Tech News

Khatabook, a startup that is helping small businesses in India record financial transactions digitally and accept payments online with an app, has raised $60 million in a new financing round as it looks to gain more ground in the world’s second most populous nation. The new financing round, Series B, was led by Facebook co-founder

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Yesterday afternoon, Vroom, an online car buying service, filed to go public. Based on its SEC filing, Vroom is a highly-successful private company in fundraising terms that has attracted over $700 million during its life

Last week, U.S. unemployment claims hit 36 million over a two-month period. The results of pandemic-led closures have been devastating to innumerable industries, as the timeline to reopen remains uncertain in many areas. Indeed noted in a recent report that hirings have slowed significantly versus this time last year. No surprise, really, for those who

Julian Shapiro Contributor Julian Shapiro is the founder of BellCurve.com, a growth marketing team that trains startups in advanced growth, helps hire senior growth marketers and finds vetted growth agencies. He also writes at Julian.com. More posts by this contributor Use accelerated retargeting to increase conversions Break-even ads can generate free brand awareness We’ve aggregated

In mid-March, Apple closed all of its stores outside of China “until further notice.” It was a sweeping — but necessary — move for a world facing down a growing pandemic. In a statement issued today until the title, “To our Customers,” Retail SVP Deirdre O’Brien offered insight into the company’s plans to reopen locations.

COVID-19 knocked the wheels off the economy, but one nascent tech job not only kept rolling, it picked up speed. Teleoperations — or more specifically, teleops for autonomous delivery robots — is still a niche job within an industry that has yet to dive into the deep end of the commercialization pool. However, the job,

Everlywell was one of the first startups to announce that it was working on a self-administered, at-home COVID-19 diagnostic kit, but it initially sought out to ship kits before regulators made clear that this was not in line with its guidelines. Everlywell then became intent on working with the FDA to secure a proper Emergency

[embedded content] On Saturday, the United Launch Alliance (ULA) is targeting a liftoff time of 8:24 AM EDT (5:24 AM PDT) for one of its Atlas V rockets carrying the U.S. Space Force’s X-37B orbital test vehicle, which is a fully autonomous winged spaceplane that looks a little like a scaled down version of the

Kevin Rose has been in the spotlight since co-founding the early social news aggregation site Digg in late 2004. A genial whiz kid turned serial entrepreneur, he has since become as well-known for launching a whole lot of slickly designed products, some of them out of his startup incubator Milk (later acquired by Google), and

New numbers from NPD confirm what we’ve known for a while: the first quarter of 2020 was a very good one for gaming companies. The new report notes that sales hit a record $10.86 billion in the States between January and March of this year, marking a 9% increase over a year prior. $9.58 billion

“The first Asian Jew in fake space” — that’s how Josh Burstein introduced himself to me when we hopped on the phone earlier this week. The fake space in question is the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS), where NASA has been periodically isolating teams of astronauts to study how they respond to the

San Mateo-based startup Xona Space Systems has raised a $1 million “pre-seed” round led by 1517, and including participation from Seraphim Capital, Trucks Venture Capital and Stellar Solutions. The company is focused on developing a Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) satellite service that it believes can supersede Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), providing big benefits

Small and medium businesses and sole-traders account for the vast majority of businesses globally, 99.9% of all enterprises in the UK alone. And while the existence millions of separate companies, with their individual demands, speaks of a fragmented market, together they still represent a lot of opportunity. Today, a UK fintech startup looking to capitalise

Rocket Lab is already in the testing phase for a new engine it’s building to propel its forthcoming Photon Lunar spacecraft, according to CEO and founder Peter Beck . Beck shared an image of the engine, called hyperCurie, undergoing tests conducted by the company’s propellant team. HyperCurie, as its name implies, is an evolution of

When you think of voice assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri, the words “emotional” and “expressive” probably don’t come to mind. Instead, there’s that recognizably flat and polite voice, devoid of all affect — which is fine for an assistant, but isn’t going to work if you want to use synthetic voices in games,

Even amid a pandemic, there’s a race on to create a powerful, global private securities marketplace where private shares are traded as freely as public company shares on the Nasdaq . In one lane is Carta, an eight-year-old maker of cap table management software with big ambitions to create a kind of private company stock

Soft robots have been a booming category for research and manufacturing in recent years, due to a number of beneficial characteristics. The field has become increasingly important to things like robotic graspers, which rely on their compliance to pick up fragile objects like fruit. Speed, on the other hand, doesn’t tend to be a word

The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click The Station — to receive it every Saturday in your inbox. Hi and welcome back to The Station, I’m your host Kirsten Korosec, senior transportation reporter at TechCrunch. If you’re interested in all the future and present ways people

The head of what is arguably private equity’s most successful technology investment firm — Vista Equity Partners — made a rare appearance on Meet The Press to discuss the steps that the country needs to take to help minority-owned businesses recover from the economic collapse caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. Robert F. Smith is one

Editor’s note: Get this weekly recap of TechCrunch news that any startup can use every Saturday morning by email (7am PT). Subscribe here. A specific type of small startup has a window to raise crowdfunding in a somewhat less regulated way than normally required in the U.S., based on a temporary set of rule changes

Tesla filed a lawsuit Saturday against Alameda County in an effort to invalidate orders that have prevented the automaker from reopening its factory in Fremont, California. The lawsuit, which seeks injunctive and declaratory relief against Alameda County, was first reported by CNBC. The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for California’s Northern District. Earlier

Given the endless drumbeat of layoff announcements — with deep cuts by Airbnb and Uber garnering much of the industry’s attention this week — it’s reasonable to wonder: what happens to all of the talent that’s being laid off? How does the changing supply and demand balance impact pay? Is anyone safe in this market?

The original Go was a mostly well-received addition to the Surface line when it arrived in late 2018. It was a nice, pint-sized alternatively, positioned fairly well to serve as a secondary device for some. It did the convertible double duty and traveled well, but otherwise was lacking in guts and versatility. Launching at the

Xiaomi, Vivo, Samsung, Oppo and other smartphone companies have received approval from some state governments in India to partially resume manufacturing and assembling of devices amid the ongoing lockdown in the world’s second largest handset market that completely shut operations at these plants in late March. The companies said that they have secured permission to

When Uber rolled out its selfie system for drivers in 2016, the ride-hailing company was focused on preventing fraud. In the future, it could be used to ensure drivers are wearing a mask. Uber said earlier this week — CEO Dara Khosrowshahi reiterated today — that it is working through plans to require drivers and

Eight glasses of water a day. That’s the old recommendation you and I have heard growing up. And while we all know the importance of hydration to our health, some methods of hydration are more efficient than others. At least, that’s the premise that Hydrant was built on. The company, a wellness brand that launched

When I first met Bustle Digital Group’s Jason Wagenheim, it was right as New York City was beginning to go into lockdown. The BDG offices were empty thanks to the company’s newly instituted work-from-home policy, but it still seemed reasonable to meet in-person to learn more about BDG’s broader vision. At the time, Wagenheim —

A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups. The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment

Creatively was supposed to launch this summer, according to CEO Greg Gittrich. And then COVID-19 happened. “We made the decision to fast-track the launch when the pandemic hit, because we felt like launching as a beta would really help the creative community,” Gittrich told me. The startup was founded by Stacey Bendet and Joe Indriolo,

Zeitgold has raised a Series B round of $29.2 million (€27 million). Overall, the company has raised more than $54 million (€50 million). The company is building a software platform for small companies to automate bookkeeping as much as possible. Vintage Investment Partners is leading today’s round with existing investors Battery Ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures,