Microsoft and Amazon are at it again as the fight for the Defense Department JEDI contract continues. In a recent series of increasingly acerbic pronouncements, the two companies continue their ongoing spat over the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract spoils. As you may recall (or not), last fall in a surprise move, the DoD selected […]

In response to calls for stronger action on hosts that aren’t casual users, Airbnb said it would start sharing some data with governments and getting hosts to agree to a policy of listing only their permanent homes. Here’s what Brian Chesky said in a post today: Today, we’re taking the next step to turn these principles into […]

Even though Rohit Prakash was a dual MD and PhD researching optogenetics at Stanford University, his entrepreneurial itch kept returning him to his family’s small business roots. He and his co-founder Nipul Patel began researching the travails of small business owners, interviewing countless entrepreneurs, trying to figure out what their risks were or what caused […]

“Capitalists both in the Old World and the States, even now, have but little faith in California. They regard this country and everything relating to it as one grand bubble, liable to burst at any moment…. This is how it should be. The wealth of California is thereby passing into the hands of young, active, […]

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 […]

Quitting Europe would see Washington deliver to Beijing its most important strategic ambition

Past prime ministers put head before heart on Europe. Not any more

German and French leaders’ hesitation could be fatal

The coronavirus pandemic is presenting hospitals with a terrible choice about whose life to save

Covid-19 and his brush with mortality present the UK prime minister with a unique chance

Ministers failed to grasp the threat as Boris Johnson tried to swerve a tough response

Cuckoo Internet is a new U.K. startup that aims to disrupt the U.K. broadband market. It has now raised £470,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from work.fund, a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling founder). Other investors include Lorin van Nuland (early investor in Betterment), Edward Campbell-Harris (Bulb early […]

Stilt, a Y Combinator alum that provides financial services for immigrants without Social Security numbers or credit reports, announced today that it has closed a $7.5 million seed round. It also launched FDIC-insured pre-approved global bank accounts today. The startup has raised equity from investors including Liron Petrushka; Hillsven Capital; Streamlined Ventures; Gokul Rajaram; Bragiel […]

Four years ago, Adnan Asar, the founder of the new addiction prevention service Lucid Lane, was enjoying a successful career working as the founding chief technology officer at Livongo Health. It was the serial senior tech executive’s most recent job after a long stint at Shutterfly and he was shepherding the company through the development […]

Group says virus will hit restructuring, while private equity seeks to offload risk

Thierry Breton says coronavirus crisis shows vital supplies are vulnerable to disruption

Demand in most profitable market nears 2019 level but brand expects slower revival in Europe

The combination of rents and retail is toxic in a coronavirus-wracked world

We knew it was going to be bad — but not necessarily “lowest level since 2013” bad. As Apple was busy reporting its earnings, Canalys just dropped some of its own figures — and they’re not pretty. After two quarters of much-needed growing, the global smartphone market just took a big hit. And you no […]

Got something in your medical history that first responders should know about if you call 911? Things like known drug allergies, or the medications you’re on? The iPhone and Apple Watch will soon be able to share this information with first responders automatically (if you opt to let it do so). When a user with […]

BenevolentAI, a startup which has raised $292 million to apply AI to create drugs faster, today says it has uncovered an already approved drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19, after it applied its AI platform and team to the problem. The revelation, which has now appeared in peer-reviewed scientific journals and has entered clinical […]

In the time many of us live in now, we all know our online media consumption is — to state the obvious — going through the roof. Subsequently, the amount of data pertaining to online marketing is, equally, reaching stratospheric heights and in recent years tech companies like Datorama and Funnel.io, SuperMetrics and Adverity have appeared to […]

At the end of March, a coalition of grassroots UK tech initiatives came together to coordinate the key groups of tech industry people supporting the UK’s response to the coronavirus. The Code4Covid.org initiative came out of a milieu of other projects such as Covidmutualaid.org and Covid Tech Support, but it was the CoronavirusTechHandbook (CTH), an initiative […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

There are some startups that behave like sprinters, and others that run a marathon. I came across Instabug when I was in Cairo in 2013. Born during the chaotic era of the Arab Spring, this plucky startup managed to make it to TechCrunch Disrupt, then Y Combinator in 2016, then a $1.7 million in seed […]

VC fund Runa Capital was launched with $135 million in 2010, and is perhaps best known for its investment into NGINX, which powers many web sites today. In more recent years it has participated or led investments into startups such as Zipdrug ($10.8 million); Rollbar this year ($11 million); and Monedo (for €20 million). HQ’d […]

Cuckoo Internet is a new U.K. startup that aims to disrupt the U.K. broadband market. It has now raised £470,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from work.fund, a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling founder). Other investors include Lorin van Nuland (early investor in Betterment), Edward Campbell-Harris (Bulb early […]

Late last night the Financial Times reported that HuffPost, arguably one of the crown jewels of Verizon Media Group’s remaining network of media properties (which includes TechCrunch), is up for sale. Verizon has been shedding media properties in a retreat from the strategy that it had begun to execute with the acquisition of AOL for […]

The Midwest may not be known as the fashion capital of the world (or even the U.S.), but its place in the consumer retail firmament is secure through L Brands and its Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works subsidiaries. Now, venture investors are investing $17.3 million to establish another tent-pole clothing brand in the […]

The $55tn industry has emerged scared and shrunken but largely intact

Slick stock-trading apps skip over the risks for inexperienced investors

Two-thirds of companies with lowly ratings from Moody’s were bought by PE groups

Few investors went into this crisis with a portfolio they were entirely happy with

Row escalates between Elizabeth Warren, Blackstone and KKR after coronavirus crisis prompts cuts

Electriphi, a provider of charging management and fleet monitoring software for electric vehicles, has joined the scrum of startups looking to provide services to the growing number of electric vehicle fleets in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund […]

Vericool, a Livermore, Calif.-based startup that’s replacing plastic coolers and packaging with plant-based products, has raised $19.1 million in a new round of financing. The company’s stated goal is to replace traditional packaging materials like polystyrene with plant-based insulating packaging materials. Its technology uses 100% recycled paper fibers and other plant-based materials, according to the […]

NASA and Planet have deemed their pilot partnership a success, and the result is that NASA will extend its contract with Planet to provide the company’s satellite imagery of Earth to all research programs funded by the agency. NASA had signed an initial contract last April with Planet to provide Planet imagery to a team […]

Microsoft and Amazon are at it again as the fight for the Defense Department JEDI contract continues. In a recent series of increasingly acerbic pronouncements, the two companies continue their ongoing spat over the $10 billion, decade-long JEDI contract spoils. As you may recall (or not), last fall in a surprise move, the DoD selected […]

After months of testing, Facebook’s redesign is finally official. Announced last year at F8, the more minimalist approach to its desktop design has been rolled out in waves. In March, the company added an option to try out the new version. Users could switch back and leave feedback for why they had done so. This […]

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 […]

Four years ago, Adnan Asar, the founder of the new addiction prevention service Lucid Lane, was enjoying a successful career working as the founding chief technology officer at Livongo Health. It was the serial senior tech executive’s most recent job after a long stint at Shutterfly and he was shepherding the company through the development […]

Germany has U-turned on building a centralized COVID-19 contacts tracing app — and will instead adopt a decentralized architecture, Reuters reported Sunday, citing a joint statement by chancellery minister Helge Braun and health minister Jens Spahn. In Europe in recent weeks, a battle has raged between different groups backing centralized vs decentralized infrastructure for apps […]

The makers of the world’s most ethical smartphone, the Fairphone 3, have teamed up for a version of the device with even less big tech on board. The Netherlands-based device maker has partnered with France’s /e/OS to offer a “de-Googled” version of its latest handset, running an Android AOSP fork out of the box that’s […]

Apple and Google have released the first version of their exposure notification API, which they previously called the contact tracing API. This is a developer-focused release, and is a seed of the API in development, with the primary intent of collecting feedback from developers who will be using the API to create new contact tracing […]

This week we continue to look at how the coronavirus outbreak is impacting the world of apps, plus the use of live-streaming apps as fundraising tools and more.

Apple and Google are providing additional resources for developers working with the first version of their Exposure Notification API, the development tools the companies have created and are working on in order to provide a cross-platform way for public health agencies to notify individuals of a potential exposure to a person with a confirmed case […]

The UK has this week started testing a coronavirus contacts-tracing app which NHSX, a digital arm of the country’s National Health Service, has been planning and developing since early March. The test is taking place in the Isle of Wight, a 380km2 island off the south coast of England, with a population of around 140,000. […]

It’s a brutal time for marijuana startups. I’m hearing some are raising at 1/5th of their 2019 valuation amidst rampant competition, tall taxes, and slow legalization. The struggles for marijuana’s best-known startup, delivery service Eaze, continue as today it’s losing one of its top partners. $75 million-funded weed brand empire Caliva has dropped Eaze in […]