Polestar, Volvo Car Group’s standalone electric performance brand, has raised $550 million in its first external round led by Chongqing Chengxing Equity Investment Fund Partnership, Zibo Financial Holding and Zibo Hightech Industrial Investment. SK Inc., the South Korean global conglomerate, and a range of other investors also participated. While this is Read more…
Pearpop, the marketplace for social collaborations between the teeming hordes of musicians, craftspeople, chefs, clowns, diarists, dancers, artists, actors, acrobats, aspiring celebrities and actual celebrities, has raised $16 million in funding that includes what seems like half of Hollywood, along with Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six venture firm and Bessemer Read more…
We hope you can make our virtual meetup in Detroit today. The event is free, features a pitch-off with Detroit startups, a talk regarding StockX, and a panel with Detroit VCs on best practices when fundraising. This event is the second in TechCrunch’s new series, City Spotlights where TechCrunch focuses Read more…
Dan Gilbert loves his hometown of Detroit. He loves it so much that the billionaire founder of what would eventually become the mortgage lender Quicken Loans has poured at least $2.5 billion into rehabilitating buildings in the heart of the city. He has also invested in many companies that are Read more…
Saikat Dey, the founder of Detroit’s own Guardhat Technologies, got his start working in the steel industry. His last job, before founding Guardhat, was serving as the chief executive officer of Severstal International, the multinational steel conglomerate whose headquarters were in Dearborn, Mich. There, managing the global business of the Read more…
Canadian MP William Amos apologises, saying he was changing after going for a jog. Source: BBC
A number of startups have promised to bring a drive-and-fly vehicle to market over the past few years, but none have yet managed to follow through. NFT Inc. is betting it will succeed where its rivals have failed, with preorders opening Thursday for ASKA, company’s first electric flying car. The Read more…
As companies create machine learning models, the operations team needs to ensure the data used for the model is of sufficient quality, a process that can be time consuming. BigEye (formerly Toro), an early stage startup is helping by automating data quality. Today the company announced a $17 million Series Read more…
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company aiming to deploy robotaxis in San Francisco and Dubai, has added Walmart as an investor in an extended fundraising round that has grown to $2.75 billion. The company said it has a post-money valuation of more than $30 billion. Walmart and several unnamed institutional investors Read more…
Autodesk, the publicly-traded software company best known for its CAD and 3D modeling tools, today announced that it has acquired Upchain, a Toronto-based startup that offers a cloud-based product lifecycle management (PLM) service. The two companies, which didn’t disclose the acquisition price, expect the transaction to close by July 31, Read more…
The carbon accounting and management platform Persefoni now has $9.7 million more in funding to support its international expansion, product development, and recruitment efforts. The round, led by Rice Investment Group with participation from NGP ETP, the electricity, renewable and sustainability-focused investment arm of the oil and gas and power Read more…
Google says evidence of melting glaciers and deforestation will raise awareness of climate change. Source: BBC
Satellite images collected over 37 years are combined to show how Earth in a new way. Source: BBC
Dozens of entities are targeted over attacks including alleged interference in the 2020 elections. Source: BBC
A campaign group claims the “image-obsessed” platform is dangerous for children’s health and privacy. Source: BBC
The toymaker is launching new cars based on electric models and making some from recycled materials. Source: BBC
There’s no shortage of data-driven sales management tools in the market. Naturally, Atrium, a five-year-old, San Francisco-based company cofounded by serial entrepreneur Pete Kazanjy, says it does a far better job of empowering sales managers to improve their team’s performance. How? By giving them easy, digestible, real-time insights into who Read more…
Some users said they were offered “appetite suppressants” and “fasting” by the search feature. Source: BBC
Coinbase makes an impressive public debut, Dell spins out VMware and Ford announces a new hands-free driving system. This is your Daily Crunch for April 14, 2021. The big story: Coinbase goes public Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public today via direct listing at an opening price of $381 per share, Read more…
Pico, a New York startup that helps online creators and media companies make money and manage their customer data, announced today that it has launched an upgraded platform and raised $6.5 million in new funding. In a statement, the startup’s co-founder and CEO Nick Chen said Pico helps creators with Read more…