Mike Butcher
TechCrunch
United Kingdom
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Recent articles by Mike:
Audio tech supplier to Rolls Royce and Xiaomi secures another $13.2M in funding
As autonomous driving eventually transforms cars from transportation devices to mobile theaters or conference rooms we will need better audio inside them. And we’ve already seen that VCs like Andreessen Horowitz say ‘audio is the future. → Read More
Numan is a startup which aims to tackle your tackle problem: erectile dysfunction
A long-time London-based entrepreneur re-surfaces today with the launch of Numan a new kind of subscription business, with a rather unusual approach to a very old problem. → Read More
btov Partners closes €80M for its fund aimed at industrial tech startups
European Deep-Tech and ‘industrial tech’ start-ups working in the field of industrial applications get a shot in the arm today with the news that btov Partners has closed 80 million Euros in backing for the second closing of its new btov Industrial Technologies Fund. btov Partners is a … → Read More
Toronto’s OneEleven launches space in London, but will its scale-up services fly?
Last time I checked London was awash with co-working spaces, shared office spaces, spaces of every shape, size and color. → Read More
Melonport dissolves in favor of its protocol, setting a new bar for the blockchain world
In the world of blockchain, it is the sector of Fintech where most think Satoshi’s invention will have the greatest impact. And in finance there are few more elite worlds that those of asset management. → Read More
DataSine raises $5.2M led by Pentech and Propel for its AI content marketing platform
By now, most of us should be familiar with the concept of the tailored news feed. Right now my Facebook feed (yes, I’m still there, alas) has been messed up because I’ve clicked on too many posts about Brexit, but I digress. → Read More
Commuters become crypto users, as DOVU signs loyalty deal with rail service
While blockchain emerged first as a platform for currency and value, its employment in the tokenization of data and information has become recognized as being of at least, if not more, underlying value. → Read More
After challenger banks comes the wave of anti-fraud startups
The sheer scale of global financial crime is not to be underestimated. The UK’s National Crime Agency recently observed that it’s “in the hundreds of billions of pounds” annually, and that’s just in the UK. → Read More
Tradeshift says it’s seen a ‘huge drop’ in UK transactions amid Brexit uncertainty
The UK is experiencing a significant and drastic fall in the volume of business-to-business transactions, according to the CEO of one of the world’s largest B2B payments and supply chain logistics platforms. → Read More
World Economic Forum warns of AI’s potential to worsen global inequality
Tech and political leaders sounded the alarm bell today about the potential for artificial intelligence to exacerbate huge inequalities across the world. → Read More
Knotel acquires Deskeo, Paris’s largest agile office space operator
Breathing down the neck of WeWork is Knotel, which in 2017 raised a Series A round of $25 million, then another round of $70m, and then another $5m in debt. It says it has one million square feet in New York versus WeWork’s four million. → Read More
Invoice finance platform MarketInvoice raises $33.5M from Barclays, Santander
London, with its huge FinTech hub, is continuing to attract investment and that is no better represented today than with the news that MarketInvoice, arguably Europe’s largest online invoice finance platform, has raised £26M ($33. → Read More
Stung by criticism, Facebook’s Sandberg outlines new plans to tackle misinformation
Stung by criticism of its widely reported role as a platform capable of spreading disinformation and being used by state actors to skew democratic elections, Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg unveiled five new ways the company would be addressing these issues at the annual DLD conference in Munich, st… → Read More
Open Bionics closes $5.9M Series A for its affordable and cool bionic limbs
The world wowed a few years ago when a very clever startup from Bristol, UK, came up with 3D printed bionic limbs for amputees. → Read More
Lisbon finally gets a substantial VC fund in the shape of Indico Capital Partners
Lisbon, characterized occasionally by some tech scene observers as ‘the warm Berlin’, has been threatening to generate more startups in the last few years, not least because it will now have the enormous Web Summit conference there for the next 10 years, and because it’s a cheap and great pla… → Read More
CherryHome raises $5.2M to apply AI to home care cameras, detecting behaviour changes
A new startup using AI to look after elderly people at home has raised a new round of funding to apply its platform to detect changes in gait or behavior, falls or stumbles. In other words, it could start to predict changes in long-term health. → Read More
Pimcore closes $3.5M for its open-source data platform to expand in the US
Pimcore, an open-source platform for data and customer experience management which has emerged out of Austria, has closed $3.5 million in a Series A funding led by German Auctus Capital Partners AG. The funding will be used for its US expansion. → Read More
Goldex raises $1M for its marketplace app for ‘ethical’ physical gold trading
Goldex, a trading app that claims to power so-called ‘ethical pricing’ for retail gold investments, says it has now raised over £1M ($1.25M) in a pre-series A round led by a group of angels and institutional investors. → Read More
Ultra-affordable ultrasound startup M-SCAN wins TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa
TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Africa just finished in Lagos Nigeria, where 15 companies took the stage for the chance of winning the $25,000 equity-free grand prize, a trip for two to TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco 2019, and the coveted title of “Africa’s Favorite Startup.” The winne… → Read More
Announcing the final batch of judges for Startup Battlefield Africa
Startup Battlefield Africa in Lagos, Nigeria, is coming up fast. As usual, we have a great lineup of panels that will include investors and founders discussing issues such as blockchain, raising venture capital on the continent and beyond and more. → Read More