It was one of the fastest growing startups in modern history and one of the most anticipated IPOs of 2019. But now, following the company’s disclosure of a potential fraud of hundreds of millions of dollars, Luckin’s journey is starting to meet its end. The company, in a statement today filed with the SEC, said […]
As other retailers begin the slow, cautious move to reopen, Microsoft has announced that it will be permanently shutting down the vast majority of its retail stores. There are some exceptions, including flagships in urban hubs including London, New York City, Sydney and its own campus in Redmond, Washington, but the remainder of the locations […]
Amazon has announced that it will acquire Zoox, a self-driving startup founded in 2014, which has raised nearly $1 billion in funding and which aims to develop autonomous driving technology, including vehicles, for the purposes of providing a full-stack solution for ride-hailing. Zoox will continue to exist as a standalone business, according to Amazon’s announcement, […]
The direct-to-consumer health insurer Oscar has raised another $225 million in its latest, late-stage round of funding as its vision of tech-enabled healthcare services to drive down consumer costs becomes more and more of a reality. In an effort to prevent a patient’s potential exposure to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, most healthcare practices are seeing […]
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a bit feisty, but that’s only because Danny Crichton and Natasha Mascarenhas and I were all in pretty good spirits. It would have been hard to not be, given how much good stuff there was to […]
Salt Lake City’s Spiff has announced a $10 million round of funding to expand the sales and marketing efforts for its service that automates commission payments for sales people. Some of the biggest names in startup tech are using the service to pay their sales force, including Brex, Workfront, Algolia and the publicly traded startup […]
For Amazon, it’s never too late to try something in India. The e-commerce giant is exploring ways to further spread its tentacles in the largely offline, technology-free neighborhood stores in one of its key overseas markets. The American firm’s latest attempt is called “Smart Stores.” For this India-specific program, Amazon is providing physical stores with […]
Another brick in the wall for vacation rental platforms: Amsterdam is booting Airbnb and other such platforms from three districts in the city’s old center from July 1, further tightening its rules for such services. In other districts in the famous city of canals, vacation rentals will only be permitted with a permit from next Wednesday, […]
Indian online learning startup Byju’s has nearly doubled its valuation in a year as it adds one more high-profile name to the list of its backers: Bond. In a statement on Friday, Bangalore-based Byju’s said it had raised an undisclosed amount from the VC fund co-founded by Mary Meeker. The first female-founded VC firm’s check […]