As a hardware startup, Astrohaus stands apart because of its unique offerings focused specifically on writers and writing. Its debut product, the Freewrite, looked like an old-school travel typewriter with an e-ink screen. Now, it‘s back with a new device it‘s been working on for the past couple of years: The Freewrite Traveler. This more []

Salto, a Tel Aviv-based open-source startup that allows you to configure SaaS platforms like Salesforce, NetSuite and HubSpot with code, is coming out of stealth today and announced that it has raised a 27 million Series A round. This round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. The general idea []

Postmates is now rolling out what could be the biggest update to the company‘s service in a long time adding a retail option for users to shop local stores and for local merchants to set up a virtual on-demand storefront in the app. Starting in Los Angeles and building on yesterday‘s test run []

Zoom, the video calling company that millions turned to during the pandemic, has finally launched end-to-end encrypted video calls for free accounts. The company said last week that it was readying the feature, months after it drew criticism for denying end-to-end encrypted calls to free users, effectively drawing a line between paid users whose conversations []

Israeli startup SimilarWeb has made a name for itself with an AI-based platform that lets sites and apps track and understand traffic not just on their own sites, but those of its competitors. Now, it‘s taking the next step in its growth. The startup has raised 120 million, funding it will use to continue expanding []

Theta Lake, a provider of compliance and security tools for conferencing software like Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, Zoom and others, said it has raised 12.7 million in a new round of funding. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the round with commitments from Cisco Investments, angel investors from the collaboration and security space, and previous investors, []

The entire asset class of venture capital is built atop systemic racism. The numbers don‘t lie: only 2% of partner-level VCs are Black, and 81% of venture capital firms don‘t have a Black partner on board. The lack of diversity in check-writers doesn‘t stay in board rooms: homogeneity trickles down to the founders who get []

The chip industry consolidation dance continued this morning as AMD has entered into an agreement to buy Xilinx for 35 billion, giving the company access to customers requiring chips with high performance for workloads like artificial intelligence. AMD sees this deal as combining two companies that complement each other‘s strengths without cannibalizing its own markets. []

Only a few weeks after the successful public offering of Array Technologies proved that there‘s a market for technologies aimed at improving efficiencies across the solar manufacturing and installation chain, Leading Edge Equipment has raised capital for its novel silicon wafer manufacturing equipment. The 7.6 million financing came fromPrime Impact Fund, Clean Energy Ventures and []

Deci, a Tel Aviv-based startup that is building a new platform that uses AI to optimized AI models and get them ready for production, today announced that it has raised a 9.1 million seed round led by Emerge and Square Peg. The general idea here is to make it easier and faster for businesses to []

Uber is facing another legal challenge in Europe related to algorithmic decision making. The App Drivers Couriers Union (ADCU) filed a case, yesterday, with a court in the Netherlands seeking to challenge the ride hailing company‘s practice of robo-firing‘ aka the use of automated systems to identify fraudulent activity and terminate drivers based []

NeoLight, a startup company that‘s working to bring hospital-grade neonatal care technologies to the home, has raised 7 million more in financing. Dignity Health and Honor Health Systems came in to support the company along with previous investors like the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and his wife Ashley and other, undisclosed investors. Initially intended []

With a new 4 million round, the Bogota-based supply chain logistics technology developer Tl is prepping to expand across the Latin American region. Founded by Enrique Villamarin Lafaurie and Juan Carlos Narvez, Tl‘s technology connects construction manufacturers to the small businesses across Latin America that are responsible for handling half of the inventory for construction []

FreshToHome, an Indian e-commerce startup that sells fresh vegetables, fish, chicken and other kinds of meat, has raised 121 million in a new financing round as the Bangalore-headquartered firm reports accelerated growth spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. The startup, which offers its service in several major Indian cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, and Hyderabad, []

Dating app Tinder has flipped the switch, turning on a video chat feature for its entire user-base. The global rollout of the virtual dates feature, which it‘s calling Face to Face‘, follows select market tests this summer. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the usual pattern of hook-up app usage, where a digital swipe right in []

More robots are coming to White Castle. Expanding a partnership with Miso Robotics, around 10 new White Castle locations will be rolling out the Pasadena, Calif.-based company‘s robotic fry cook. The move accelerates the adoption of Miso Robotics‘ newly designed Flippy robot into kitchens to speed up production and allow more staff to work in []

Tinder, currently the world‘s biggest biggest dating app for people to find matches and connect with them, is expanding another feature today to extend the time people spend in the app, and the communications they can have within it. Face to Face, an opt-in-only feature that Tinder launched earlier this year that lets users video []

InVideo, a Mumbai-based startup that has built a video creation and editing platform, has raised 15 million as it looks to court more users and customers worldwide. The startup offers a freemium web-based editing tool that allows users to create videos for all the popular social media platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube). It has []

In the first real test of the potentially transformative power of its food-preserving technology, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based Apeel Sciences is bringing its innovative food treatment and supply chain management services to distribution centers in select markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The goal is to alleviate food insecurity among farmers, who comprise one []

Last month, former Facebook and Pinterest executive Tim Kendall told Congress during a House hearing on the dangers of social media that Facebook made its products so addictive because its ad-driven business model relies on people paying attention to its product longer every day. He said much the same in the Netflix documentary The Social []

Last month, former Facebook and Pinterest executive Tim Kendall told Congress during a House hearing on the dangers of social media that Facebook made its products so addictive because its ad-driven business model relies on people paying attention to its product longer every day. He said much the same in the Netflix documentary The Social []

Not just the future of civilization is up for grabs this November. In this age of mobile social computing, we‘re figuring out how to vote, entertain, teach, learn, and commit to meaningful change. Thanks to the pandemic emergency, our plans for transforming our country and planet are subject to immediate recall. Much of the current []

Facebook gets into cloud gaming while continuing its public dispute with Apple, Ant Group prepares for a massive IPO and Pinterest embraces iOS widgets. This is your Daily Crunch for October 26, 2020. The big story: Facebook launches cloud gaming service Facebook is launching a cloud gaming service of its very own, although the focus []

As promised, Microsoft announced that it has added full trackpad and mouse support for the iPadOS version of Microsoft 360. That includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint, marking another important step in Apple‘s longstanding push to blur the line between tablet and desktop, making iPads more well-rounded productivity machines. Apple laid the foundation back in March, []