September 2020
Palantir’s reference price values it at roughly $16 billion
Palantir is preparing for its public debut tomorrow morning on the NYSE (after 17 years), and now we are getting some data on how the company’s shares are being valued…
Amazon unveils a new biometric ID technology, the Biden campaign takes aim at Facebook and iRobot’s co-founder joins a robotic gardening startup. This is your Daily Crunch for September 29,…
Spin workers just ratified their first union contract
A group of 40 workers at Ford-owned Spin just successfully ratified their first union contract. This comes after this group of shift leads, maintenance specialists, operations specialists, community ambassadors and…
Amazon launches a virtual tours and experience platform, Amazon Explore
Amazon today is launching a new service called Amazon Explore that allows customers to book live, virtual experiences led by local experts. The experiences may be focused on creativity, learning…
Ford drops the price of its all-electric Mustang Mach-E to stay ‘fully competitive’
Ford has slashed the price of its upcoming all-electric Mustang Mach-E crossover by as much as $3,000 as the automaker seeks to stay competitive in an increasingly crowded and unsettled…
Serious injuries at Amazon fulfillment centers topped 14,000, despite the company’s safety claims
As Amazon‘s biggest shopping day of the year approaches, a new report reveals that the company’s investments in automation and safety have not stemmed surging numbers of serious injuries in…
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Duolingo CEO explains language app’s surge in bookings
Language learning apps, like many educational technology platforms, soared when millions of students went home in response to safety concerns from the coronavirus pandemic. It makes sense: Everyone became an online learner in some capacity, and for non-frontline workers, each day became an opportunity to squeeze in a new skill (beyond sourdough). So why not…
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How Twilio built its own conference platform
Twilio’s annual customer conference was supposed to happen in May, but like everyone else who had live events scheduled for this year, it ran smack-dab into COVID-19 and was forced to cancel. That left the company wondering how to reimagine the event online. It began an RFP process to find a vendor to help, but…
With a Warby Parker playbook, SISU raises funding from Greycroft to face off against cosmetic clinics
With so many people getting botox and filler treatments to their faces these days (or are they, during the pandemic?), it’s probably no wonder that venture capital has decided to…
Starlink puts towns devastated by wildfires online for disaster relief workers
SpaceX’s Starlink has showed its utility in connecting far-flung locations to the internet quickly and relatively simply in Washington, where like much of the west coast wildfires have caused enormous…
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9 VCs in Madrid and Barcelona discuss the COVID-19 era and look to the future
Spain’s startup ecosystem has two main hubs: Madrid and Barcelona. Most observers place Barcelona first and Madrid second, but the gap appears to close every year. Barcelona has benefitted from attracting expats in search of sun, beach and lifestyle who tend to produce more internationally minded startups. Madrid’s startups have predominantly been Spain or Latin…
Collective, a back-office platform that caters to ‘businesses of one,’ just landed a hefty seed round
Americans and other global citizens are increasingly self-employed, thanks to great software, the need for flexibility and because skilled services especially can pay fairly well, among other reasons. In fact,…
Shipt shoppers are organizing a walkout in protest of new pay model
Shipt shoppers are organizing a handful of actions in protest of Shipt’s new pay structure that began rolling out this month. The first action is happening from Saturday, Oct. 17…
Healthcare entrepreneurs should prepare for an upcoming VC/PE bubble
Now is potentially a prime time to create a healthcare startup, but the road ahead will not be an easy one for emerging solution providers.
Greylock and MLT are trying to diversify tech’s wealth cycle
Greylock Partners has teamed up with Management Leadership for Tomorrow to address issues of diversity and inclusion in the technology industry. “Our view is this has to be a comprehensive…
Final week to score $50 student passes to TC Sessions: Mobility 2020
Class is about to be in session, students. If you’re passionate about mobility and transportation tech and hungry to learn from the visionaries, makers and investors who are building the…
Ringing alarm bells, Biden campaign calls Facebook ‘foremost propagator’ of voting disinformation
In a new letter to its chief executive on the eve of the first presidential debate, the Biden campaign slammed Facebook for its failure to act on false claims about…
Polaris and Zero Motorcycles reach deal to bring electric off-roaders to market
Polaris is a name synonymous with powersports — just head to any of the hundreds of snowmobile trails in Wisconsin, Minnesota or other sufficiently wintry place for evidence. Now, it’s…
For me, the last six months has shown that people are resilient, and that when faced with a common threat or the need to suddenly rethink everything they might know,…
Facebook introduces Accounts Center, a tool for managing a growing number of cross-app settings
Despite being under antitrust investigations in the U.S. and E.U., Facebook today is rolling out a new feature that highlights the extent to which its suite of apps now interoperate.…
TikTok launches a US elections guide in its app
Though TikTok is in the middle of fighting off the Trump administration’s attempt to ban its app in the U.S. over data privacy concerns, the company today is launching a…
Extra Crunch Live: Join us today at 2pm EDT/11am PDT to discuss the future of startup investing with Index Ventures VCs Nina Achadjian and Sarah Cannon
The venture capital world is rapidly changing, and thank heavens we have two of the smartest VCs on the future of investing, productivity tools and remote work joining us today…
Datasaur snags $3.9M investment to build intelligent machine learning labeling platform
As machine learning has grown, one of the major bottlenecks remains labeling things so the machine learning application understands the data it’s working with. Datasaur, a member of the Y…
D-Wave launches its 5,000+ qubit Advantage system
D-Wave today announced the launch of its new Advantage quantum computers. These new systems, with over 5,000 qubits and 15-way qubit connectivity, are now available in the company’s Leap cloud…
Google offers Europe more checks Fitbit data won’t be used for ads
Google has offered a second round of concessions to try to persuade European regulators to clear its acquisition of wearables maker Fitbit. The deal has been stalled by concerns over…
Amazon introduces the Amazon One, a way to pay with your palm when entering stores
In the middle of a pandemic when customers are often wearing plastic gloves to stores alongside their face masks, Amazon’s physical retail team is introducing a new biometric device that…
Rally raises $17M to expand a platform that lets you invest in (but not buy) collectibles
When people ponder the investment opportunity around collectibles, they probably think about things like wine auctions, sales of very expensive old cars or baseball cards, or maybe a pocket watch…
Businesses reducing trash and plastic consumption are beginning to look like treasure to some VCs
Zuleyka Strasner didn’t set out to become an advocate for zero-waste consumption. The former manager of partner operations at Felicis Ventures had initially pursued a career in politics in the…
New program wants to be the Y Combinator for emerging fund managers
Rolling funds, the rise of solo capitalists, crowd syndicates and team-based seed funds all scream one thing in unison: venture capital is growing and getting unbundled at the same time.…
Axis Security raises $32M to help companies stay secure while working from home
Axis Security launched last year with the idea of helping customers enable contractors and third parties to remotely access a company’s systems in a safe way, but when the pandemic…
