Merge, a startup that helps its users build customer-facing integrations with third-party tools, today announced that it has raised a $4.5 million seed round led by NEA. Additional angel investors include former MuleSoft CEO Greg Schott, Cloudflare C

Mike Ghaffary Contributor Share on Twitter Mike Ghaffary is a general partner at Canvas Ventures, where he invests in innovation for consumers and software. Previously, he was a partner a

Facebook has failed in its bid to prevent its lead EU data protection regulator from pushing ahead with a decision on whether to order suspension of its EU-U.S. data flows. The Irish High Court has just issued a ruling dismissing the company’s

Image Credits: Echelon (stock image) Peloton wasn’t the only at-home workout giant exposing private account data. Rival exercise giant Echelon also had a leaky API that let virtually anyone access riders’ account information. Fitness tech

Legionfarm, the gaming platform that lets gamers play with pro players in their favorite games, has today announced the close of a $6 million Series A round. Investors in the round include SVB, Y Combinator, Scrum VC, Kevin Lin, Altair Capital, Ankur

Fiveable, an online learning community for high school students, made its first-ever acquisition earlier this week: Hours, a virtual study platform built by a 16-year-old. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Fiveable is a free, online learning

The tabletop gaming industry has exploded over the last few years as millions discovered or rediscovered its joys, but it too is evolving — and The Last Gameboard hopes to be the venue for that evolution. The digital tabletop platform has progresse

Houston-based startup Axiom Space and NASA unveiled more details Monday about the forthcoming Axiom Mission 1 (AX-1), the first fully private human mission to the International Space Station. The Axiom Mission 1 spaceflight mission will ferry four pr

Credit Karma Money, a new checking and savings account from the company best known for its credit monitoring service, recently launched a significant new feature. Called Instant Karma, the program rewards users by randomly refunding purchases. So far

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. The whole team was aboard for this recording, with Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Danny, Alex and Natasha on

Robotic process automation (RPA) has certainly been getting a lot of attention in the last year, with startups, acquisitions and IPOs all coming together in a flurry of market activity. It all seemed to culminate with UiPath’s IPO last month. T

If you ask Nik Bonaddio why he wanted to build a new mobile trivia app, his answer is simple. “In my life, I’ve got very few true passions: I love trivia and I love sports,” Bonaddio told me. “I’ve already started a spor

Daniel Incandela Contributor Share on Twitter Daniel Incandela is the chief marketing officer of Terminus, an ABM platform that powers high-performing go-to-market teams. There’s n

Stride VC, a London-based seed investment fund, has raised its second fund, which will be £100 million ($138.6 million) — identical to its first fund. The fund will invest primarily in London startups but also look at select European opportuni

With Verizon’s long-anticipated sale of its media business now finally in progress — by way of a deal, announced earlier today, with private equity firm Apollo paying $5 billion for Yahoo, AOL and the many various internet brands and serv

Jay-Z’s Roc Nation announced in 2017 that it was forming a venture investment arm called Arrive. And the firm has been busy since then — co-founder and president Neil Sirni said Arrive has made 29 investments thus far. At the same time, Sirni

TechCrunch is known for its pitch-offs. We’ve had them in cities all over the world, and heard from hundreds of startups who have shared the story of their company on our stages. We’re excited to be bringing the pitch-off to Extra Crunch

A U.S./Israeli startup, Sorbet — which is tackling what companies do with the financial risks as employees accrue paid time off (PTO) — has raised $6 million in a seed funding round led by Viola Ventures, with participation by Global Founders Cap

While waiting for full first-quarter venture capital results for fintech startups to drop, we knew that they were going to be outsized. The Exchange previously explored the pace at which huge venture rounds were invested into the startup niche, notin

Uber is launching more than a half-dozen new features, including one that will let users book vaccine appointments at Walgreens and reserve a ride to get their jab, as the company homes in on a business model that will finally deliver profitability.

Mobile social networking app for women, Peanut, is today becoming the latest tech company to integrate audio into its product following the success of Clubhouse. Peanut, which began with a focus on motherhood, has expanded over the years to support w

Apple has spent years reinforcing macOS with new security features to make it tougher for malware to break in. But a newly discovered vulnerability broke through most of macOS’ newer security protections with a double-click of a malicious app,

Michael B. Gray Contributor Share on Twitter Michael B. Gray is partner and leader of the private equity, venture capital and growth companies practice, Neal Gerber Eisenberg.

Cryptocurrency prices continued to tumble Friday with Bitcoin leading the charge, with prices for the internet currency dipping below $50,000 for the first time since early March. Bitcoin is down roughly 20% week-over-week, around 30% from its all-ti

Sophie Ruddock Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Ruddock is VP, GM North America at Multiverse, a tech startup focused on high-quality education and training through professional appren

Brazilian mobile payments app PicPay filed on Wednesday an F-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an IPO valued at up to $100 million. The company plans to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol PICS. PicPay operates largely as

Tim Parkin Contributor Share on Twitter Tim Parkin, president of Parkin Consulting, is a consultant, advisor, and coach to marketing executives globally. He specializes in helping marketi

Class, an edtech startup that integrates exclusively with Zoom to make remote teaching more elegant, has raised $12.25 million in new financing. The round brings Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures and Super Bowl champion Tom Brady onto its capital t

We’ve all heard the phrase “passive income” to describe how people can make money by owning rental properties. Many Americans would love to passively earn money, but the process of becoming a landlord can be intimidating and complicated.  I me

Tesla owners can now see exactly what kind of energy is powering their electric vehicles. TezLab, a free app that’s like a Fitbit for a Tesla vehicle, pushed out a new feature this week that shows the energy mix — breaking down the exact type

BrandProject — a firm that’s backed successful direct-to-consumer commerce startups like Freshly (acquired by Nestlé), Persona (also acquired by Nestlé) and Chef’s Plate (acquired by Hello Fresh) — is announcing that it has raised $

Robotic process automation platform UiPath filed its first S-1/A this week, setting an initial price range for its shares. The numbers were impressive, if slightly disappointing because what UiPath indicated in terms of its potential IPO value was a

The race among mobility startups to become profitable by controlling market share has produced a string of bad results for cities and the people living in the them. City officials and agencies learned from those early deployments of ride-hailing and

Labor activists challenging Uber over what they allege are ‘robo-firings’ of drivers in Europe have trumpeted winning a default judgement in the Netherlands — where the Court of Amsterdam ordered the ride-hailing giant to reinstate

Facebook’s self-styled “Oversight Board” (FOB) has announced an operational change that looks intended to respond to criticism of the limits of the self-regulatory content-moderation decision review body: It says it’s started

Out the window, a fire is raging — and it’s moving ever closer. Confusion. Fear. A run for the car. Roads open and then suddenly closed by authorities. Traffic jams. A fire break that stalls the flames and then suddenly the flames jump, changing

From building out Facebook’s first office in Austin to putting together most of Quora’s team, Bain Capital Ventures managing director Sarah Smith has done a bit of everything when it comes to hiring. At TechCrunch Early Stage, she spoke a

Facebook has removed 16,000 groups that were trading fake reviews on its platform after another intervention by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regulator said today. The CMA has been leaning on tech giants to prevent their

Digital mortgage lender Better.com has raised a $500 million round from Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank that values the company at $6 billion. The financing is notable for a few reasons. For one, that new $6 billion valuation is up 50% from

Viewed from the outside, board selection and corporate governance can seem like a bit of a black box — particularly at a startup. Generation Investment Management partner Dave Easton spoke at TechCrunch Early Stage about how to build a board as a f

Black Innovation Alliance and Village Capital today announced Resource, a national initiative aimed at boosting the efforts of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) led by, and focused on, founders of color. The motivation behind the project is s

A partnership between the University of North Carolina’s Kenan Flagler Entrepreneurship Center, the Opportunity Hub and 100 Black Angels and Allies Fund, set up to improve representation and support of diverse founders in the tech industry, is

StockX’s mission is “to provide access to the world’s most coveted items in the smartest way possible.” It says it right on the website, and it’s incontestable that the infinite data StockX makes transparent to anyone for free allows for sm

Kevin Xu Contributor Share on Twitter Kevin Xu is an early-stage investor and founder of Interconnected, a bilingual newsletter covering tech, business and U.S.-Asia relations. Mexic

Edtech unicorns have boatloads of cash to spend following the capital boost to the sector in 2020. As a result, edtech M&A activity has continued to swell. The idea of a well-capitalized startup buying competitors to complement its core business

I use Feedly to work my way through each day’s stream of politics, tech and media stories. Today, I am greeted with a picture of something called Feedly Cloud and the following message: Scheduled Maintenance Feedly will be back in less than 30

Holler, described by founder and CEO Travis Montaque as “a conversational media company,” just announced that it’s raised $36 million in Series B funding. You may not know what conversational media is, but there’s a decent cha

Fast-growing fintech Pipe has raised another round of funding at a $2 billion valuation, just weeks after raising $50 million in growth funding, according to sources familiar with the deal. Although the round is still ongoing, Pipe has reportedly rai

Back in the halcyon days of 2019, we piloted a new format for Extra Crunch we dubbed the EC-1. Modeled after the Form S-1 filing that late-stage startups submit to the SEC as part of the IPO process, EC-1s are authoritative, deep analyses into growth

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, di

Woven Capital, the investment arm of Toyota’s innovation-focused subsidiary Woven Planet, has announced an investment into Silicon Valley-based autonomous delivery vehicle company Nuro. This kicks off the new $800 million strategic fund, which

Hub, a productivity platform for technical pre-sales, has formally launched with $1 million in seed funding. CEO Freddy Mangum and CTO Karl Gainey founded Hub in 2020. The pair both had experience in technical sales and recognized the challenges of u

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Natasha and Danny and Alex and Grace were all here to chat through the week’s biggest tech happenings. News

In the trucking industry, “dwell and detention” times are the enemies of efficiency, profits and drivers. More than two billion hours are lost each year due to dwell — the time spent at a distribution yard or facility — and detention

Covering YC Demo Day yesterday was good fun, but I missed a few items while watching several hundred startup pitches. A few years ago, these stories might have been the biggest news of the week. But with the venture capital market redlining its engin

The New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) released a report today that cleared the Apple Card credit card program of discriminatory practices and specifically, gender-based discrimination, following an investigation triggered by onl

Israel’s ironSource, an app-monetization startup, is going public via a SPAC. But before you tune out to avoid reading about yet another blank-check company taking a private company public, you’ll want to pay attention to this one. For st

There is a prevailing notion that while the cloud infrastructure market is growing fast, the vast majority of workloads remain on premises. While that could be true, new research from Synergy Research Group found that cloud infrastructure spending su

Brian Brackeen, the founder and former CEO of facial recognition startup Kairos, has made his way back to the company following his ouster in 2018. Brackeen is now chairing the company’s scientific advisory board, where he’ll help to addr

Recently public unicorn Upstart announced earnings that blew the socks off of Wall Street this week. After closing on Wednesday at around $61 per share, Upstart wrapped Thursday worth $115 per share. It turns out that all the blather we’ve had

Katherine Kostereva Contributor Share on Twitter Katherine Kostereva is CEO and managing partner of Creatio, a global software company providing a leading low-code platform for process ma

One of the biggest gripes about investing apps is that they are not acting responsibly by not educating users properly and allegedly letting them fend for themselves. This can result in people losing a lot of money, as evidenced by the number of laws

The global venture capital ecosystem is inequitable. In the United States’ mature venture capital market, an entrepreneur’s race, gender and age help determine who has access to capital. But there are other limiting factors: geography, fo

Early-stage founders, why not take a page from the old Doublemint gum slogan — double your pleasure, double your fun — and buy a dual-event pass for access to both TC Early Stage 2021 events? We can’t promise minty-fresh breath, but you will ge

Another day, another Godzilla anime on Netflix. But wait, before you get down on your haunches and give into your kaiju fatigue again, the latest Godzilla anime, titled Godzilla Singular Point, has a few intriguing things going for it. First, it

Artificial intelligence is one of the latest crazes in horror, and Blumhouse is activating a new tech thriller at Universal that will turn state-of-the art technology into a deadly threat. M3GAN will star Allison Williams (Get Out, Girls) as a brill

Plenty of political scandals have been turned into features films and TV shows, but the complicated rise and fall of former Congresswoman Katie Hill is one of the more unique stories to come out of Washington DC in recent memory, and soon it will be

Passenger List, a podcast that features Kelly Marie Tran, is headed to TV. It doesn’t sound like Tran is going to appear on the show, however – but the podcast will be back for a second season as well, with the Star Wars: The Last Jedi an

When you’ve got Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz, Diane Kruger, and Bingbing Fan leading a movie about lady spies, do you even need a title? Well, yes, and in the case of the vaguely titled The 355, it turns out y

The Social Network is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year, and a lot has changed in the world – and the world of Facebook – since the film’s release. Since then, the social media giant has only gotten worse, becoming a kind of petr

In the market for something spooky? Netflix has you covered – because they went ahead and put Bly Manor, from the impending The Haunting of Bly Manor, up on real estate database company Zillow. To be fair, you can’t actually buy the house

Finally, the journey is at an end: The Lord of the Rings trilogy is getting a 4K box set. Uh, oh yes…there’s also going to be a Hobbit 4K box set, but it’s okay, you’re among friends here – you can admit you don’t

Mel Gibson is a miserable, washed-up, drunken Santa Claus and Walton Goggins is the hitman trying to take him down in Fatman, a new dark comedy for the holiday season. Here, Santa is thinking about hanging it up when the U.S. Military comes calling

On the October 5, 2020 episode of /Film Daily, /Film editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is joined by /Film weekend editor Brad Oman and senior writer Ben Pearson to discuss the latest film and tv news, including movie theaters, release dates, Star Wars,

Alita: Battle Angel, a movie that’s been on Blu-ray and digital since July 2019, is headed back to theaters in the midst of a deadly pandemic. Why? Who’s to say, really? But while the film was not a hit in the U.S., it did well overseas

It’s-a-me, your resident theme park news updater to tell you that Universal Studios Japan’s highly anticipated Super Nintendo World expansion has set an opening date window. After years of setbacks and delays, the Super Nintendo World op

At long last, we know when the new movie by David Fincher will arrive. Mank, Fincher’s movie about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, will roll out in select theaters in November (assuming theaters are still open by then) befor

No Time to Die has felt the brunt of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic not once, but twice, with the James Bond action flick in the full swing of its promo tour back when the pandemic hit the U.S. in March. MGM would end up delaying the Cary Joji

Boredom and stress are a dangerous combination during the holidays. Dealing with an overbearing family, a lingering assignment for college applications, and trying to entertain an aloof partner can make anyone search for an escape. Writer/director M

Remember The New Mutants? It’s the X-Men spin-off that originated at Fox, got its release date pushed around a bunch of times, became a Disney movie after the Fox-Disney merger, and then finally found its way to theaters in the midst of a dea

The Goonies is one of those beloved movies from the 1980s that remains powered by nostalgia. The treasure-hunting adventure from director Richard Donner, writer Chris Columbus, and executive producer Steven Spielberg has stood the test of time, and

Joe Manganiello is built like a comic book character. He’s played one before, popping up very briefly as Deathstroke in the post-credits scene of Justice League – a tease which, through no fault of his, will likely never pay off. Now heR

Raised by Wolves is a hardcore slice of science-fiction. From showrunner Aaron Guzikowski and director Ridley Scott, the series effortlessly blends thought-provoking drama and the fun of watching androids obliterating humans with the awesome pow

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is still on track for its planned deployment next year after it passed environmental testing. Those evaluations assess whether the telescope can survive its launch."The successful completion of our ob

Steam’s latest feature allows you to tweak your chat settings to obscure profanity, slurs and any other words you don’t want to see while using the platform. It builds on filtering options Valve developed for games like CS:GO and Dota 2.

Facebook is once again tightening its rules as it prepares for a potentially chaotic election. The company said that it would ban all political ads from its platform once polls close on election night in an effort to guard against misinforma

Google’s latest effort to protect the safety and privacy of its users involves more prominent security alerts. Moving forward, when the company detects a potentially serious issue with your account, it will notify you directly through the

Being an astronaut is great so long as you don’t mind sucking your dinner out of a pouch and munching on freeze dried ice cream given that fresh foodstuffs have traditionally lacked the necessary multi-year shelf stability. Thankfully, the

Valorant is already an esports success story, and Riot Games is set to expand the pro scene further. It’s preparing to run its first Valorant tournament. So far in the competitive shooter’s short lifespan, third-party companies and espor

The next time you see your favorite artist or podcaster share their latest recording on social media, you may see them use a new tool from Spotify to do so. The company is introducing new promo cards for both musicians and podcasters that gi

Back in July (roughly 6 eons ago in 2020 parlance), YouTube announced the formation of a $100 million fund tasked with “amplifying” Black voices dubbed, “#YouTubeBlack Voices Fund.” Today, the streaming video site revealed the first

If you’re interested in beginning or furthering a career in tech or IT, you’re far from alone. Thanks to the high pay, countless job opportunities, and growing importance on the world stage, the tech industry is where today’s most tale

The “Baby Boom” is finally here. After six years of development, Boom Supersonic is unveiling its XB-1 demonstrator. The craft is the company’s first supersonic plane, designed to prove the technology ahead of a full-size airliner, Ove

If you’ve ever wondered what your portrait would look like if Van Gogh or Frida Kahlo were to paint it, Google can help you find out. The company’s latest Arts & Culture app update is a set of augmented reality Art Filters you ca

The US Army is looking to build an autonomous charging system that can support hundreds of drones. It has funded a four-year research project with the ultimate aim of kitting out ground-based vehicles with charging stations that swarms of dr

If you’re looking to upgrade your rig or pick up a new desktop, it may be worth waiting until next year. In a Medium post, Intel has confirmed that its 11th generation “Rocket Lake” CPUs will be arriving in the first quarter of 2021. T

Mercedes has made it clear that its electric car plans will extend well beyond initial vehicles like the EQC. The German automaker has outlined its expanded EV plans for the near future, and is promising six new models arriving in relatively

Netflix has recently been the target of criticism over a controversial movie called Cuties. Now, the company is facing a criminal charge over the film. A grand jury in Tyler County, Texas has indicted Netflix. The company knowingly promoted

One of the most popular Nintendo Switch games to come out this year has returned to its all-time-low price. You can get a physical copy of Animal Crossing: New Horizons from Amazon and Walmart for $50, which is $10 off its normal price. The

CRISPR gene editing promises to revolutionize medical science, and two of its pioneers are getting a prestigious award for their efforts. Emmanuelle Charpentier (shown at left) and Jennifer Doudna (right) have received the 2020 Nobel Prize i