The $9 trillion financial management firm Blackrock is collaborating with the $313 billion Singapore investment firm Temasek to back companies developing technologies and services to help create a zero emission economy by 2050. The two mega-investment firms will invest an initial $600 million to launch Decarbonization Partners, and look to Read more…
How much is Epic Games worth? Well, we’ve long ago surpasses the realm of dollar figures regular humans can contextualize. With its latest round, the gamer hits an equity valuation of $28.7 billion. Yes, “b” for “billion.” That’s a lot of micro-transactions. Time to start talking metaverse! Best known for Read more…
Justin Mast has a simple reason for starting his plant retail startup Bloomscape in Detroit. “This is home,” he told me. “This is where I have a really strong network and I knew I’d be able to find a lot of support.” Mast didn’t grow up in Detroit proper, but Read more…
House listing on Rightmove reveals “treasure trove of private data”. Source: BBC
HomeX, a home services platform for homeowners and service providers, has raised $90 million in a funding round led by New Mountain Capital. New Mountain Capital, a New York-based investment firm with more than $30 billion in assets under management, was the only institutional investor to put money in this Read more…
Artificial intelligence technology holds a huge amount of promise for enterprises — as a tool to process and understand their data more efficiently; as a way to leapfrog into new kinds of services and products; and as a critical stepping stone into whatever the future might hold for their businesses. Read more…
Josh Mendelsohn Contributor Share on Twitter Josh Mendelsohn is the founder and managing partner of Hangar, a public sector investment firm focused on building and scaling innovative startups. Building, scaling and launching new tools and products is the lifeblood of the technology sector. When we consider these concepts today, many Read more…
ConsenSys, a key player in crypto and a major proponent of the Ethereum blockchain, has raised a $65 million funding round from J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, and UBS AG, as well as major blockchain companies Protocol Labs, the Maker Foundation, Fenbushi, The LAO and Alameda Research. Additional investors include CMT Digital and the Read more…
Spotify this morning officially announced the limited U.S. release of its first hardware device, the oddly named Car Thing, aimed at Spotify Premium subscribers. The new device — which Spotify is surprisingly offering for free plus shipping — has evolved substantially from the version that first began testing in 2019. Read more…
Are you 100% sure that your children are brushing their teeth properly? A New York-based startup called Willo has been working for several years on a device that should transform the tooth-brushing experience for children. Willo isn’t a new toothbrush — electric or not. It’s an oral care device that Read more…
Meroxa, a startup that makes it easier for businesses to build the data pipelines to power both their analytics and operational workflows, today announced that it has raised a $15 million Series A funding round led by Drive Capital. Existing investors Root, Amplify and Hustle Fund also participated in this Read more…
Tom Tugendhat, Foreign Affairs Select Committee chair, says he was advised Gmail was ‘more secure’. Source: BBC
The YouTuber has not yet commented on allegations from Paradise, a TikTok star. Source: BBC
NI Screen and Hypixel Studios launch incentive to encourage people to work in local gaming industry. Source: BBC
The overhaul will force the Alibaba-backed group to become a financial holding firm. Source: BBC
Son Nguyen, founder and chief executive officer of Dat Bike Dat Bike, a Vietnamese startup with ambitions to become the top electric motorbike company in Southeast Asia, has raised $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding led by Jungle Ventures. Made in Vietnam with mostly domestic parts, Dat Bike’s selling point Read more…
Decentralized finance startup MOUND, known for its yield farming aggregator Pancake Bunny, has raised $1.6 million in seed funding led by Binance Labs. Other participants included IDEO CoLab, SparkLabs Korea and Handshake co-founder Andrew Lee. Built on Binance Smart Chain, a blockchain for developing high-performance DeFi apps, MOUND says Pancake Read more…
Drones capable of 90mph are being raced in a league which supporters say is close to the big time. Source: BBC
Equipment at Battery Resourcers’ new cathode sintering and analysis facility in Novi, Michigan. (Photo: Battery Resourcers) As a greater share of the transportation market becomes electrified, companies have started to grapple with how to dispose of the thousands of tons of used electric vehicle batteries that are expected to come Read more…
Microsoft makes a big healthcare tech acquisition, Twitter is building a presence in Africa and Apple may be cooking up some new smart home products. This is your Daily Crunch for April 12, 2021. The big story: Microsoft acquires Nuance for $19.7B Microsoft announced this morning that it’s acquiring speech-to-text Read more…