European regulators have given the green light to Apple’s December 2017 acquisition of music and image recognition discovery firm Shazam. Apple Music is the second largest music streaming service in Europe, after Spotify . While Shazam offers what has been described as “a leading music recognition app” in the region (and globally). TechCrunch broke the
Month: September 2018
Dreamforce, Salesforce’s massive customer conference is coming later this month to San Francisco, but the news is starting already well ahead of the event. Today, the company announced updates to its core Sales Cloud with an emphasis toward automation and integration. For starters, the company wants to simplify inside phone sales, giving the team not
So you thought group-buying was dead?! Not in Southeast Asia where Fave, a company that aims to connect local merchants with customers using discount sales, has closed a $20 million Series B round as it explores expansion opportunities. The startup began as fitness subscription service KFit, but it pivoted group-buying and coupons after it acquired
Berlin-based location marketing startup Uberall has raised a further $25 million in funding — adding to a $25 million Series B raised earlier this year — and acquired competitor Navads. Terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, with Uberall claiming that the deal makes it the second biggest location marketing platform behind U.S. rival Yext. Navads
Perhaps the one downside to building a venture capital firm filled with operational experience is that you can’t always keep an operator out of the action for too long. Or so it seems, if the latest VC move at London-based Atomico is anything to go by. Atomico Partner Yann de Vries — who led investments
The large amounts of cash that is being invested in challenger banks in the U.K., whether that be startups with a fully fledged banking license or those using the less burdensome e-money regulations, shows no signs of abating. The latest banking fintech to raise a substantial new round is Monese. The London and Tallinn-based company,
South Korean home cleaning service Miso wants to leave its competition in the dust after raising an $8 million Series A. Led by AddVenture, with participation from returning investors Y Combinator, FundersClub and Strong Ventures, and new backer Social Capital, the funding will be used on marketing and entering new Asian countries. The Y Combinator
Forethought, a 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield participant, has a modern vision for enterprise search that uses AI to surface the content that matters most in the context of work. Its first use case involves customer service, but it has a broader ambition to work across the enterprise. The startup takes a bit of an unusual
Never has it been so clear that the attorneys charged with enforcing the laws of the country have a complete disregard for the very laws they’re meant to enforce. As executives of Twitter and Facebook took to the floor of the Senate to testify about their companies’ response to international meddling into U.S. elections and
McCarthyFinch sounds a bit like a law firm — and with good reason. The startup has developed an AI as a Service platform aimed at the legal profession. This week, it’s competing in the 2018 TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in San Francisco. The company began life as a project at a leading New Zealand law firm,
Meet PoLTE, a Dallas-based startup that wants to make location-tracking more efficient. Thanks to PoLTE’s software solution, logistics and shipment companies can much more easily track packages and goods. The startup is participating in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF. If you want to use a connected device to track a package, you currently need
Meet Stealthy a new messaging app that leverages Blockstack’s decentralized application platform to build a messaging app. The company is participating in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield at Disrupt SF and launching its app on iOS and Android today. On the surface, Stealthy works like many messaging apps out there. But it gets interesting once you start
Ashton Kutcher’s VC firm, Sound Ventures, believes there’s opportunity for investment outside of Silicon Valley. Specifically, the firm pegs Denver, Austin and Miami as the most promising U.S. markets for tech startups and investing, outside of the large markets like Silicon Valley and New York, of course. According to Sound Ventures partner Effie Epstein, speaking
Elastic, the provider of subscription-based data search software used by Dell, Netflix, The New York Times and others, has unveiled its IPO filing after confidentially submitting paperwork to the SEC in June. The company will be the latest in a line of enterprise SaaS businesses to hit the public markets in 2018. Headquartered in Mountain
Rugged smartphones, the kind of devices that business can give to their employees who work in harsh environments, are a bit of a specialty market. Few consumers, after all, choose their smartphones based on how well they survive six-foot drops. But there is definitely a market there, and IDC currently expects that the market for
After two years operating in stealth, Mint .com founder Aaron Patzer’s new startup Vital Software is open for business. Patzer made the announcement Wednesday while on the Next Stage at Disrupt SF. Patzer’s company, which he co-founded with Dr. Justin Schrager of Emory University, is an enterprise software business that aims to make emergency rooms
How fasting helped Mike Maser beat cancer and get back to startups Josh Constine @ / 8 hours Cancer almost killed the acquisition of video workout startup FitStar and its co-founder Mike Maser, who’s just become the CEO of the No. 1 fasting app, Zero. It was a dream that turned into a nightmare. Fitbit
Unity CEO John Riccitiello came to TechCrunch Disrupt SF to give everyone an update on the world’s most popular game engine. You might not be aware that most of the games you’re playing, especially mobile games, are built using Unity. For those not familiar with game engines, Riccitiello started by describing game engines very clearly.
Roblox, which allows kids to create 3D worlds and games, has raised an additional $150 million in funding. The company didn’t disclose its valuation in the announcement, but a source with knowledge of the deal told us that it valued Roblox at more than $2.5 billion — the price that Microsoft paid to acquire Minecraft
The Justice Department has confirmed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expressed a “growing concern” that social media giants may be “hurting competition” and “intentionally stifling” free speech and expression. The comments come as Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg and Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey gave testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday,
AnchorFree, a maker of a popular virtual private networking app, has raised $275 million in a new round of funding, the company announced Wednesday. The Redwood City, Calif.-based app maker’s flagship app Hotspot Shield ranks as one of the most popular VPN apps on the market. The app, based on a freemium model, allows users
Snapchat isn’t revealing sales numbers of version 2 of its Spectacles camera sunglasses, but at least they’re not getting left in a drawer as much as the V1s. The company tells me V2 owners are capturing 40 percent more Snaps than people with V1s. And today, Snapchat is launching two new black-rimmed hipster styles of
The European Union is set to move ahead with a plan to enforce pan-European quotas on streaming services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix to support production of locally produced film and video content. Roberto Viola, the European Commission’s directorate general of communication, networks, content and technology told Variety that the new rules are on
Indie app maker MacPaw updated its Mac cleaning software with a new major version called CleanMyMac X (which is different from MacKeeper). It’s hard to believe, but CleanMyMac currently has 5 million users. CleanMyMac X helps you remove unneeded files and get an overview of what is slowing down your computer. Most people don’t need
Wunder Mobility, the Hamburg-based startup that provides a range of mobility services, from carpooling to electric scooter rentals, has raised $30 million in Series B funding. The round was led by KCK Group, with participation from previous backer Blumberg Capital and other non-disclosed investors. The German company says the investment will be used to expand
In an important move for inclusion in the gaming community, the Xbox Adaptive Controller, created for gamers with mobility issues, is now on sale. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) also announced today that it has acquired the Xbox Adaptive Controller for display in its Rapid Response gallery dedicated to current events and pop culture.
Apttus, a quote-to-cash vendor built on top of the Salesforce platform that looked to be heading toward an IPO in recent years has taken a different tack, instead being acquired by private equity firm Thoma Bravo today. The company did not reveal the purchase price, but said it could be ready to share more details
It was May 2016 when Thomas Plantenga got the call. He was living in New York and working on projects with Fabrice Grinda — the co-founder of classified juggernaut OLX, and the founder of FJ Labs. Plantenga had worked with Grinda on expanding OLX and was ready for the next challenge — which came in
The Pansar Augmented is a Swedish smart watch that looks like a standard three-handed wristwatch. However, with the tap of a button, you can view multiple data points including weather, notifications, and even sales data from your CRM. Pansar is a Swedish watch company that uses Swiss movements and hand assembled components to add a
CRISPR, the gene-editing system that could one day change the course of humanity still has a long way to go before we seriously alter anything but it’s not too far-fetched to say it could happen. What’s real and what’s not and just how close are we to radically changing our food supply, medicine and life