Tech

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

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

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

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.

Early-stage entrepreneurs who are eager to ship usually spend more time calculating their startup’s monthly burn rate than selecting an optimal development environment. As a result, technical debt starts to accumulate. And accumulate. TechCrunch Senior Writer Romain Dillet interviewed Jill Wetzler, VP of Engineering at Pilot, and Preeti Somal, EVP of Engineering at HashiCorp, to

Spinal surgery is not for the faint of heart at the best of times, but Intelligent Implants raised €7.5 million ($8.7 million) to make spinal surgery less of a pain in the backside. The company’s smart implants’ first application is in spinal fusion surgery — where two or more vertebrae are permanently connected to improve

Instagram is testing new tools for creators to earn commissions and form partnerships with brands on its platform. The Facebook-owned company is expanding its existing native affiliate tool, which launched in June and allows creators to discover products, share them with followers and earn commissions for sales driven by their posts. With this latest launch,

Derek Zaba Contributor Derek Zaba is a partner at Sidley Austin’s Palo Alto office and co-chairs the firm’s Shareholder Activism practice. He counsels companies on a variety of matters, including activism defense/proxy contests, activism preparedness, takeover defenses, shareholder engagement and corporate governance. Sharon R. Flanagan Contributor Sharon R. Flanagan is the managing partner of Sidley

IBM has been in the midst of a strategy shift with a focus on hybrid cloud and AI since Arvind Krishna was promoted to CEO in last year. Red Hat, the software company it purchased for $34 billion in 2018 has been at the center of it all. With the company reporting earnings yesterday, the

Facebook has reached a multi-year agreement to pay French publishers for resharing their content on its platforms, it announced today. The social media giant said the licensing agreement with the Alliance of national and regional newspapers “means that people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities,

It makes sense that phone manufacturers are paying extra attention to how faces show up in photos, and the new Pixel 6, announced by Google today, introduces a suite of new AI-powered tools to make humans show up better than ever. The two highlights are Face Unblur — which helps reduce blur on moving faces

Following moves by major tech platforms to better protect minors using their platforms, Snapchat is preparing to introduce its own set of “family engagement” tools in the coming months. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel teased the planned offering during an interview at the WSJ Tech Live conference this week, where he explained that the new product

The edtech boom has focused primarily on students, but teachers are learners, too. Doyobi, a Singapore-based professional development platform, wants to give educators new, more engaging ways of teaching STEM subjects. The startup announced today it has raised $2.8 million in pre-Series A funding led by Monk’s Hill Ventures. The round included Tresmonos Capital, Novus

In what would be a blockbuster acquisition, PayPal is reportedly exploring the purchase of social media company Pinterest, according to Bloomberg. According to the publication, San Jose, California-based PayPal has “recently approached” Pinterest about a potential buyout. Citing an anonymous source, Bloomberg said PayPal could pay around $70 a share, which would value Pinterest at