India asks court to block WhatsApp’s policy update, says new change violates laws

As WhatsApp spends months to address users' concerns and confusion about its planned policy update, there is evidently one entity it hasn't had much luck making inroads with: The government of India. The Indian government alleged on Friday that WhatsApp's planned privacy update, which g

Survey: Share feedback on Extra Crunch

Over the last few months, we’ve added a number of new Extra Crunch features at the request of the community. This includes Group Membership, expanding support to new countries like Israel and Norway, adding “sign in with Google” to improve checkout speed, and increasing login time

Brazilian startup Tractian gets the Y Combinator seal of approval for its equipment monitoring tech

Igor Marinelli and Gabriel Lameirinhas were raised around manufacturing plants. Marinelli’s father worked for International Paper in a plant outside of São Paulo, while Lameirinhas’ father worked in a cement plant.  Throughout their lives, the two friends had heard their parents comp

Nordetect’s system to monitor soil and water for indoor agriculture raises seed funding

As indoor farming expands, a number of new companies are cropping up to provide better data and monitoring tools for the businesses aimed at improving efficiencies and quality of indoor crops.  One of these companies, the Copenhagen-based Nordetect, is entering the U.S. market with around $1.5 mil

Blackstone just closed its inaugural growth equity fund, and it’s a doozy

The private equity giant Blackstone is today announcing the final close of its first growth equity fund — Blackstone Growth — with $4.5 billion in capital commitments from a wide range of family offices, entrepreneurs, endowments, strategic institutional investors, pension funds and oth

Nigeria’s Termii raises $1.4M seed led by Future Africa and Kepple Africa Ventures

Ideally, it is expected of every business to reach its customers effectively. However, that’s not the case, as limiting factors that hinder proper digital communication come into play at different growth stages. Termii, a Nigerian communications platform-as-a-service startup that solves this

Backed by YC, Vendease is building Amazon Prime for restaurants in Africa

For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better dea

Betting on China’s driverless future, Toyota, Bosch, Daimler jump on board Momenta’s $500M round

Across the street from Suzhou North, a high-speed railway station in a historic city near Shanghai, a futuristic M-shaped building easily catches the eye of anyone passing by. It houses the headquarters of the five-year-old Chinese autonomous driving startup, Momenta. Like other major Chinese citie

Gillmor Gang: Clubhouse Style

Let’s stipulate the storm of user media (social audio, newsletters, live streaming) is evidence of something real and lasting. When this citizen media migrates to small business and the enterprise, we see that as confirmation, validation. Most of these efforts are in the investment phase, wh

Fortify raises a $20M Series B for its composite manufacturing 3D printer

There's been quite a bit of movement in the additive manufacturing space in recent months. If I had to pinpoint a reason, I would say that — much like robotics (another space I follow fairly closely) — the category has gotten a boost in interest from the pandemic. Medical applicatio

Ford to build some F-150 trucks without certain parts due to global chip shortage

Ford said Thursday that some Ford F-150 pickup trucks and Edge crossovers will be built without certain electronic modules due to a twofold punch of a global semiconductor shortage and a lack of parts caused by a winter storm. Ford said it will build and hold the vehicles for a number of weeks, the

Fort raises $13M for its robotics safety software

Fort Robotics today announced a $13 million raise. Led by Prime Movers Lab, the round also features Prologis Ventures, Quiet Capital, Lemnos Labs, Creative Ventures, Ahoy Capital, Compound, FundersClub and Mark Cuban. The Philadelphia-based company was founded in 2018 by Samuel Reeves, who previous

MrBeast’s management company, Night Media, has a new venture fund that’s backed by creators

MrBeast’s management company is getting into the venture business. Night Media, the six-year-old, Dallas-based multimedia talent management company, is closing a debut fund with $20 million in capital commitments from the powerful family-friendly online influencers it manages, along with othe

Daily Crunch: YouTube’s TikTok rival launches in the US

YouTube Shorts comes to the U.S., Amazon starts testing electric delivery vans in San Francisco and new data suggests the impact of Google Play’s recent changes. This is your Daily Crunch for March 18, 2021. The big story: YouTube’s TikTok rival launches in the US The Yo