Uber Technologies announced Tuesday that it will buy the Taiwan unit of Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda for $950 million in cash. The deal is part of Uber Eats’ strategy to expand in Asia, specifically by strengthening its position in Taiwan. On the other hand, it also underscores Delivery Hero’s ongoing retreat from that same market: The sale […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

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 markets. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Tesla’s factory outside Berlin, Germany will likely be shut down for days and cost the automaker more than $100 million, after a suspected arson attack on the local power grid. The fire didn’t spread to Tesla’s factory and nobody was harmed, though employees were evacuated. Thousands of residents in the area also briefly lost power […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Everyone has a story in them, as someone famous once said. A startup called Inkitt believes that it can use AI to turn the strongest of these into blockbusters and to build a new “Disney” for the 21st century around that content. Now, it’s raised $37 million in aid of that ambition. The startup’s eponymous […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

There have been many attempts at open source AI-powered voice assistants (see Rhasspy, Mycroft and Jasper, to name a few) — all established with the goal of creating privacy-preserving, offline experiences that don’t compromise on functionality. But development’s proven to be extraordinarily slow. That’s because, in addition to all the usual challenges attendant with open […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

There’s a reason why some people are die-hard Microsoft Outlook fans. It brings together your emails, your calendar events and your contacts in a single app. But . . . it’s Outlook. And some people can’t stand its convoluted interface. Amie, one of the most innovative apps in the new wave of calendar apps, is adding emails to its […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Just a year after raising $11.6 million, Kittl raised another $36 million in a Series B round led by IVP with some existing investors participating once again. The Berlin-based startup has been working on a graphic design tool that you can use in your web browser without having to install an app. At this point, […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

This is Getsafe's second acquisition in a few months, after it nabbed the German portfolio of ailing French insurtech company Luko. © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Berlin-based banking startup N26 is rolling out a new stock and ETF trading feature starting with Austria as the first market. This product launch marks a renewed focus on the startup’s core markets with a larger portfolio of banking products in those countries. Like many challenger banks, N26 started with a simple product — an account […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more

Following competition objections raised on Google in Germany this summer over bundling of services including Google Maps via its Android-based in-car infotainment system software, known as Google Automotive Services (GAS), the tech giant has made an offer of some service unbundling and the removal of contractual restrictions it applies to vehicle makers in a bid […] © 2023 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only ..read more