8 investors tell us the story behind the Romanian startup boom
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With record funding levels and three unicorns to show, local investors are buoyant about Romania’s prospects heading into 2021. We caught up with eight of them recently, and heard how the country’s technical talent pool, broadband access and low c
Watch SpaceX’s first dedicated rideshare rocket launch live, carrying a record-breaking payload of satellites
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SpaceX is set to launch the very first of its dedicated rideshare missions – an offering it introduced in 2019 that allows small satellite operators to book a portion of a payload on a Falcon 9 launch. SpaceX’s rocket has a relatively high pay
Welcome back to The TechCrunch Exchange, a weekly startups-and-markets newsletter. It’s broadly based on the daily column that appears on Extra Crunch, but free, and made for your weekend reading. Click here if you want it in your inbox every Saturday mo
Instacart to eliminate about 2,000 jobs and GitHub head of HR resigns
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Hey y’all. You’ve just landed on Human Capital, the weekly newsletter that details the latest in labor, and diversity and inclusion in tech. The week kicked off with GitHub making a public apology to the person the company terminated for cautioning hi
Would you bet millions of dollars on a corporate travel comeback? Doesn’t matter. Andreessen Horowitz, Addition and Elad Gil are anyways. This week, the trio led a nine-figure financing round in TripActions, a software company that helps other companies boo
Howdy friends, this is the web version of my Week in Review newsletter, it’s here to entice you to sign up and get it in your inbox every week. Last week, I showcased how Twitter was looking at the future of the web with a decentralized approach so tha
This Week in Apps: TikTok viral hit breaks Spotify records, inauguration boosts news app installs, judge rules against Parler
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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 is as hot as ever, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global
Original Content podcast: ‘Bridgerton’ is an addictive reimagining of Jane Austen-style romance
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“Bridgerton,” the Shondaland drama that launched last month on Netflix, offers a few key updates to the standard formula of Regency-era romance. For one thing, there’s a racially diverse cast, with Black actors taking on the role of early
Watch SpaceX launch its first dedicated rideshare mission live, carrying a record-breaking number of satellites
newsdepo.com
SpaceX is set to launch the very first of its dedicated rideshare missions – an offering it introduced in 2019 that allows small satellite operators to book a portion of a payload on a Falcon 9 launch. SpaceX’s rocket has a relatively high payload ca
How fintech and serial founders drove African pre-seed investing to new heights in 2020
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When Stripe-subsidiary Paystack raised its seed round of $1.3 million in 2016, it was one of the largest disclosed rounds at that stage in Nigeria. At the time, seven-figure seed investments in African startups were a rarity. But over the years, those same
While many deemed 2020 the year of SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company, 2021 may well make last year look quaint in comparison. It’s probably not premature to be asking: is there any company too big to be SPAC’d? Just today, we sa
While many deemed 2020 the year of SPAC, short for special purpose acquisition company, 2021 may well make last year look quaint in comparison. It’s probably not premature to be asking: is anything too big to be SPAC’d? Just today, we saw the trad
Alphabet pulls the plug on its internet balloon company, Apple is reportedly developing a new MacBook Air and Google threatens to pull out of Australia. This is your Daily Crunch for January 22, 2021. The big story: Alphabet shuts down Loon Alphabet announce
End-to-end operators are the next generation of consumer business
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These businesses are fundamentally reimagining their product experience by owning the entire value chain from end to end, thereby creating a step-functionally better experience for consumers.
Backed by Vint Cerf, Emortal wants to protect your digital legacy from ‘bit-rot’
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We are all pumping out data into the cloud. Some of it we’d like to keep forever. Emortal is a startup that wants to help you organize, protect, preserve and pass on your ‘digital legacy’ and protect it from becoming unreadable, otherwise known as
Extra Crunch roundup: Digital health VC survey, edtech M&A, deep tech marketing, more
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Speaking as an unvaccinated urban dweller: I'd rather speak to a nurse or doctor via my laptop than try to remain physically distanced on a bus or hailed ride traveling to/from their office.
Boston Globe will consider people’s requests to have articles about them anonymized
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The Boston Globe is starting a new program by which people who feel an article at the newspaper is harmful to their reputation can ask that it be updated or anonymized. It’s reminiscent of the E.U.’s “right to be forgotten,” though pot
Drupal’s journey from dorm-room project to billion-dollar exit
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Moving from dorm room to billion-dollar exit is the dream of every startup founder. Dries Buytaert got there by being bold, working hard and thinking big.
In what feels like an attempt at kicking some bad news under the rug on a Friday, Microsoft announced this morning that the price of Xbox Live Gold is going up.
EVgo to go public via SPAC in bid to power EV charging expansion
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EVgo, the wholly owned subsidiary of LS Power that owns and operates public fast chargers for electric vehicles, has reached a deal to become a publicly traded company through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Climate Change Crisis Real Impac
Google today announced a subtle but welcome refresh of its mobile search experience. The idea here is to provide easier to read search results and a more modern look with a simpler, edge-to-edge design. From what we’ve seen so far, this is not a radical
Pinterest launches an AR-powered Try-on experience for eyeshadow
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Pinterest is expanding its virtual makeup try-on capabilities with today’s launch of a new augmented reality feature that allows online shoppers to virtually try on new eyeshadow. Initially, Pinterest is allowing try-on with 4,000 shades from brands lik
Sounding Board raises cash as startups wake up to executive coaching
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In an unprecedented work environment defined by distributed teams and virtual-only communication, two co-founders think their 2018 bet reigns truer than ever: mentors need mentorship, too. Christine Tao and Lori Mazan, the brains behind Sounding Board, want t
MotoRefi raises $10M to keep pedal on auto refinancing growth
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A month before the COVID-19 pandemic had spread to North America, auto fintech startup MotoRefi — newly armed with nearly $9 million in venture capital — was preparing to bring its refinancing platform to the masses. CEO Kevin Bennett, and the investors b
Google threatens to close its search engine in Australia as it lobbies against digital news code
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Google has threatened to close its search engine in Australia — as it dials up its lobbying against draft legislation that is intended to force it to pay news publishers for reuse of their content. Facebook would also be subject to the law. And has prev
Blobr, the ‘no-code’ company turning APIs into products, raises €1.2M pre-seed
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Blobr, a Paris-based startup operating in the no-code space with tech to make it easier for companies to expose and monetise their existing APIs, has raised €1.2 million in pre-seed funding. The round is led by pan-European pre-seed and seed investor Seedca
Dashlane taps JD Sherman, ex-Hubspot COO, as new CEO, as co-founder Emmanuel Schalit steps aside
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Our reliance on internet-based services is at an all-time high these days, and that’s brought a new focus on how well we are protected when we go online. Today comes some news from one of the bigger companies working in the area of password security, wh
Cloudflare introduces free digital waiting rooms for any organizations distributing COVID-19 vaccines
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Web infrastructure company Cloudflare is releasing a new tool today that aims to provide a way for health agencies and organizations globally tasked with rolling out COVID-19 vaccines to maintain a fair, equitable and transparent digital queue – completely
‘Slow dating’ app Once is acquired by Dating Group for $18M as it seeks to expand its portfolio
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Five-year-old ‘slow dating’ app Once has been acquired by the Dating Group, one of the largest companies in the dating world, for $18 million in cash and stock. Dating Group has 73 million registered users across a range of portfolio fatting apps includi
Apple reportedly planning thinner and lighter MacBook Air with MagSafe charging
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Apple is said to be working on a new version of the MacBook Air with a brand new physical case design that’s both thinner and lighter than its current offering, which was updated with Apple’s M1 chip late last year, per a new Bloomberg report. Th
UK resumes privacy oversight of adtech, warns platform audits are coming
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The UK’s data watchdog has restarted an investigation of adtech practices that, since 2018, have been subject to scores of complaints across Europe under the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The high velocity trading of Internet u
Privacy complaint targets European parliament’s COVID-19 test-booking site
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The European Parliament is being investigated by the EU’s lead data regulator over a complaint that a website it set up for MEPs to book coronavirus tests may have violated data protection laws. The complaint, which has been filed by six MEPs and is bei
Didi to subsidize trips for vaccinations with $10M global fund
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As countries around the world prepare to vaccinate people against the coronavirus, tech companies are rushing to demonstrate their willingness to help fight the deadly virus. China’s ride-hailing leader Didi Chuxing is pledging a $10 million fund to sup
China’s draft payments rules put Ant, Tencent on notice
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A string of recent events in China’s payments industry suggests the duopoly comprising Ant Group and Tencent may be getting a shakeup. Following the abrupt call-off of Ant’s public sale and a government directive to reform the firm’s busines
JustKitchen is using cloud kitchens to create the next generation of restaurant franchising
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JustKitchen operates cloud kitchens, but the company goes beyond providing cooking facilities for delivery meals. Instead, it sees food as a content play, with recipes and branding instead of music or shows as the content, and wants to create the next iterati
Elon Musk is donating $100M to find the best carbon capture technology
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Elon Musk said Thursday via a tweet that he will donate $100 million toward a prize for the best carbon capture technology. Musk, who recently surpassed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest person, didn’t provide any more detail
Chinese esports player VSPN closes $60M Series B+ round to boost its international strategy
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Esports “total solutions provider” VSPN (Versus Programming Network) has closed a $60 million Series B+ funding round, joined by Prospect Avenue Capital (PAC), Guotai Junan International and Nan Fung Group. VSPN facilitates esports competitions in China,