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Welcome to Chain Reaction, where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news, drama and trends, breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious. For our Thursday…
Announcing the first tranche of Startup Battlefield judges
The Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt on October 18–20 is set to be our most epic yet. This year’s competitors, selected from our handpicked cohort, the Startup Battlefield 200, are…
Exceptional Ventures joins Europe’s health and wellness gold rush with a new $24M fund
With the after-effect of the pandemic set to play out for years, VCs specializing in health, wellness and general ‘joy’ would appear to have rising fortunes. Funds such as Able…
Welcome back to Chain Reaction. Last week, we looked at a crossover episode for meme investing. This week, we’re talking about Musk dumping tokens while holding onto others. You can…
Regulators should address crypto ‘garbage’ first, former SEC Chairman Clayton says
Stablecoins, CFTC oversight are among the first issues the U.S. Senate hopes to tackle in a bipartisan crypto bill.
Key European tech founders and investors launch OneUkraine charity to assist Ukraine
A host of major European tech founders and investors are today backing the launch of OneUkraine, a new charity providing sustainable humanitarian relief for the Ukrainian people. OneUkraine will be…
European micromobility startup Reby acquired by PE player House of Lithium for $100M
Founded in 2018, European micromobility startup Reby took an interesting path. It deployed e-scooters in the city of Zaragoza (Spain), during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also created a SaaS-oriented “MaaS”…
Nue Life Health raises $23M Series A Led by Obvious Ventures for psychedelics platform
Last year we covered the $3.3 million seed round for NUE Life Health, a US-based telemedicine startup in the US, which was building out a mental wellness platform that combined…
Hype, hope and money: Your guide to all the EV SPAC investigations going on
If 2020 and 2021 were the years of the SPAC, 2022 is shaping up to be the year of the reprimand.
Builder.ai raises $100M Series C led by Insight Partners to scale up its software automation
When we started covering Builder.ai a few years ago, the startup was tapping into a new wave of businesses wanting their own native apps. The previous wave of agency-built and…
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.…
Volocopter raises $170M, now valued at $1.87B, to fuel first commercial launches of flying taxi fleet in 2024
Volocopter, the startup out of southern Germany (Bruchsal) that has been developing electric VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft and a business model for operating them in taxi-style fleets in…
Trump’s TRUTH Social launches at the top of the App Store, but no one can get in
Donald Trump’s media group released its TRUTH Social iOS app today in the U.S., but a scan of the app’s API using publicly available tools revealed that it already closed…
Homeland Security establishes the Cyber Safety Review Board to learn the mistakes from past cyber incidents
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has assembled a review board that will be tasked with investigating major national cybersecurity incidents in an effort to “meaningfully improve” the nation’s cyber resilience.…
The first big tech antitrust bill lumbers toward reality
A major Senate bill that would prevent tech companies from giving preference to their own products and services just passed a significant hurdle in Congress, bringing it one step closer…
Disney’s streaming biz reorg includes an international content hub, plans to double Disney+ footprint
Disney announced today it plans on expanding its direct-to-consumer streaming business to more global markets and is creating a new International Content and Operations group to aid in this push.…
Nigeria lifts ban on Twitter, says the social media giant has met conditions
The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter operations more than six months after it first declared a crackdown on the social media giant in the country. Kashifu Inuwa…
AWS will buy a SaaS company, and other 2022 enterprise predictions
It’s always a sticky business predicting what’s going to happen in tech, because who knows what’s going on behind the scenes or what’s coming next.
Francophone African super app Gozem grabs $5M to expand and offer more services
Gozem, a super app that provides a host of services — including transport, e-commerce and financial services in Francophone Africa — has raised $5 million in Series A financing, the…
Co-working and edtech company Talent Garden acquires Hyper Island to scale online courses globally
Talent Garden is a sort of “European-WeWork-meets-General-Assembly” in that its business model is a combination of co-working spaces (in places like Italy, Austria, Romania, among others) plus online/offline digital courses.…
OpenSea admits incident as top exec is accused of trading NFTs on insider information
The “eBay of NFTs” is running into a scandal as it admits one of its employees traded the crypto digital assets using insider information from the platform. Yesterday, a top…
Cent, the platform that Jack Dorsey used to sell his first tweet as an NFT, raises $3M
Cent was founded in 2017 as an ad-free creator network that allows users to offer each other crypto rewards for good posts and comments — it’s like gifting awards on…
Andreessen Horowitz triples down on blockchain startups with massive $2.2 billion Crypto Fund III
While the cryptocurrency market’s most recent hype wave seems to be dying down after a spectacular rise, Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm is reaffirming its commitment to startups building blockchain projects…
Iceland’s Frumtak Ventures raises its third, $57M, fund focusing on post-seed and Series A
Frumtak Ventures, one of the few VCs in Iceland, has raised its third fund, Frumtak III. The $57 million (ISK 7b, €48m) fund will focus on post-seed and Series A…
Productivity startup Time is Ltd. raises $5.6M to be the ‘Google Analytics for company time’
Productivity analytics startup Time is Ltd. wants to be the Google Analytics for company time. Or perhaps a sort of “Apple Screen Time” for companies. Whatever the case, the founders…
Honeywell and Cambridge Quantum form joint venture to build a new full-stack quantum business
Honeywell, which only recently announced its entry into the quantum computing race, and Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQ), which focuses on building software for quantum computers, today announced that they are…
Cybersecurity unicorn Exabeam raises $200M to fuel SecOps growth
Exabeam, a late-stage startup that helps organizations detect advanced cybersecurity threats, has landed a new $200 million funding round that values the company at $2.4 billion. The Series F growth round…
Aldea Ventures creates ‘hybrid’ European €100M fund to invest both in micro VCs, plus follow-on
The historical trajectory of venture capital has been to move to earlier and earlier finding rounds in order to capture the greatest potential multiple on exit. In the U.S., we’ve…
Psykhe secures seed funding to match consumer personalities to fashion products
In an overcrowded market of online fashion brands, consumers are spoilt for choice on what site to visit. They are generally forced to visit each brand one by one, manually…
Bowery Farming adds executives as it expands to sell produce in 650 stores
Bowery Farming has added to its executive team as it expands its retail footprint to 650 stores, the company said. From three indoor farms in Kearny, New Jersey and Nottingham,…
