Author: TechCrunch News

Founded in 2014, Blossom Finance was first intended for Muslim entrepreneurs in the United States. The microfinancing platform connects investors with small businesses using mudarabah, a shariah-compliant profit-sharing agreement. But founder Matthew Joseph Martin soon realized that the startup, backed by investors like Boost VC and Tim Draper, was serving a relatively niche market in…

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hi, folks! It’s Wednesday, and we’re running around like crazy, so let’s get to it! Wooooo! — Christine and Haje The TechCrunch Top 3 Can you see it?: Enterprise security company Lookout…

Meta shared some updated engagement info around its platforms on its Q1 2023 quarterly earnings call on Wednesday, with Meta CFO Susan Li joining CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg to field questions from analysts about its results. Zuckerberg shared that time spent on Instagram has grown more than 24% since the company launched Reels on…

Meet Bastion, a French startup that was created in October 2022 to help small companies tackle cybersecurity risks without too many complexities. Created by former Palantir employees, the company has already raised $2.8 million. What makes Bastion different from other cybersecurity startups is that it wants to be your first and last cybersecurity subscription. It…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk might be ordered to testify under oath in a lawsuit that blames Autopilot, Tesla’s advanced driver assistance system, for a fatal crash in 2018. The tentative ruling, issued by a California judge Wednesday and first reported by Reuters, came in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of Walter Huang…

The energy-intensive process of separating and purifying chemicals and gases is a big reason why industries like plastic manufacturing cause so much pollution. UniSieve wants to reduce their carbon emissions and operational costs with its tech, which uses a high-precision membrane with special crystals that can filter specific molecules and ions. Today the Zurich-based startup…

Smile Identity, a KYC compliance and ID verification partner for many African fintechs and businesses, has acquired Inclusive Innovations, the parent company of Appruve, a Ghanaian developer of identity verification software. In a statement shared with TechCrunch, Smile Identity said it is “actively fulfilling regulatory requirements to finalize the transaction for the [Inclusive Innovation] affiliated…

Japanese shared micromobility startup Luup has raised $30 million (4.5 billion yen) in a Series D financing round, which consists of 3.8 billion yen in equity and 700 million yen in debt. Luup has now amassed a total of $68 million in equity, debt, and asset financing to date, at what sources said valued the…

Coinbase has filed a petition to compel the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to respond to a months-old petition that asks whether the securities regulator would allow the industry to be regulated using existing SEC frameworks, the exchange firm said on Monday, escalating its tensions with the regulator that has ramped up enforcement actions and…

The UK has signalled it will press ahead with an ex ante competition reform aimed at addressing the market muscle of Big Tech. The legislation will also aim to strengthen consumer rights by targeting fake reviews and subscription traps, with the aim of making it less of a minefield for web users to shop online…