Internet watchdog Citizen Lab claims iPhone spyware dodges Apple security measures – TechCrunch

For a recap of TechCrunch’s most important and important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3:00 p.m. PDT, subscribe here.

Hello and welcome to Daily Crunch for August 24, 2021. Today’s news cycle was particularly strong, so we have a long way to go. Especially if you want to know the latest news from Spotify, Waymo, and other big tech companies.

But before that, Disrupt is less than a month away and will star the two Salesforce heirs, Stewart Butterfield and Bret Taylor. Be hyped! – Alexis

The Top 3 TechCrunch

• Airbnb will house 20,000 Afghan refugees: Corporate gadgets are empty gestures at best. What Airbnb promises is the opposite. By providing free accommodation to tens of thousands of Afghan refugees, the company is using its business network for material ends. Other rich tech companies, what are you going to do?
• Ramp Raises $ 300 Million at a Valuation of $ 3.9 Billion: The startup war to capture the growing business spending market has escalated further today with Ramp raising new funds. Brex, Ramp and Airbase are locked in a multi-party duel after former competitor Divvy was sold to Bill.com. Ramp also made its first acquisition, he said.
• For more on the Ramp-Brex rivalry and what their acquisitions may detail about their divergent strategies, go here.
• Booming hours in Beantown: The global startup scene is accelerating, but few markets have enabled afterburners to the same degree as Boston. The venerable startup hub is setting venture capital records on more rounds than ever. And a host of local investors do not see momentum slackening over the next few quarters.

Startups / VC

So much has happened in the last 24 hours that we have to go in sections. Make sure to follow TechCrunch on Twitter so you can stay up to date all day.

We start in India:

• Bankers drive out the Byju: Its IPO, that is. By our own Manish singh, bankers pitch the famous edtech startup, hoping to secure part of its future IPO action. And the figures released are truly astonishing: “Most banks have offered Byju a valuation of between $ 40 billion and $ 45 billion, but some, including Morgan Stanley, have proposed a valuation of $ 50 billion if the startup is listed there. ‘next year,’ he writes. .
• Khatabook Raises $ 100 Million More: Now valued at around $ 600 million, Khatabook’s business of digitizing India’s myriad of SMEs is doing well, it seems. The company’s new C-Series will help power its 10 million monthly active users and likely help it grow its workforce by 200.

To get us into starting laps more generally, our own Natasha Mascarenhas today posted an article about NoRedInk’s massive $ 50 million Series B. Its goal is to help students become better writers. I asked her why she chose the tour to cover, to which she replied the following:

Usually I see edtech companies working on topics that have a good answer, or at least that can be put into a single category like STEM or coding often is. NoRedInk caught my eye because it wants to bring technology to a highly emotional and subjective subject: writing. It’s a tough challenge, but it’s cool to see the education community betting on ambitious projects beyond teaching coding to more students.

Next, we have a few regular Starter Bulletins:

• Substack buys the team behind Cocoon: Substack has all week. After hiring a general counsel, the startup announced it had acquired the Cocoon team, which TechCrunch described as “a subscription-based social media app built for close friends.”
• Maybe 3D printed houses will be a thing? Investors are betting they will, pouring $ 207 million into ICON after its 3D-printed home business saw 400% revenue growth. Realistically speaking, we have a national housing crisis. So if this leads to more and cheaper homes, it’s hard to argue with it.
• Sora raises $ 14 million for the automation of HR operations: Sora is back this year with a new capital increase, after having multiplied by 7 its customers and multiplied its income by 8 since its 2020 fundraising. Now flush with the cash flow of Series A, the startup has big plans for grow your team and double your efforts to make the HR technology stack work together, eliminating busy work.
• And in a somewhat related field, Tango announced that it had raised $ 5.7 million to develop its process documentation service. The startup observes how employees perform a particular task, then creates a how-to guide so others can follow in their footsteps. For new hires, especially in a remote world, this could be neat service.
• Finally from startupland, Sara Mauskopf (CEO and co-founder of Winnie) and Elana Berkowitz (founding partner at Springbank Collective) wrote an essay for TechCrunch noting that one particular industry is huge, but somehow devoid of venture capital funds: child care.

Back to the suture: the future of health is at home

It was once a common practice for physicians to visit sick patients at home: in 1930, 40% of all consultations were home visits. In 1980, this figure was less than 1%.

Today, emergency care centers take up storefronts on Main Street, and 33% of medical expenses are spent in hospitals. This leads to higher prices, but not necessarily better results, according to Sumi Das and Nina Gerson, who lead healthcare investments at Capital G.

“We can improve both outcomes and costs by moving care from the hospital to where it started – at home,” they write in an article that explores five innovations enabling home care and identifies opportunities for it. investment such as acute care and infrastructure development.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams move forward. You can register here.)

Big Tech Inc.

Kicking off our Big Tech recap today, ours Ron Miller takes a close look at how Cisco makes acquisitions. The dotcom boom company is one of the most buying companies in the world, which makes its approach to attracting talent and products from startups worth understanding.

And now, Big Tech’s favorite:

• Your iPhone is not immune to this spyware: This is the gist of Zack Whittaker’s latest story, which explains how a clickless attack executed by NSO software broke the security of an “Bahraini human rights activist’s iPhone”. Not good!
• Peloton’s Tread is back, hopefully safer: One of the strangest self-inflicted injuries in the world of exercise tech came about when Peloton tried to argue that their treadmills were safe. They weren’t. Platoon eventually gave in and offered a recall. Now they are back!
• TikTok continues to shake things up: This time around, the social giant is taking e-commerce a step further, it announced today, detailing an expanded partnership with Shopify. A service called TikTok Shopping is also coming to the US, UK, and Canada.
• All US podcasters can now access the Spotify subscription option: Paid podcasting is important in China, but less popular elsewhere in the world. Spotify is betting that the model will be present in other markets as well. Now, all US podcasters can access the paid service if they choose.
• To complete us, Waymo Deploys Autonomous Car Service in San Francisco. Given City by the Bay’s inability to complete a road works project, this is great news. As someone who doesn’t want to drive, that’s great news.

TechCrunch Experts: Growth Marketing

Image credits: SEAN GLADWELL (Opens in a new window) / Getty Images

We reach out to startup founders to tell us who they turn to for the most up-to-date growth marketing practices. Complete the survey here.

Read one of the testimonials we received below!

Trader: Avi Grondin, Spread Marketing

Recommended by: Adam Czach, Explorator Labs

Testimony: “They have a hands-on approach and have worked with my team not only to get results, but also to teach us how we can grow our business further. “