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Mercato, which provides e-commerce tools to small grocers and specialty food stores, raises $26M Series A led by Velvet Sea Ventures
US Commerce Department adds seven Chinese supercomputing entities to an export blacklist for allegedly building supercomputers used by Chinese military
OneTrust, which offers enterprise compliance tools, raises $210M Series C extension led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, bringing its total raised to $920M
Nydig Raises $100M in Funding
New York-based Bitcoin trading and custody services provider NYDIG raises $100M, just one month after raising $200M, bringing its total raised to $405M
Samsung announces $40 SmartTag Plus, which uses Bluetooth and UWB to locate lost items, and AR to guide users to them, launching globally on April 16
Cryptocurrency mining company Riot Blockchain says it will buy Texas-based Bitcoin hosting facility Whinstone for $80M in cash and around $570M in stock
Intel details Bleep, which uses AI to redact audio when it detects "hate speech" and lets users toggle how much they want to hear
Report: hackers scraped data of 500M LinkedIn users and posted it for sale online; LinkedIn confirms the dataset includes publicly viewable info from its site
Union seeking to represent Amazon workers in AL says 3,215 ballots were cast, 55% of those eligible; hundreds of ballots are being contested, mostly by Amazon
nytimes.com · 2 days ago
London-based mobile game studio Tripledot raises $78M Series A and says it has an 11M active user base, up from 6M six months ago
Lawsuit alleges that, since 2017, civil rights groups have flagged hundreds of anti-Muslim Pages and Groups to Facebook, more than half of which stayed up
China-based online grocery delivery service Dingdong Maicai raises $700M Series D; Dingdong Maicai was reportedly valued at $2B after raising $300M in May 2020
Indian used car marketplace Spinny raises $65M Series C led by General Catalyst, bringing its total raised to $120M+, source says at a ~$350M valuation
Apple's conclusions of law in Epic case: App Store doesn't lead the gaming market, so consequently it cannot be considered a monopoly
Norway's grocery delivery service Kolonial rebrands as Oda, raises €223M at a €750M post-money valuation, led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 and Prosus
Indian messaging service Gupshup raises $100M from Tiger Global at a $1.4B valuation, bringing its total raised to $150M
Egypt's Paymob, which helps merchants accept payments from their customers in a variety of ways, raises $18.5M Series A led by Dubai-based Global Ventures
UK startup TrueLayer, which lets fintech apps connect with customers' bank accounts, raises $70M Series D led by Addition, bringing its total raised to $142M
Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, raises $115M at a $1.6B valuation, and says it is nearing a transaction rate of $1B
Facebook says it is adding contextual labels to posts by Pages like "satire page" and "public official" to reduce confusion about their origin
Canvas Medical, a startup that streamlines EHR for doctors providing value-based care, raises $17M Series A, bringing its total raised to $20M
Box says KKR is leading a $500M investment in the company via preferred convertible stock; Aaron Levie will step down as chairman but will remain as CEO
Tasktop, which reduces time to market and increases the velocity of software development, raises $100M, bringing its total raised to $129M+
Sources: production of some MacBooks and iPads has been postponed due to the global component shortage, a sign that the chip shortage is growing more serious
Google has started rolling out an updated UI for the Play Store, which moves the Play Store menu items to the profile thumbnail and removes the hamburger menu
Indian social media startup ShareChat raises $502M from investors including Tiger Global, Snap, and Twitter, at a valuation of $2.1B, and says it has 160M MAUs
Autonomous trucking startup TuSimple is aiming to raise ~$1.3B in its US IPO, with expected share price between $35-$39, and is targeting a valuation of $8B+
Facebook's NPE team launches a public beta for Hotline, a web-based app letting creators stream live video or audio-only Q&As; events are recorded automatically
techcrunch.com · 3 days ago
Best Buy is piloting Best Buy Beta, a new membership program with perks including unlimited tech support and free shipping for $200/yr, starting in IA, OK, PA
Facebook says it did not notify users about the 2019 data leak affecting 533M accounts at the time and doesn't plan to do so now
Sources: Twitter discussed acquiring Clubhouse for around $4B but the talks fell apart; Clubhouse is now looking to raise funding at a $4B valuation
Peter Thiel says he is a pro-Bitcoin maximalist, but Bitcoin threatens fiat money and might be used by China to undercut the US dollar's reserve currency status
An in-depth look at the impact, often negative and not fully understood, of AR beauty filters on social media, especially on girls and young women
Twitter says it won't let the US National Archives make @realDonaldTrump's old tweets available on the platform, citing his permanent suspension
Internal memo: Huawei is closing its core cloud and AI business after only 14 months, splitting the group into two
Philadelphia-based recruiting and HR software developer Phenom raises $100M at a $1.3B valuation led by B Capital Group
CaptivateIQ, a no-code service for creating sales commission plans, raises $46M Series B led by Accel, bringing its total raised to $63M
T-Mobile launches its 5G home internet service, costing $60-$65/month with no data caps, hardware rental fees, or annual contracts
Report: digital ad spending grew 12.2% YoY in 2020 to $139.8B, as H2 political ad spending offset the H1 falloff; top 10 companies held 78.1% share of revenues
Swyft, which runs a marketplace for shipping carriers and develops APIs to let smaller retailers offer same-day delivery, raises $17.5M Series A
techcrunch.com · 3 days ago