African tech took center stage in 2021

Two years ago, the African tech ecosystem saw newfound attention from global players that translated to the continent’s best year of receiving venture capital. From varying sources, it is estimated up to $2 billion went into African tech startups in 2019. With high-profile visits from the most famous Jacks (Ma and Dorsey), a long-awaited first […]

India’s Cars24, a used-vehicle sales platform, raises $400M, now at a $3.3B valuation, to double down on growth

With supply chains in the automotive industry continuing to be disrupted due to Covid-19, demand has surged in the used-car market. Today, one of the startups that’s seeing a lot of growth as a result of that is announcing a big round of funding to further tap the opportunity. Cars24, a startup out of India […]

Flink, the Berlin-based instant grocery startup, is now valued at $2.85B after raising $750M in a round led by DoorDash

Instant grocery delivery continues to be a very frothy market, but today comes news of a major funding round for one player in it that investors believe will still be standing after the hype has died down. Flink, the Berlin-based startup that sells food and other essentials at supermarket prices and aims to deliver them […]

MrBeast’s ‘Real Life Squid Game’ and the price of viral stunts

First, everyone was talking about “Squid Game,” the Korean psychological thriller that became Netflix’s biggest series launch ever, with 142 million viewers. Now, everyone’s talking about YouTuber MrBeast’s recreation of the show’s titular fight-to-the-death, which racked up 142 million views in eight days. (Don’t worry, no one was killed). Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast), the 23-year-old who […]

Irish virtual sports giant’s new startup bets big on rugby in bid for US market share

A fantasy sports exchange founded by Irish betting veteran Paddy Power is bringing NFT-enabled live trading to rugby fans in a bid to expand globally. American Sports Exchange (ASX Sports), just signed a deal with New Zealand digital media company RugbyPass to use its data to allow fans to participate in ASX’s virtual stock market […]

In-game creation platform Overwolf raises $75M Series D led by Andreessen Horowitz

Overwolf, a platform that enables creators to build, share, and monetize items inside games, has raised a $75 million Series D funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Previous investors including Griffin Gaming Partners, Insight Partners, Intel Capital, Liberty Technology Venture Capital, and Marker also participated. The funding will be pumped into Overwolf’s CurseForge Core, […]

As offices come back, ATMO launches air monitoring device claiming to give COVID-risk score

Way back in 2015 we covered the launch of the Atmotube, a small, innovative, portable air quality monitor which went on to receive a number of awards after its CES debut. Since rebranding as ATMO, the company, co-founded by Vera Kozyr, is now launching the Atmocube, an indoor air quality monitoring system for businesses and […]

Facebook enters the fantasy gaming market

Facebook is getting into fantasy sports and other types of fantasy games. The company this morning announced the launch of Facebook Fantasy Games in the U.S. and Canada on the Facebook app for iOS and Android. Some games are described as “simpler” versions of the traditional fantasy sports games already on the market, while others […]

UK-based Heroes raises $200M to buy up more Amazon merchants for its roll-up play

Heroes, one of the new wave of startups aiming to build big e-commerce businesses by buying up smaller third-party merchants on Amazon’s Marketplace, has raised another big round of funding to double down on that strategy. The London startup has picked up $200 million, money that it will mainly be using to snap up more […]

This Week in Apps: OnlyFans bans sexual content, SharePlay delayed, TikTok questioned over biometric data collection

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices […]