Author: Ingrid Lunden

Uber reaches tentative settlement with drivers arbitrating over employment status and expense reimbursement Uber is reportedly on track to go public in the first quarter next year, and in the lead up to that, it’s sewing up some loose ends. TechCrunch has learned that Uber has offered a tentative settlement to pay out 11 cents for every mile driven for Uber (including adjacent services like Uber Eats) to drivers who have been in individual arbitration with the company over their employment classification. Drivers were pursuing individual arbitration after an appeals…

Delivery Hero sells its German business to Takeaway.com in a .1B deal One more big consolidation play is underway in the highly competitive European food delivery business, amid more pressure from newer players like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Today, Delivery Hero announced that it will be selling its operations in Germany — its actual home market — to Dutch rival Takeaway.com for a total consideration of €930 million (or about $1.1 billion). The deal covers all of Delivery Hero’s operations in Germany, which include the Lieferheld, Pizza.de and foodora brands, which…

Corel confirms it has acquired virtualization specialist Parallels Last month, we broke the news that Corel was buying Parallels, a pioneer in virtualization, to expand its footprint in the world of business software. Now that deal is official: today Canada-based Corel confirmed that it has acquired the company. Now products like CorelDraw and productivity apps like WordPerfect will sit alongside Parallels Desktop for Mac, Parallels Toolbox for Windows and Mac, Parallels Access, Parallels Mac Management for Microsoft SCCM, and Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) — key products for businesses that run networks…

Uber partner Fair gets 5M led by Softbank to grow its flexible car ownership model globally California startup Fair.com is aiming to turn the car market on its head by providing price-friendly, easy options for people to lease vehicles instead of buying them, and today it’s taking the latest, big step in that ambition. Fair has raised a huge Series B funding round of $385 million led by Softbank, with participation from Exponential Ventures, Munich Re Venture’s ERGO Fund, G Squared, and CreditEase, to take its business global. Requiring just a drivers…

Cinven acquires One.com, one of Europe’s biggest hosting providers with 1.5M customers One of the biggest providers of domain names and web hosting in Europe is changing hands today. One.com, which has around 1.5 million customers mainly across the north of the region, has been sold by private equity firm Accel-KKR to Cinven, another PE player that focuses on investments in Europe. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but as a rough guide, Cinven once owned and sold another European hosting provider of comparable size: it acquired Host…

Crew, a Workplace and Slack messaging rival for shift workers, raises M, adds enterprise version When it comes to shift workers communicating with each other in the workplace when they are not face-to-face, gone are the days of cork announcement boards. Now, the messaging app is the medium, and today one of the startups tackling that opportunity in a unique way has raised a round of funding to get to the next stage of growth. Crew, a chat app that specifically targets businesses that employ shift workers who do not…

Sprout Social raises another .5M to double down on social tools for businesses Sprout Social, a social media monitoring, marketing and analytics service with 25,000 business customers that helps these organizations manage their public profiles and interact with customers across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Google+ (soon to RIP), has raised $40.5 million in funding in order expand its business internationally and add more functionality to its platform. The money — a Series B led by Future Fund with participation from Goldman Sachs and New Enterprise Associates — brings the…

UK’s DCMS calls in Facebook again over user data access, asks competition authorities to investigate The latest revelations about Facebook’s handling of user data — an investigation by the New York Timesfound that Facebook had been providing special data access to large companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Spotify and others — has landed the social network once more in hot water in Europe, and specifically the United Kingdom. Today, Damian Collins MP, Chair of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, issued a statement in which he called on competition authorities to open…

Kahoot, a ‘Netflix for education’, launches an accelerator to tap gaming and education startups On the back of Disney increasing its shareholding in Oslo-based Kahoot to four percent last week, Kahoot today announced a new initiative that helps to position the popular startup — which already has 60 million games and has seen over 1 billion players engage on its platform over the last year — as the “Netflix for education apps.” It’s launching Kahoot! Ignite, a new accelerator for like-minded startups that are pushing the boundaries of education through gaming…

Zwift, which turns indoor cycling workouts into multiplayer games, raises 0M Fitness and gaming have been two of the most popular categories of apps for years, and now a startup founded out of London that has combined the two in a unique way has picked up a big round of funding to capitalise on that. Zwift, an interactive platform for people to turn indoor cycling workouts into massive, multi-participant races, social rides, and immersive explorations of new domains, has raised $120 million — money that its co-founder and CEO, Eric…