Ingrid Lunden
TechCrunch
United Kingdom
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Recent articles by Ingrid:
Used car marketplace Vroom nabs $254M to take its growth up a gear
There have been a lot of bumps in the road for startups building used-car marketplaces, but now one of the longer-standing of them has closed a major round of funding: a clear sign of the mileage left in this category. Vroom today is announcing that it has raised $254 million, a Series H that it […] → Read More
Kustomer raises $60M for its omnichannel-based CRM platform –
Kustomer, a CRM startup that’s taking on the likes of Zendesk, Salesforce, and many other bigger and older providers, has closed yet another round of funding — no less than its third fundraise of the year — as it continues to double down on its new approach to managing customers in today’s digital world. The […] → Read More
Rapyd, which offers fintech-as-a-service via a single API, adds $20M more to its coffers at a $1.2B valuation –
One of the biggest trends in the world of financial technology has been an ongoing push towards consolidation, where larger fish are snapping up smaller fish (including a proliferation of interesting startups) to get improved economies of scale in a business model where every transaction brings incremental returns. But today, a startup that has built […] → Read More
Cyber Monday totalled $9.2B in US online sales, smartphones accounted for a record $3B –
Cyber Monday — the final day of the extended Thanksgiving weekend that traditionally kicks off holiday season spend — broke another e-commerce record: US shoppers racked up a total of $9.2 billion in online sales, according to figures from Adobe. To put that number into some perspective, at its peak, consumers were spending $11 million […] → Read More
Black Friday sees record $7.4B in online sales, $2.9B spent using smartphones –
Following swiftly on the heels of a Thanksgiving that broke records with $4.2 billion in online sales, Black Friday also hit a new high, although it just fell short of predictions. According to analytics from Adobe, consumers spent $7.4 billion online yesterday buying goods online via computers, tablets and smartphones. The figures were up by […] → Read More
2019 Thanksgiving e-commerce sales show 14% rise on 2018, $470M spent so far –
With popular social networks seeing some downtime, shops closed, and many people off work today for Thanksgiving, bargain hunters are flocking online to start their holiday shopping. Adobe says that so far some $470 million has been spent online, a rise of 14.5% compared to sales figures from the same time last year, with sales […] → Read More
Vinted, the second-hand clothes marketplace, raises $141M at a $1B+ valuation –
The market for second-hand clothes — the “circular economy” as it’s sometimes called — has been on the rise in the last several years, fuelled by economic crunches, a desire to make more responsible and less wasteful fashion choices, and a wave of digital platforms that are bringing the selling and buying of used clothes […] → Read More
Trouva, an online marketplace for independent boutiques, raises $22M –
Amazon helped pioneer and now dominates the online marketplace business model, where a variety of merchants post items for sale on its platform for billions of consumers to discover and buy them. Today, a London startup that’s taken that idea but is applying it to a far more curated set of retailers and goods has […] → Read More
Tray.io brings in $50M more at a $600M+ valuation for its workflow automation tools –
Organizations are always looking for new ways to work more efficiently, but too often the problem is that, in a digital-first environment, they have to get in line to ask their in-house IT experts (or even more expensively, external consultants) to build those solutions for them. To underscore the demand for a better approach, today […] → Read More
Taiwan’s Appier raises $80M for AI-based marketing technology –
Artificial intelligence continues to be the theme of the moment in enterprise software, and today a company out of Asia that has built a suite of AI-powered marketing and ad tools is announcing a round of funding. Appier, a Taipei-based startup that provides an artificial intelligence engine to brands and retailers to help improve customer […] → Read More
VTEX, an e-commerce platform used by Walmart, raises $140M led by SoftBank’s LatAm fund –
E-commerce now accounts for 14% of all retail sales, and its growth has led to a rise in the fortunes of startups that build tools to enable businesses to sell online. In the latest development, a company called VTEX — which originally got its start in Latin America helping companies like Walmart expand their business […] → Read More
Linear lines up $4.2M led by Sequoia to build a better platform for software developer collaboration –
Software will eat the world, as the saying goes, but in doing so, some developers are likely to get a little indigestion. That is to say, building products requires working with disparate and distributed teams, and while developers may have an ever-growing array of algorithms, APIs and technology at their disposal to do this, ironically […] → Read More
Celonis, a leader in big data process mining for enterprises, nabs $290M on a $2.5B valuation –
More than $1 trillion is spent by enterprises annually on “digital transformation” — the investments that organizations make to update their IT systems to get more out of them and reduce costs — and today one of the bigger startups that’s built a platform to help get the ball rolling is announcing a huge round […] → Read More
Vouch raises $45M led by YC Continuity for business insurance that targets startups –
“Move fast and break things” is a term we usually associate with Facebook (at least, until 2014) and the general startup ethos of being disruptive. Now in true entrepreneurial fashion, the phrase is finding itself as the center of — what else — a startup idea, which today is announcing a sizeable Series B as […] → Read More
Vayyar nabs $109M for its “4D” radar tech, which detects and tracks images while preserving privacy –
The future of the connected home, connected car, and connected everything will have a lot of imaging technology at the center of it: sensors to track the movement of people and things will be a critical way for AI brains to figure out what to do next. Now, with a large swing towards more data […] → Read More
BlueVine raises $102.5M more for banking services that target small businesses –
When it comes to fintech plays, small and medium businesses are not often the target audience: they’re too small and fragmented compared to big-spending corporates; and they’re too demanding compared to mass-market consumer users. But as a sector, they account for over 99% of all businesses in developed countries like the UK and USA, and that […] → Read More
Juno shuts down its operations in NYC as owner Gett signs strategic partnership with Lyft –
Gett, the ridesharing company backed by Volkswagen and valued at around $1.5 billion, is putting the brakes on a major part of its growth strategy. Today, the company announced that it is closing down its operations in New York, which operates under the Juno brand, effective today. The company has substantial business serving enterprise customers […] → Read More
John Legere is stepping down as CEO of T-Mobile, succeeded by deputy Mike Sievert on May 1 –
He’s reportedly not going to take over WeWork, but John Legere is definitely on his way out of the CEO role at T-Mobile, the carrier that is currently merging with SoftBank-controlled Sprint. Today the carrier and Legere confirmed that Mike Sievert — currently T-Mobile’s COO — will succeed Legere as CEO on May 1 of […] → Read More
Elavon to acquire Sage Pay, a gateway that competes with Stripe, PayPal and Adyen, for $300M –
E-commerce continues to gain momentum — a trend we’ll see played out in the next two months of holiday shopping — and with that comes more consolidation. Today, Elavon, the payments company that is a subsidiary of US Bancorp, announced that it will acquire Sage Pay, one of the bigger payment processors in the UK […] → Read More
Iran shuts down country’s internet in the wake of fuel protests –
Iran, one of the countries most strongly identified with the rise cyber terrorism and malicious hacking, appears now to be using an iron fist to turn on its own. The country has reportedly shut down nearly all internet access in the country in retaliation to escalating protests that were originally ignited by a rise in […] → Read More