The idea of becoming a real estate investor for as little as $5 may seem too good to be true. And for many users of Landa, a proptech company that promised just that — it has been. Landa emerged from stealth in August 2022, announcing a total of $33 million in funding and a pledge […]

In the U.S., a number of startups aim to be the corporate spend manager of choice for small and large businesses. Brex, Ramp, and Mercury are among those companies, just to name a few. Moving north of the border to Canada, the options are fewer, but growing. Keep is a startup that has built a […]

Brex has once again made the surprising, but perhaps realistic, decision to partner with another one-time competitor. This time Zip, the CEOs of both companies told TechCrunch exclusively.  In April 2022, fintech Brex announced it was making “a big push” into both the enterprise and software. The news was notable considering that Brex originally was […]

Melbourne O’Banion co-founded insurtech Bestow with Jonathan Abelmann in 2017 after struggling to secure his own life insurance policy. His goal was to make it easier for people to obtain life insurance and make the process more tech-enabled. Initially, Bestow operated as a direct-to-consumer insurance provider — selling, underwriting, and servicing life insurance policies. In […]

Rep. Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, has initiated an investigation into whether expense management startup Ramp is receiving preferential treatment in its bid for a $25 million government contract. Connolly sent a letter to General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian demanding information and documents related to the GSA’s […]

HR tech startup Rippling has raised a $450 million Series G round at a $16.8 billion valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. It is also conducting a $200 million tender offer to give current and former employees some liquidity. The equity raise marks a big jump in valuation from a year ago. In April 2024, […]

Sankaet Pathak’s last startup, fintech Synapse, filed for bankruptcy in 2024 amid issues with partner Evolve Bank & Trust. Tens of millions of dollars in deposits made by consumers, mostly customers of fintechs that worked with Synapse, remain unaccounted for. Yet according to The Information, Pathak is reportedly moving full steam ahead on attempts to […]

Fintech giant Stripe announced Wednesday a slew of new product launches at its annual Stripe Sessions user event. The highlights include a new AI foundation model for payments; stablecoin-powered accounts; a new Orchestration offering, and a recent migration with chip behemoth Nvidia. Stripe’s payments foundation model has been trained on tens of billions of transactions, […]

In February of 2024, equity management startup Carta revealed that it was getting into the startup winddown business with a new offering called Carta Conclusions. By December, the company had decided to “retire” that offering, according to a blog post. And now, SimpleClosure, a startup that has described itself as “the Turbo Tax of shutting […]

Finom, an Amsterdam-based digital bank for small- and medium-sized businesses, has raised €92.7 million (roughly $105 million) in a growth investment from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund, the company tells TechCrunch exclusively. The capital infusion “will be used exclusively and only for growth” and not for operational expenses or product development, Kos Stiskin, Finom’s chairman […]

Agree.com says its AI-powered e-signature platform is different from competitors because it includes invoicing and payment processing. That’s why the company might have a shot at tackling the industry Goliath, Docusign.  Because the startup makes its money from transaction fees for any money movement facilitated by its platform, Agree.com has made e-signatures free to all […]

Employer.com has acquired MainStreet.com for an undisclosed amount, the latest fintech startup to get snapped up by the workforce management company. In a post on X, Employer.com Chairman and co-founder Jesse Tinsley said the two companies were “merging forces to simplify business back office solutions into one powerhouse platform.” Tinsley confirmed the acquisition to TechCrunch. […]

Artificial intelligence is not just infiltrating the startup world. Now credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are getting into the AI game. Visa announced on Wednesday “Intelligent Commerce,” which it says enables AI “to find and buy.” AI agents will be able to shop and make purchases on behalf of consumers, based on preselected preferences. […]

Nuvo, a company that has built a social-like platform to facilitate easier purchasing of physical goods between businesses, has raised a $34 million Series A from Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The San Francisco-based startup previously raised $11 million in an undisclosed seed round led by Founders Fund and Index Ventures […]

In the latest development of an increasingly public dispute between HR and payroll services rivals, Deel has filed a countersuit against Rippling. To recap: Rippling publicly announced on March 17 that it was suing Deel over alleged corporate espionage, with accusations ranging from violation of the RICO racketeering act (typically used to prosecute organized crime) […]

Former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann has raised over $100 million in capital for his proptech startup, Flow, in a round that values that company at about $2.5 billion, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.  Citing anonymous sources familiar with the deal, Bloomberg reported that existing backer Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) participated in the financing. Neumann told Bloomberg that […]

Flex, a startup that offers personal finance software for business owners, has acquired Maza, a finance app aimed at Spanish speakers in the U.S., for $40 million, the companies told TechCrunch exclusively. At first glance, the pairing may seem a bit curious. Flex’s software and payments infrastructure is to help business owners have a single […]

After a sluggish couple of years, fintech appears to be making a comeback. In the first quarter of 2025, fintech startups globally raised a combined $10.3 billion — marking the highest level of funding since the first quarter of 2023, according to CB Insights research. The average deal size of $17.7 million also marked the […]

As an AI engineer at Meta, Boris Valkov helped build PyTorch, one of the world’s largest machine learning libraries. During his time there, Valkov realized that artificial intelligence “was about to unlock capabilities…in the application layer in the software stack.” He left Meta in late 2021 to start Lace AI, a startup that has developed […]

Expense management startup Ramp is being considered for a charge card pilot program by the U.S. government’s General Services Administration, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Thursday. The government’s internal expense card program, dubbed SmartPay, is a $700 billion program. It is estimated that the charge card pilot program contract for which Ramp is being […]