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Johnson’s covert Brexit plan is self-isolation

The real story is that all traces of the EU are to be expunged from the public realm




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National action cannot fix a global pandemic

US, China and Europe must work together to defeat coronavirus




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Xi and Putin are the big losers from this pandemic

The relationship of unequals has seen both Beijing and Moscow wrongfooted by the crisis




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Cuckoo Internet closes seed funding to disrupt UK broadband market

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 […]




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Stilt, which provides financial services for immigrants, raises $7.5 million seed round

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 […]




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Locatee raises $4M Series A for its workplace analytics platform

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]




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Longtime VC Todd Chaffee of IVP says late-stage scene is now ‘M&A world’

Todd Chaffee has long been one of the most senior members of the late-stage venture firm Institutional Venture Partners. Chaffee joined IVP in 2000 after logging six years at Visa, and went on to lead rounds in numerous prominent later-stage companies, many (but not all) of which have gone public, including Coinbase, Compass, Klarna, Kayak, […]




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Target to acquire same-day delivery tech from Deliv

Target, which already owns on-demand delivery service Shipt, is in the process of acquiring technology assets from same-day delivery service Deliv. The retailer is characterizing the deal as more of an R&D type of acquisition and not one that will have an immediate consumer-facing impact. Deal terms were not disclosed, but we understand the deal […]




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Workstream, a platform for deskless work, raises $10 million to serve local businesses

Deskless workers make up 80% of the global workforce, but to Desmond Lim, that job title is his entire world. Lim grew up in Singapore and saw his father wake up every morning, six days a week, at 5 a.m. to start his job as a driver. Lim and his mom, who worked as a […]




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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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Health APIs usher in the patient revolution we have been waiting for

Rish Joshi Contributor Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT. More posts by this contributor Health APIs usher in the […]




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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 […]




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Acast partners with JioSaavn, one of India’s largest streaming audio services

Acast, a podcast monetization and distribution platform, announced a new partnership with JioSaavn, one of the largest streaming audio services in India. The agreement mean JioSaavn will distribute content from Acast and have access to its technology for podcasters. JioSaavn, which claims 104 million monthly active users, is the second-largest streaming audio service in India […]




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How will coronavirus change the world? — Parlia launches to help you find out

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]





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VCs see opportunities for gaming infrastructure startups and incumbents

As the infrastructure for developing games becomes more advanced, studios have turned to buying best-in-class technology from others instead of building everything from scratch (often with inferior quality). This shift underpinned Unity’s rise as the most popular game engine. The current focus on games as ever-evolving social hubs that can remain popular for a decade […]




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CRV’s Saar Gur wants to invest in a new wave of games built for VR, Twitch and Zoom

Saar Gur is adept at identifying the next big consumer trends earlier than most: The San Francisco-based general partner at CRV has led investments into leading consumer internet companies like Niantic, DoorDash, Bird, Dropbox, Patreon, Kapwing and ClassPass. His own experience stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred his interest in three new investment […]




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Lucid Lane has developed a service to get patients off of pain meds and avoid addiction

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 […]




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As funding slows in Boston, its early-stage market could shine

Chris Lynch, a founder and former general partner at Boston-based seed-stage fund Accomplice, remembers “VC Mountain in Waltham.” Back then, entrepreneurs on funding quests would visit a building overlooking the Waltham Reservoir near Boston where they pitched to a few investors: Matrix Partners, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners. “And if they didn’t invest in […]




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Italy’s corporate reopening stirs fears over more deaths

Conflicting pressures between health and preventing economic ruin divide country as it emerges from lockdown




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Judgment day for VW as pensioner’s Dieselgate fight goes to top court

German group’s battle to minimise financial damage from scandal hinges on test case




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Companies ramp up orders for kit to protect workers

Manufacturers say they will struggle to provide equipment sought by business




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BOC Aviation taps parent for assault on leasing market

Fifth-biggest lessor approaches Bank of China to snare greater share of sector




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Thyssenkrupp warns on proceeds from lifts unit sale

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




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The real work of helping companies bounce back from coronavirus hasn’t even begun

Government loans a start but not the end; Pendragon takes a pop at Lookers; insurers and honey badgers




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Qantas shelves ‘Project Sunrise’ plan for world’s longest flights

Australian carrier reviews operations and fleet due to coronavirus travel collapse




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UK car sales fall 97% in worst month since 1946

Showroom and factory closures blamed for dive to 4,321 registrations in April




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VW warns of rising costs as car market faces deep recession

Carmaker says profits are under pressure as suppliers pass on increased expenses




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Defence industry in retreat as coronavirus attacks

The era of extravagant military purchases is surely over after the threat posed by the pandemic




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FCA posts €1.7bn loss as plant closures hit car market

Maker of Fiat and Chrysler burns through billions of euros in cash in first quarter




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VW hails speed of car sales recovery in China

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




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US truck sales a bright spot as GM ekes out a profit

Detroit automaker says demand stayed high in parts of country less hard-hit by virus




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Orion runs off, leaving Hammerson in the lurch and needing funds

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




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We should aim for the moon, not claim it

National grabs of lunar and celestial resources need to be resisted




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Facebook to launch ‘virtual dating’ over Messenger for Facebook Dating users

Facebook will soon allow users to go on “virtual dates,” the company announced today. The social network is planning to introduce a new video calling feature that will allow users of its Facebook Dating service to connect and video call over Messenger, as an alternative to going on a real-world date. This sort of feature […]




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Shine adds invoice insurance to its freelancer bank account

French startup Shine is adding a new option today. If you think there’s a chance that a client is not going to pay your next invoice, you can insure that invoice to avoid any bad surprise. Shine is building a challenger bank for freelancers and small companies. It lets you send and receive money in […]




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Shopify launches Shop, a new mobile app

While Shopify is best-known for powering the online stores of more than 1 million businesses, the company is launching a consumer shopping app of its own today, simply called Shop. The app is actually an update and rebrand of Arrive, an app for tracking packages from Shopify merchants and other retailers, which the company says […]




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WhatsApp eyes lending feature in India as Amazon rolls out Pay Later to tens of thousands of customers

WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the Facebook -owned messaging platform has listed credit as one of the areas it will pursue in the country. […]




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Biloba lets you chat with a doctor if you have questions about your children

Meet Biloba, a French startup that wants to leverage tech to make it easier to keep your children healthy. The company recently launched a new mobile app that lets you chat with a doctor whenever you want between 8 AM and 8 PM. This way, if you have questions about your kids, you can get […]




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An already struggling smartphone market takes a big hit from COVID-19

Quarter after quarter, familiar stories have appeared. The smartphone market, once seemingly bulletproof, has suffered. The list of factors is long, and I’ve written about them ad nauseam here, but the CliffsNotes version is: costs are too high, innovation is too incremental and most people already own a device that will be plenty good for […]




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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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Health APIs usher in the patient revolution we have been waiting for

Rish Joshi Contributor Rish is an entrepreneur and investor. Previously, he was a VC at Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), co-founded a fintech startup building an analytics platform for SEC filings and worked on deep-learning research as a graduate student in computer science at MIT. More posts by this contributor Enterprise companies find MLOps critical […]




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Facebook to supply free Portals to some care home residents under NHS scheme

The U.K. government is pulling in tech firms to connect family and friends with isolated residents and patients in care via video call devices and services during the COVID-19 crisis. First to join is Facebook, which is supplying up to 2,050 of its Portal video-calling devices for free to hospitals, care homes and other settings, […]




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Potential new treatment for COVID-19 uncovered by BenevolentAI enters trials

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 […]




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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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Marketing data platform Adverity raises $30M Series C led by Sapphire Ventures

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 […]




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Relive the heady days of crypto with the ‘Crypto Rush’ documentary

When Liliana Pertenava decided to go all-in on crypto by investing $2,000 in a mining rig in 2017, she went so far down the crypto rabbit-hole she decided to make a documentary about it. If you’re locked-down and looking for something to watch, you could do worse than sit down and watch “Crypto Rush,” which […]




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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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The ‘Wikipedia of COVID-19’ has launched a crowdfunding drive to keep going

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 […]




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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 […]