Mike Butcher
TechCrunch
United Kingdom
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Recent articles by Mike:
Silicon Valley VC 7BC Capital expands in Europe, recruits first venture partner –
Silicon Valley VC 7BC Venture Capital has decided to make an incursion into Europe, recruiting its first venture partner in the UK. Monty Munford was previously a freelance journalist, conference speaker and columnist contributing to Forbes, The Telegraph, The Economist, BBC Newsweek and Wired, among others. 7BC VC focuses primarily on AI, FinTech, blockchain and […] → Read More
WholyMe, which makes natural products for chronic pain, closes Seed round –
WholyMe, a London startup that makes and markets ‘natural relief’ products to manage chronic pain, has closed a £500,000 Seed round from investors Financière Saint James, V1 Capital, Guibor and business angels. The round also includes Joyance Partners, a New York-based VC concentrating on the new science emerging around ‘health and happiness’ which recently expanded […] → Read More
Berlin venture studio Merantix raises $27M fund to concentrate on AI startups –
Berlin-based Merantix, a venture studio which specifically concentrates on building ‘AI companies’, says it has raised a new €25M fund ($27M). Anchor investors include Trusted Insight, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, as well as further family offices from Europe. Co-founder Adrian Locher said in a statement that the successful fundraising “underpins […] → Read More
Dfinity launches an open source platform aimed at the social networking giants –
When Dfinity raised $102 million in funding in 2018 at a $2 billion valuation in a round jointly led by Andreessen Horowitz and Polychain Capital, it represented a step change in the world of blockchain technology. In an area that at the time was more synonymous with cryptocurrency speculation, this was a change in focus, […] → Read More
Language platform Busuu acquires video tutor startup, now plans IPO –
Language-learning platform Busuu, which has fast expanded to take on traditional giants like Duolingo, says it has acquired the live video tutoring company Verbling for an undisclosed amount, other than calling it a “double-digit million dollar acquisition.” As a result, Busuu will now use the Verbling platform to expand into the live video tutoring space […] → Read More
Cambridge Analytica email chain with Facebook sheds new light on data misuse scandal –
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Brittany Kaiser has released new documents today that suggest Facebook accepted only a simple acknowledgment on email from the firm that it had deleted data associated with 87 million Facebook users’ profiles. The data was improperly obtained in 2014 by researchers with access to Facebook’s developer platform who were being paid by […] → Read More
Hyundai and Kia put over $110M into UK electric delivery vehicles startup Arrival –
Forget the consumer market for electric vehicles. It turns out delivery vehicles could be the ‘Trojan horse’ for electric to really take off. Korean auto giants Hyundai and Kia put over $110 million in UK startup Arrival, which emerged from relative stealth today. The investment immediately makes Arrival one of Britain’s most valuable startups, valuing […] → Read More
Submissions for The Europas Tech Startups Awards are now open –
Submissions for The Europas Awards 2020 have now opened. We’re back for our 11th year of recognizing the hottest tech startups across the European tech scene, as supported by TechCrunch. The awards evening will be held on 25 June 2020 in London, UK, at the ‘Museum of the Home‘ (formerly known as the Geffrye Museum). […] → Read More
Tradeshift raises $240M and appears to put it’s expected IPO on hold — for now –
Tradeshift — the startup which set out to disrupt the traditional arena of supply chain payments and marketplaces when it first appeared in 2008 – has today announced a new funding round of $240 million in equity and debt, raised from a combination of existing and new investors. The funding will be used to help […] → Read More
Eddy Travels closes pre-seed round led by Techstars to scale its AI travel assistant –
Eddy Travels, an AI-powered travel assistant bot which can understand text and voice messages, has closed a pre-seed round of around $500,000 led by Techstars Toronto, Practica Capital and Open Circle Capital VC funds from Lithuania, with angel investors from the U.S., Canada, U.K. Launched in November 2018, Eddy Travels claims to have more than […] → Read More
Drone delivery startup Manna boosts seed funding ahead of launch in Ireland –
Listening to the radio (yes, it still exists) the other day I realized that the “futurist” that was being interviewed was speculating that drones would “one day be delivering food, but not any time soon.” Well, so much for that prediction. Because coming to an Irish household early next year will be drones delivering exactly […] → Read More
French startup EfficientIP secures $11M from Jolt Capital to fight DDoS attacks –
French startup EfficientIP, a network security and automation specialist, has secured an $11 million Series B investment from Jolt Capital in Paris. The investment will drive international expansion. EfficientIP’s software discovers the DNS issues, which are the primary cause of DDoS attacks. These are typically the largest types of attacks. Its platform is designed to […] → Read More
Be in the TechCrunch End of Year Review for Europe –
TechCrunch is running an end-of-year review for the European tech startup industry. We’d love your input on the feature! We’d like to know which particular topics really resonated with you in 2019 and what your predictions are for 2020. Fill in the survey here. Please give us your thoughts in the survey below. The more […] → Read More
Ada Ventures launches with a $34M fund aimed at super-charging diverse global founders –
According to Atomico’s recent “State of European Tech, 2019” — widely considered by the European tech industry to be a reliable annual study — at present, 92 in every 100 dollars invested in Europe goes to all-male teams, 83% founders are white, 82% are university educated, in the U.K. a quarter of investment committees saw […] → Read More
GitGuardian raises $12M to help developers write more secure code and ‘fix’ GitHub leaks –
Data breaches that could cause millions of dollars in potential damages have been the bane of the life of many a company. What’s required is a great deal of real-time monitoring. The problem is that this world has become incredibly complex. A SANS Institute survey found half of company data breaches were the result of […] → Read More
Facebook bowed to a Singapore government order to brand a news post as false –
Facebook added a correction notice to a post by a fringe news site that Singapore’s government said contained false information. It’s the first time the government has tried to enforce a new law against ‘fake news’ outside its borders. The post by fringe news site States Times Review (STR), contained “scurrilous accusations” according to the […] → Read More
As the new year beckons European investors start moving into new roles –
As the Holiday Season approaches, new jobs for players in the tech ecosystem beckon. And this is no less true for investors. Two notable moves have recently happened that are worthy of note in the European scene. The first is that GR Capital, a pan-European VC, is opening an office in London and has lured […] → Read More
Rossum raises $4.5M to make OCR-like data entry many times more accurate –
Every day, people slog over inputting date from invoices and other forms. So instead of using traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) extraction software, you could apply a new form of machine learning to documents to speed up the process. That’s the thinking behind Rossum’s technology, which uses ‘Cognitive Data Capture’ to teach computers to understand […] → Read More
Engineer.ai launches its Builder Now platform for rapid app prototyping and building –
Engineer.ai combines AI with crowdsourced teams of designers and developers to build bespoke digital products faster that it would take to create a team. At least that’s what it says. Last year the company raised one of Europe’s largest Series A investments at $29.5 million, led by Lakestar and Jungle Ventures, with participation from SoftBank’s […] → Read More
Mike Butcher – Page 2 –
Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. As a writer, editor, interviewer, moderator and columnist in the tech media world he covers everything the smallest tech startups and the largest tech giants. Lately, he’s been writing a lot about Blockchain and Crypto. Mike has been named one of the most influential people in European technology by various newspaper and magazines. He founded… → Read More