The enterprise software and services focused accelerator, Alchemist has raised $4 million in fresh financing from investors BASF and the Qatar Development Bank, just in time for its latest demo day unveiling 20 new companies. Qatar and BASF join previous investors including the venture firms Mayfield, Khosla Ventures, Foundation Capital, DFJ, and USVP, and corporate […]

Tis the season to be raising in India and Southeast Asia. Hot on the heels of new funds from Strive and Jungle Ventures, so Singapore’s Vertex Ventures, a VC backed by sovereign wealth fund Temasek, today announced a first close of $230 million for its newest fund, the firm’s fourth to date. Vertex raised $210 […]

Walmart’s investments in e-commerce are paying off. The retailer today announced its U.S. e-commerce revenue grew by 37 percent in the first quarter, largely thanks to its booming online grocery business and growth in both the home and fashion categories on Walmart.com. The company beat analyst estimates for the quarter, with earnings per share of […]

Startups are ultimately vessels of speculation, of new products, new markets, and innovations the world has never seen. While data and information are important components for exploring the frontiers of the possible, perhaps the best way is through stories and fiction, and especially speculative fiction. We’ve been fortunate at Extra Crunch to have noted novelist […]

SugarCRM announced today that it has acquired Atlanta-based Salesfusion to help build out the the marketing automation side of its business. The deal closed last Friday. The companies did not share the purchase price. CEO Craig Charlton, who joined the company in February, says he recognized that marketing automation was an area of the platform […]

February’s acquisition of Anchor was a savvy move on Spotify’s behalf. It’s a clever and rapidly growing company that will help the music service get a big leg up in its bid to build podcast operation. For the looks of it, however, the big buy out isn’t making Anchor complacent when it comes to building […]

Instagram’s pivot to Stories continues with an overhaul of Explore designed to let users dig deeper into their niche interests. Stories are now eligible to show up in the Explore tab for the first time, giving creators a way to get discovered through their intimate, silly, behind-the-scenes content instead of just their manicured feed posts. […]

Samsung’s been mostly quiet on the Fold front after recalling review units and indefinitely delaying the phone’s release. Understandably so. It couldn’t have been easy going back to the drawing board with one of buzziest handsets in recent memory. While we’ve been waiting word, the company has been exploring fixes and attempting to determine the […]

As Facebook pushes ahead with its strategy to consolidate more of the backend of its various apps on to a single platform, it’s also doing a little simplifying and housekeeping. In the coming month, it will shut down Direct, the standalone Instagram direct messaging app that it was testing to rival Snapchat, on iOS and […]

TodayTix, a mobile ticketing company that makes it easy and relatively affordable to go to Broadway shows and other live performances, is announcing a new $73 million round of funding led by private equity firm Great Hill Partners. The company was founded in 2013, and it served initially as the mobile equivalent of New York’s […]