Author: Isabella

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: ReadySet, which is building a database infrastructure to help developers build real-time applications, raises a $24M Series A led by Index Ventures  —  ReadySet, a company providing database infrastructure to help developers build real-time applications, today announced that it raised $24 million …

Mike Butcher / TechCrunch: London-based Banked, which lets merchants accept payments without users creating an account or sharing data, raises $20M Series A led by BOA and Edenred  —  Banked is a FinTech startup that offers an alternative to card schemes.  Consumers are able to pay without entering financial data …

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Whimsical, which makes tools for workplace collaboration, raises a $30M Series A led by Accel after being bootstrapped since its founding in 2017  —  Whimsical, a startup creating tools for workplace collaboration, announced Tuesday its first funding round, a $30 million Series A investment led by Accel.

Mary Ann Azevedo / TechCrunch: Better.com lays off 3,000+ employees in the US and India, citing “current market conditions”; some staff learned of layoffs after early rollout of severance pay  —  The mass layoffs at digital mortgage lender Better.com have reportedly started, according to employees and other sources …

Mike Peterson / AppleInsider: Filing: Apple argues that Epic lost the Epic v. Apple trial because it failed to prove wrongdoing and not because of any legal errors on the judge’s part  —  In a new brief, Apple declares that Epic Games lost the Epic v. Apple trial because it failed to prove wrongdoing — and not because of any legal errors on the judge’s part.

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Microsoft completes its $19.7B acquisition of Nuance after UK’s CMA approved the deal earlier in the week  —  Microsoft completed its $19.7 billion acquisition of voice technology company Nuance Communications on Friday morning, two days after clearing their final regulatory hurdle.

Alex Roha / FinLedger: Atomic, which provides an API for fintech companies and banks to launch investment products, raises a $25M Series A co-led by QED Investors and Anthemis  —  San Francisco-based startup Atomic, which provides an investing API for fintechs and banks, has collected $25 million in a Series A round …

Jeanne Whalen / Washington Post: TSMC, Intel, GlobalFoundries, and other chipmakers have begun halting sales to Russia in response to US sanctions  —  The global computer chip industry, including the giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, has begun halting sales to Russia in the wake of U.S. sanctions aimed at punishing Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Christine Hall / TechCrunch: Mexico City-based Zubale, which matches gig workers with e-commerce fulfillment jobs in Latin America, raises a $40M Series A led by QED Investors  —  The e-commerce market in Latin America has been gaining traction over the past two years and is poised to double in size and be valued at more than $100 billion by 2025.

Enlarge / The hardware that slows down antiprotons so they can be used in these sorts of experiments. (credit: CERN) In Wednesday’s issue of Nature, a new paper describes a potentially useful way of measuring the interactions between normal matter and exotic particles, like antiprotons and unstable items like kaons or elements containing a strange quark. The work is likely to be useful, as we still don’t understand the asymmetry that has allowed matter to be the dominant form in our Universe. But the study is probably most notable for the surprising way that it collected measurements. A small research team managed to…