Ingrid Lunden
Writer
The Latest from Ingrid Lunden
Kustomer gets $26M to take on Zendesk with an omnichannel approach to customer support
The CRM industry is now estimated to be worth some $4 billion annually, and today a startup has announced a round of funding that it hopes will help it take on one aspect of that lucrative pie, custom
Pipedrive, a CRM and sales tool, raises $50M to take on Salesforce and Microsoft
While Salesforce and Microsoft have a dominant position in the world of sales software today, there are a number of startups nipping at their heels, and today one of the more promising of them has ann
Dutch payments company Adyen opens at €400/share, a pop of 67%, now valued at $16B
After raising €1.1 billion in its initial offering and pricing its shares at €240 each last night, Adyen, the Dutch payments company, went public today with a bang. It opened for trading this mor
Google adds tools for brick-and-mortar stores to boost interest from online shoppers
Despite the growth of Amazon and other e-commerce giants, offline commerce — buying goods from brick-and-mortar stores — still accounts for around 90 percent of all retail spending. So in
Facebook cracks down on ads from e-commerce scammers flagged by new reviews
Facebook is cracking down on shopping sites and others that bait and switch customers by delivering lower quality products than what they advertised on the social network. Today, Facebook launches a n
Workday acquires financial modelling startup Adaptive Insights for $1.55B
Workday, the cloud-based platform that offers HR and other back-office apps for businesses, is making an acquisition to expand its portfolio of services: It’s buying Adaptive Insights, a provide
Memrise raises $15.5M as its AI-based language-learning app passes 35M users
Memrise, a UK startup whose eponymous language-learning app employs machine learning and localised content to adapt to users’ needs as they progress through their lessons, has raised another $15
Airbnb will now let people register as Open Homes emergency volunteers before a crisis hits
Airbnb — the travel startup that lets individuals rent out private homes or rooms in private homes to people as an alternative to hotels — has racked up more than 17,000 nights in its Open
Airbnb creates $10M fund to cover cancelled reservations in Japan after regulatory shift
Airbnb has been one of the breakthrough stories in the wave of shared-economy startups that have emerged out of Silicon Valley, with a valuation of $30 billion for its travellers platform that lets pe
Yahoo Messenger is shutting down on July 17, redirects users to group messaging app Squirrel
It’s the end of an era for Yahoo Messenger, one of the first instant messaging apps on the market. Today, Oath (which also owns TechCrunch) announced that it would be winding down the service on
LinkedIn debuts Your Commute, navigation and maps to evaluate jobs based on how far they are
LinkedIn, the social media site that’s aimed at people looking to network or otherwise change up their career prospects, is taking a plunge into location-based services. From today, the company
Gett raises $80M led by VW at a $1.4B valuation, says it will be profitable by Q1 of next year
While Uber is growing its business with a net loss on its balance sheet, a smaller rival has confirmed a round of funding, and projects that it will be profitable by Q1 of next year. Gett, the transpo
Badoo plans to drop the swipe from its dating app as it tests live video broadcasts
Is it time to swipe left on the swipe? Badoo, a UK-based dating app with some 388 million users globally — whose majority-owned app Bumble is currently being sued by Tinder in part for its use o
Caroobi, a marketplace for automotive mechanics, raises $20M led by Nokia’s NGP Capital
The long-term future of transportation might see fewer people owning cars, but today a lot of private vehicles are still on the road, and now a startup that’s building a multi-faceted marketplac
Marqeta raised $45M led by Iconiq for payment card processing technology, reportedly at a $545M valuation
On the heels of payment processing startup Adyen pricing its IPO in Europe to raise $1 billion, another startup working in the area of digital payment processing has raised a significant growth round
Adyen aims for a $1B IPO, valuing the payments startup at up to $8.3B when it lists on June 13
After announcing its intention to go public in May, today Adyen published more details with the finances filled in. The Netherlands-based payments startup — which competes against the likes of P
Apple says CarPlay will now support third party navigation and mapping apps
Big news for CarPlay, Apple’s in-car service that lets a vehicle’s display act as a controller and ‘reader’ of your iPhone. At WWDC, Apple today announced that it will now let
App Store hits 20M registered developers and $100B in revenues, 500M visitors per week
Microsoft may have just acquired developers’ favorite code repository GitHub, but it is Apple where many of them are making a lot of money at the moment. Today at WWDC, Apple’s CEO Tim Coo
Walmart sells 80% of its Brazilian operation to Advent Intl, will record $4.5B loss as a result
Walmart’s ongoing push to cut away unprofitable or slow-growing international operations, to shore up its resources to compete against Amazon at home and in Asia on digital fronts, had another d
Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5B in stock
After a week of rumors, Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired GitHub, the popular Git-based code sharing and collaboration service. The price of the acquisition was $7.5 billion in Microsoft