Author: TechBrunch

Quickly! The content submission ends tomorrow, April 26th at 11:59pm PT. If you're a startup professional and want to lead a session at TechCrunch Disrupt, October 28-30, apply now. Submit your proposal to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 by the deadline. Your topic should enable startup founders, builders, and entrepreneurs to drive their businesses forward. Choose the format (or both!) that best suits your subject matter. Breakout sessions: 30 minutes of talk followed by 20 minutes of Q&A for up to 100 participants. Roundtable Discussions: Lead her 30-minute interactive conversations with up to 25 participants and foster organic dialogue. Our…

Social media platform TikTok said a bill banning the app in the United States is “unconstitutional” and it will challenge the latest attempt to restrict its use in court. The bill in question, signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday, gives Chinese parent company ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok or face a ban on app stores distributing the app in the United States. The bill received strong bipartisan support in the House of Representatives and a majority in the Senate. This is part of a broader bill that includes military aid to Israel and Ukraine. “Make no mistake about…

Rubrik stock debuted on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday at $38 per share. The cybersecurity company raised $752 million Wednesday night at a price of $32 per share, slightly above its original target range of $29 to $31. The share price gives Rubrik a fully diluted valuation of $6.6 billion, an 88% increase from its previous underlying valuation of $3.5 billion in 2019. Rubrik sells cloud-based security software to enterprise customers and has 1,700 customers with commitments of $100,000 or more and 100 customers who pay the company more than $1 million annually. The Silicon Valley startup was…

Social networks Bluesky and Mastodon may soon be accessible from within one app. At least, that's what Bluesky hopes. This new decentralized social network was originally founded within Twitter, run by Jack Dorsey, and will connect, or “bridge”, Mastodon's requests with Bluesky's, allowing consumer-facing apps like Ivory to connect with him as well. We are supporting the project to make it compatible with Bluesky. The project, dubbed SkyBridge, received a small grant from Bluesky of $4,800 to be distributed throughout the project. SkyBridge was his second largest recipient in this current cohort, receiving his $800 of the total. Bluesky announced…

Adam Mosseri, head of Threads and Instagram, today announced that Threads is launching a new feature that lets you filter out words and phrases from your feed and mentions. The “Hidden Words” feature automatically mutes common words, phrases, and emojis that may be offensive to users. In addition to these preset filters, users can add their own custom words and phrases to the settings. Users can turn off these settings at any time. Earlier this week, dating app Hinge launched its own “Hidden Words” feature (yes, it's the same name) that blocks requests with comments containing unwanted words. Image credit:…

Fintech giant Stripe continues to inch its way back into the crypto market. The company announced Thursday that it will begin accepting cryptocurrency payments, initially only in Solana, Ethereum, and Polygon, with customers starting with one currency in particular, the USDC stablecoin. This is the first time Stripe has used cryptocurrency payments since 2018, when it stopped supporting Bitcoin because it was too volatile. Stripe made its first re-entry into the cryptocurrency market in 2022 by announcing payments (not payments) in USDC, with Twitter as the service's primary customer. Thursday's news did not name the customer. Stripe co-founder and president…

Open banking may be a global trend, but implementation is fragmented. Fintech startups gearing up to do just that in smaller markets could become M&A targets for incumbents like Visa. One of them is Fintoc, a Y Combinator alumnus. Fintoc is his B2B fintech startup that he raised $7 million in a Series A round to strengthen its presence in his native Chile and Mexico, where he expanded a year ago. Fintoc's product is an API that allows online businesses to accept instant payments directly from their customers' bank accounts. This method, known as account-to-account (A2A), provides an alternative to…

This week, the Federal Trade Commission voted 3-2 to ban non-compete agreements. The FTC estimates that nearly one in five U.S. workers is subject to non-compete agreements, but these agreements are a big problem in Silicon Valley because they are unenforceable in California. do not have. This is perhaps one of the region's competitive advantages, allowing employees (in most cases) to start something new without having to worry about having to fight their former employer in court for years to come. Because you can. This ban allows the FTC to extend the same freedom to employees across the United States.…

RevenueCat is the top subscription management platform for apps that monetize through in-app purchases, and is currently receiving an influx of new funding as it expands into the web. The company completed its $12 million Series C led by Adjacent following the launch of RevenueCat Billing, a new product that allows web app developers to integrate subscription purchases into any website. Later, we plan to support Roku as well. The timing of this product's launch is noteworthy. The announcement comes amid the implementation of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulation, forcing Apple to open up its iPhone and App…

Paystand has acquired spend management software startup Teampay to build what the companies call a “fee-free B2B digital payments and spending powerhouse.” Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Teampay has raised $65 million since his founding in 2016. The combined company serves more than 1 million participants in more than 1 million businesses operating on commercial blockchains. The company claims to have processed more than $10 billion in transactions, representing nearly 2% of annual business-to-business payments in the United States. “Teampay represents this new class of fintech companies,” Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond told TechCrunch exclusively. “The company is…