Guestio brings podcasters closer to their next big 'get'

Guestio closed on $1.5 million in seed funding for its platform that simplifies the booking process for podcasts. Founder and CEO Travis Chappell said users can go on the platform and book guests for their shows at the click of a button in all kinds of topics and with shows big or small.

Insurtech, on the heels of a fintech boom, heats up in Africa

Insurance in Kenya and Africa at large remains a marginal product, with levels of penetration across the continent half the world average as a percentage of GDP, and premiums per capita 11-fold lower than the world average, according to a recent report by McKinsey and Co. (and that’s includin

Graneet thinks construction companies should switch from Excel to its tool

Meet Graneet, a French startup that just raised a $2.8 million seed round (€2.4 million) led by Point Nine and Foundamental. Graneet is a vertical software-as-a-service startup focused on the construction industry and the myriad small and medium companies in this industry specifically. It wants t

Tiger Global in talks to lead over $100M investment in India’s Slice

A number of high-profile investors are chasing to invest in Slice, a fintech startup that is attempting to expand the market for credit cards in India. Tiger Global is in advanced stages of talks to lead a round of over $100 million in the Bangalore-based startup, sources familiar with the matter t

Upmesh wants to build a community-driven discovery app for Southeast Asian live commerce

The founders of Upmesh were building a game on top of Twitch's API when they realized something about another group of livestreamers. Even though selling through Facebook Live has been gaining popularity in Southeast Asia for years, many vendors are still going through their comments afterward

SoftBank-backed Korean edtech startup Riiid acquires Langoo, expands in Japan  

Riiid, a South Korea-headquartered AI-powered edtech company, acquired its Japanese distribution partner Langoo to expand its Japan footprint.  The acquisition comes after the company’s latest $175 million Series D round from SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 in May. Riiid has said it will contin

Elon Musk announces Tesla to move headquarters to Austin

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the company would be moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas, a city that has recently seen a flood of tech companies and remote workers. Musk announced the news at the 2021 Tesla, Inc. Annual Meeting of Stockholders, which took place at the Tesl

Daily Crunch: India’s Rebel Foods scores $1.4B valuation after raising $175M Series F

To get a roundup of technewss's biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for October 7, 2021! Sure, we're excited about software here at technewss, but we also keep at least one eye on the sky at

Google and YouTube say they won’t allow ads or monetized content pushing climate denial

Google announced Thursday that it would no longer allow ads or monetization for content that promotes climate change denialism. The policy change will apply to publishers, advertisers and YouTube creators, who will no longer be able to make money from content that “contradicts well-establishe

Pluton Biosciences looks to nature for cutting-edge biotech solutions, raising $6.6M seed

Many of the problems we face today in biology and agriculture have been faced before — but not by humans. Somewhere in nature there is a microscopic creature that accomplishes naturally and efficiently what chemists and bioengineers are struggling to do at all — and Pluton Biosciences claims to

Where does Facebook go from here?

Let's be really generous to Facebook and assume that 50% of what Frances Haugen just testified to before Congress was misconstrued in some way. Regardless, Facebook will argue their case (as they always do), deny everything (as they always do) and claim that no one really understands them (as t

YouTube announces new audio features aimed at making videos more accessible

YouTube announced several new audio features on Thursday, some of which have already rolled out while others will launch in the coming months. Starting today, creators have the ability to enable live auto-captions for any livestreams in English to make streams more accessible. This feature was prev

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney calls out Apple for promoting its services in the iPhone Settings screen

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose high-profile antitrust lawsuit against Apple is now under appeal, is today calling out the iPhone maker for giving itself access to an advertising slot its competitors don’t have: the iPhone’s Settings screen. Some iOS 15 users noticed Apple is now adve

Microsoft acquires Ally.io, OKR startup that raised $76 million

Microsoft announced today that it has acquired Ally.io, a software service that helps companies measure their progress against OKRs (objectives and key results), a common way that management measures both individual and company progress. The two firms did not share the purchase price. Microsoft pla