This Week in Apps: HQ Trivia’s dramatic death, Android 11, Apple mulls a more open iOS

{rss:content:encoded} This Week in Apps: HQ Trivia’s dramatic death, Android 11, Apple mulls a more open iOS https://ift.tt/2HOUsoy https://ift.tt/2ulVipv February 22, 2020 at 08:00PM Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the Extra Crunch 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 in 2019 and $120 billion in consumer spending in 2019, according to App Annie’s recently released “State of Mobile” annual report....

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Startups Weekly: What the E-Trade deal says about Robinhood

[Editor’s note: Want to get this weekly review of news that startups can use by email? Just subscribe here.]  How well do Robinhood’s financials stack up against incumbent online brokerages? While we wait for the seven-year-old company’s long-planned IPO, Alex Wilhelm examined Morgan Stanley’s big $13 billion purchase of E-Trade for fresh data comparison points. Robinhood has 10 million accounts — twice what E-Trade has — but it also appears to make much less money per user and has far fewer assets under management, as he covered for...

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Fintech startups raised $34B in 2019

{rss:content:encoded} Fintech startups raised $34B in 2019 https://ift.tt/38X1KCE https://ift.tt/38Tw3do February 22, 2020 at 07:23PM Financial services startups raised less money in 2019 than they did in 2018 as VC firms looked to back late stage firms and focused on developing markets, a new report has revealed. According to research firm CB Insights’ annual report published this week, fintech startups across the world raised $33.9 billion* in total last year across 1,912 deals*, down from $40.8 billion they picked up by participating in 2,049...

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Fintech startups raised $34B in 2019

Financial services startups raised less money in 2019 than they did in 2018 as VC firms looked to back late stage firms and focused on developing markets, a new report has revealed. According to research firm CB Insights’ annual report published this week, fintech startups across the world raised $33.9 billion* in total last year across 1,912 deals*, down from $40.8 billion they picked up by participating in 2,049 deals the year before. It’s a comprehensive report, which we recommend you read in full here (your email is required to access it),...

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Investors in LatAm get bitten by the hotel investment bug as Ayenda raises $8.7 million

Some of Latin America’s leading venture capital investors are now backing hotel chains. In fact, Ayenda, the largest hotel chain in Colombia, has raised $8.7 million in a new round of funding, according to the company. Led by Kaszek Ventures, the round will support the continued expansion of Ayenda’s chain of hotels in Colombia and beyond. The hotel operator already has 150 hotels operating under its flag in Colombia and has recently expanded to Peru, according to a statement. Financing came from Kaszek Ventures and strategic investors like...

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Report: Outdoor Voices founder Tyler Haney is stepping down as CEO as growth slows

Tyler Haney, the founder and chief executive of activewear label Outdoor Voices, has stepped down, according to the Business of Fashion. We’ve reached out to Haney directly, as well as board members from the venture firms that have backed the company, including General Catalyst and Forerunner Ventures, and we hope to update this story accordingly. According to BoF, the transition follows a previously unreported capital injection from Outdoor Voices’ investors at a lower valuation than previous rounds. It says the company tried raising new funding...

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Do AI startups have worse economics than SaaS shops?

A few days ago, Andreessen Horowitz’s Martin Casado and Matt Bornstein published an interesting piece digging into the world of artificial intelligence (AI) startups, and, more specifically, how those companies perform as businesses. Core to the argument presented is that while founders and investors are wagering “that AI businesses will resemble traditional software companies,” the well-known venture firm is “not so sure.” Given that TechCrunch cares a lot about startup business fundamentals, the notion that one oft-discussed and well-funded category...

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EV fleet management gets another venture-backed contender as Electriphi raises $3.5 million

Electriphi, a provider of charging management and fleet monitoring software for electric vehicles, has joined the scrum of startups looking to provide services to the growing number of electric vehicle fleets in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund and Blackhorn Ventures. Lemnos Labs and Acario Innovation also participated in the round. Electriphi’s pitch has resonated with school districts. It counts the Twin Rivers Unified...

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At Tock, this restaurant group owner and former trader is building a Spotify for reservations

Tock, a six-year-old, Chicago-based culinary reservation service, has never had the kind of brand-recognition that other companies in the space have enjoyed, from publicly traded OpenTable to Resy, the New York-based company that was founded in 2014 and acquired last year for undisclosed terms by American Express. That’s because Tock has relatively quietly been supporting customers, many of them high-end restaurants like French Laundry that, with Tock’s encouragement, began selling prepaid “tickets” for meals years ago. These aren’t unlike buying...

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DSP Concepts raises $14.5M for its Audio Weaver platform

DSP Concepts — a startup whose Audio Weaver software is used by companies as varied as Tesla, Porsche, GoPro and Braun Audio — is announcing that it’s raised $14.5 million in Series B funding. The startup goal, as explained to me by CEO Chin Beckmann and CTO Paul Beckmann (yep, they’re a husband-and-wife founding team), is to create the standard framework that companies use to develop their audio processing software. To that end, Chin told me they were “picky about who we wanted on the B round, we wanted it to represent the support and endorsement...

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Volocopter extends Series C funding to $94M with backing from logistics giant DB Schenker and others

Autonomous air mobility company Volocopter has added to the Series C funding round it announced in September 2019. The German electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft maker announced €50 million ($54 million at today’s exchange rate) in funding at the time, and the C round has now grown to €87 million ($94 million) thanks to new lead investor DB Schenker, a German logistics company with operations all over the world. This round also includes participation by Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Group, as well as the venture arm of its parent...

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Shopify joins Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra Association

{rss:content:encoded} Shopify joins Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra Association https://ift.tt/38LPioY https://ift.tt/37OGnC2 February 21, 2020 at 04:07PM After eBay, Visa, Stripe, and other high-profile departures, the Facebook-backed cryptocurrency collective Libra scored a win today with the addition of Shopify. The ecommerce platform will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin. If Libra manages to assuage international regulators’...

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Shopify joins Facebook’s cryptocurrency Libra Association

After eBay, Visa, Stripe, and other high-profile departures, the Facebook-backed cryptocurrency collective Libra scored a win today with the addition of Shopify. The ecommerce platform will become a member of Libra Association, contributing at least $10 million and operating a node that processes transactions for the Facebook-originated stable coin. If Libra manages to assuage international regulators’ concerns which are currently blocking its roll out, Shopify could gain a way to process transactions without paying credit card fees. Libra is designed...

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Equity is not always the answer

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This week was a fun combination of early-stage and late-stage news, with companies as young as seed-stage and as old as PE-worthy joining our list of topics. Danny and Alex were back on hand to chat once again. Just in case you missed it, they had some fun talking Tesla yesterday, and there are new Equity videos on YouTube. Enjoy! Here’s what the team argued about this week: HungryPanda raises $20 million from...

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Where top VCs are investing in manufacturing and warehouse robotics

Robotics and automation tools are now foundational parts of warehouses and manufacturing facilities around the world. Unlike many other robotics and AI use cases, the technology has moved well beyond the theoretical into practice and is used by small suppliers and large companies like Amazon and Walmart. There’s no doubt that automation will transform every step of the supply chain, from manufacturing to fulfillment to shipping and logistics. The only question is how long such a revolution will take. There’s still plenty of market left to transform...

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Tier Mobility, the European e-scooter rentals startup, adds another ~$40M to its Series B

Tier, the European e-scooter rentals startup that operates in 55 cities across 11 countries, has topped up its funding for the second time in four months. The Berlin-based company has extended its Series B round to over $100 million, up from $60 million disclosed in October. The additional capital is a mix of equity and debt financing provided by Moscow’s RTP Global, London’s Novator, and an unnamed U.S. debt fund. Part one of the Series B was co-led by Mubadala Capital and Goodwater Capital. Tier says the additional funds will be invested in R&D...

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Here’s our pick of the top six startups from Pause Fest

We’ve been dropping into the Australian startup scene increasingly over the years as the ecosystem has been building at an increasingly faster pace, most notably at our own TechCrunch Battlefield Australia in 2017. Further evidence that the scene is growing has come recently in the shape of the Pause Fest conference in Melbourne. This event has gone from strength to strength in recent years and is fast becoming a must-attend for Aussie startups aiming for both national international attention. I was able to drop in ‘virtually’ to interview a number...

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