Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined …
Forests are a multitrillion-dollar asset. Vibrant Planet bets SaaS can save them
Vibrant Planet is definitely a software play — from its cloud focus to its per-seat licenses, it’s SaaS through and through — but its end goal is different from many others.
Immutable launches $500M fund to boost web3 gaming adoption
The crypto gaming industry is continuing to grow in popularity as more capital is deployed in the space and traditional Web 2.0 gaming studios look to enter the web3 market. Immutable, an Australia-based web3 gaming firm, launched an inaugural $500 million developer and venture investment fund, Rob…
Growing up enterprise for SaaS startups: 7 lessons on doing it right
A lot of founders make the mistake of thinking that hiring a bunch of highly paid account executives (a fancy name for salespeople) is the same as "going enterprise." It’s not.
Twitter now allows local businesses to display location, hours and contact info on their profiles
Twitter’s expanding its suite of offerings for businesses with a new feature called Location Spotlight for professional accounts, the company announced on Tuesday. Now, local stores can display details on their profiles such as the location of their business or shop, contact info, and operati…
Google expands ads verification program to tackle financial scams
Google is expanding a verification program for financial services ads that it launched in the UK last summer after seeing what it describes as a “pronounced decline” in reports of ads promoting financial scams. First in line to get the requirement, as part of a phased expansion of the p…
Bud raises $80M more to expand its AI-based open banking platform, used to power lending tools and more
Embedded finance — where financial services companies and others bring in different kinds of fintech technology by way of APIs to enhance their own offerings with more data and functionality — remains a growing opportunity, both to help fuel new business and to help incumbents get up to…
Walmart is acquiring Memomi, an AR startup powering virtual try-on for eyewear
Walmart is expanding its array of virtual try-on services for shoppers with today’s news that it’s planning to acquire Memomi, an AR optical tech company and current Walmart partner offering virtual try-on experience for eyewear. Deal terms were not disclosed, but Memomi has enabled dig…