French startup Mirakl has closed a new Series E funding round of $555 million. Following this round, the company is now valued at $3.5 billion. Mirakl helps you launch a marketplace on your online store for your end customers or for your B2B clients. It’s a software-as-a-service marketplace, meaning that Mirakl manages the marketplace for […]
French book prize under fire after judge’s partner makes shortlist
Goncourt secretary defends decision but criticises same judge for writing scathing review of rival workThe jury for France’s top literary prize, the Goncourt, has been engulfed in a row over ethical breaches after the shortlist included a book by the b…
Brexit made an unlikely hero of Angela Merkel for Britain’s remainers | Rafael Behr
The German chancellor’s record is mixed, but her exit brings home how adrift Europhiles in the UK now areAngela Merkel is used to being unimpressed by British prime ministers. She was appalled by David Cameron’s casual surrender of influence in Europe,…
Journalist who tracked Viktor Orban’s childhood friend infected with spyware
Dániel Németh’s phones infected with Pegasus software while reporting on one of Hungary’s richest menDániel Németh, a Budapest-based photojournalist, has tried to keep a low profile in his groundbreaking work investigating and documenting the luxury li…
Raspberry Pi gets $45M to meet demand for low cost PCs and IoT
Turns out COVID-19 lockdowns have been good for the indoor hobby of hardware hacking: The UK-based foundational behind the low price microprocessor, Raspberry Pi, announced close of a $45 million funding round yesterday. The cash injection into the trading arm of the (non-profit) Raspberry Pi Foundational values it at $500M (pre-money), founder Eben Upton confirmed. […]
German parties vague on pension plans as they court older voters
Ageing population is putting strain on system that is a point of national pride for manyThe churned-up garden of the clubhouse for pensioners is preoccupying Peter Klotsche. “It’s the raccoons,” he says. “They come at night and toss up the earth lookin…
Alan acquires Jour and launches mental health service Alan Mind
French startup Alan is better known for its health insurance products — they now insure 200,000 people. But it has been slowly building a superapp for your health and expanding with new services. Today, the company announced its first acquisition ever with the acquisition of Jour for $20 million. This is going to be the […]
Post-pandemic shifts means Patch will take co-working to UK small towns and suburbs
It would be fair to say the pandemic has had enormous effects on the world of work, but it has come at a time when other factors were already ongoing. The decline of main-street shopping due to e-commerce has only been hastened. The shift to remote working has sky-rocketed. And people no longer want to […]
Urgent climate action is getting lost in the heat of Germany’s election campaign | Hanna Gersmann
Despite the summer’s floods, frontrunner Olaf Scholz’s ‘moderate’ climate message is holding out against the GreensForty years ago, Germans loved to make fun of eco-types who ate muesli, wore shapeless knitted sweaters and packed their groceries in jut…
UK’s MarketFinance scores $383M to fuel its online loans platform for SMBs
Small and medium businesses regularly face cashflow problems. But if that’s an already-inconvenient predicament, it has been exacerbated to the breaking point for too many during the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, a UK startup called MarketFinance — which has built a loans platform to help SMBs stay afloat through those leaner times — is announcing a […]