Daily Crunch - Stripe valued at $95B

Stripe gets a mind-boggling valuation, Facebook promotes COVID vaccines and Elon Musk has an interesting new title. This is your Daily Crunch for March 15, 2021.

The big story: Stripe valued at $95B

That’s right: The popular payments company has raised $600 million in new funding at a $95 billion valuation. It says it will use the money to expand in Europe while also growing its global payments and treasury network.

“Whether in fintech, mobility, retail or SaaS, the growth opportunity for the European digital economy is immense,” said president and co-founder John Collison in a statement.

Meanwhile, over in Extra Crunch, Alex Wilhelm takes a closer look at the company’s new growth numbers, like the fact that it’s now working with more than 50 companies that are each processing more than $1 billion annually.

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Ericsson’s smart factory brings 5G revolution to the U.S.

Sponsored by Ericsson

Ericsson’s Texas smart factory is producing equipment for rapid 5G deployments in the U.S. The facility is also a working example of how the latest in mobile broadband can bring innovation to industry.

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The tech giants

Facebook to label all COVID-19 vaccine posts with pointer to official info — The company says it has also implemented some “temporary” measures aimed at limiting the spread of vaccine misinformation/combating vaccine hesitancy.

His Majesty Elon the First, Technoking of Tesla — In Musk-speak, his new title still translates into the chief executive officer of the electric car company.

Netflix gets 35 Oscar nominations, including 10 for ‘Mank’ — Of course, this is a streaming-centric year for movies overall.

Startups, funding and venture capital

Airtable is now valued at $5.77B with a fresh $270 million in Series E funding — Airtable is a relational database that many describe as a souped-up version of Excel or Google Sheets (and there’s at least one TechCrunch editor who swears by it).

WeWork unbundles its products in an attempt to make itself over, but will the strategy work? — The pandemic presented WeWork with challenges, but also, some might say, opportunity.

ElevateBio raises $525M to advance its cell and gene therapy technologies — The company’s business model focuses on both developing and commercializing its own therapies, while also working through long-term partnerships with academic research institutions.

Advice and analysis from Extra Crunch

Julia Collins and Sarah Kunst outline how to build a fundraising process — Collins is the first Black woman to co-found a venture-backed unicorn, so it should come as no surprise that investors lined up to bet on her latest venture.

Olo raises IPO range as DigitalOcean sees possible $5B debut valuation — It’s a busy day in IPO-land.

(Extra Crunch is our membership program, which helps founders and startup teams get ahead. You can sign up here.)

Everything else

US e-commerce on track for its first $1 trillion year by 2022, due to lasting pandemic impacts — The COVID-19 pandemic boosted U.S. online shopping by $183 billion, according to a new report by Adobe’s e-commerce division.

BMW debuts the next generation of its iDrive operating system — With its new system, BMW is expanding the center dashboard display all the way through the cockpit.

4 signs your product is not as accessible as you think — Bringing decades-long legacy code and design into the future isn’t easy.

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