Tech

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consumer protection (IMCO) committee adopted their position on a Commission proposal announced last fall, ahead of a full vote by the parliament next month to

When it comes to presentation creation, PowerPoint and Keynote remain the de facto tools by incumbent advantage. PowerPoint has over one billion installs and 500 million users alone, thanks to Microsoft’s longtime bundling of Office with certain Windows editions. But this hasn’t stopped startups from trying to disrupt the status quo. Besides Prezi, there’s Pitch,

Last year, SEON, which has an anti-fraud platform designed to fight accounts raised a $12 million Series A. It does this by looking at a customer’s ‘digital footprint’ – especially their social media – in order to weed out false accounts and thus prevent fraudulent transactions. Clients included Patreon, AirFrance, Rivalry and Ladbrokes. The London-based

Everyone thought it was a little bonkers when Panic announced that they would be making a monochrome handheld gaming machine with a sort of subscription model where you can’t choose the games you get. DOA, right? Well, the preorders sold out so perhaps not. And fortunately, Playdate is a fun, weird and promising device that’s

As part of its continued investment into expanding its mobile gaming business, Netflix today announced it will, for the first time, launch a mobile game alongside a TV series from the same franchise. The game and show will be based on the popular Exploding Kittens card game. The mobile game will launch in May exclusively

CoinDCX has doubled its valuation to $2.15 billion (post-money) in eight months following a fresh $135 million funding, it said today, as the Indian cryptocurrency exchange looks to aggressively expand its product offerings and talent base, including some to double down on compliances in the world’s second largest internet market. Steadview and existing backer Pantera

For the bulk of the past two years, the pandemic has put the kibosh on corporate travel of nearly any kind. This has dampened investors’ enthusiasm in travel and expense (T&E) startups, predictably, whose expertise lies in creating software for travel and other forms of expensing. But as the appetite for in-person events and interactions

Slope, which provides businesses an easy way to offer buy now, pay later services, has had a busy six months. That’s not much of a surprise, given that the buy now, pay later market size was valued at $16 billion in 2021 and is poised to grow nearly six times by 2029. Its API technology

From mega-rounds to early-stage deals, Europe had a strong start to the year Anna Heim 7 hours VC funding into Europe (including the U.K.) was up in the first quarter of 2022, CB Insights and Crunchbase data show. In other words, the region escaped the global quarter-on-quarter slowdown in startup investment. But Europe isn’t the

The United States is the world’s largest cannabis market, but as more European countries consider legalizing recreational use, investors are looking for opportunities in production, distribution and retail. Much like the U.S., laws governing this plant-based drug differ across the EU, which means entrepreneurs must navigate complicated legal frameworks even as they compete with an

Welcome to my weekly fintech-focused column. I’ll be publishing this every Sunday, so in between posts, be sure to listen to the Equity podcast and hear Alex Wilhelm, Natasha Mascarenhas and me riff on all things startups! And if you want to have this hit your inbox directly once it officially turns into a newsletter on May 1, sign

The alternative protein space is hot, hot, hot as evidenced by both the number of companies developing products and the venture capital going into the space. Investment into alternative proteins, for example, plant-based meats and dairy substitutes was $5 billion in 2021, according to both the Good Food Institute and Crunchbase data. The latest company

Clipboard Health, an app-based marketplace that matches nurses with open shifts at nearby healthcare facilities, today announced that it raised $80 million over two unannounced rounds, a $50 million Series B round in 2021 and a $30 million Series C round this year, at a $1.3 billion valuation post-money. CEO Wei Deng says that the

Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Every Monday, Grace and Alex scour the news and record notes on what’s going on to kick off the week. We are sitting on the precipice of a very busy few weeks, so let’s get right to

Steve Blank Contributor More posts by this contributor Managing customer discovery when you can’t leave the house Cram downs are back, and I’m keeping a list. At the turn of the century after the dotcom crash, startup valuations plummeted, burn rates were unsustainable and startups were quickly running out of cash. Most existing investors (those

The value of later-stage startups is in decline, data indicate. This particular market movement isn’t a surprise, but the scale of the contraction is worth noting. Forge Global, a secondary market for private-company shares, “said the prices of companies on its platform had fallen 19.9 per cent in February and March compared with the fourth

Companies like Slack and Asana stormed into the world of tech to steal a march on incumbents like Microsoft in providing a new wave of point solutions to make it easier for workers respectively to chat with each other, plan projects and more. Now another startup is announcing a massive round of funding for a

Hark, all ye who pay attention to the stock market, for Elon Musk’s wheels-focused company broached the $1 trillion market cap threshold today. Yeah, it finally happened, so the Equity team quickly scrambled for the microphones. Chris put together the show, allowing Alex and Kirsten to dive into the matter. Kirsten, in case you aren’t

NYSE-listed e-commerce platform Jumia experienced a shift in shopping habits across its markets in Africa last year, as more shoppers bought everyday products as opposed to electronics. Shopping for essentials such as foodstuff, fashion and beauty products, saw Jumia’s total sales value of Fast-Moving Consumer Goods grow by 13 percentage points last year from 44%

Pipefy, a “low-code” workflow management SaaS startup, announced today that it has raised $75 million in Series C funding. SoftBank Latin America Fund led the financing with a $50 million contribution, bringing Pipefy’s total raised to $138.7 million since its 2015 inception. Steadfast Capital Management, Insight Partners and Redpoint eventures also put money in the

Rhinoceros beetles are one of the greatest threats to oil palm crops, attacking plants while they are young and potentially lowering a farm’s yield for years. They also affect workers’ health, since pesticides need to be sprayed frequently. Based in Kuala Lumpur, Poladrone wants to change the way farms use pesticides with a combination of

Celeb video site Cameo is making its first acquisition. The company will buy Represent, a marketing and merch company that helps celebrities and brands set up individualized online storefronts. It’s a natural fit for Cameo, which invites fans to pay celebrities of all stripes for short customized videos. Represent counts Jennifer Lopez, Ed Sheeran, Leonardo

Matt Rogers Contributor Matt Rogers built the first machine-learning thermostat as the co-founder of Nest. He was previously an engineer at Apple, where he helped build ten generations of the iPhone and the first iPad. He currently splits his time between Incite.org and a new company that he is developing. The best way to drive

Klarna, the global retail bank, payments and shopping service, can now add “travel agent” to that list. The company announced Friday that it acquired Inspirock, an online trip planner using artificial intelligence and local expertise to enable Klarna’s 90 million users to quickly and easily explore a destination’s offerings and create personalized itineraries. Financial terms

With the Climate Crisis looming, lots of companies want to do their part. But asking customers to “offset the CO2 emission of this delivery” is usually a hammer to crack a nut. There is very little transparency around carbon offsets. Plus, smaller companies want to access high-quality carbon credits, but calculate their impact at a

Google’s latest flagship phones have an impressive set of automated, AI-powered tools to help make your photos look better, with smart blurs, object removal, and skin tone exposure. While we’ll have to test them out to see if they work as advertised, they could be useful for everyone from pixel peepers to casual snapshot takers.

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices alone.