plants

Papaya Global to buy Azimo for $150M-$200M to expand its payroll payments to more markets

Six months after raising $250 million, Papaya Global is making a key acquisition to expand its cloud-based HR and payroll platform globally on the heels of major surge in remote working. The Isra

Vanilla Vida wants the world to eat more natural vanilla

The goal is to provide quantity, quality and cost stability for the vanilla supply chain through advanced growing methods for the beans via smart farms and in climate-controlled greenhouses.

Gift Guide: The best tech gifts for plant geeks

Welcome to TechCrunch’s 2021 Holiday Gift Guide! Need help with gift ideas? We’ve got lots of them. We’re just starting to roll out this year’s gift guides, so check back from now until the en

Greg, an app for plant lovers, grows $5.4 million in seed funding

Before the pandemic rendered us homebound, the houseplant industry was already in bloom. One year sequestered in our homes later, and our living spaces have flourished into our personal indoor gardens

Bloomscape’s Justin Mast explains how he built a thriving garden startup in Detroit

Justin Mast has a simple reason for starting his plant retail startup Bloomscape in Detroit. “This is home,” he told me. “This is where I have a really strong network and I knew I’d be able to

The toilet paper startup backed by Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi and Robert Downey Jr. now sells paper towels

Cloud Paper, the startup whose bamboo toilet paper (and celebrity and billionaire backers, including Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Marc Benioff, Dara Khosrowshahi and Mark Cuban) made a splash l

Online garden shop Bloomscape raises $15M Series B, acquires plant care app Vera

If you thought to invest in more plants or started growing a small garden during 2020’s coronavirus lockdowns, you weren’t alone. According to Bloomscape, a company that ships live plants

Investors cozy up to LA-based ettitude’s bamboo bedding and sleep wear with $1.6 million

Ettitude, the Los Angeles-based, direct-to-consumer startup making sustainable bedding and sleepwear from bamboo fibers, has raised a sustainably sized round that should keep the company going even in

Ginkgo Bioworks’ dev shop for genetic programming is now worth $4 billion

Ginkgo Bioworks is now worth $4 billion after a $290 million capital infusion that will give the company the cash to dramatically expand its developer shop for genetic programming. The Boston-based co

Apeel partners with Nature’s Pride to bring spoilage-resistant fruits and veggies to Europe

Apeel Sciences, the developer of a new technology that makes fruits and vegetables more resistant to spoilage, and Nature’s Pride, one of the largest vendors of avocados and mangos in Europe, are pa

Crunch Report | Glow-in-the-Dark Plants

Blue Origin's Crew Capsule 2.0 takes first flight, scientists at MIT make glow-in-the-dark plants and Google is opening an AI center in China. All this on Crunch Report.

GROW raises $2.4M to to build a smart planter for easy-to-cultivate vegetables

Boxee co-founder Idan Cohen’s most recent stint may have been in the smart TV space — but now he wants to build a box that’ll help you grow some lettuce outside your home. That might see

Weird: slow-motion plant race to the death

I hear you asking: what is it good for? Unlike war, it’s actually pretty useful. I mean, useful if you really care about growing plants systematically… and you liked Gladiator. My only obj

Miniature greenhouse takes up yet another USB port

Sigh. Well, it’s off to my local electronics store to purchase another USB hub. I’m honestly running out of ports (and desk space) for all of these wonderful gadgets. I mean, I’ve go

Botanicalls: Hello, I'm dying

Want to talk to your plants in a way that doesn’t make you look like a New Age dope? Build the Botanicalls plant-to-Twitter connection kit and your plant can ping you every time its thirsty. You

Fill your house with Plant Breath using these filters

Unsatisfied with current air filtration methods, French designer Mathieu Lehanneur has created this excellent little thing that would look at home in Sleeper or The Jetsons. It’s called the &#82

ThirstyLight! Tells you when to wet your wysteria's whistle

I’m not sure why you wouldn’t just use your built-in all-purpose moisture indicator (tongue) to tell whether your plant’s soil is dry, but this thing is cool anyway. It tests for wet

Cellular Plant Communicator

Well this is clever if not aged, but I hadn’t seen it yet, so here we go. This is a plant that tells you how thirsty it is. Essentially it’s a sensor that measures soil moisture and relays