Alpaca said this morning that it has closed a massive $50 million Series B round of capital. TechCrunch previously covered the company’s late-2019 $6 million seed round and its late-2020 $10 million Series A. Alpaca offers equities trading software via API. The company initially allowed firms to plug into its technology, powering the trading capabilities of […]

Poppi, a prebiotic soda brand, closed $13.5 million in a Series A2 round and is on a mission to lead in the new category of “functional soda” by offering a better-for-you product that also tastes good. The investor group includes CAVU Ventures as well as sports and entertainment celebrities like Russell Westbrook, the Chainsmokers, 24kGoldn, […]

Ragnarok, a ransomware gang operational since 2019 that gained notoriety after launching attacks against unpatched Citrix ADC servers, has shut down and released a free decryption key for its victims. The gang, sometimes referred to as Asnarok, last week replaced all 12 of the victims listed on its dark web portal with a short instruction […]

Social commerce startup Flip is mixing live commerce mobile apps with real customer reviews to improve the buying experience and opportunity for the creator economy. Today, the Los Angeles-based company closed on a $28 million Series A led Streamlined Ventures. Nooruldeen “Noor” Agha, a serial e-commerce entrepreneur, founded Flip in 2019 after emigrating to the […]

After a difficult year, the travel industry is gaining steam again this summer and Thatch is carving out a space for itself in the sector by enabling travel creators to monetize their recommendations. Today the company announced a $3 million Seed II round led by Wave Capital. They were joined by Freestyle VC’s Jenny Lefcourt […]

Berlin-based Xayn, which as we reported last year is doing ad-free, personalized, privacy-safe search as an alternative to tracking and profiling adtech giants like Google, has expanded its product offering — launching a desktop version (in beta for now). The desktop Xayn WebBeta is described as a “light web version” of the product with similar functionality […]

China’s National Press and Publication Administration has released a notice imposing limits on online gaming for minors. On September 1st, video game companies will have to restrict gaming time to three hours a week — from 8 PM to 9 PM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. With this new set of restrictions, Chinese authorities want […]

HAAS Alert, a SaaS company that provides real-time automotive collision prevention for public safety and roadway fleets, has raised $5 million in seed funding that the company says it will use to scale sales and outreach efforts and prioritize R&D with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) technology partnerships. The round was led by R^2 and Blu […]

Astra, now a public company, ran into a problem during its first commercial launch (the mission carried a test payload contracted by the U.S. Space Force as part of its Space Test Program) that meant the rocket never made it to orbit. On Saturday, the rocket ignited all its engines at liftoff time on the […]