AC Ventures announces the first close of its $80 million fund for Indonesian startups

As one of the world's most populated countries, with a fast-growing internet economy, Indonesia offers plenty of opportunity for startups. AC Ventures wants to tap into that with its $80 million ACV Capital III L.P. fund. The firm announced the first close of the fund today, with $56 million al

India’s Razorpay becomes unicorn after new $100 million funding round

Bangalore-headquartered Razorpay, one of a handful of Indian fintech startups that has demonstrated accelerated growth in recent years, has joined the coveted unicorn club after raising $100 million in a new financing round, the payments processing startup said on Monday. The new financing round, a

Twilio is buying customer data startup Segment for between $3B and $4B

Sources have told technewss that Twilio intends to acquire customer data startup Segment for between $3 and $4 billion. Forbes broke the story on Friday night, reporting a price tag of $3.2 billion. We have heard from a couple of industry sources that the deal is in the works and could be announce

Hands on with Telepath, the social network taking aim at abuse, fake news and, to some extent, ‘free speech’

There’s no doubt that modern social networks have let us down. Filled with hate speech and abuse, moderation and anti-abuse tools were an afterthought they’re now trying to cram in. Meanwhile, personalization engines deliver us only what will keep us engaged, even if it’s not the

Public investors stay in love with tech, as Root and Affirm file to IPO

Editor's note: Get this free weekly recap of technewss news that any startup can use by email every Saturday morning (7 a.m. PT). Subscribe here. Why are there so many tech IPOs right now? Startups are finding that they can get higher valuations from public markets than private ones these da

This Week in Apps: Antitrust investigation dubs App Store a monopoly, Microsoft adopts ‘app fairness’ rules, pandemic boosts Q3 app revenues

"">Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the technewss series that recaps the latest OS news, the applications they support and the money that flows through it all. "">The app industry is as hot as ever, with a record 204 billion downloads and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019. People are

A prison video visitation service exposed private calls between inmates and their attorneys

Fearing the spread of coronavirus, jails and prisons remain on lockdown. Visitors are unable to see their loved ones serving time, forcing friends and families to use prohibitively expensive video visitation services that often don’t work. But now the security and privacy of these systems are

Brian Armstrong’s new problem: 60-plus free agents

A lot has been made of the open memo that Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong published nearly two weekends ago, essentially barring political activism at work because he sees it as a distraction. He also made it clear that employees who disagreed with the decision — and he foresaw that some would n

Judge denies Epic’s request to force Apple to bring Fortnite back to App Store

The California judge in the legal skirmish between Epic Games and Apple has denied Epic’s request that Apple be forced to reinstate Fortnite in the App Store, but did affirm that Apple cannot take action against the Epic Games developer accounts used to bring Unreal Engine developers access t

Human Capital: Uber engineer explains why he spoke out against Prop 22

Welcome back to Human Capital, where we discuss the latest in labor, diversity and inclusion in tech. This week’s eyebrow-raising moment came Wednesday when the U.S. Department of Labor essentially accused Microsoft of reverse racism (not a real thing) for committing to hire more Black people

How Roblox completely transformed its tech stack

Picture yourself in the role of CIO at Roblox in 2017. At that point, the gaming platform and publishing system that launched in 2005 was growing fast, but its underlying technology was aging, consisting of a single data center in Chicago and a bunch of third-party partners, including AWS, all runn

Why Amazon and Panasonic are betting on this battery recycling startup

JB Straubel, the Tesla co-founder and former CTO, is often cast as the humble and pioneering engineer, the quiet one who toiled away in the background for 15 years on some of the company’s most important technologies. That characterization — which intensified as the hype and media attention

Facebook and Instagram will pin vote-by-mail explainers to top of feeds

Starting this weekend, everyone of voting age in the U.S. will begin seeing informational videos at the top of Instagram and Facebook, offering tips and state-specific guidance on how to vote through the mail. The videos will be offered in both English and Spanish. The vote-by-mail videos will run

Chinese browser Tuber offers a glimpse beyond the Great Firewall — with caveats

China now has a tool that lets users access YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google and other internet services that have otherwise long been banned in the country — selectively. Called Tuber, the mobile browser debuted on China’s third-party Android stores this week, with an iOS