Last night, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky took to Twitter to share what he’s seeing in the company’s data. The broad strokes version was that the pandemic-induced flexibility in our work lives has allowed more people to travel during the week, and even travel for months at a time, effectively living on Airbnb. 13. So basically,…
AudioMob is a startup that provides ‘non-intrusive’ audio ads within mobile games. It turns out that gamers don’t seem to mind little ads like this popping up, and somehow AudioMob seems to have cracked the mechanic. It’s now raised a $14 million Series A round led by Makers Fund and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Also participating…
Apple Music users around the world will soon have access to more Chinese musicians. Tencent Music Entertainment, the online music subsidiary of Tencent, said Tuesday that “record labels and artists” who are part of its “Music Cloud” program can now distribute their works through Apple Music. This isn’t the first time Tencent has joined hands…
Instagram earlier this year said it would explore the idea of creator subscriptions and was later spotted developing a feature that would offer exclusive Stories that were only visible to a creator’s subscriptions. Now, it seems, the company is poised to launch creator subscriptions into broader testing. According to two third-party app intelligence services, Instagram…
As venture capital totals grow in Latin America, the region is about to see its leading champion go public. Nubank’s IPO is coming into closer focus after the Brazilian neobank filed privately to list its shares in both the United States and its home market, later releasing a public IPO filing. One investor in the…
JUMO, a South Africa- and London-based company that offers financial services to entrepreneurs and businesses in emerging markets, has raised $120 million in a new round of funding led by Fidelity Management & Research Company. The round, which marks Fidelity’s first investment in an African company, also saw the participation from fintech giant Visa and…
BrightChamps, an Indian edtech startup that is attempting to bridge the learning gap left by K12 schools, said on Monday it has raised $51 million in a new financing round and $63 million since launching a year ago as the Goa-headquartered firm looks to expand its footprints in over 10 nations. The startup, which is…
Jacob Mullins Contributor Jacob Mullins is a managing director at Shasta Ventures, where he has invested in VR/AR since 2016. More posts by this contributor The top 10 best of VR in 2016 Investment Banking 2.0 Says “Hello World!?” Facebook is in the fight for its life, but it won’t be the regulatory pressure that…
H2O.ai — a startup that has developed an open-source framework as well as proprietary apps that make it easier for any kind of enterprise to build and operate artificial intelligence-based services — has seen a surge of interest as AI applications have become more ubiquitous, and enterprises beyond tech companies want to get in on…
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes…
