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The Latest Tim Hortons marks two years in China with Tencent investment Feb 25, 2021 Rita Liao Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee and doughnut giant, has raised a new round of funding for its Chinese venture. The investment is led by Sequoia China with participation from Tencent, its digital part Bessemer Venture Partners closes on $3.3 billion across two funds Feb 25, 2021 Mary Ann Azevedo Ingrid Lunden Another major VC firm has closed two major rounds, underscoring the long-term confidence investors continue to have for backing privately held companies in the tech sector. Early-stage VC firm Besseme Newsela, the replacement for textbooks, raises $100M and becomes a unicorn Feb 25, 2021 Natasha Mascarenhas Newsela, a SaaS platform for K-12 instructional material backed by the likes of TCV, Kleiner Perkins, Reach Capital and Owl Ventures, announced today that it has raised $100 million in a Series D roun Daily Crunch: Twitter announces ‘Super Follow’ subscriptions Feb 25, 2021 Anthony Ha Twitter reveals its move into paid subscriptions, Australia passes its media bargaining law and Coinbase files its S-1. This is your Daily Crunch for February 25, 2021. The big story: Twitter announce AT&T is turning DirecTV into a standalone company Feb 25, 2021 Anthony Ha AT&T just announced an agreement with private equity firm TPG that will turn DirecTV into a standalone company, albeit one that’s still majority owned by the telecom giant. Specifically, AT& Orca wants to give boating navigation its ‘iPhone moment’ Feb 25, 2021 Devin Coldewey Boating is a hobby steeped in history and tradition — and so is the industry and those that support it. With worldwide connectivity, electric boats, and other technological changes dragging the sect DigitalOcean’s IPO filing shows a two-class cloud market Feb 25, 2021 Alex Wilhelm Ron Miller This morning DigitalOcean, a provider of cloud computing services to SMBs, filed to go public. The company intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol “DOCN.&#8 Crypto company Anchorage raises $80 million after getting federal banking charter Feb 25, 2021 Romain Dillet Anchorage has raised an $80 million Series C funding round led by GIC, also known as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund. Andreessen Horowitz, Blockchain Capital, Lux and Indico are also participating Twitter’s ‘Super Follow’ creator subscription takes shots at Substack and Patreon Feb 25, 2021 Lucas Matney It’s been an all-around more ambitious year for Twitter. Following activist shareholder action last year that aimed to oust CEO Jack Dorsey, the company has been making long overdue product move Stoke Space aims to take reusable rockets to new heights with $9M seed Feb 25, 2021 Devin Coldewey Many launch providers think reusability is the best way to lower the cost and delay involved in getting to space. SpaceX and Rocket Lab have shown reusable first stages, which take a payload to the ed Robotics roundup Feb 25, 2021 Brian Heater Robotics took a small step into the wild world of SPACs this week, as Berkshire Grey announced its plan to go public by Q2. Setting aside some of the bigger issues with using the reverse merger route Sergey Brin’s airship aims to use world’s biggest mobile hydrogen fuel cell Feb 25, 2021 Mark Harris Sergey Brin’s secretive airship company LTA Research and Exploration is planning to power a huge disaster relief airship with an equally record-breaking hydrogen fuel cell. A job listing from the co Register for TC Sessions: Justice for a conversation on diversity, equity and inclusion in the startup world Feb 25, 2021 Alexandra Ames Diversity, equity and inclusion. These essential elements remain woefully lacking across the tech industry despite recent strides. Join us on March 3 — just one week away — for TC Sessions: Justic Docyt raises $1.5M for its ML-based accounting automation platform Feb 25, 2021 Frederic Lardinois Accounting isn’t a topic that most people can get excited about — probably not even most accountants. But if you’re running any kind of business, there’s just no way around it. Blue Origin pushes New Glenn orbital rocket’s first flight to Q4 2022 Feb 25, 2021 Darrell Etherington Jeff Bezos’ space company Blue Origin published an updated timeline for the first flight of New Glenn, the orbital rocket it’s building to complement its existing New Shepard suborbital sp Learn about creating equity in tech with Rep. Barbara Lee at TechCrunch Sessions: Justice Feb 25, 2021 Henry Pickavet Rep. Barbara Lee, who has represented the East Bay of California since 1998, is one of Congress’s staunchest proponents of diversity in tech. Representing Oakland, Emeryville and other cities nestle Foresite Capital raises $969 million fund to invest in healthcare startups across all stages of growth Feb 25, 2021 Darrell Etherington Health and life science specialist investment firm Foresite Capital has raised a new fund, its fifth to date, totaling $969 million in commitments from LPs. This is the firm’s largest fund to da Former top Paytm exec is building his own financial services startup Feb 25, 2021 Manish Singh The executive who built the financial services boutique for Paytm, India’s most valuable startup, is ready to do something similar all over again. Pravin Jadhav, the former chief executive of Pa Five takeaways from Coinbase’s S-1 Feb 25, 2021 Alex Wilhelm This morning I want to dig more deeply into Coinbase's user numbers, its asset mix, its growing subscription incomes, its competitive landscape and who owns what in the company. How top startup lawyer Dawn Belt thinks about company-building in the age of SPACs Feb 25, 2021 Eric Eldon Dawn Belt has been working with top tech companies for two decades, most recently helping commercial electric vehicle company Proterra go public as a SPAC in January. Now she’ll be joining us at Load More \n Introducing paywalls into the Twitter feed could dramatically shift the mechanics of the service. Twitter has been pretty conservative over the years in building features that are intended for singular classes of users. Creator-focused features built for a network that is already home to so many creators could be a major threat to services like Patreon, which have largely popped up due to the lackluster monetization tools available from the big social platforms. \n New revenue streams will undoubtedly be key to Twitter’s ambitious plan to double its revenues by 2023 . \n \n Will this time be any different for Twitter? \n \n   \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been an all-around more ambitious year for Twitter. Following activist shareholder action last year that aimed to oust CEO Jack Dorsey, the company has been making long overdue product moves, buying up companies and aiming to push the envelope on how it can tap its network and drive new revenue streams. Things seem to […] \n","protected":false},"author":89192944,"featured_media":2117991,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"outcome":"","status":"","crunchbase_tag":0,"amp_status":"","relegenceEntities":[],"relegenceSubjects":[],"carmot_uuid":"d3fccadf-e65c-3ae9-b4f2-7cbd99355c15"},"categories":[17396],"tags":[168632,10406,150082,262,2209,5597,81819,3280351,3015,167933896,2647480,4471403,581,61736,599182],"crunchbase_tag":[],"tc_stories_tax":[],"tc_ec_category":[],"tc_event":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Screen-Shot-2021-02-25-at-10.40.22-AM.jpg","shortlink":"https:\/\/tcrn.ch\/3kpZ8DJ","rapidData":{"pt":"","pct":""},"premiumContent":false,"premiumCutoffPercent":1,"featured":false,"subtitle":"","seoTitle":"","seoDescription":"","tc_cb_mapping":[],"associatedEvent":null,"event":null,"authors":[89192944],"hideFeaturedImage":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117983"}],"collection":[{"href":"htt...