Tokyo-based mobile banking app Kyash raises a $41M Series D from Block, Greyhound, and others; report says it is Block’s first investment in Asia (Kate Park/TechCrunch)

Kate Park / TechCrunch: Tokyo-based mobile banking app Kyash raises a $41M Series D from Block, Greyhound, and others; report says it is Block’s first investment in Asia  —  Kyash, a Tokyo-based mobile financial app, has raised $41.2 million (4.9 billion JPY) Series D funding.  —  The round comes from a number …

French cloud service OVHcloud files an antitrust complaint about Microsoft with the European Commission; sources say complaint focuses on Microsoft’s licensing (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal: French cloud service OVHcloud files an antitrust complaint about Microsoft with the European Commission; sources say complaint focuses on Microsoft’s licensing  —  France’s OVHcloud has filed a complaint that Microsoft is abusing its position to hurt competition

Bored Ape Yacht Club launches ApeCoin, or the $APE token, with 1B in total supply, and forms the ApeCoin DAO, whose founding members include Alexis Ohanian (Lucas Matney/TechCrunch)

Lucas Matney / TechCrunch: Bored Ape Yacht Club launches ApeCoin, or the $APE token, with 1B in total supply, and forms the ApeCoin DAO, whose founding members include Alexis Ohanian  —  Even among the fastest-growing crypto startups, Yuga Labs has had a particularly explosive year.  —  The startup is behind …

A possible new Covid-19 vaccine could be accessible for more of the world

While many people in wealthier countries have been vaccinated against Covid-19, there is still a need for vaccination in much of the world. A new vaccine developed at MIT and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center may aid in those efforts, offering an inexpensive, easy-to-store, and effective alternative to RNA vaccines. In a new paper, the […]

A fabric that “hears” your heartbeat

Having trouble hearing? Just turn up your shirt. That’s the idea behind a new “acoustic fabric” developed by engineers at MIT and collaborators at Rhode Island School of Design. The team has designed a fabric that works like a microphone, converting sound first into mechanical vibrations, then into electrical signals, similarly to how our ears […]

Wasoko, formerly Sokowatch, a Kenya-based B2B marketplace that offers a BNPL service to retailers, raises a $125M Series B, source says at a $625M valuation (Tage Kene-Okafor/TechCrunch)

Tage Kene-Okafor / TechCrunch: Wasoko, formerly Sokowatch, a Kenya-based B2B marketplace that offers a BNPL service to retailers, raises a $125M Series B, source says at a $625M valuation  —  Informal retail is king in Africa, with hundreds of billions of dollars of consumer goods are sold through its channels yearly.

Treehouse, which provides DeFi data analytics, raises an $18M seed led by an “undisclosed large fintech investor”, with Binance and others participating (Jamie Crawley/CoinDesk)

Jamie Crawley / CoinDesk: Treehouse, which provides DeFi data analytics, raises an $18M seed led by an “undisclosed large fintech investor”, with Binance and others participating  —  Treehouse aims to provide retail investors the infrastructure needed for them to make informed decisions on their DeFi positions

SpaceFill, which helps companies build flexible logistics networks in Europe by offering warehouse space and a SaaS monitoring tool, raises $27M led by NGP (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: SpaceFill, which helps companies build flexible logistics networks in Europe by offering warehouse space and a SaaS monitoring tool, raises $27M led by NGP  —  French startup SpaceFill has raised a $27 million funding round (€25 million) led by NGP Capital with Maersk Growth …

Google Domains comes out of beta in 26 countries, seven years after launch; the service now supports over 300 domain endings (Kris Holt/Engadget)

Kris Holt / Engadget: Google Domains comes out of beta in 26 countries, seven years after launch; the service now supports over 300 domain endings  —  Seven long, long years ago, Google started offering users a way to buy a domain without having to deal with a host provider.  Now, Google Domains is at last […]

Bear Robotics, which develops food service robots that aim to reduce the workload of human waitstaffs, raises a $81M Series B led by IMM (Brian Heater/TechCrunch)

Brian Heater / TechCrunch: Bear Robotics, which develops food service robots that aim to reduce the workload of human waitstaffs, raises a $81M Series B led by IMM  —  One of the most interesting things about following food robotics startups over the past couple of years is tracking all of the different tasks companies …

Akeneo, which makes product experience management and product information management software, raises a $135M Series D led by Summit Partners (FinSMEs)

FinSMEs: Akeneo, which makes product experience management and product information management software, raises a $135M Series D led by Summit Partners  —  Akeneo, a Nantes, France- and Boston, MA-based provider of product experience management (PXM) and product information management (PIM) solutions, raised $135M in Series D funding.

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a planet? Nope, just a star

The first worlds beyond our solar system were discovered three decades ago. Since then, close to 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed in our galaxy. Astronomers have detected another 5,000 planetary candidates — objects that might be planets but have yet to be confirmed. Now, the list of planets has shrunk by at least three. In […]

France-based Doctolib, a booking service for doctors and medical workers, raises €500M in equity and debt led by Eurazeo at a €5.8B valuation (Romain Dillet/TechCrunch)

Romain Dillet / TechCrunch: France-based Doctolib, a booking service for doctors and medical workers, raises €500M in equity and debt led by Eurazeo at a €5.8B valuation  —  French startup Doctolib has announced that is has raised a new funding round.  With this round, the company has reached a valuation …

Germany-based Staffbase, a communications service for internal teams to send messages and measure their impact, raises a $115M Series E at a $1.1B valuation (Ingrid Lunden/TechCrunch)

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch: Germany-based Staffbase, a communications service for internal teams to send messages and measure their impact, raises a $115M Series E at a $1.1B valuation  —  The Covid-19 pandemic, with its by-product of social distancing to help reduce the spread of infection, led to many organizations working …

ChannelEngine, which helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, raises a $50M Series B led by Atomico (Paul Sawers/VentureBeat)

Paul Sawers / VentureBeat: ChannelEngine, which helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, raises a $50M Series B led by Atomico  —  ChannelEngine, a platform that helps brands manage their products and inventory across multiple third-party marketplaces, has raised $50 million in a series B round of funding.

When it comes to AI, can we ditch the datasets?

Huge amounts of data are needed to train machine-learning models to perform image classification tasks, such as identifying damage in satellite photos following a natural disaster. However, these data are not always easy to come by. Datasets may cost millions of dollars to generate, if usable data exist in the first place, and even the […]

Microsoft brings its DirectStorage API from Xbox to Windows to improve game load times and graphics details, after promising it in September 2020 (Michael Kan/PCMag)

Michael Kan / PCMag: Microsoft brings its DirectStorage API from Xbox to Windows to improve game load times and graphics details, after promising it in September 2020  —  “Starting today, Windows games can ship with DirectStorage,” Microsoft says.  “This public SDK release begins a new era of fast load times …

Israel’s National Cyber Directorate says the country has recovered from a large-scale DDoS attack on Monday, which took down several government websites (Jon Fingas/Engadget)

Jon Fingas / Engadget: Israel’s National Cyber Directorate says the country has recovered from a large-scale DDoS attack on Monday, which took down several government websites  —  Israel appears to be recovering from a large-scale cyberattack.  According to Haaretz and Kan’s Amichai Stein, attackers took …