Sunday was a big day in fintech: Afterpay has agreed to merge with Square. This agreement sets two of the most admired financial technology companies in recent history on a path to becoming one.
Lilium in talks with Brazilian airline for $1B order
German electric aircraft startup Lilium is negotiating the terms for a 220-aircraft, $1 billion order with one of Brazil’s largest domestic airlines, the companies said Monday. Should the deal with Azul move forward, it would mark the largest order in Lilium’s history and its first foray into South American markets. “A term sheet has been […]
Why Square is shelling out $29B to snag BNPL player Afterpay
With PayPal, Klarna, Afterpay, Affirm and a host of smaller BNPL providers proving that customers like fee-based installment loans for online purchases, Square had to join the fight or miss a trick
The tale of two edtech IPOs
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Last week, Natasha and Alex jumped on Twitter Spaces to discuss the tale of two edtech IPOs: Duolingo, the consumer language learning company, and PowerSchool, the enterprise K-12 software platform. It was a rare moment in the sun for the […]
Yaydoo secures $20M, aims to simplify B2B collections, payments
It’s no secret that the technology for easy business-to-business payments has not yet caught up to its peer-to-peer counterparts, but Yaydoo thinks it has the answer.
Newtopia closes first fund of $50M to invest in LatAm startups
Early-stage venture capital fund Newtopia VC launched Monday with $50 million to invest in tech startups based in Latin America.
BoxGroup closes on $255M across two funds to back startups at their earliest stages
BoxGroup has quietly, yet diligently, been funding companies at the early stage for over a decade. The 11-year-old firm in fact was the first investor in Plaid, a fintech company that nearly got sold to Visa last year for billions of dollars. It has seen a number of impressive exits over the years, proving an […]
Mixlab raises $20M to provide purrfect pharmacy experience for pet parents
Pet pharmacy Mixlab has developed a digital platform enabling veterinarians to prescribe medications and have them delivered — sometimes on the same day — to pet parents.
Singapore-based Nektar.ai gets $6M to help B2B sales team collaborate more effectively
Organizing information about prospective deals is a challenging task for B2B sales teams, since salespeople usually rely on multiple tools (email, Zoom, WhatsApp, etc) to talk with buyer committees. It becomes even more unwieldy when sales teams work remotely. Nektar.ai is a B2B sales productivity startup that wants to help sales team by reducing the […]
5 lessons from Duolingo’s bellwether edtech IPO of the year
Duolingo landed onto the public markets this week, rallying excitement and attention for the edtech sector and its founder cohort. The language learning business’ stock price soared when it began to trade, even after the unicorn raised its IPO price range, and priced above the raised interval. Duolingo’s IPO proves that public market investors can […]