Startups

A new mobile data network — accompanied by the quinfecta of a website, Medium post, white paper, dedicated subreddit and Discord channel —  quietly launched late Tuesday evening in San Francisco, promising a new way to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds without relying on leg

Founded by alums of Hinge and Bumble, Sunroom is a creator platform that throws out the stuff that makes mainstream social media apps such a hostile place for women. And, ideally, it wants to help them get paid in the process. The app was co-founded by Lucy Mort, former design director at Hinge, an

Meditation app Calm is acquiring Ripple Health Group, a San Francisco-based healthcare technology company. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Calm says the acquisition will accelerate its mental health care ambitions. Following the acquisition, Ripple Health Group CEO David Ko will take on t

Waldo has raised $15 million for its “no code” automated testing tool. Mobile development teams using Waldo can set up tests without writing a line of scripting code. It then seamlessly integrates in your continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Insight Partners is leading today's Seri

RudderStack, a platform that focuses on helping businesses build their customer data platforms to improve their analytics and marketing efforts, today announced that it has raised a $56 million Series B round led by Insight Partners, with previous investors Kleiner Perkins and S28 Capital also part

The internet is undergoing a drastic facelift thanks to surging interest in web3 and the metaverse. But the journey to the internet of the future is so complex that companies are struggling to find people who can do the job. The augmented reality team at Microsoft saw 100 departures in the past yea

In early morning trading today, shares of PayPal are off around 25% following the company’s earnings report yesterday evening. Investors did not like what the company had on offer. technewss focuses on private companies and private markets. But at times, public companies can help us better u

Livestream shopping platform Whatnot has come a long way from being run out of a garage in Phoenix to now a 120-person company, valued at $1.5 billion, that’s expected to grow to over 300 people by year-end as its business explodes. To aid on that front, Whatnot is making two key hires, one o

Melonn, a Colombian startup that provides fulfillment and software services to small and medium-sized e-commerce companies in Latin America, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by QED Investors. The round comes less than a year after Melonn raised a pre-seed round from NFX. Interestingly

The uptake of electric vehicles in Kenya currently stands at 5% — a majority of which are private vehicles. But the situation is about to change following an announcement that the new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) network in the country's capital, Nairobi, will only be operated by green (electr

African countries are yet to catch up with social security and safety programs commonly used in the West, where the government provides health insurance and unemployment benefits to citizens. The general perception of insurance on the continent has been bland for years, and its penetration rate, ex

French health wearables firm Withings today announced that it has acquired 8fit, makers of the workout/meal planning app of the same name. The news comes as hardware makers ranging from Apple and Samsung to Peloton and Mirror are taking an increasingly content-forward approach to the fitness space.

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PST, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for Tuesday, February 1, 2022! I celebrated the first day of the month by having my internet cut out right as I started to prepa

Another vertical farming operation revealed its plans to hit Nasdaq by way of SPAC. This week, Florida-based Kalera announced plans to merge with Agrico Acquisition Corp. in a deal that values the agtech firm at $375 million. The move comes as plenty of excitement swirls around the category, though