Arrenda, a Mexico City-based fintech company, is offering digital financial services to the real estate market of Latin America and closed on $26.5 million in a pre-seed round of equity and debt. The funding round was a mix of $1.5 million in equity and $25 million in debt financing. Fasanara Capital led the investment and…
Conversational commerce isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, with countless companies using live chats, messaging apps, chatbots, voice assistants and more to encourage consumers to part with their cash. As part of that broader movement, the mighty WhatsApp, a dominant force in the messaging world, has been pushing deeper into the business arena with myriad tools…
In today’s earnings call, Netflix confirmed the reports that have been circulating since last week that it is renegotiating deals to allow the streamer to put content on its cheaper advertising-supported plan, the arrival of which on the platform has been moved to early 2023. “The vast majority of what people watch on Netflix we…
It was with great fanfare in 2015 that Apple announced that certain MacBook models would ship with redesigned keys, so-called “butterfly” keys, designed to fit in the laptops’ shallower cases. Replacing the traditional scissor-based switches with a new “butterfly” mechanism, the company boasted that it shaved off 40% thickness per key. But problems emerged. In…
Security vulnerabilities in a popular Chinese-built GPS vehicle tracker can be easily exploited to track and remotely cut the engines of at least a million vehicles around the world, according to new research. Worse, the company that makes the GPS trackers has made no effort to fix them. Cybersecurity startup BitSight said it found six…
Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t be introducing a previously announced new policy that would effectively ban developers from selling open source software on the Windows app store. Section 10.8.7 of its Microsoft Store Policies document, which was updated in mid-June and had been due to come into effect on Saturday (July 16), had said…
The pandemic has triggered more demand for online shopping and fueled many smaller retailers to establish their own online offerings. Japanese commerce enabler AnyMind, which helps brands and influencers’ online operations, has closed a ¥5 billion (approximately $36 million) Series D round on the back of that boost to make additional acquisitions in Japan and…
Uber has agreed to settle a lawsuit alleging that the ride-hail company violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by overcharging riders with disabilities. The company will offer several million dollars in compensation to more than 65,000 Uber users who were “charged discriminatory fees due to disability,” according to a statement from the United States…
Facebook parent Meta’s been putting up a strong fight appealing the UK antitrust decision investigating and ultimately ordering Meta to sell Giphy, the GIF marketplace that it acquired back in May 2020 for around $315 million; and now it has gotten a small stay of execution: the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal has sent the case…
Syrius Robotics, a Chinese startup that makes autonomous robots for warehouses, just secured 50 million yuan ($7.4 million) in a Series B funding round, lifting its total raised so far to $40 million. The four-year-old company specializes in what’s called automated mobile robots (AMR), in contrast to some of its competitors that offer automated guided…
