Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher

Editor At Large

Mike Butcher (M.B.E.) is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. He has written for UK national newspapers and magazines and been named one of the most influential people in European technology by Wired UK. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum, Web Summit, and DLD. He has interviewed Tony Blair, Dmitry Medvedev, Kevin Spacey, Lily Cole, Pavel Durov, Jimmy Wales, and many other tech leaders and celebrities. Mike is a regular broadcaster, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg. He has also advised UK Prime Ministers and the Mayor of London on tech startup policy, as well as being a judge on The Apprentice UK. GQ magazine named him one of the 100 Most Connected Men in the UK. He is the co-founder ThePathfounder.com newsletter; TheEuropas.com (the Annual European Tech Startup Conference & Awards for 12 years); and the non-profits Techfugees.com, TechVets.co, and Coadec.com. He was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2016 for services to the UK technology industry and journalism.

The Latest from Mike Butcher

Inclusivity-focused VC Ada Ventures pulls in $80M for second fund

U.K.-based Ada Ventures is an unusual VC. Instead of just talking about SaaS or AI, it hunts down founders addressing inclusivity and diversity. Instead of confusing LPs with this methodology, it’s

‘Banking-as-a-Service’ startup Griffin raises $24M as it attains full banking license

Founded by former Silicon Valley engineers, UK-based Griffin Bank, has now raised $24 million (£19 million) in a fresh, extended Series A, funding round.

LLMs are poised to make lumbering business intelligence tools easier and faster to use

UK startup Fluent has closed a $7.5M seed round to apply LLMs to business databases, making them far easier to interrogate.

This Swedish startup wants to reduce the cost, and controversy, around stem cell production

With the news that “mini organs” have been grown for the first time using human stem cells, this futuristic area of bio-medicine is clearly accelerating by leaps and bounds. However, harvesting st

New report confirms Europe’s tech investment doldrums, but there are signs of life

Europe is suffering from a big hangover after the tech investment party of the 2020-2021 period. That said, compared to pre-pandemic levels, VC investment in European startups is up, historically spea

MWC: Swayy app lets you share your future location with close friends, or groups you curate

Given that this week Instagram revealed that it was developing a “Friend Map” feature, it was interesting and timely to run into a startup during Mobile World Congress that plans to go beyond even

The five finalists to emerge from the Four Years From Now 2024 pitch competition

Update: Qilimanjaro was chosen as the winner and awarded €20,000. Long ago Mobile World Congress, which we’ve been covering all week, absorbed a side event for startups, the idiosyncratically nam

Spain’s Embat, which has raised $16M, plans to compete with Trovata in real-time accounting

For obvious reasons, financial teams can spend a great deal of time on corporate treasury management, accounting and bank reconciliation, so anything that speeds up that process usually garners a lot

Displace plans new models, new AI features for its ‘wireless’ TVs

At CES 2023, a startup hardware company called Displace launched its 55-inch ‘Display Flex’, a “wireless” $3,000 4K OLED TV  which sticks to walls without a traditional mounting. The launch c

Doublepoint launches its WowMouse gesture-touch control app for Pixel Watch 2

Admittedly, Apple iWatch users have had it since October last year, but as of today at Mobile World Congress, the Doublepoint startup has launched the updated version of its popular WowMouse gesture-t

Two years since Russia’s invasion, Ukraine’s startups soldier on

This weekend marks exactly two years since Russia’s illegal, unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine. Despite overwhelming odds and continued hiccups in the supplies of Western aid to fight off Ru

$13M and 3 years later, Superlist hopes to become a decacorn. But will it?

The former founder of a to-do lists app which sold for as much as $200 million, comes back, nine years later, with yet another app to do the same thing. Really? It’s a story that would be hard to ma

AI-powered Estonian QA startup Klaus acquired by Zendesk

Klaus — an Estonian-born startup which emerged in 2019 to aid customer services agents — has been acquired by global customer services platform Zendesk for an undisclosed amount. Last year

As Iran-backed groups attack Red Sea ships, investors are backing startups assisting global cargo

Multiple shocks to global supply chains brought about first by the pandemic and more recently by Iran-backed Houthis targeting cargo ships in the Red Sea have shown there’s a need for greater resili

Open source ‘headless commerce’ builder Saleor closes $8M round led by Target Global and Zalando

Saleor’s API for e-commerce does the back-end heavy lifting for online shopping while developers produce a bespoke front end.

As Podcastle raises $13.5M, its founder credits AI-driven growth in Armenia’s ‘Mini-Silicon Valley’

Podcastle, a podcasting platform that has boosted its product with various generative AI-driven features, has raised $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Mosaic Ventures. Also participatin

MessageBird rebrands as Bird, and slashes prices by 90% on SMS to take on Twilio

No, don’t think Bird Scooters. Think Bird, formerly MessageBird. For the Amsterdam-based unicorn is now re-branding as such after reportedly acquiring the Bird.com domain name a couple of years ago,

Signaling more consolidation may come, smart-bus startup Zeelo acquires Kura, a smaller player

A small U.K. startup that combined a school bus service with a software platform to safeguard pupils has been acquired by “smart buses” startup Zeelo, which last year raised a $14 million

Amid a fairly flat European market, Giant Ventures raises $250M to invest transatlantically

Giant Ventures, a U.K.-based VC that has made a habit of investing on both sides of the Atlantic, is launching two new funds, totaling $250 million. Its previous fund totaled $100 million. The firm in

SMOK VC’s second fund is another signal that Poland’s tech scene is hitting its stride

In 2007 I was running late for my speech at the Polish Stock Exchange, but the cool reception I received there suggested I should perhaps not have bothered. Speaking about the new wave of tech startup
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