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VC’s largest funds make big bets on vertical B2B marketplaces

During the waning days of the first dot-com boom, some of the biggest names in venture capital invested in marketplaces and directories whose sole function was to consolidate information and foster transparency in industries that had remained opaque for decades. The thesis was that thousands of small businesses were making specialized products consumed by larger […]




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Apple said to sell Macs powered by in-house ARM-based chips as early as 2021

Apple’s long-rumored Mac ARM chip transition could happen as early as next year, according to a new report from Bloomberg. The report says that Apple is currently working on three Mac processors based on the design of the A14 system-on-a-chip that will power the next-generation iPhone. The first of the Mac versions will greatly exceed […]




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NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]




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Orca Security raises $20M Series A for its multi-cloud security platform

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]




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Sinch acquires SAP’s Digital Interconnect messaging business for $250M

M&A activity has generally slowed down in the weeks since the novel coronavirus took a grip on the world, but there have been some pockets of activity in the tech industry when the price is right or when the divestment/acquisition just makes sense. The world of messaging brings us the latest development in that theme: SAP, […]




2

VC’s largest funds make big bets on vertical B2B marketplaces

During the waning days of the first dot-com boom, some of the biggest names in venture capital invested in marketplaces and directories whose sole function was to consolidate information and foster transparency in industries that had remained opaque for decades. The thesis was that thousands of small businesses were making specialized products consumed by larger […]




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Oakland Startup, The History Project, Raises $2M To Build Digital Time Capsules of Family, Personal Histories

After years of working in mobile advertising, founder Niles Lichtenstein discovered a box of records from his late father. That compelled him to start putting together memories and online histories earlier, by documenting his mother’s life history and how he first met his wife. That developed into an interactive timeline where he collected songs from […]




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AngelList Raised $163M For Startups in 2015, Up 56% Year-Over-Year

AngelList, the online platform that had made itself indispensable to early-stage startups for fundraising and recruiting, said it closed out last year having raised $163 million online on behalf of 441 companies. That’s about 56 percent higher than the year before in 2014. About 40 percent of the deals were private rounds and institutional funds were in about 40 […]




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The outlook for Bay Area startup space in 2017

One of my favorite things to do is riff on Bay Area real estate and tech  --  of all kinds, residential, commercial, retail ... and Justin Bedecarre has been working with San Francisco founders for almost a decade in the commercial real estate market. He’s now a founder of HelloOffice, a technology-powered commercial real estate brokerage. We talk about what 2017 holds for the office market.




2

VC’s largest funds make big bets on vertical B2B marketplaces

During the waning days of the first dot-com boom, some of the biggest names in venture capital invested in marketplaces and directories whose sole function was to consolidate information and foster transparency in industries that had remained opaque for decades. The thesis was that thousands of small businesses were making specialized products consumed by larger […]




2

Owkin raises $25 million as it builds a secure network for healthcare analysis and research

Imagine a model of collaborative research and development among hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, universities and other research institutions where no one shared any actual data. That’s the dream of the new New York-based startup Owkin, which has raised $25 million in fresh financing from investors, including Bpifrance Large Venture, Cathay Innovation and MACSF (the French Pension […]




2

TikTok tops 2 billion downloads

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads […]




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Social network for women, Peanut, raises $12M Series A amid pandemic

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the […]




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Data dashboard startup Count raises $2.4M from LocalGlobe, with Global Founders Capital

Early-stage companies often have trouble dealing with the amount of data that can run through the organization, especially as it grows. Large sums are spent on data software, dislocated data, dealing with data pipelines. All of which involve data warehousing, cleaning tools and a visualization platform. Count is a startup that is an attempt to […]




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UK’s BBI puts $12M into Startup Funding Club for early-stage startups

SFC (formerly known as Startup Funding Club – a UK a seed stage investor – has received £10 million from British Business Investments (the commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank), to deploy a total of £40 million across more than 100 early-stage startups in the UK. SFC intends to deploy the commitment in over […]




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Templafy raises $25M Series C led by Insight partners to deal with enterprise documents

Back in 2018 Templafy — which had come up with a way for enterprises to more easily make templates out of standard documents (yes, it’s a thing) — raised an additional $15 million from existing investors as an extension of its earlier Series B round taking it to $40.2 million raised. The company integrates with enterprise infrastructure to […]




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B2B challenger bank Finom raises $7M Seed from Target Global and General Catalyst

Just as challenger banks have appeared in the B2C space, so to have B2B startup banks aimed at small businesses, among them startups like Qonto (Fr), Tide (UK), Penta (GER) and CountingUp (UK). Today another such firm, Finom, has closed a €6.5m ($7M) seed funding round led by Target Global, with participation from General Catalyst. […]




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How this startup built and exited to Twitter in 1,219 days

By the summer of 2016, Marie Outtier had spent eight years as a consultant advising media agencies and martech companies on marketing growth strategy. Pierre-Jean “PJ” Camillieri started as a music software engineer before joining one of Apple’s consumer electronics divisions. Inspired by Siri, he left to start Timista, a smart lifestyle assistant. When the […]




2

NEAR Protocol raises $21.6M from A16Z and launches its MainNet, beating Ethereum 2.0

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]




2

KKR posts $4.2bn net loss as investment portfolio hit

Sale of German broadband provider rescues buyout firm’s performance




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UK PLC cuts dividends by £24bn in face of crisis

Investors braced for years of lower payouts by some of the most reliable dividend-paying stocks




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VW hit by €2bn-a-week cash drain

World’s biggest carmakers reveal costs of pandemic shutting down factories around world




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Tesla Model 3 makes Consumer Reports ‘Top Picks’ list for 2020

Tesla’s Model 3 is among the top 10 choices for car buyers in 2020, according to Consumer Reports. The nonprofit organization released its “Top Picks” of the year on Thursday, and it included Tesla’s most affordable vehicle alongside cars from automakers including Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Kia and Lexus. The Model 3 was chosen as one […]




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Citroën introduces a two-seat EV that costs €19.99 a month

The Citroën Ami is a new take on urban mobility. It’s electric, cheap and doesn’t require a license. In short, it’s less of a car and more of an electric scooter with two seats, doors and a heater. Jokes aside, the Citroën Ami could be a glimpse at the future of mobility. The innovation isn’t […]




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Zume co-founder goes from pizza to climate-friendly food with $2.7 million in funding

Before leaving SoftBank-backed Zume Pizza in November 2018, co-founder Julia Collins knew what her next move would be: climate-friendly food. Today, Collins is announcing Planet FWD’s $2.7 million seed round led by BBG Ventures with participation from Cleo Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Precursor Ventures, Kapor Capital and others. What’s unique about this round, Collins told TechCrunch, […]




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Uber pushes adjusted quarterly profit target to 2021

Uber has pushed its target to achieve a measure of profitability to a quarter in 2021, reversing a decision made just three months ago to move up the goal to the end of this year. Uber will miss its target to reach an adjusted EBITDA quarterly profit in the fourth period of 2020, CFO Nelson […]




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Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

The original Go was a mostly well-received addition to the Surface line when it arrived in late 2018. It was a nice, pint-sized alternatively, positioned fairly well to serve as a secondary device for some. It did the convertible double duty and traveled well, but otherwise was lacking in guts and versatility. Launching at the […]




2

TikTok tops 2 billion downloads

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads […]




2

India’s Glance tops 100M daily active users in 21 months

Glance, which serves media content, news and casual games on the lock screen of Android -powered smartphones, has amassed 100 million daily active users, it said today. The subsidiary of ad-firm InMobi Group reached the milestone in 21 months in what appears to be the shortest duration for any popular internet service to gain their […]




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Moshi, a sleep and mindfulness app for kids, raises $12M Series B led by Accel

“If your kids aren’t sleeping, you aren’t sleeping,” says Moshi founder and CEO Ian Chambers. As mindfulness apps grow increasingly popular among adults, Moshi is looking to bring mindfulness and meditative techniques to children. The app today announced the close of a $12 million Series B financing led by Accel, with participation from Latitude Ventures […]




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Extra Crunch Live: Join Roelof Botha for a live Q&A on May 6 at 2pm ET/11am PT

23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner, leading the firm’s U.S. business, is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that […]




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Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes is coming to Disrupt SF 2020

Atlassian is about as ubiquitous to software engineers as Google is to the rest of us. The Sydney-based company, which launched in 2002, develops tools and services for enterprise collaboration and marched efficiently to a public offering in 2015. So it goes without saying that we’re thrilled to have Atlassian co-founder and co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes […]




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Material Bank, a logistics platform for sourcing architectural and design samples, raises $28M

Material Bank, a logistics platform for the architectural and design industry, has announced the close of a $28 million Series B financing today, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Bain’s Merritt Hummer led the round on behalf of the firm and will join the board of directors at Material Bank, along with Jeff Sine, cofounder and […]




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nextmv picks up $2.7M to optimize and test decision models for the logistics industry

Optimization. Efficiency. Data-driven decisions. If I had a nickel for every time I hear these words from founders I’d be long retired. And yet, the process involved in achieving resource optimization, efficiency and making truly data-driven decisions is laborious to say the least, and usually involves an immense amount of talent and resources. And then […]




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Summary of AEO 2019 findings




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EIA's view of the effects of the upcoming IMO 2020 regulations




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Greylock’s Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo to talk fundraising at Early Stage SF 2020

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]




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Fundbox raises $176 million Series C to build ‘Visa’ for B2B payments

Credit cards have become all but ubiquitous for consumer transactions, and it isn’t hard to see why. By intermediating payments, networks like Visa allow buyers and sellers to exchange money for goods and services without knowing the financial risk profile of the counter-party. Rather than applying for credit at every merchant you shop at, you […]




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6 strategic stages of seed fundraising in 2020

Seed fundraising is rarely easy, but it certainly used to be a lot less complicated than it is today. In a simpler world, a seed investor (or maybe two) would lead a round, which meant that they would write the terms of the deal in a term sheet and then pass that document to their […]




2

Oura raises $28 million for its health and sleep tracking ring

Smart rings are still a relatively young category in the wearable hardware world, but the Oura Ring seems to be a standout in terms of early success. The Oura Ring hardware is sleek and packed with sensors, allowing it to measure a user’s sleep patterns, take your body temperature and track activity, and now Oura […]




2

Extra Crunch Live: Join Roelof Botha for a live Q&A on May 6 at 2pm ET/11am PT

23andMe. MongoDB. Eventbrite. Evernote. Bird. Square . Tumblr. Unity. YouTube. Xoom. Roelof Botha has had a seat on each of these companies’ boards, but his list of investments is much, much longer. The Sequoia partner, leading the firm’s U.S. business, is legendary in Silicon Valley and the broader tech world, and we’re very excited that […]




2

EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2020 explores the changing U.S. energy mix through 2050 as consumption grows more slowly than production, particularly of oil, natural gas, and renewables, resulting in increasing exports and relatively stable CO2 emissions

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released updated projections of future U.S. energy production and use in its Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) today.




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Media Advisory: EIA presents alternative policy scenarios to the AEO2020

EIA will present results from four alternative policy scenarios to the Annual Energy Outlook 2020 (AEO2020) published in an Issue in Focus article. The article and the presentation will examine the potential effects of a range of alternative energy policies on the future U.S. electric power sector through 2050.




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U.S. crude oil production poised for record-setting 2020 and 2021

In December 2019, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and a group of other oil producers announced they were deepening the production cuts originally announced in December 2018. However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that global oil production will rise in 2020 despite the cuts, as expected growth in non-OPEC crude oil production will offset OPEC's reduced output. Non-OPEC production will be driven by continued growth in the United States. Outside of the United States, growing crude oil production in Brazil, Norway, and Canada will also contribute to supply growth over the next 24 months. In its January Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA reports that U.S. crude oil production in 2019 hit a record annual average of 12.2 million barrels per day. EIA forecasts U.S. production will reach 13.3 million barrels per day in 2020 and 13.7 million barrels per day in 2021. Most of the production growth occurs in the Permian region of Texas and New Mexico.




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U.S. monthly natural gas production expected to decline through 2020

The U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 95.3 billion cubic feet per day in 2020, up 3% from 2019. However, EIA expects monthly production to generally decline through 2020, falling from an estimated 96.3 billion cubic feet per day in January to 92.3 billion cubic feet per day in December. Most of the decline in production will occur in the Appalachian and Permian regions. In the Appalachian region, low natural gas prices are discouraging drilling for natural gas. In the Permian, low oil prices are expected to reduce the associated production of natural gas from wells drilled to produce oil. In its March Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA forecasts that U.S. dry natural gas production will average 92.6 billion cubic feet per day in 2021, down 3% from 2020. This would be the first decline in average annual natural gas production since 2016.




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U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions to decrease by 7.5% in 2020

The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting that U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) will decrease by 7.5% in 2020, driven by the economic slowdown and restrictions on business and travel activity related to COVID-19. This follows a 2.7% decrease in emissions in 2019. EIA forecasts that energy-related CO2 emissions will then increase by 3.6% in 2021. In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA estimates that in 2020, CO2 emissions from petroleum will decrease 7% and from coal will decrease 18.4%. EIA creates estimates of energy-related CO2 emissions based on energy consumption and on the amounts of CO2 that are released when different fuels are burned. Total CO2 emissions depend on total energy consumption and the fuel mix of the energy consumed. When it is burned, coal creates the most CO2 of the major fossil fuels. However, because more petroleum products (such as motor gasoline) are consumed than coal, petroleum is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the United States. Natural gas is the least carbon-intensive fossil fuel, but in recent years, because of its increasing consumption, it generates more U.S. CO2 emissions than coal. Non-fossil fuels such as nuclear power and renewable generation emit no direct CO2 at the end use. As these noncarbon generation sources increasingly enter the fuel mix, energy demand can be met without a proportional increase in energy-related CO2.




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U.S. total electricity generation expected to decline in 2020

In its April Short-Term Energy Outlook, the U.S. Energy Information Administration forecasts that U.S. electricity generation will decline by 3% in 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 related economic slowdown. Most new generating capacity built in 2020 will use renewable energy sources. EIA expects renewable generation to grow by 11% in 2020. Although EIA expects renewable energy to be the fastest growing source of U.S. electric generation in 2020, the economic slowdown will reduce the total amount of new generating capacity over the next few months. The electric power sector will add 19.4 gigawatts of new wind capacity and 12.6 gigawatts of utility-scale solar capacity in 2020. These annual wind and solar capacity additions are 5% and 10% less, respectively, than EIA forecast in its March outlook. This update combined with EIA's forecast lower overall electricity demand, leads to a decline in U.S. fossil fuel generation, especially at coal-fired power plants. EIA expects that coal generation will fall by 20% in 2020.




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New international standards for audit reports are game-changing - 20 Jan

After three years in development, the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) has released a set of standards that are game-changing for shareholders and the profession, says PwC.




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Australian CEOs getting on with business, despite threats to growth - 20 Jan

CEOs are more optimistic about growth than international counterparts, despite concerns about over-regulation and the Government's response to Australia's fiscal deficit, according to a PwC report launched today.




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Supporting Adelaide's Entrepreneurs - 23 Jan

For members of Australia's start up community, Adelaide is fast growing the reputation of a national entrepreneurial hub.