Jump brings stability to freelancers by giving French permanent contracts

French startup Jump wants to disrupt the industry of umbrella companies. Those companies provide an alternative to traditional freelancing jobs. They can hire workers on permanent contracts so that they get the stability and the benefits that come with a full-time contract. But workers remain independent — they can work with multiple clients and they […]

Portugal’s ‘Predictive maintenance’ startup Stratio pulls in a $12M Series A round led by Forestay

The fleet management industry needs to be able to predict when a truck or a van is about to break down. Not only does this prevent millions in lost revenues, it also has huge implications for supply chains. ‘Predictive maintenance’ is one of those spaces in which you will find several incumbent companies, such as […]

Upway is building an online marketplace to buy and sell used electric bikes

Meet Upway, a French startup that is building a marketplace for second-hand electric bikes. The startup just raised a $5.7 million (€5 million) seed round from Sequoia Capital and Global Founders Capital. If you’re familiar with the world of online marketplaces for cars, Upway will sound familiar to you as well. The company buys electric […]

Second-hand car auction platform Motorway hits Unicorn status after $190M raise with Index, ICONIQ

It was only in June that Motorway – a U.K. platform on which professional car dealers can bid in an auction for privately owned cars for sale – raised $67.7 million in a Series B round. It’s now raised a $190m Series C funding round led by Index Ventures and ICONIQ Growth, a leading Silicon […]

Paris asks scooter sharing services to restrict speed to 10km/h

Riding a scooter in Paris will soon feel incredibly… slow. The City of Paris has announced that scooter sharing services should restrict the maximum top speed to 10km/h (that’s 6.2mph). That decision comes following a number of pedestrian injuries that involved a scooter. Paris has been an important market for scooter sharing companies. It’s a […]

Italy fines Apple and Google for ‘aggressive’ data practices

Apple and Google have been fined €10 million apiece by Italy’s competition and market authority (AGCM) which has found they did not provide their users with clear enough information on commercial uses of their data — in violation of the country’s consumer code. The regulator also accuses the pair of deploying “aggressive” practices to push […]

Covid live: UK reports 47,240 new cases; Merkel urges successor to impose more restrictions in Germany

UK also records 147 further deaths; outgoing German chancellor warns ‘every day counts’ as cases exceed 75,000 a day for first timePregnant women urged to take Covid jab as new data shows it’s safeEU moves to place booster vaccines at heart of travel r…

UK privacy watchdog warns adtech the end of tracking is nigh

It’s been well over two years since the UK’s data protection watchdog warned the behavioural advertising industry it’s wildly out of control. The ICO hasn’t done anything to stop the systematic unlawfulness of the tracking and targeting industry abusing Internet users’ personal data to try to manipulate their attention — not in terms of actually […]