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Category: Commerce

Amazon launches personalized shopping prompts as part of its generative AI push

Amazon continues to infuse AI into its shopping tools to encourage customers to make more purchases. The company announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Interests,” aimed at creating a more personalized and conversational search experience.  With the new feature, customers can enter tailored prompts in the search bar, reflecting their interests, preferences, and even…

AI creation platform Arcade expands from jewelry to home goods

Arcade, a generative AI marketplace for designing jewelry, is expanding its offerings to include home goods, starting with rugs. The company on Monday also introduced a new feature called “Match My Room,” which allows users to upload a photo of their room so that their design complements the existing colors and style. Alongside this expansion,…

Bluesky made more money selling t-shirts mocking Zuckerberg than custom domains

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber made a splash at SXSW last week, showing up at her keynote event in a t-shirt that subtly poked fun at Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg. Or, at least it seemed like it was subtle. But so many people appreciated the jab that users convinced Bluesky to reproduce and sell Graber’s shirt…

Google search, Play Store falling foul of Digital Markets Act rules, says EU

Google Search and its Play Store app marketplace are suspected of breaching the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), per preliminary findings announced Wednesday by EU Commission enforcers of the bloc’s flagship market contestability law, who have been investigating the company for months. The DMA applies to a handful of tech giants, Alphabet (Google’s parent)…

Google now lets kids use Google Wallet for in-store payments in select countries

Google announced on Wednesday that kids with Android phones can now tap to pay at stores using Google Wallet in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, and Poland. Parents and guardians in these countries can now allow their children to access digital payments on their Android devices with supervision. Kids can also use Google…

GrubMarket raises $50M at a $3.5B+ valuation to build AI for the $1 trillion food distribution industry

U.S. President Trump’s wide-ranging tariff hikes are already resulting in growth forecasts being cut amid other uncertainty — actions that will inevitably impact the technology sector, too. Today, however, one food e-commerce startup, GrubMarket, is announcing a new equity round of $50 million on a raised valuation of over $3.5 billion — a signal of…

How La Fourche, an online organic supermarket, is thriving after q-commerce’s bust

La Fourche is just seven years old but it has been quite a rollercoaster for the French startup. During this time, the online grocery retailer has gone through a global pandemic, followed by the rise of venture-backed quick-commerce startups that promised grocery deliveries in less than 15 minutes, followed by the implosion of that vertical.…

Uber terminates Foodpanda Taiwan acquisition, citing regulatory hurdles

Uber Technologies has ended its acquisition of Delivery Hero’s Foodpanda in Taiwan, the Germany-based tech firm said on Tuesday. The announcement comes roughly three months after Taiwan’s antitrust regulator blocked the deal, citing competitive issues. The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said that if Uber acquired Foodpanda, its market share in Taiwan would increase to 90%,…

CollX raises $10M to grow its card collection marketplace

CollX, a company offering an online trading card marketplace, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Austin-based Brand Foundry Ventures and Philadelphia-based 114 Ventures, both of which were previous investors in the company. Other investors such as Next Coast Ventures, FJ Labs, and Ben Franklin Technology Partners also participated…

EU must ‘fully’ apply its market fairness rulebook on Google, search rivals urge

The European Union is once again being urged to expand its investigation of Google under the bloc’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). The big aim of the EU’s flagship competition reform — which came into force last spring — was to level the digital playing field by forcing platform giants into fairer dealing with rivals and…

Grain emerges from stealth with $50M to help any business hedge against FX volatility

Foreign exchange fluctuations can make or break a business that trades across borders, but keeping up and responding to the FX market can be tricky if you’re anything smaller than the world’s largest enterprises. Today, a startup called Grain is emerging from stealth with a product that it says will let finance teams at companies…

Swap banks $40M to build tools for merchants to deal with tariffs and other cross-border trading nightmares

Cross-border trade could become significantly more challenging with the wave of new tariffs getting introduced across different markets. Today, in a timely piece of news, a London-founded startup called Swap — which is building tools for e-commerce companies to better navigate the cross-border trading world — is announcing $40 million in funding to expand. Iconiq…

Hotel management platform Mews books $75M round led by Tiger Global

Despite clouds of uncertainty looming over the economy and geopolitics, people still want to travel. To meet that demand, Mews, an Amsterdam-founded ‘unicorn’ building an SaaS platform for hotel management, has raised a fresh $75 million. The funding is coming at a crossroad in the travel industry. On one hand are positive signals. Analysts at…

Cino cracks bill-splitting at the moment of payment, raises seed round

While Venmo or Splitwise are effectively ‘debt collector’ tools, which require one person to pay a full bill and then request funds from others, neither have cracked bill-splitting at the moment of payment. European startup Cino, which has come up with just such a product, has now raised €3.5m in a Seed funding round led…

eBay makes it easier to find fast-shipping items and local listings

eBay announced on Thursday that it has updated its platform to help buyers find fast-shipping items and local listings, thanks to changes to Search item cards and additional usage of AI. The company is making it easier to identify items with fast delivery, as search item cards now display delivery range estimates for all fast…

Europe’s Relay pulls in $35M Series A after applying Asia’s model to delivery

Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively ‘Uberising’ how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Think DoorDash but for parcels, not food. This is what the founders of Europe’s Relay realized and decided to bring to the region —…

Commercetools, a pioneer in ‘headless commerce’, lays off dozens of staff

Commercetools — a “headless commerce” platform that provides APIs to companies building online storefronts — saw a major boost in its business just a few years ago, raising money at a whopping $1.9 billion valuation as the world went shopping online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and businesses rushed to improve their e-commerce…

Shop Circle raises $60M to encircle e-commerce with an app suite

The boom in e-commerce post-pandemic meant shops moved online. However, some merchants ended up with dozens of separate app providers to accommodate everything from supply chains, to inventory, to marketing. The founders of Shop Circle realized this and either built or bought many such apps. The company has now raised $60 million in a Series…

Gozem nets $30M to expand vehicle financing, digital banking in Francophone Africa

Since its launch in 2018 as a ride-hailing service in Togo, Gozem has steadily expanded across French-speaking West Africa, integrating a wide range of services as it sought to become a super-app. The company now offers ride-hailing, commerce, vehicle financing, and digital banking across Togo, Benin, Gabon, and Cameroon. Now, in a bid to scale…

The pain of discontinued items, and the thrill of finding them online

We’ve all been there. A favorite item is suddenly unavailable for purchase. Couldn’t the manufacturer have given you advance warning? Whether owing to low sales, changing habits, production costs, or even because something is a little wrong with your favorite product (shh), discontinued items are part of life. In a weekend piece, the New York…

Fiverr wants gig workers to offload some of their work to AI

Gig marketplace Fiverr wants to let freelancers train AI on their bodies of work and use it to automate future jobs. At an event on Tuesday, Fiverr announced the launch of several new efforts aimed at attracting gig workers to its platform and equipping them with generative AI tools. Perhaps the most ambitious is a…

Amazon kills ‘Inspire,’ its TikTok-style feed for discovering products

Amazon is shutting down “Inspire,” its TikTok-like, short-form video and photo feed that was previously available in its mobile app. The feed allowed users to discover products and shop from content created by influencers, brands, and other customers. A company spokesperson confirmed the move to TechCrunch, saying “We regularly evaluate various features to better align…

North Carolina Amazon workers vote against unionizing

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results…

EU’s Disinformation Code moves closer to becoming DSA benchmark

Staying on the right side of the European Union’s online rulebook when it comes to the slippery topic of disinformation is set to get easier for platforms that commit to the bloc’s long-standing Code of Practice on Disinformation. You know, the voluntary Code that Elon Musk pulled X (formerly Twitter) out of back in 2023.…

Lanch bags $27M for a social media-skewed take on fast food

E-commerce startups built around food continue to gobble up funding as investors look for sticky consumer concepts that can scale without breaking the bank. On Wednesday, Germany’s Lanch — which taps social media and influencers to develop popular food brands alongside retail networks for distributing them — closed funding of €26 million ($27 million) to…

Amazon tests sending customers directly to brands’ websites when it doesn’t stock their products

Remember that Christmas movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” where Macy’s in-store Santa, Kris Kringle, sends a frazzled shopper to a competitor’s store to find the Christmas present her son wanted because Macy’s was out of stock? Now, Amazon is doing the same thing online. The retailer announced on Tuesday the test of a new Amazon…

Shopify took down Kanye’s swastika T-shirt shop, but another antisemitic storefront still operates

Shopify took down Kanye West’s online store after the musician sold T-shirts with the swastika symbol. West, who also goes by Ye, advertised his online store in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, directing viewers to his website, where the only item listed was the swastika T-shirt. Though Shopify removed a policy banning sellers from…

Saudi’s BRKZ closes $17M Series A for its construction tech platform

Construction procurement is highly fragmented, manual, and opaque, forcing contractors to juggle multiple suppliers, endure lengthy negotiations, and deal with delayed payments. In Saudi Arabia, where trillion-dollar infrastructure and real estate projects are underway, these inefficiencies are even more pronounced. To address this, BRKZ, a Riyadh-based construction tech startup, offers a tech-enabled managed marketplace that…

Shopify pushes for ‘open trade’ as Trump delays import exemption

On the same day that President Donald Trump delayed ending a trade exemption targeting certain Chinese imports, ecommerce company Shopify published a blog post making its stance on U.S. trade policy clear. In the post, Shopify endorsed “open trade,” calling for regulators to give online merchants the “freedom to expand without constraints imposed by geopolitical…

Swiggy, 2024’s biggest tech listing, falls below its IPO price and 2022 valuation

Indian food delivery company Swiggy’s stock fell below both its IPO price and its last private valuation as mounting losses and a wavering market position in quick commerce pressured its margins in the last quarter. The food delivery company’s stock fell as low as ₹374.80 ($4.29) on Thursday below its November IPO price of ₹390,…

Shein gets more questions from EU about DSA compliance

After consumer protection scrutiny dialled up on fast-fashion giant Shein in the European Union on Wednesday, the bloc’s executive announced Thursday that it’s sent a fresh request for information (RFI) to the ecommerce platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a pan-EU online governance framework. The Commission oversees larger platforms’ compliance with a subset of…

India’s Zomato to rebrand as Eternal

Indian food delivery group Zomato plans to rename itself as Eternal, a strategic shift as its quick commerce unit Blinkit becomes a significant driver of future growth. The Gurugram-based company, which joined India’s benchmark BSE Sensex in December, said on Tuesday the name change would better reflect its expanding business portfolio that includes quick commerce…

Shein hit with consumer protection action in EU as bloc unboxes strategy to tackle low-cost ecommerce risks

Chinese ecommerce and fast fashion giant Shein is facing fresh scrutiny in the European Union in relation to consumer protection rules following the launch of a coordinated action by the bloc’s Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (CPCN). The action is being conducted with reference to the EU’s Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, Consumer Rights Directive, Unfair Contracts…

Sotira lands $2M to help brands offload and monetize their surplus inventory

An estimated 20% to 30% of all inventory in the U.S. is surplus, with much of it ending up in landfills. A startup called Sotira wants to help address this problem: It leverages AI to help companies offload and monetize their surplus inventory. Sotira partners with brands to offload millions of pounds of surplus grocery,…

Shein app returns to India via Reliance deal

Chinese fast-fashion retailer Shein has relaunched in India through a partnership with Reliance Retail, nearly five years after it was banned amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Beijing. The new Shein India Fast Fashion app, developed and launched by billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Retail, marks the firm’s significant return to one of Asia’s largest…

Google commits to combatting fake reviews in the UK after 5-year probe

The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has reached an agreement with Google to counter the scourge of fake online reviews. The internet giant has committed to several remedies. Bogus endorsements have blighted the web since the creation of user reviews, which is why regulators around the world have been upping the ante on tech companies to put…

Stripe is laying off 300 people, but says it still plans to hire in 2025

Fintech giant Stripe is laying off 300 people, according to a leaked memo reported on Tuesday by Business Insider. The affected employees are “largely in product, engineering, and operations roles,” the memo said. Despite the layoffs, Chief People Officer Rob McIntosh said that Stripe intends to still grow its headcount by 17% “to land at…

Qomodo raises $13.9M to expand BNPL for Italy’s main-street retailers

Payments and financial solutions are two-a-penny at this point, but mostly for online e-commerce. What about physical stores? In 2023 Qomodo, a Milan-based “all-in-one” payment methods aggregator for physical merchants, came out with a €34.5 million ($36.9 million) pre-seed round (mostly debt), which we covered, to expand the BNPL model into other categories. It’s now…

Blinkit signals costly battle ahead in Indian quick commerce market

Zomato’s quick commerce unit Blinkit is accelerating its expansion and expects continued losses as competition intensifies in India’s instant delivery market. Blinkit now aims to reach 2,000 dark stores – small warehouses in residential areas that exclusively service online orders – by December 2025, a year ahead of its previous guidance, after exceeding 1,000 stores…

Fast-growing South African venture FARO raises $6M to source, refurbish and sell surplus clothing

Global fashion brands grapple with excess inventory. ASOS, for instance, had over £1.2 billion of unsold products in 2022.  Mostly, these brands avoid reselling in core markets like the UK and the U.S. to prevent market cannibalization. Meanwhile, emerging markets like Africa heavily rely on secondhand clothing imports, but 30% to 40% of these items…

eBay acquires Caramel to reduce risk and complexity of online car sales

E-commerce giant eBay has announced plans to acquire Caramel, a startup that helps car sellers and buyers complete the final steps of the transaction — including verification, financing, paperwork, ownership transfer, insurance, and more. Founded out of Los Angeles in 2021, Caramel formally launched last year with some $19 million in funding behind it, from…

Automattic says it will reduce its contribution to WordPress core project to match WP Engine

It’s a new year, but drama in the WordPress community keeps going. Automattic, the company that runs WordPress.com, said that it would reduce its contribution to WordPress core, the open-source project that acts as the backbone of most of Automattic’s products and ensures the longevity of WordPress as a technology and community. Automattic CEO and…

PrettyDamnQuick snaps up $25M to speed up online checkout

A startup hoping to provide a credible alternative to Amazon has picked up funding to double down on the gap in the market. PrettyDamnQuick (PDQ) provides tech to retailers to let them customize and test different shipping and checkout flows, and now it has picked up a deal of its own: a $25 million Series…

Flipkart taps Dunzo founder to lead quick commerce push

Flipkart has hired Kabeer Biswas, co-founder of Indian delivery startup Dunzo, as the Walmart-owned e-commerce group expands its quick commerce business in the world’s most populous nation. Biswas will lead Flipkart’s quick commerce business, called Flipkart Minutes, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch. The move follows Flipkart engaging with Biswas over a potential…

Facebook Marketplace to display eBay listings to appease EU regulators

Meta is set to start displaying eBay listings in its own Facebook Marketplace classifieds platform, in an effort to appease European regulators. Back in November, Meta was hit with a €798 million fine by the European Commission (EC) in Europe for breaching antitrust rules. The EC contended that Meta created “unfair trading conditions” by connecting…

Livestream shopping app Whatnot raises $265M, pinning valuation at nearly $5B

Whatnot, the platform that allows users to sell items such as trading cards, comics, and sneakers through live videos, announced on Wednesday that it has secured $265 million in a Series E funding round, a significant investment for a livestream shopping platform. This round puts Whatnot’s valuation at $4.97 billion. The investment marks an important…

Just Eat Takeaway completes Grubhub sale to Wonder for a modest $650M

After looking for a buyer for more than two years, Just Eat Takeaway.com has finally closed the menu on Grubhub. On Tuesday, the Dutch food delivery giant said it completed the sale of the U.S. business to Wonder, the food startup founded and led by e-commerce veteran Marc Lore. The deal has an enterprise value…

Online spending grew 3% to a record $1.2T over holiday period, says Salesforce

Online spending rose 3% to a record $1.2 trillion globally over the holiday period, with U.S.-sales, specifically, growing 4% to $282 billion. That’s according to a new report from Salesforce, which aggregated data from across its various cloud services, including Agentforce, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, to garner insights into spending activity spanning…

Avataar releases new tool to create AI-generated videos for products

Generative AI models have reached a baseline capability of producing at least a passable video from a single image or short sentence. Companies building products around these models are claiming that anyone can make a snazzy promo video if they have some images or recordings — and videos usually perform better than static images or…

YouTuber LegalEagle sues PayPal over ‘sleeping leech’ Honey extension

A new lawsuit alleges that the PayPal-owned browser extension Honey is cheating creators out of money. Honey, which PayPal acquired for $4 billion in 2019, works by automatically presenting users with relevant coupon codes as they shop. However, in a video posted last month, YouTuber MegaLag described Honey as a “scam” that’s “stealing money from…

Hindustan Unilever in talks to acquire Peak XV-backed Minimalist for up to $350M

Consumer goods giant Hindustan Unilever is in advanced talks to acquire four-year-old direct-to-consumer startup Minimalist for up to $350 million, according to two people familiar with the matter. An acquisition would add to the Unilever subsidiary’s buying spree in India, where it expanded into the health and wellbeing category by acquiring Oziva and Wellbeing Nutrition…

Yoast CEO calls for a ‘federated’ approach to WordPress repository

Days after web hosting provider WP Engine won a preliminary injunction against WordPress co-creator Matt Mullenweg and rival hosting provider Automattic, Mullenweg announced that WordPress.org is taking a holiday break. WordPress.com — a site that provides access to WordPress plug-ins, themes, and other artifacts to the community — will take a break from providing free…

Prosus buys Despegar for $1.7B, taking a bite out of Latin America’s travel sector

Yet another major investment is going down in the travel sector, underscoring its ongoing rebound after the Covid-19 pandemic. Prosus, the tech conglomerate controlled by Naspers, is paying $1.7 billion to acquire Despegar, one of the biggest online travel agencies in Latin America, to scale up its operations in the region. Despegar’s board of directors…

Shein must cede Indians’ data, control of local ops to re-enter India

Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail, and keep operations fully local to re-enter the Indian market, according to new government disclosures that reveal how the apparel and accessories retailer secured a rare exception to India’s ban on Chinese-linked apps. In a parliamentary…

Travel is back: Hostaway raises $365M at a $925M valuation

The tourism and travel industries — after several tough years that included not just a global health pandemic but economic and geopolitical upheaval — are finally back on track, expected to make a “full recovery” to pre-pandemic levels of activity, the UN said earlier this month. As an indicator of that, Hostaway, one of the…

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