Startups Weekly: DoorDash gets a taste of Caviar

Hello and welcome back to Startups Weekly, a weekend newsletter that dives into the week’s noteworthy startups and venture capital news. Before I jump into today’s topic, let’s catch up a bit. Last week, I wrote about SoftBank’s second Vision Fund. Before that, I noted some challenges plaguing mental health tech startups. Remember, you can send me tips, suggestions and feedback to kate.clark@techcrunch.com or on Twitter @KateClarkTweets. If you don’t subscribe to Startups Weekly yet, you can do that here. What’s new? This week DoorDash...

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Facebook to admit ownership of Instagram, WhatsApp in hard-to-read small-print

For the first time in more than half a decade, Facebook wants to inform you that it owns Instagram, the hyper-popular rival social networking app it acquired for a $1BN steal back in 2012. Ditto messaging platform WhatsApp — which Mark Zuckerberg splurged $19BN on a couple of years later to keep feeding eyeballs into his growth engine. Facebook is adding its own brand name alongside the other two — in the following format: ‘Instagram from Facebook’; ‘WhatsApp from Facebook.’ The cheap perfume style rebranding was first reported by The Information...

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Early bird pricing ends next week for TC Sessions: Enterprise 2019

Here are five words you’ll never hear spring from the mouth of an early stage startupper. “I don’t mind paying more.” We feel you, and that’s why we’re letting you know that the price of admission to TC Sessions Enterprise 2019, which takes place on September 5, goes up next week. Our $249 early-bird ticket price remains in play until 11:59 p.m. (PT) on August 9. Buy your ticket now and save $100. Now that you’ve scored the best possible price, get ready to experience a full day focused on what’s around the corner for enterprise — the biggest and...

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What to expect from Samsung’s Galaxy Note event

{rss:content:encoded} What to expect from Samsung’s Galaxy Note event https://ift.tt/2SYwFXK https://ift.tt/2MBIzpm August 02, 2019 at 07:28PM Samsung’s never been particularly good at keeping things under wraps. That’s no doubt, at least in part, by design. The company loves priming the rumor pump ahead of product announcements, and like clockwork, we’ve already seen plenty of what we expect is planned for next Wednesday’s Unpacked event in Brooklyn. Samsung targets iPad Pro with the Galaxy Tab S6 Earlier this week, Samsung announced the...

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Biome Makers closes $4M to assess the quality of the ‘gut bacteria’ of a farm’s soil

The agriculture industry faces huge problems of sustainability. The world’s population is increasing, leading to higher food demand, but this then threatens increasing deforestation, pesticide use and some fertilizers that are responsible for greenhouse emissions. Farming can also be a source of carbon sequestration, but how to preserve that? Plus, land quality is being decreased due to over-farming. All this while agriculture has been an underserved industry in terms of technology development compared to others. So it’s the right time to look...

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A closer look at China’s smartphone market

{rss:content:encoded} A closer look at China’s smartphone market https://ift.tt/2MExBjb https://ift.tt/2LWYsqW August 02, 2019 at 06:00PM In February 2013, China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest smartphone market. More than half a decade on, it still proves an elusive target for international sellers. A glance at reports from the past several shows reveals the top spots dominated by homegrown names: Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi. Combined, the big four made up roughly 84 percent of the nearly 100 million smartphones shipped...

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Babylon Health confirms $550M raise at $2B+ valuation to expand its AI-based health services

Babylon Health, the UK-based startup that has developed a number of AI-based health services, including a chatbot used by the UK’s National Health Service to help diagnose ailments, has confirmed a massive investment that it plans to use to expand its business to the US and Asia, and expand its R&D to diagnose more serious, chronic conditions. It has closed a $550 million round of funding, valuing Babylon Health at over $2 billion, it announced today. This is the largest-ever fundraise in Europe or US for digital health delivery, Babylon said. “Our...

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Africa Roundup: Canal+ acquires ROK, Flutterwave and Alipay partner, OPay raises $50M

In July, French television company Canal+ acquired the ROK film studio from VOD company IROKOtv. Canal+ would not disclose the acquisition price, but confirmed there was a cash component of the deal. Founded by Jason Njoku in 2010 — and backed by $45 million in VC — IROKOtv boasts the world’s largest online catalog of Nollywood: a Nigerian movie genre that has become Africa’s de facto film industry and one of the largest globally (by production volume). Based in Lagos, ROK film studios was incubated to create original content...

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Following Ninja’s news, Mixer pops to top of the App Store’s free charts

Yesterday, Tyler “Ninja” Blevins announced that he’s leaving Twitch, moving his streaming career over to Microsoft’s Mixer platform. This morning, Mixer has shot to the top of the App Store’s free app charts. Microsoft acquired Mixer in 2016, back when it was called Beam, and has been trying to grow the platform since. However, Mixer has had a tough go of it with competition from the industry leader, Twitch, as well as other tech giants like Google (YouTube) and Facebook. In fact, Mixer represented just three percent of game streaming viewership...

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Texas joins growing list of AGs looking to block T-Mobile/Sprint merger

{rss:content:encoded} Texas joins growing list of AGs looking to block T-Mobile/Sprint merger https://ift.tt/2KcVk8w https://ift.tt/2yvP6JZ August 02, 2019 at 03:51PM Late last week, the DOJ green lit T-Mobile and Sprint’s $26 billion deal to become nation’s number three carrier. The deal isn’t officially official just yet, with some prominent opposition facing the merger. A growing list of attorneys general have sued to block the merger, and other big name just came on board. With the addition of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the number moves...

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Unpacking DoorDash’s $410M Caviar acquisition

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week Kate and Alex were back to dig through a surprising number of fresh rounds and new funds along with a little breaking news. The traditional VC summer is nowhere to be seen in 2019, so expect the show to stay packed for the foreseeable future. DoorDash’s decision to buy Caviar from Square upended our agenda. The decacorn’s decision to drop $410 million in cash and stock on an asset that Square had spent...

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Scottish spaceport closer to launch after land lease signed

Plans to open a new spaceport in Sutherland in Scotland have moved closer to final approval: The real estate companies working on the deal have signed a 75-year lease for the land to be used for Space Hub Sutherland, which will look to launch small satellites via private launch services from companies including startup Orbex, a micro-launch startup founded in 2015, and Lockheed Martin. The land lease is still dependent on final approval being given for the spaceport to be built, which is in process as the groups behind its development, including...

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Bring your team to Disrupt Berlin 2019 and save big

Early-stage startuppers around the world are getting ready for Disrupt Berlin 2019, which takes place on 11-12 December. Our premier tech conference attracts an international startup community from more than 50 countries. It’s the intersection of current and future tech and an incomparable networking opportunity. You reap big savings with our super early-bird pricing (up to €600), but you can save even more when you buy in bulk. We want to make Disrupt Berlin a team-friendly event, because nobody wants to play rock, paper, scissors, lizard, Spock...

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Digital identity startup Yoti raises additional £8M at a valuation of £82M

Yoti, the London startup offering a digital identity platform and app that lets you prove who you say you are when accessing services or making age verified purchases, has raised £8 million in additional funding. Backing the round is unnamed private investors, Yoti employees, and Robin Tombs, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, who previously founded and exited online gambling company Gamesys. I’m told that the startup has had around £65 million in investment in total since being founded in 2014, the majority of which has been made by Tombs and another...

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UrbanClap, India’s largest home services startup, raises $75M

UrbanClap, a marketplace for freelance labor in India and the UAE, has raised $75 million in a new financing round to expand its business. The Series E round for the four-and-a-half-year old India-based startup was led Tiger Global. Existing investors Steadview Capital, which led the startup’s Series D in December last year, and Vy Capital also participated in the current round. The startup, which has raised about $185 million to date, said some early investors sold portions of their stake as part of the new round. Through its platform, UrbanClap...

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Dasha AI is calling so you don’t have to

While you’d be hard pressed to find any startup not brimming with confidence over the disruptive idea they’re chasing, it’s not often you come across a young company as calmly convinced it’s engineering the future as Dasha AI. The team is building a platform for designing human-like voice interactions to automate business processes. Put simply, it’s using AI to make machine voices a whole lot less robotic. “What we definitely know is this will definitely happen,” says CEO and co-founder Vladislav Chernyshov. “Sooner or later the conversational...

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