (GOSST). He has founded projects like Minikube, Skaffold, TektonCD and Sigstore. SolarWinds and Log4j have made software supply chain security issues a topic of intense interest and … Read more

NopeaRide, Kenya’s first EV taxi service, shuts down

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Kenya’s first fully electric taxi service, NopeaRide, is exiting the market after its parent company EkoRent OY failed to raise additional funding to keep it afloat. NopeaRide said EkoRent Africa, the local subsidiary of the Finnish company, has filed for insolvency in Kenya, bringing to an end the operations of the all-electric vehicle taxi player, … Read more

Deepgram lands new cash to grow its enterprise voice-recognition business

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Deepgram, a company developing voice-recognition tech for the enterprise, today raised $47 million in new funding led by Madrona Venture Group with participation from Citi Ventures and Alkeon. An extension of Deepgram’s Series B that kicked off in February 2021, led by Tiger Global, it brings the startup’s total raised to $86 million, which CEO … Read more

UK confirms removal of Online Safety Bill’s ‘legal but harmful’ clause

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The UK government has completed a major revision to controversial but populist online safety legislation that’s been in the works for years — and was finally introduced to parliament earlier this year — but has been paused since this summer following turmoil in the governing Conservative Party. In September, new secretary of state for digital, Michelle Donelan, … Read more