Atomico promotes SaaS and enterprise-focussed investor Ben Blume to partner

Atomico, the European venture capital fund that typically invests at Series A and Series B, has made a number of internal promotions, including making SaaS and enterprise-focussed investor Ben Blume a partner at the firm. The step up from principal to partner comes after 8 years spent at Atomico, w

A look at the soaring valuations of Rivian and Cruise with transportation VC Reilly Brennan

Perhaps more than most, Reilly Brennan loves cars and trucks. The native Michigander happily did grunt work for an automotive magazine as an undergrad at the University of Michigan before landing a gig as a trackside communications manager at General Motors, spending a few years as an editor and a

Berlin’s Remagine secures $24M to finance high-growth and impact-led startups

Remagine, a financing platform offering banking services to high-growth companies with an 'impact' twist, has raised €20 million ($24M) in a Seed funding round. The Berlin-based startup has been operating in stealth mode, but already has 20 clients under its former brand name ‘Get C

SoftBank-backed travel platform Klook raises $200M amid COVID-19

Klook, the Hong Kong-based travel activities platform backed by SoftBank Vision Fund, announced the closure of $200 million in funding for its Series E round, lifting the startup’s total capital raised to date to $720 million. Aspex Management, an investment fund focused on Asia Pacific led t

Forget winning, can Amazon survive in India?

During a visit to India in 2014, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos made a splashy announcement: His firm was investing $2 billion in the South Asian nation, just a year after beginning operations in the country. Amazon's announcement underscored how far India had come to open up to foreign firm

BlackBerry and Baidu deepen autonomous, connected car partnership

BlackBerry and Chinese search engine giant Baidu have agreed to expand a partnership that aims to give automakers the tools they need to launch next-generation connected and autonomous vehicles in China. Under the deal, Baidu’s high-definition maps will be integrated into BlackBerry’s Q

President Joe Biden commits to replacing entire federal fleet with electric vehicles

President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. government would replace the entire federal fleet of cars, trucks and SUVs with electric vehicles manufactured in the United States, a commitment tied to a broader campaign promise to create 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry and supply chains.

Facebook News launches in the UK, the first international market for its curated news portal

As the United Kingdom prepares to sharpen its focus on how it regulates big tech companies, Facebook is taking a big step up in the role it plays in presenting media to the U.K. public, and into how it works with the country’s media industry. Today it is launching Facebook News in the U.K., F

Debunk, don’t ‘prebunk,’ and other psychology lessons for social media moderation

If social networks and other platforms are to get a handle on disinformation, it’s not enough to know what it is — you have to know how people react to it. Researchers at MIT and Cornell have some surprising but subtle findings that may affect how Twitter and Facebook should go about treati

Daily Crunch: Twitter unveils Birdwatch

Twitter pilots a new tool to fight disinformation, Apple brings celebrity-guided walks to the Apple Watch and Clubhouse raises funding. This is your Daily Crunch for January 25, 2021. The big story: Twitter unveils Birdwatch Twitter launched a new product today that it says will off

Smart lock maker Latch teams with real estate firm to go public via SPAC

This week, Latch becomes the latest company to join the SPAC parade. Founded in 2014, the New York-based company came out of stealth two years later, launching a smart lock system. Though, like many companies primarily known for hardware solutions, Latch says it's more, offering a connected sec

Fintechs could see $100 billion of liquidity in 2021

Three years ago, we released the first edition of the Matrix Fintech Index. We believed then, as we do now, that fintech represents one of the most exciting major innovation cycles of this decade. In 2020, all the long-term trends forcing change in this sector continued and even accelerated. The br

Walking with Dolly

A walk is, more often than not, a solitary experience. As far as the age of COVID-19 is concerned, that's probably more bug than feature. It's a way to escape the confines of a shutdown for a few glorious moments, to get some air and, for better or worse, reflect on the day that's passe

Facebook will give academic researchers access to 2020 election ad targeting data

Starting next month, Facebook will open up academic access to a dataset of 1.3 million political and social issue ads, including those that ran between August 3 and November 3, 2020 — Election Day in the U.S. Facebook’s Ad Library, launched in 2019, offers a searchable database of all ads r