StartUp

We are still years away from a time when fully-autonomous cars will be able to drive us from A to B, and the complexity of getting to that point is likely going to need hundreds of billions of dollars of investment before it becomes a reality.

That hard truth is leading to some shifts in the self-driving startup landscape. England’s Five (formerly

Spindrift, maker of fizzy soda and sparkling water, has raised $29.8 million in a funding round, per an SEC filing. The Charlestown, Mass. company was founded by Bill Creelman and has raised $70 million in known venture capital funding to date, per Crunchbase data.

The company did not immediately respond to request for comment. 

Previous investors

Justin Kan’s hybrid legal software and law firm startup Atrium is shutting down today after failing to figure out how to deliver better efficiency than a traditional law firm, the CEO tells TechCrunch exclusively. The startup has now laid off all its employees, which totaled just over 100. It will return some of its $75.5 million in funding to

Another afternoon, another round of funding for a mobile banking app. This time, it’s Empower Finance, a San Francisco-based company that’s headed up by former Sequoia Capital partner Warren Hogarth and which just closed on $20 million in Series A funding from Icon Ventures and Defy Ventures.

David Velez, who is the founder and CEO of Nubank, the

Enterprise software startups are changing how they infiltrate companies, and investors are taking note.

Last week, I chatted with Lerer Hippeau‘s Ben Lerer after his firm had just led a seed round in Air, a digital asset management platform. I used the opportunity to pick his brain about what he’s searching for in early-stage investments and which t

Alternative and holistic healthcare seekers in the Los Angeles area have a new service they can turn to in WellSet, the listing platform that launched on Tuesday. 

Through the service, customers coming off the company’s existing waitlist can access its marketplace for finding acupuncturists, massage therapists, functional medicine practitioners, c

Social networks are in for a rude copyright awakening. A new European Union law called Article 17 essentially eradicates safe harbor and requires that they’ve made their “best effort” to get licenses from rights holders for all content on their platform. If a user uploads a video with a popular song in the background, tech platforms can’t just take

It’s a bit gauche to talk about positive economic impacts of what may become a global pandemic, but the novel coronavirus hasn’t been bad news for every company.

Video conference provider Zoom appears to be one beneficiary; after going public in 2019, its share price rose from around $68 at the start of the year to $115 today. Why? As governments

Nvidia today announced that it has acquired SwiftStack, a software-centric data storage and management platform that supports public cloud, on-premises and edge deployments.

The company’s recent launches focused on improving its support for AI, high-performance computing and accelerated computing workloads, which is surely what Nvidia is most i

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between.

Earlier this week, the popular free stock trading service Robinhood suffered downtime over a two-day period. The company, a well-funded unicorn taking on incumbents in its industry, failed to operate properly when the public

Kinnos, a New York-based startup, was founded six years ago, but what the five-person company produces is suddenly top of mind — and a new round of funding reflects as much.

To wit, Kinnos, which makes additives that cause disinfectants to turn blue long enough to ensure a surface has actually been covered, just closed on $6 million in funding, a

VC firm TLcom Capital closed its Tide Africa Fund at $71 million in February, and announced plans to invest in 12 startups over the next 18 months.

The group — with offices in London, Lagos and Nairobi — is looking for tech-enabled, revenue-driven ventures in Africa from seed-stage to Series B, according to TLcom Managing Partner Maurizio Caio.

He

The Chinese government has been removing criticism of its coronavirus response from apps like Weibo, the local equivalent of Twitter. But before it can, that content is being saved, decentralized and highlighted thanks to Arweave’s permaweb. Today it’s announcing another $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and

Netlify, the startup that wants to kill the web server and change the way developers build websites, announced a $53 million Series C today.

EQT Ventures Fund led the round with contributions from existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins and newcomer Preston-Werner Ventures. Under the terms of the deal Laura Yao, deal partner and

Founders, it’s time to launch your company on the most famous stage in tech media. Startup Battlefield applications are now open. TechCrunch is scouring the globe to find the most innovative and game-changing startups to compete for the famous Disrupt Cup and a $100,000 equity-free prize at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2020. Startups will gain

Boosted, the startup behind the Boosted Boards and, more recently, the Boosted Rev electric scooter, has laid off “a significant portion” of its team, the company announced today. The company is now actively seeking a buyer.

Boosted attributes the layoffs to the costs of developing, producing and maintaining electric vehicles and the “unplanned c

Mavenoid, a startup founded in Stockholm that helps companies scale tech-focused product support via an AI-powered chatbot, has raised $8 million in Series A funding. The round is led by Mosaic Ventures, alongside Creandum and Point Nine Capital.

The company says the new capital will be used to invest further in product development and to fuel

The Walt Disney Company is now accepting applications for its 2020 Disney Accelerator, the company said today.

The accelerator accepts 10 growth-stage startups for a three-month mentorship program that provides access to the creativity, imagination and expertise of Disney — including unique access to Disney’s leadership team.

“We created the Disney

Today after the bell, Zoom reported its Q4 earnings. The company’s recorded revenue of $188.3 million and its adjusted per-share profit of $0.15 were ahead of expectations, including $176.55 million in revenue and earnings per share of $0.07, according to Yahoo Finance averages.

Down several points during a broad market rally, Zoom has been a hot

French startup Colonies has raised a $34 million funding round (€30 million). In addition to that, LBO France is committing to spend $168 million (€150 million) in real estate projects over the next couple of years. Those new buildings will eventually be managed by Colonies.

Idinvest Partners, Global Founders Capital and La Financière Saint James

Today we bring you another edition of “Dear Sophie,” an advice column that answers immigration-related questions about working at technology companies.

“Your questions are vital to the spread of knowledge that allows people all over the world to rise above borders and pursue their dreams,” says Sophie Alcorn, a Silicon Valley immigration attorney.

It’s the best and worst of times for travel startups.

Massive growth over the past few decades has made tourism one of the big global industries, covering everything from recreation to business conferences to shopping sprees.

But doubts about the future of the industry are growing — and not just because of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19. The r

It wasn’t the leap year, a coding blip, or a hack that caused Robinhood’s massive outages yesterday and today that left customers unable to trade stocks. Instead, the co-CEOs

write that “the cause of the outage was stress on our infrastructure — which struggled with unprecedented load. That in turn led to a “thundering herd” effect — triggering a f

Tens of thousands of Indians move to the United States to pursue higher education each year. But like many others who have arrived from a foreign land, they can’t secure education loans or personal loans from the banks at interest rates on par with those levied on local students.

The reason why these students — or anyone else moving to a different c