Interactive streaming platform Adventr raises $5M in seed funding

Founder and CEO Devo Harris got the idea for Adventr while working with the music industry’s biggest artists. “Adventr was inspired by my experience creating content for artists like Kanye West, Britney Spears and Nas,” he said. “The music videos where I introduced interactive components shot up in popularity, proving that engaging viewers was not […]

How one founder tapped lasers to automate and scale stem cell production

Not only is this week’s guest the TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Battlefield winner, but Nabiha Saklayen is also democratizing access to life-saving cell therapies by using — you guessed it — lasers. Saklayen is the co-founder and CEO of Cellino, which is a company developing the tech to automate stem cell production that will lower the […]

Meet the 5 judges who will pick the 2021 winner of TechCrunch Disrupt’s Startup Battlefield

The battle to win Startup Battlefield began long before TechCrunch Disrupt kicked off Tuesday. Startup founders from all over the world applied to what has been described as the most competitive batch in TechCrunch history. Twenty startups competed this week on the TechCrunch virtual stage for $100,000 in equity-free prize money and last night, we […]

Here are the 5 Startup Battlefield finalists at Disrupt 2021

Over the last two days, 20 companies took the stage in TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield in a bid to win $100,000 and the Startup Battlefield cup. They had six minutes to present their pitch decks and answered six minutes of questions from noted investors and executives. The judges and TechCrunch editors evaluated the companies and selected […]

Announcing the Startup Battlefield companies pitching at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021

Today, TechCrunch is excited to announce the 20 startups pitching on stage in this year’s Startup Battlefield. Selected from the most competitive batch in TC history, selected founders from across the globe will pitch on the virtual stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2021. Startups will be competing for $100,000 in equity-free prize money and the attention […]

Botify raises $55 million to optimize search engine indexing

Botify has raised a $55 million Series C funding round led by InfraVia Growth with Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund also participating. The company has created a search engine optimization (SEO) platform so that your content is better indexed and appears more often in search results. Existing investors Eurazeo and Ventech are also investing in the […]

Lux Capital’s Deena Shakir is helping judge Startup Battlefield at this year’s Disrupt

Deena Shakir is a partner at Lux Capital, where she looks to invest in technologies that are streamlining analog industries while also improving lives and livelihoods. Among the companies she has backed, for example, are Shiru, which is leveraging computational design to create enhanced proteins to help feed the world; and AllStripes, which aggregates and […]