Techflier

Goldman Sachs is no stranger to testing the waters with crypto, with institutional clients looking for more exposure in the space. Last week, Goldman was the first major U.S. bank to execute an over-the-counter crypto options trade with Galaxy Digital, which some market players say is foreshadowing more institutional adoption of digital assets. “Crypto markets need large, credible and credit-worthy counterparties to grow the space further,” a source who works with digital assets at a major investment bank told TechCrunch. “Goldman and other Wall Street banks will bring that eventually.” The 153-year-old firm is headquartered in New York City with offices globally and has $2.47 trillion assets under supervision. Galaxy Digital’s trading unit facilitated and executed the transaction with the investment bank in the form of a Bitcoin non-deliverable option. This means that the firm isn’t directly engaging or holding the underlying crypto, but taking an option with a payoff that’s set...

Signaling its ambitions in the process automation market, Microsoft has acquired Minit , a Bratislava, Slovakia-originated process mining technology vendor, for an undisclosed sum, the companies announced today. Microsoft says that the purchase will “further empower” it to “help … customers digitally transform” by creating a more complete picture of their processes — and identifying which of those processes are ripe for automation. “Minit currently enables businesses to transform the way they analyze, monitor and optimize their processes. Minit’s solutions have helped businesses gain deep insights into how processes run, uncover root causes of operational challenges and help mitigate undesired process outcomes,” Justin Graham, Microsoft’s general manager of process insights, wrote in a post on Microsoft’s corporate blog. “[With Minit, our] customers will be able to better understand their process data, uncover what operations look like in reality, and drive process standardization an...

Mass transit and shared mobility provider Swvl went public today in a landmark moment for Egyptian and Middle Eastern tech ecosystems . It’s also a test for the company going public despite a market that’s been unfriendly toward combinations with special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, of late.  The Egypt-born and Dubai-based company has listed its shares at $10 on the Nasdaq through a merger with U.S. women-led blank check company Queen’s Gambit Growth Capital. The planned merger, which will see Swvl offer 20-30% of its total shares, was announced last July . Following closing, the combined company, now “Swvl Holding Corp,” will trade under GMBT and GMBTW today before switching to SWVL and SWVLW on April 1. Swvl is the first company launched from Africa and the second Middle Eastern company to list on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger . Anghami, an Abu Dhabi-based music streaming platform, did so last February when it listed with Vistas Media Acquisition at a $220 millio...

Earlier this week, a video surfaced of a robot dog walking down the streets of Shanghai with a bullhorn strapped on its back. There are those who will, no doubt, view it as a kind of apocalyptic vision. I’d be lying if the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. It’s a strange thing, living through history and imagining yourself traveling back in time as recently as 2019 and attempting to describe the scene. A quadrupedal robot bounding along down empty streets in a city with a population topping 26 million. The voice emerging from its back is warning citizens to stay inside, as China begins its largest lockdown in two years, as the country is seeing another spike in the ongoing pandemic. The less cynical part of me (it exists! really!) sees a fascinating little microcosm. We can debate lockdown measures (and certainly China’s specific approach to them) another day. But the image of a robot doing a job designed to curb the spread of the virus’s transmission distills a lot of what I’ve been ...

Ukrainian army soldiers ride in a vehicle on a road in Irpin, March 4, 2022, in Irpin, Ukraine. Photo By Diego Herrera/Europa Press via Getty Images Russian forces have started to withdraw from the Chernobyl plant on Thursday. Ukraine's nuclear agency said troops reportedly suffered from "significant doses of radiation." The agency confirmed on Telegram that Russian forces dug trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest. Russian forces have begun to withdraw from the Chernobyl nuclear plant after reportedly suffering from "a significant doses of radiation," Ukraine's state nuclear agency said on Thursday. Energoatom wrote on Telegram  that Russian troops dug trenches in the highly radioactive Red Forest — within Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone — where they fell ill and decided to retreat to the Belarusian border.  Insider did not see independent evidence that soldiers had been affected from radioactive exposure, and the Ukrainian power authority...

Matt Gatto Contributor Share on Twitter Matt Gatto is a managing director at Insight Partners. He focuses on high-growth software and SaaS businesses across infrastructure, healthcare and enterprise applications, and also has experience with leveraged buyouts. Last year was huge for the cybersecurity market, fueled by rising incidents of cyberattacks, particularly ransomware that disrupted services and held companies hostage. The numbers are striking: Investments in the space more than doubled from the year before to $29.3 billion, according to a recent report by investment bank Momentum Cyber. Two recent funding rounds, in November and February, even exceeded $1 billion. A record 286 M&A deals, worth $77.5 billion, were made, and 14 deals of those were over $1 billion each. This year is off to a promising start with Google’s $5.4 billion acquisition of Mandiant in March. The market is responding to the evolving threat landscape. As new types of attacks arise, sec...

There were already several hints that YouTube was getting more serious about podcasts, after reports indicated the company hired a podcast executive , Kai Chuk, to lead its efforts in the space and had even begun offering cash to popular podcasters to film their shows. Now, a leaked document has unveiled more about YouTube’s plans in this area, pointing to a future podcasts homepage on YouTube.com and other monetization features. The details were published by Podnews , which recently got its hands on an 84-page presentation where YouTube described its podcasts roadmap. Here, the company says it will improve podcast ingestion by piloting the ability to pull in podcast RSS feeds. It also noted it plans to centralize podcasts on a new homepage at YouTube.com/podcasts. The URL doesn’t yet work; but it also doesn’t automatically redirect to the YouTube homepage — which is what it does if you put other random words after the slash. Not surprisingly, Google sees podcasts as a way to expand...

Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Joe Manchin (W-Va.) Win McNamee/Getty Images Sanders swiped at Manchin for torpedoing Biden's billionaire tax plan. "I don't care what Mr. Manchin has to say," he told Insider. It was the second time in five months that the conservative West Virginia Democrat sunk a billionaire tax plan.  Sen. Bernie Sanders took a swipe at Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Tuesday after the conservative Democrat sunk a fresh White House tax proposal taking aim at the richest Americans. "I don't care what Mr. Manchin has to say," he told Insider on Tuesday. He went on: "At a time of massive income and wealth inequality where billionaires are doing phenomenally well and in some cases don't pay any federal taxes, it's absolutely essential that we have a progressive tax system and demand billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. We got to go forward on that." Manchin came out in opposition to President Joe B...

Kate Sharma and Anthony Bridgerton on "Bridgerton" season two. Liam Daniel/Netflix "Bridgerton" season two was watched for 193 million hours in its debut weekend. Its Netflix's second-biggest TV premiere ever, behind "Money Heist" season five. Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its lists of its most popular shows and movies of the previous week. "Bridgerton" returned after more than a year on Friday, and it was one of Netflix's biggest premieres ever. The second season was watched for 193 million hours in its first three-day weekend, Netflix said on Tuesday, making it the most-watched TV debut for an English-language series on the service. Overall, it was behind the Spanish series "Money Heist's" season-five premiere, which was watched for 201.9 million hours in its first weekend. Every Tuesday, Netflix updates its list of top 10 TV shows and movies of the previous week, based on the number of hours watched globally....

Big Diomede Island, Russia (left) and Little Diomede Island, Alaska (right). Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2018/Gallo Images/Getty Images Life in Diomede, Alaska, is unlike anywhere else in the United States. Just 2.4 miles from Russia's Big Diomede Island, the city of 83 people can see the border from the shore. "We're safe, as long as we sleep good at night," a resident told Insider. "We keep the eyes and ears." Geopolitical relations between Russia and the United States are often seen through the lens of geography, with both countries projecting power across multiple time zones on opposite sides of the Earth. As the world's two biggest nuclear powers — and with Russia putting its stations on high alert in response to Western sanctions following the invasion of Ukraine — fears of an armed conflict evoke images of long range missile strikes and proxy wars in far flung regions, or for Baby Booomers, "duck-and-cover" drills...

It’s not a coincidence that TechCrunch has covered more African startups in the last year than any period in our history. Many of those companies are Nigerian, and when we look at venture capital data, we can see why. The country had an incredible 2021 as the most active venture capital scene in Africa, collecting more than $1.8 billion, or 34% of the $5 billion raised across the continent, according to Partech , a pan-African VC firm that also tracks investments. The country has posted steady progress in the last three years as the leading African startup market. In 2019, startups based in Nigeria attracted $747 million, or 37% of Africa’s total VC investment. Those numbers decreased to $307 million, or 21% of the continent’s total, the following year, though 2020 was a venture capital year much impacted by outside forces. YC W22 batch nets 24 African startups, including 18 from Nigeria Thanks in part to a global boom in venture capital activity last year, Nigeria became the f...

Philadelphia Proud Boys leader Zachary Rehl, left, and Washington State Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean attend the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. Carolyn Kaster/AP A growing "Free the Patriots" movement is fueling anti-government extremism, watchdogs say.  The movement centers on a small number of jailed defendants in the DOJ's Jan. 6 insurrection probe. Long pretrial jail stays and slow-moving prosecutions are reinforcing themes of a tyrannical government. To federal prosecutors, Zachary Rehl is a dangerous radical, a Proud Boys leader who helped mastermind the hate group's barrier-toppling, window-busting breach of the US Capitol and afterward bragged he was "proud as fuck." But to a robust and growing "Free the Patriots" movement, Rehl and other jailed "January Sixers" are something else entirely. They are American heroes, ripped by a tyrannical government from their ho...

As more banking, e-commerce and insurance startups work to improve the way business is done in emerging countries, it should come as no surprise that this winter’s Y Combinator batch is rife with related efforts. There are 35 companies this year, just over double the amount in the 2021 winter batch and up from 18 in the summer program, according to the organization’s directory. What you’ll notice about this year’s cohort is the prevalence of companies from Nigeria, Indonesia and Argentina, all areas that have seen an abundance of venture capital funding into fintech in recent years, though nearly every country at this point is attracting investor interest. Indeed, according to CB Insights, global fintech funding reached a record $132 billion in 2021, more than two times the amount related companies raised in 2020 and accounting for a whopping 21% of all venture dollars. Herewith, the startups, with some of our quick thoughts about the broader problem each is trying to solve. Aigis...