science and technology

LSE to pay dividend after riding market turbulence

Frantic trading across financial markets pushes revenues up at the exchange and financial data group




science and technology

Interactive Brokers takes $88m hit from crude futures collapse

Shares in brokerage firm drop overnight after it discloses payments to clearing houses




science and technology

Refinitiv’s data-race struggle highlights LSE challenge

Business being bought from Blackstone-led consortium has lost ground to Bloomberg




science and technology

US options exchanges prepare to reopen trading floors

Arca in San Francisco and Box in Chicago will throw open their doors on Monday




science and technology

The Apple Card is an expensive way to pay

It is right for the Fed to lead America towards faster and more efficient bank payments




science and technology

Business in Hong Kong needs to stay strong

Beijing wants to make companies impose obedience to China on protesting employees




science and technology

Invent a greener milk carton for the world

Tetra Pak’s innovation overtook the glass bottle but it needs to be improved




science and technology

The Anarchy — East India Company in the dock

This riveting account of how a piratical corporation subjugated India resonates with today’s global capitalism




science and technology

Jeffrey Epstein found the weakness of universities

The need to raise donations led MIT’s Media Lab to a terrible misjudgment




science and technology

WeWork’s prophet has lost his charisma

Adam Neumann transformed shared offices but failed to charm stock market investors




science and technology

Chasing wealth managers is a risky business

Private banks are fighting to advise billionaires who want a lot for their money




science and technology

Juul and the damage done to e-cigarettes

The US is in danger of lurching from lax oversight of vaping to banning it unwisely




science and technology

Big Oil should rebel against its customers

Energy companies facing climate protests need to limit the wasteful use of their products




science and technology

Dyson and the art of making quick decisions

Companies from Boeing to HSBC have discovered the danger of delaying hard choices




science and technology

The perfect apple and the Cosmic Crisp

The biggest brand launch since the Pink Lady is changing the nature of the fruit




science and technology

A diamond is not forever at a fashion house

LVMH’s $14.5bn bid for Tiffany shows power passing from gem miners to luxury marketers




science and technology

Do global businesses have too much power?

Despite public anger, corporate regulation is likely to remain fragmented




science and technology

Europe has a problem with its SUV habit

The continent faces a new emissions scandal as family vehicles grow bigger and heavier




science and technology

The Ride of a Lifetime — life at the top of Disney

The story of Robert Iger’s career as a leader is a thoughtful tale of surviving disruption




science and technology

Billionaires have never had it so good

Fortunes are created by technology and globalisation, as well as talent and enterprise




science and technology

Saudi Aramco does not rule the world

The valuation of an energy company cannot be engineered like the production of oil




science and technology

LVMH has become a luxury department store

Bernard Arnault’s company is the modern incarnation of La Samaritaine and Neiman Marcus




science and technology

China’s internet interference is TikTok famous

The video app loved by teenagers is powered by artificial intelligence and protectionism




science and technology

Peloton’s sexist Christmas ad has another problem

Misjudged commercial is an example of an especially troublesome type of marketing mistake




science and technology

Inside LBC: the radio station capturing the political zeitgeist

In a polarised time, the broadcaster has won listeners by embracing confrontation




science and technology

Goodbye to all that creative destruction

In 16 years of columns on business, the only constant has been disruptive innovation




science and technology

The trends that shaped a decade of domestic life

From high-tech to hygge, our homes changed at top speed in the 2010s — what will the 2020s bring?




science and technology

How we all became screen obsessives

Phones, TV and games constantly vie for our attention — but how much do they add to our lives?




science and technology

What Japan Inc really thinks about Carlos Ghosn

Downfall of carmaker’s former boss sets up clash between country’s old guard and its reformists




science and technology

Zeitgold raises $29.2M to automate bookkeeping

Zeitgold has raised a Series B round of $29.2 million (€27 million). Overall, the company has raised more than $54 million (€50 million). The company is building a software platform for small companies to automate bookkeeping as much as possible. Vintage Investment Partners is leading today’s round with existing investors Battery Ventures, HV Holtzbrinck Ventures, […]




science and technology

As Europe slowly unlocks, e-scooter startups, like Helbiz, are wooing with offers

At the start of the year, it looked like Europe would be in for a “Summer E-Scooters / E-Bike War,” as both regional startups and U.S.-backed unicorns vied for the pockets of city commuters. Consolidation came when German startup Circ was taken over by U.S. competitor Bird at the start of the year. Still on […]




science and technology

TechCrunch’s top 16 picks from Techstars April virtual demo days

Like other accelerators, Techstars, a network of more than 40 corporate and geographically targeted startup bootcamps, has had to bring its marquee demo day events online. Over the last two weeks of April, industry-focused accelerators working with startups building businesses around mobility technologies (broadly) and the future of the home joined programs in Abu Dhabi, […]




science and technology

Estonian fintech askRobin scores $1.7M to bring ‘fair credit’ to emerging markets

AskRobin, an Estonia-founded fintech that operates a financial services marketplace for “underbanked” customers in Latin America, has picked up $1.7 million in funding. The seed round is backed by VC funds Change Ventures, Vereeni Early Stage Fund, BENE Asia Capital, and Lemonade Stand. In addition, a number of tech entrepreneurs from Estonia participated, such as […]




science and technology

Banked picks up £2.35M seed to use open banking for account-to-account payments

Banked, a London-based fintech using open banking to enable account-to-account payments at checkout (and beyond), has raised £2.35 million in further seed funding. The round was led by Force Over Mass, with participation from previous investors Backed and Acrew Capital, along with a number of high-net-worth individuals, such as Paul Forster (co-founder of Indeed.com). It […]




science and technology

UK investors band together to survey Angels on their strategy during COVID-19

A number of UK entrepreneurs have banded together to survey Angels about their investment strategy. The initiative comes in the wake of the UK government’s “Future Fund” for startups, which has been criticized as being inadequate for the needs of Angel and Seed-stage startups. The group hopes the survey will give the UK early-stage investment […]




science and technology

Vote for Europe’s hottest startups in The Europas Awards + workshops, pitches, networking

The Europas Awards — which have been recognising the hottest European tech startups in since 2009 — are now open for the public voting stage, prior to the formal judging process. The entries have been sorted and sifted by journalists to compile an editorially-driven ‘long list’ of some of Europe’s most exciting startups and investors. […]




science and technology

Kairn is a new task manager focused on speed

Meet Kairn, a new startup coming out of stealth today with a sneak peek of what the company has been working on. As Wunderlist shuts down, Kairn wants to prove that there’s still room for an innovative task-management service. “We’re building a task manager that is smart and focused on capturing tasks,” co-founder and CEO […]




science and technology

Runa Capital closes Fund III at $157M, with an added focus on quantum computing

VC fund Runa Capital was launched with $135 million in 2010, and is perhaps best known for its investment into NGINX, which powers many web sites today. In more recent years it has participated or led investments into startups such as Zipdrug ($10.8 million); Rollbar this year ($11 million); and Monedo (for €20 million). HQ’d […]




science and technology

Countingup scores £4M bridge round for its small business banking and accounting app

Countingup, the business current account that “automates” your accounting, has raised £4 million in self-described bridge funding. Leading the round is ING Ventures, with co-investment from Triple Point, CVentures, and BiG Start Ventures. Founded by Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, and now boasting 20,000 business customers, Countingup’s long term vision […]




science and technology

Deep Render raises £1.6M for image compression tech that mimics ‘neural processes of the human eye’

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]




science and technology

Cuckoo Internet closes seed funding to disrupt UK broadband market

Cuckoo Internet is a new U.K. startup that aims to disrupt the U.K. broadband market. It has now raised £470,000 in seed funding, which includes funding from work.fund, a new Silicon Valley fund operator fund led by Bart Macdonald (Sapling founder). Other investors include Lorin van Nuland (early investor in Betterment), Edward Campbell-Harris (Bulb early […]




science and technology

How will coronavirus change the world? — Parlia launches to help you find out

“Is Greta Thunberg a hypocrite?” Google that phrase and you will get thousands of results. It just goes to show that, to a large extent, the “Q&A” model is broken on the internet. Where once Yahoo Answers and Quora were considered the bright young things of Web 2.0’s “Read/Write Web,” today there is only the […]




science and technology

WhatsApp eyes lending feature in India as Amazon rolls out Pay Later to tens of thousands of customers

WhatsApp, which began testing its mobile payments feature in India two years ago, could offer at least one more financial service to people in its biggest market. In a filing with the local regulator in India, the Facebook -owned messaging platform has listed credit as one of the areas it will pursue in the country. […]




science and technology

Facebook stock spikes despite ‘significant reduction’ in demand for ads

The coronavirus pandemic is significantly slowing the growth of Facebook’s ads business, but investors seem pleased with the company’s performance in Q1 after Facebook released its earnings report Wednesday. The company beat Wall Street expectations on revenues, sharing that they had made $17.74 billion while falling short on earnings per share at $1.71. The company […]




science and technology

TikTok tops 2 billion downloads

TikTok, the widely popular video sharing app developed by one of the world’s most valued startups (ByteDance), continues to grow rapidly despite suspicion from the U.S. as more people look for ways to keep themselves entertained amid the coronavirus pandemic. The global app and its Chinese version, called Douyin, have amassed over 2 billion downloads […]




science and technology

The lockdown is driving people to Facebook

The quarantine lockdown is driving a record number of users to Facebook’s products. On a conference call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg disclosed a number of new metrics highlighting a significant bump in Facebook usage during the broader quarantine lockdown. In the past month, more than 3 billion internet users logged onto a Facebook service, including its […]




science and technology

Instagram ‘pods’ game the algorithm by coordinating likes and comments on millions of posts

Researchers at NYU have identified hundreds of groups of Instagram users, some with thousands of members, that systematically exchange likes and comments in order to game the service’s algorithms and boost visibility. In the process, they also trained machine learning agents to identify whether a post has been juiced in this way. “Pods,” as they’ve […]




science and technology

Facebook now allows users in the US & Canada to export photos and videos to Google Photos

Facebook is today rolling out a tool that will allow users in the U.S. and Canada to export their Facebook photos and videos to Google Photos. This data portability tool was first introduced in Ireland in December, and has since been made available to other international markets. To use the feature, Facebook users will need […]




science and technology

Indian education startup Byju’s is fundraising at a $10B valuation

Byju’s, an education learning startup in India that has seen a surge in its popularity in recent weeks amid the coronavirus outbreak, is in talks to raise as much as $400 million in fresh capital at a $10 billion valuation, said three people familiar with the matter. The additional capital would be part of the […]




science and technology

Equity Shot: 1% is the new “growth”

Happy Saturday and welcome back to an Equity Shot, a short-form episode of Equity where we drill into one particular topic. There was so much news this week in our main areas of focus — startup funding rounds, new venture funds, that sort of thing — that we had to exclude earnings from the main […]