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Further proving that venture investors have more dry powder than ever before, this week started with a flurry of venture capital fund close announcements across sectors and stages. It tells that LPs are staying active amid this dissonant moment in tech, and despite some struggles ahead for emerging

Russia fined Google 21.1 billion rubles ($374 million) on Monday for repeatedly failing to “remove prohibited information” — content related to the country’s invasion and subsequent war in Ukraine. The country’s telecommunication watchdog Roskomnadzor cited a court order a

Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t be introducing a previously announced new policy that would effectively ban developers from selling open source software on the Windows app store. Section 10.8.7 of its Microsoft Store Policies document, which was updated in mid-June and had been due to c

Slack, the chat platform that serves as an online watercooler for oh-so-many teams, is bumping up its monthly price and changing the way its free plan works. The company announced the changes via blog post this afternoon. Here’s what’s changing: If you pay for the “Pro” pla

Digital mortgage lender Better.com, which began making plans to go public via a SPAC in May 2021, has confirmed that it intends to move forward with its planned public debut, despite lackluster performance of blank-check combinations in recent quarters. Better.com has itself seen its fair share of

Denmark is effectively banning Google’s services in schools, after officials in the municipality of Helsingør were last year ordered to carry out a risk assessment around the processing of personal data by Google. In a verdict published last week, Denmark’s data protection agency, Data

Household cleaning chemicals in the form of a tablet that can be dissolved in water appear to have given rise to a number of startups. As well as Munich-based startup everdrop, there is also Atmo Home out of Berlin, as well as Grove Collaborative, Blueland, Smol, Spruce, Ocean Saver … the list go

Acast, the Swedish tech company that helps businesses and individuals publish and monetize podcasts, has announced plans to acquire podcast database Podchaser. The deal initially values Podchaser at $27.2 million, though this could rise by a further $6.8 million if Podchaser meets certain “pe

Welcome to Startups Weekly, a fresh human-first take on this week's startup news and trends. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. At this point, it's clear that no one agrees on anything. Half my sources say that early-stage venture completely is uncorrelated to the public stock marke

Big Tech companies are facing increased scrutiny in South Africa for dominance abuse and anti-competitive behavior, just months after the country's competition regulator, the Competition Commission (CompCom), started an inquiry into the conduct of online intermediation (B2C) platforms. In its i

If you’re feeling confused about the state of startup investing, join the club. Public company shares have been relentlessly hammered in recent months amid rising fears of a recession, yet startup funding seems as brisk as ever and, more surprising, to us, VCs are still routinely announcing e

Robocalls and other automated scams are an everyday occurrence for millions of Americans. But while stricter rules are coming and the FCC is about to hit one robocaller’s operation with a $116 million fine, the agency wants to step up its enforcement with the ability to take the scammers to c

Italy’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into Google over concerns it has abused a dominant position by hindering data portability rights which are afforded to individuals under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The procedure follows a compl

Google announced today that Chrome OS Flex, its operating system for old PCs and Macs that can be loaded on a thumb drive, is now out of beta with support for more than 400 devices. The company first announced Chrome OS Flex’s preview back in February, with support for more than 250 devices.