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Levchin’s Affirm secures $100M credit line from Morgan Stanley
This morning, fintech startup Affirm announced a new $100 million credit line from Morgan Stanley. The money will go directly to supporting the company’s current financial products that help customers purchase goods and spread their expenses over a period of time. Morgan Stanley is not the first institutional lender to issue a line of credit to the company. In May of 2015, Affirm closed… Read More
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A test flight with Zipline, makers of humanitarian delivery drones
A maker of delivery drones called Zipline began nationwide delivery of blood and other critical medical supplies in Rwanda today, through a partnership with the Rwandan government. The program strikes a hopeful note about drones, following news earlier this week that ISIS fighters had packed a hobbyist drone with explosives in Iraq, killing two Kurdish fighters who captured and disassembled it. Read More
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Pinterest hits 150M monthly users, missing earlier leaked projections in 2015
Today, Pinterest said it hit 150 million monthly active users, up from the 100 million it announced in September 2015. However, as TechCrunch previously reported, Pinterest in 2015 was targeting that it would hit 151 million monthly active users by the end of 2015. We reported the story in October last year, and the information was used by Andreessen Horowitz to solicit limited partners to… Read More
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Alibaba backs PlaceIQ, a provider of location tools and data
PlaceIQ has a new, big-name investor — Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.
The companies aren’t disclosing the size of the deal; they’ll only say that it’s a strategic, minority investment, and that it’s an addition to the $25 million round that PlaceIQ announced at the beginning of this year. Co-founder and CEO Duncan McCall told me this is part of a larger… Read More
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What regulation crowdfunding in the JOBS Act means to entrepreneurs and startups
The JOBS Act was signed into law by President Obama in 2012, allowing companies to acquire funding through online portals from non-accredited investors, which roughly accounts for 97 percent of the population in the United States. On May 16, 2016, Title III of the JOBS Act, also known as regulation crowdfunding, or equity crowdfunding, was the last section to be implemented by the SEC. Read More
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Shine is rolling out on-demand life coaching via text message
A startup called Shine is rolling out a new service offering on-demand life coaching via text messages as a paid tier to its free, daily texting service. While a number of today’s chatbots and SMS-based concierge services have been focused on helping people shop via text message, Shine to date has instead focused on helping you become a better person. Through automated texts,… Read More
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Noodle Partners raises $4 million to help colleges deliver degrees online
Noodle Partners Inc., a new education venture from the founder of The Princeton Review and 2U Inc., John Katzman, has raised $4 million in venture funding to help colleges and universities deliver high-quality certificate and degree programs online. Philadelphia-based Osage Venture Partners led the investment in Noodle Partners and was joined by New Markets Venture Partners, 500 Startups… Read More
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The Markforged Mark X lets you teleport precision custom parts from designer to printer
The promise of 3D printing has been kind of a dud. Aside from a few cool Yoda heads and some small plastic pieces, there have been no “indie” players doing much interesting in the space except Markforged. Markforged is a Boston company we featured last year that makes carbon-fiber reinforced plastic parts using traditional 3D-printing techniques. This means the objects they print… Read More
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Facebook, Twitter cut off data access for Geofeedia, a social media surveillance startup
According to a new study published today from the American Civil Liberties Union, major social networks including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have recently provided user data access to Geofeedia, the location-based, social media surveillance system used by government offices, private security firms, marketers and others.
As TechCrunch previously reported, Geofeedia is one of a bevy of… Read More
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Dropbox rolls out PDF signing, iMessage integrations and picture-in-picture on iOS
Dropbox is still working its way through the enterprise world in order to show the world it isn’t just dumb online storage — which, given as simple as it was to use, was one of the tool’s original top selling points.
So it’s had to shift gears in order to focus on larger companies, and that means consistently rolling out new tools that companies need as they start to… Read More
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