Day: February 25, 2020

Following web forums, web platforms and mobile apps, we are entering a new stage of social media — the multiverse era — where the virtual worlds of games expand to become mainstream hubs for social interaction and entertainment. In a seven-part Extra Crunch series, we will explore why that is the case and which challenges […]

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Over the past three months, a number of financial events have occurred in the fintech and finservices world that have caught our eye. Between two rounds at $500 million and two exits in the billions […]

Today Amazon is opening its first grocery store to pilot the use of the retailer’s cashierless “Just Walk Out” technology that has previously powered 25 Amazon Go convenience stores in a handful of major U.S. metros. Based in Amazon’s hometown of Seattle, the new Amazon Go Grocery store allows customers to shop for everyday grocery […]

CoolBitX, a blockchain security startup based in Taiwan, announced today it has raised a $16.75 million Series B led by returning investor SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial group. Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bitsonic, Monex Group, another Japanese financial group and Taiwan’s National Development Fund also participated. Founded in 2014, CoolBitX makes two products. One is CoolWallet […]

Much like private businesses, the United States government is in the process of moving workloads to the cloud, and facing a similar set of challenges. Today, CircleCI, the continuous delivery developer service, announced a partnership with AWS GovCloud to help federal government entities using AWS’s government platform to modernize their applications development workflows. “What this […]

The famous phrase “software eats the world” was originally coined to describe how technology gradually replaces the old industrial norms of production. But few realized that when Uber started to “eat” the taxi industry it would also be among the first harbingers of a new wave of what it meant to be “employed.” As similar […]

The tech industry is built on the venture capital model where hockey stick growth and selling to a larger company or going public are markers of success. But the traditional VC model does not leave much room for startups that might not be the next unicorn but still generate revenue — just not the type […]

Another on-demand transport app is making a move into payments to expand the existing relationship with its customers (and subsequent margins that it makes from serving them). Bird today announced the launch of Bird Pay, a service that will let people use its app to purchase items from local participating businesses alongside renting scooters. The service […]

TripActions, a Palo Alto-based, corporate travel-focused unicorn, has secured a new, half-billion-dollar credit facility to help support the launch of its second product line. Called TripActions Liquid, the service helps companies that do not offer corporate cards to workers a way to avoid forcing those employees to use their personal cards to float costs for […]

Mozilla will bring its new DNS-over-HTTPS security feature to all Firefox users in the U.S. by default in the coming weeks, the browser maker has confirmed. It follows a year-long effort to test the new security feature, which aims to make browsing the web more secure and private. Whenever you visit a website — even […]