There’s no shortage of digital banks in Nigeria and, in general, in Africa. As the region continues to experience rapid growth in mobile usage and the corresponding growing young population, these fintechs think this is the right time to provide financial services to every market category, from the banked to the unbanked. We’ve covered a […]

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Dating app giant Match is getting a new CEO. Just over two years after assuming the top exec position, Match CEO and 16-year employee Shar Dubey is stepping down. The company announced today, alongside its first-quarter earnings, Shar Dubey will resign as an officer of Match Group but will remain on the company’s board and […]

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Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new vertical fund exclusively focused on opportunities in the games industry. The new $600 million fund brings a pool of dedicated capital and a new internal structure dedicated to sourcing deals inside the games vertical. The new vehicle, called Games Fund One, joins other industry-specific arms at a16z, including its […]

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Take-Two has completed its $12.7 billion acquisition of mobile games giant Zynga, the company announced on Monday. Under the terms of the merger agreement, Zynga shareholders received $3.50 in cash and 0.0406 shares of Take-Two common stock per share of Zynga common stock. The deal, which was first announced in January, will bring Zynga’s popular […]

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Roblox has picked up a key hire to help grow its ecosystem of user-generated content for the metaverse. Nick Tornow is joining the company as VP of Engineering for its developer team, leaving his former post as Twitter Platform Lead. Tornow also spent a decade at Zynga and served as the company’s CTO from 2013 […]

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Hey all. Welcome back to Week in Review, the newsletter where we recap some of the top stories to cross TC’s front page over the last 7 days. The most read story on our site this week was about Flowcarbon — a new company and “blockchain-based redemption story” (as Anita put it) launched by WeWork […]

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TikTok wants to determine its users’ appetite for mobile gaming with the launch of “mini-games” that can be played inside the social video app and discovered through creators’ videos. TechCrunch learned and has now confirmed TikTok’s new gaming pilot quietly launched just weeks ago with a variety of new partners, including game developers Vodoo, Nitro […]

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The hackers who reportedly hit more than 130 organizations last year and stole the credentials of almost 10,000 employees are still targeting several tech and video game companies, according to a report obtained by TechCrunch. The report, prepared by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, calls the hackers “Scattered Spider.” In a previous publicly available report, the company […]

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One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to replicate Bourdain’s voice. Looking back now, Neville told Wired that he saw this as a “fun” way to “keep [Bourdain’s] voice going in the film.” But his approach drew intense criticism — while […]

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Penguin Random House, the trade publisher, is adding language to the copyright pages of its books to prohibit the use of those books to train AI. The Bookseller reports that new books and reprints of older titles from the publisher will now include the statement, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced […]

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AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer. The WSJ […]

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The Mac mini will be getting an upgrade this week, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The mini is Apple’s desktop computer (really just a small gray box) positioned between the consumer iMac and the company’s professional-grade desktops. The new mini is reportedly getting smaller — nearly the size of an Apple TV set-top box. It […]

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The time has finally come to announce the five finalists of the Startup Battlefield. It all started earlier this year when the TechCrunch editorial team selected 200 companies from thousands that applied. From there, the team then chose the 20 finalists who pitched this week onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to investor judges and packed […]

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For its most recent Camp, VC and accelerator Betaworks was on the lookout for startups building native applications made possible by AI. The program was first announced in May. To explain this focus, managing partner John Borthwick wrote at the time that while things like AI chatbots and writing assistants exist, “we aren’t yet living […]

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Over the last three days, 20 startups participated in the incredibly competitive Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. After three days of intense pitching, we have a winner. The […]

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New code introduced in the latest version of Apple’s mobile operating system could make it more difficult for both police and thieves to unlock iPhones. 404 Media reported Thursday that law enforcement officials were warning each other that phones being stored for forensic examination seemed to be rebooting themselves — something that security experts confirmed […]

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Bankrupt cryptocurrency company FTX filed 23 lawsuits Friday against Anthony Scaramucci (pictured above), his hedge fund SkyBridge Capital, and other organizations, including Crypto.com and the Mark Zuckerberg-backed lobbying group Fwd.us. These lawsuits are an attempt to claw back money for FTX’s creditors following the company’s collapse. FTX claims that the money targeted in these suits […]

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The company captures real-time customer behavior so companies can see who is genuine, and who is fraudulent, and identify the root cause of customer friction.

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UNest, a fintech startup that provides financial planning tools for parents saving on behalf of their children, announced today that it raised $26 million in Series B funding led by The Artemis Fund. Existing investor Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures participated alongside new investors including Franklin Templeton, Launchpad Capital, AltaIR Capital, OneWay Ventures, Unlock Venture Partners […]

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The service will launch in both the U.S. and Australia beginning early in 2022 and will be free for customers who pay on time.

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The fintech giant Square is changing its name to Block, effective December 10. The name change, which has been in the works for over a year, is intended to house the company’s various products — including music streaming service Tidal, Cash App, TBD, and of course, Square — under one brand. This announcement comes just […]

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. It’s Friday, which means the whole crew was aboard for this particular episode. We had Grace and Chris behind the scenes, and Mary Ann, Natasha and Alex on the mics. And, frankly, we […]

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Hello friends, and welcome back to Week in Review! Last week, we took a break from contextualization for some guides to consumption. This week, we’re looking at what’s happening in the mind of one Jack Dorsey. You can get this in your inbox from the newsletter page, and follow my tweets @lucasmtny. the big thing While […]

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The NFT auction marketplace OpenSea had a blockbuster 2021 and as a result is seeing its private valuation grow more quickly than almost any other startup. The crypto firm announced late Tuesday that it closed a $300 million Series C round led by Paradigm and Coatue. The raise valued the startup at a massive $13.3 […]

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Late last year, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey stepped down from his position in order to give his full attention to his other company, Square (now called Block), which had become increasingly invested in blockchain technology and cryptocurrency — just like Dorsey himself. Now we’re starting to see the results of Block’s embrace of crypto, as […]

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Companies across the board are fighting to recruit and retain employees as the war for talent rages on. Employee benefits are no longer viewed as a cookie-cutter, standard set of offerings — rather, they are valuable tools employers can use to differentiate themselves from competitors and attract top candidates. Forma, which just changed its name […]

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In 2010, Bastian Gotter invested up to $200,000 into IROKOtv, an African video-on-demand company Jason Njoku, his friend and co-founder, launched in Lagos, Nigeria. For the next couple of years, Gotter, as CFO, was instrumental in turning IROKO — after raising over $30 million from VCs, including Tiger Global — into a household name in […]

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How will all of these BNPL-focused providers fare with Apple pounding its way into their market?

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Mandolin, the digital fan engagement platform, launched two new products today with the aim of assisting artists with turning fans into superfans and maximizing revenue. Fan Navigator helps artists collect fan data and teaches them how to engage fans with digital experiences. Mandolin’s Fan Pages also drive fan engagement with a page for the artist […]

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A plan which would see a corporate entity trademark the term “Web5” has been put to rest after much backlash. Late Tuesday night, TBD, the Bitcoin-focused division of Jack Dorsey’s payments company Block (formerly Square), announced an ill-thought-out plan to trademark the term, which refers to its vision for a decentralized, privacy-focused iteration of the […]

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Square said there was “no evidence” a cyberattack caused an outage that left customers and small businesses unable to use the payment giant’s technology on Thursday through early-Friday. The payments technology giant said in a post-mortem of the daylong outage that the outage was caused by a DNS issue. DNS, or domain name system, is […]

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MobileCoin, the startup known for building Signal’s crypto payments feature, has appointed a new CEO as it works on expanding its encrypted money transfer service to global users in need of a more modern remittance solution. Sara Drakeley is taking the helm as MobileCoin’s new chief executive officer. Replacing her previous role as the firm’s […]

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Square, the financial services platform, is embracing generative AI in a very visible way. After announcing earlier this year that it would bring AI features to drive retail sales, Square this morning took the wraps off of new 10 — count ’em, 10 — generative AI capabilities focused on customer content creation, onboarding and setup. […]

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Jack Dorsey’s Block (the company formerly known as Square) announced today that it is releasing its hardware Bitcoin wallet, Bitkey, in 95 countries. However, users can only preorder the device at the moment, with shipping starting in early 2024. The device will cost $150 USD. Block’s pitch to Bitcoin holders is that using a self-custodial […]

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Block, the company behind Square, Cash App and other services, announced a new program today allowing merchants using Square’s solutions to convert a percentage of their daily sales to bitcoin. The feature, rolling out in the U.S. starting today, will transfer 1-10% of Square sellers’ daily sales to their personal Cash App account. This amount […]

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We’re T-minus 24 hours until the TechCrunch Disrupt early bird flies south and takes up to $1,300 in savings with it. If you’re serious about realizing your startup dreams, you need to be kind to your bottom line. Disrupt is packed with many long-tail opportunities, but this one ends in just 24 hours. Buy your […]

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Here’s an exciting reprieve for time-strapped or procrastination-prone early-stage startup founders. We’re extending the application deadline for the Startup Battlefield 200! Take your shot at joining this elite group for a new and awesome opportunity at TechCrunch Disrupt. It’s positively packed with perks and possibilities. Don’t delay: Apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 by August […]

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We see how hard early startup community members work to build their dreams. You’re all wicked busy, and that’s why we’re extending our early-bird pricing on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt, taking place on October 18–20 in San Francisco. You get one extra week to save up to $1,300, so shake your tail feathers and buy […]

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We’re coming down to the wire, folks. Your chance to save early-bird pricing on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt ends this Friday. Our three-day flagship tech startup conference offers superior ROI at full price, but why spend more when you don’t have to? To-do today: Buy your early-bird pass to TechCrunch Disrupt by Friday, August 5 […]

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Building a successful startup requires an enormous amount of talent, hard work, money and, frankly, a bit of luck. Translation: You need to grab hold of every opportunity you can to make it happen. Well, heads up, early-stage founders. Your opportunity to join our inaugural cohort — the Startup Battlefield 200 — ends tomorrow. Don’t […]

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Time is running out on one of the biggest opportunities in Disrupt history. We stop accepting applications to the Startup Battlefield 200 tonight, August 5, at precisely 11:59 p.m. PDT. No more deadline extensions, no last-minute exceptions. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Lollygagger alert: Drop what you’re doing and go apply to the Startup Battlefield 200 right […]

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It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up… The scandal-hit company formerly known as Facebook has fought for over four years to keep a lid on the gory details of a third party app audit that its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg personally pledged would be carried out, back in 2018, as he sought to […]

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A multi-year investigation into TechCrunch’s parent entity Yahoo — looking at compliance with key transparency requirements of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), including in relation to cookie banners displayed on its media properties — has taken a step forward today after Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) announced that it has submitted a […]

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Yahoo is taking a nearly 25% stake in advertising network Taboola. In exchange for this move, Taboola is becoming Yahoo’s native advertising partner through a 30-year commercial agreement. If you’re not familiar with Taboola, you may have seen its content recommendation widgets on popular news websites, such as USA Today, Insider and The Weather Channel. […]

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Taboola expects to get bigger, more profitable and more self-sustaining than before thanks to Yahoo.

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Yahoo today announced that it has acquired Wagr, a three-year-old social sports betting startup based out of Nashville. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. TechCrunch, whose parent company happens to be the now Apollo-owned Yahoo, covered Wagr way back at its inception in 2020 at one of its early investor’s demo days. We noted […]

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Yahoo is introducing new AI tools for Yahoo Mail that are aimed at helping users save time and money, the company announced on Monday. The rollout includes upgrades to several of Yahoo Mail’s existing AI features, and introduces a new Shopping Saver tool. Yahoo is TechCrunch’s parent company. The new Shopping Saver tool surfaces gift […]

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News that Yahoo is buying Artifact stirred the technology watercooler yesterday. Artifact was an interesting app, employing AI to help its users find and consume more, and more targeted news. It had some devoted fans, but never reached the sort of scale that would have made it an attractive long-term project. So, the Instagram founders […]

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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our short-form week-starter in which we go over the weekend, look to the week ahead, talk about some neat funding rounds and dig into what is stuck on our minds. So, by section then: […]

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It’s no secret that a massive digital transformation is happening within financial services companies and amid the growing number of non-financial outfits that are also adding financial products to their offerings. Still, Sheel Mohnot, who was formerly a general partner at the fintech fund of 500 Startups, and Jake Gibson, co-founder of personal finance startup […]

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