Anna Heim

Freelance Reporter, TechCrunch

Anna is a freelance reporter at TechCrunch, exploring SaaS and more. Former LATAM & Media Editor at The Next Web, startup founder and Sciences Po Paris alum.

Anna Heim

While funding for Italian startups has been growing, the country still ranks eighth in Europe by VC investment, according to Dealroom. Newly created Italian Founders Fund (IFF) hopes to help…

With €50 million to invest, Italian Founders Fund looks for entrepreneurs with global ambitions

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Anna will be covering for him this week. Sign up here to…

Startups Weekly: Ups, downs, and silver linings

It’s not just instant-delivery startups that are struggling. Oda, the Norway-based online supermarket delivery startup, has confirmed layoffs of 150 jobs as it drastically scales back its expansion ambitions to…

SoftBank-backed grocery startup Oda lays off 150, resets focus on Norway and Sweden

Less than one year after its iOS launch, French startup ten ten has gone viral with a walkie talkie app that allows teens to send voice messages to their close…

French startup ten ten reinvents the walkie-talkie

With fewer than 400,000 inhabitants, Iceland receives more than its fair share of tourists — and of venture capital.

Iceland’s startup scene is all about making the most of the country’s resources

In an interview at his home near Reykjavík, the entrepreneur-turned-VC shared thoughts on his ventures and the journey that led him from Unity to climate tech, a homecoming of sorts.

Unity co-founder David Helgason’s next act: Gaming the climate crisis

China has closed a third state-backed investment fund to bolster its semiconductor industry and reduce reliance on other nations, both for using and manufacturing wafers — prioritizing what is called…

China’s $47B semiconductor fund puts chip sovereignty front and center

Remittances from workers in the U.S. to their families and friends in Latin America amounted to $155 billion in 2023. With such a huge opportunity, banks, money transfer companies, retailers,…

Félix Pago raises $15.5 million to help Latino workers send money home via WhatsApp

Venture investment into Spanish startups also held up quite well, with €2.2 billion raised across some 850 funding rounds.

Spanish startups reached €100 billion in aggregate value last year

The French Secretary of State for the Digital Economy as of this year, Marina Ferrari, revealed this year’s laureates during VivaTech week in Paris. According to its promoters, this fifth…

The biggest French startups in 2024 according to the French government

Four-year-old Mexican BNPL startup Aplazo facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer doesn’t have a credit card.

Aplazo is using buy now, pay later as a stepping stone to financial ubiquity in Mexico

High interest rates and financial pressures make it more important than ever for finance teams to have a better handle on their cash flow, and several startups are hoping to…

Israeli startup Panax raises a $10M Series A for its AI-driven cash flow management platform

Featured Article

How European disability tech startups are leveraging AI

Making life better for people with disabilities is a laudable goal, but accessibility tech hasn’t traditionally been popular among VCs. In 2022, disability tech companies attracted around $4 billion in early-stage investments, which was a fraction of fintech’s intake, for example. One reason is that disability tech startups are often…

10:02 am PDT • April 30, 2024
How European disability tech startups are leveraging AI

Gideon Valkin’s solo VC firm Andrena Ventures is raising $12 million from backers, including several VCs and entrepreneurs, and made its first investment into AI startup Nustom.

Solo GP fund Andrena Ventures hopes to carry startup talent onto its next challenges

Fintoc’s API lets online businesses accept instant payments coming directly from the customer’s bank account. This method, known as A2A, offers an alternative to credit card transactions.

Chilean instant payments API startup Fintoc raises $7 million to turn Mexico into its main market

The transaction represents a premium of a whopping 212% over Matterport’s last closing share price before the deal was announced on April 22.

Y Combinator alum Matterport is being bought by real estate juggernaut CoStar at a 212% premium

Following its first close with limited partners, including Eutelsat, the early-stage fund will build a global portfolio of 30 startups that will be backed at the seed and Series A…

Seraphim Space launches second VC fund with 9 investments already under its belt

finmid is building an embedded finance product that targets that relationship between marketplaces and sellers, and raised a Series A round to further build out its product and enter new…

Finmid raises $24.7M to help SMBs access loans through platforms like Wolt

Brazilian startup Salvy, a mobile carrier for businesses, was the only company based in Latin America in Y Combinator’s latest batch, the accelerator confirmed to TechCrunch.

Y Combinator’s latest cohort had only one LatAm startup in large part because of AI

Rubrik, the data management company that filed for IPO this week, has an AI governance committee, per its IPO filing. The detail is worth noting because it could soon be…

Rubrik’s IPO filing reveals an AI governance committee. Get used to it.

Robovision has raised $42M to industrialize deep learning tools and make them more accessible to businesses that are not tech companies at their core.

Belgian computer vision startup Robovision eyes US expansion to address labor shortages

AIF still has resources in its first fund to do a “handful” more deals as well as follow-on investments.

Autism Impact Fund closes $60M first fund and broadens its scope

While super{set} is backed by external investors, some of its capital comes from founding managing partners Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, who previously co-founded Krux and sold it to Salesforce.

Boutique startup studio super{set} gets another $90 million to co-found data and AI companies

Its long-term goal is to make more efficient semiconductors with a lower carbon footprint, while supporting what its CEO refers to as “the electrification of society,” starting with transportation.

French deep tech spinout Diamfab crystallizes hopes for diamond semiconductors to support green transition

In a market that no longer favors growth at all costs, GoStudent’s €3 billion valuation and global expansion may belong to the past. However, the Austrian tutoring platform reshaped quickly.

GoStudent, the online learning platform, says it’s now profitable

The sum will be split roughly evenly between two funds, Frontline Growth and Frontline Seed. The seed fund will favor European ventures, while the growth fund is focused on American…

Frontline Ventures raises $200M targeting B2B startups straddling the Atlantic

OTB Ventures’ new $185 million fund for deep tech in Europe will mostly be deployed at the Series A stage; but up to 10% could be allocated to seed funding,…

With backing from NATO Innovation Fund, OTB Ventures will invest $185M into European deep tech

Elaia’s third deep tech seed fund, DTS3, is double the size of the two previous funds, and signals the momentum that is forming around an emerging concept: European dynamism.

As European dynamism gathers momentum, Elaia and partners double down with new deep tech fund

France-based startup Nijta, whose flagship product Voice Harbor anonymizes voices for AI, raised €2 million in funding from various sources, including deep tech VC fund Elaia.

French startup Nijta hopes to protect voice privacy in AI use cases

Barcelona-based clean tech startup SolarMente recently added Leonardo DiCaprio to its cap table, hence becoming the actor’s and activist’s first investment in the country.

Leonardo DiCaprio backs YC alum SolarMente to democratize solar power in Spain