Author: TechBrunch
Steve Brotman founded Alpha Partners in 2014 with a then-novel idea: to invest alongside venture capitalists and retain ownership of promising companies as they move into later-stage funding rounds. Alpha's first fund was just $10 million. But as startups stayed private for longer, the venture capital industry devised a variety of mechanisms to keep a stake in the most promising startups. Many early-stage companies raised opportunity funds, dedicated pools of capital designed specifically to multiply the most promising investments. Others relied on special purpose vehicles (SPVs), financial instruments that allow multiple parties to pool their money to invest in a…
Automation and IT monitoring company Progress announced on Monday its intention to acquire file management platform ShareFile for $875 million in cash and credit. Progress CEO Yogesh Gupta said the deal, expected to close by Nov. 30, will add tools to Progress' portfolio to help companies share documents and collaborate more efficiently. “Today's businesses must continuously streamline operations to drive efficiency, security and compliance while improving the effectiveness of how they serve their customers,” Gupta said in a statement. “ShareFile's customers will benefit from Progress' strong customer focus, broad product portfolio and expertise, and unmatched track record of customer success.”…
We're excited to announce that we've confirmed a dedicated Space Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. This stage will join industry-specific stages like Fintech, SaaS, and AI, all coming together under one big roof. Additionally, we're excited to announce that this year we'll be running a pitch competition as part of the event: “The Space Challenge, powered by Aerospace.” The full agenda for Disrupt 2024's space stage As the space industry accelerates, new opportunities for founders, investors and customers are proliferating. Not only are the once-astronomical costs of doing business in orbit falling, but so are the technological barriers to entry.…
WhatsApp, the world's most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app with over 2 billion users, allows users to exchange photos and videos that disappear as soon as they are opened. But a bug in the way WhatsApp implements the so-called “view once” feature on its browser-based web app could allow malicious recipients to view and save photos and videos that are supposed to disappear soon after being viewed. The “Seen Once” feature is designed to work only on the Android and iOS WhatsApp mobile apps. WhatsApp introduced the feature in 2021. Typically, when users receive a “view once” photo or video…
As always, more rumors have popped up in the days leading up to the event. Among the more recent (all Apple Watch related) interesting rumours are that the Apple Watch Series 10's blood pressure monitoring feature will not be coming to the Watch Ultra 2, Apple Intelligence features are limited to the Watch but will be integrated into fitness coach-like features in the future, and both models will reportedly have sleep apnea features, though they likely won't be available at launch. Apple will unveil the iPhone 16 at its “It's Glowtime” event on September 9. That much is certain. But…
The data architecture of today's enterprises is completely different from 20 years ago, but monitoring and tracing tools haven't kept up, making it difficult for engineering teams to pinpoint the root cause of errors or latency issues. Israeli developer Eden Federman believes the solution is a more advanced observability method: distributed tracing, but has found that adoption is lower than he expected due to high implementation hurdles. This prompted him to co-found Odigos, a startup that helps companies easily monitor the complex, cloud-native systems that process massive amounts of data, as is often the case today. He and CEO Ari…
The bookkeeping, accounting, and finance startup for small businesses has finally raised $50 million in a Series B funding round and secured a $150 million credit line, as first reported by TechCrunch. The funding comes just seven months after the fintech company announced it had raised $10 million in funding, bringing the total amount the Miami-based company has raised since its founding in 2018 to $305 million in debt ($235 million in credit facilities) and equity ($74 million). Felix Rodriguez came up with the idea after watching his Dominican-born family start businesses in the U.S. He also experienced challenges when…
Car rental giant Avis said the personal information and driver's license numbers of hundreds of thousands of people were stolen in a cyberattack in August. In data breach notification letters filed with several U.S. attorneys general over the past week, the New Jersey-based company said it discovered an intruder in one of its business applications on Aug. 5 and worked to stop the unauthorized access that began two days earlier. Avis has not disclosed the nature of the cyberattack, and details of the incident are unclear. An Avis spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment about the cyberattack.…
Indian electric scooter maker Ather Energy plans to raise about $370 million in an initial public offering, according to a draft prospectus (PDF) filed on Monday, as the startup seeks to capitalize on growing demand for electric vehicles in the world's third-largest auto market. The Bengaluru-based startup, which competes with recently listed rival Ola Electric Inc., is targeting a valuation of $1.5 billion to $2 billion, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The company plans to sell new shares in the IPO as well as up to 22 million shares from existing investors. Other Energy declined to comment. The…
As European startups continue to search for signs of lasting market confidence beyond the hype surrounding AI companies, Atomico, one of the region's largest and most iconic venture capital firms, has raised more cash to make investments that could signal real market movement. The venture capital firm has raised a new fund totaling $1.24 billion to back early- and growth-stage startups across the region. London-based Atomico is calling it its “largest fundraise to date,” but it's technically spread across two pools of capital: Atomico Ventures VI, a $485 million fund aimed primarily at Series A companies (with some reserved for…