Messaging app Wire raises $21 million

Wire, the end-to-end encrypted messaging app and service, has raised a $21 million Series B funding round led by UVC Partners. As the company said a couple of years ago, the company is focusing on the enterprise market more than ever. While Wire started as a consumer app, it never managed to attract hundreds of millions of customers like other messaging...

9m

Vanadium ion battery startup Standard Energy raises $8.9M Series C from SoftBank Ventures Asia

Standard Energy, a vanadium ion battery developer, announced today it has raised a $8.9 million Series C from SoftBank Ventures Asia. The South Korea-based company says its batteries’ advantages over lithium ion include less risk of ignition and the ease of sourcing vanadium. The latter is an important selling point, as electric vehicle makers face...

9m

South Africa’s Quro Medical comes out of stealth with $1.1M to expand its hospital-at-home service

For a continent with such stark inequality, Africa has seen limited innovation to increase access to healthcare and reduce healthcare delivery costs. Over the years, there has been continued investment in traditional care models despite the overwhelming evidence of inefficiency and escalating costs. The pandemic also laid these problems bare, exposing...

9m

China’s Xpeng in the race to automate EVs with lidar

Elon Musk famously said any company relying on lidar is “doomed.” Tesla instead believes automated driving functions are built on visual recognition and is even working to remove the radar. China’s Xpeng begs to differ. Founded in 2014, Xpeng is one of China’s most celebrated electric vehicle startups and went public when it was just six years old....

1h

Vietnam-based healthcare booking app Docosan gets $1M seed funding led by AppWorks

Based in Ho Chi Minh City, Docosan helps patients avoid long waits by letting them search and book doctors through its app. The company announced today it has raised more than $1 million in seed funding, which is claims is one of the largest seed rounds ever for a Vietnamese healthtech startup. The investment was led by AppWorks, the Taiwan-based early-stage...

3h

New Quest 2 software brings wireless PC streaming, updated ‘office’ mode

After a relatively quiet couple of months from Oculus on the software front, Facebook’s VR unit is sharing some details on new functionality coming to its Quest 2 standalone headset. The features, which include wireless Oculus Link support, “Infinite Office” functionality and upcoming 120hz support will be rolling out in the Quest 2’s upcoming v28...

7h

FBI launches operation to remove backdoors from hacked Microsoft Exchange servers

A court in Houston has authorized an FBI operation to “copy and remove” backdoors from hundreds of Microsoft Exchange email servers in the United States, months after hackers used four previously undiscovered vulnerabilities to attack thousands of networks. The Justice Department announced the operation on Tuesday, which it described as “successful.”...

7h

Daily Crunch: Spotify unveils an in-car entertainment system

Spotify wants to have a bigger presence in your car, Apple hints at iPad-centric announcements and Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop goes on sale. This is your Daily Crunch for April 13, 2021. The big story: Spotify unveils an in-car entertainment system Spotify’s new device is the oddly (but memorably!) named Car Thing. While there are plenty of other...

9h

Coinbase sets direct listing reference price at $250/share, valuing the company at as much as $65B

Coinbase, the American cryptocurrency trading giant, has set a reference price for its direct listing at $250 per share. According to the company’s most recent SEC filing, it has a fully diluted share count of 261.3 million, giving the company a valuation of $65.3 billion. Using a simple share count of 196,760,122 provided in its most recent S-1/A filing,...

10h

Republican antitrust bill would block all Big Tech acquisitions

There are about to be a lot of antitrust bills taking aim at Big Tech, and here’s one more. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) rolled out a new bill this week that would take some severe measures to rein in Big Tech’s power, blocking mergers and acquisitions outright. The “Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act” would ban any acquisitions by companies...

10h