<p>Foreign exchange fluctuations can make or break a business that trades across borders, but keeping up and responding to the FX market can be tricky if you’re anything smaller than the world’s largest enterprises. Today, a startup called Grain is emerging from stealth with a product that it says will let finance teams at companies [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Cross-border trade could become significantly more challenging with the wave of new tariffs getting introduced across different markets. Today, in a timely piece of news, a London-founded startup called Swap — which is building tools for e-commerce companies to better navigate the cross-border trading world — is announcing $40 million in funding to expand. Iconiq [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Despite clouds of uncertainty looming over the economy and geopolitics, people still want to travel. To meet that demand, Mews, an Amsterdam-founded &#8220;unicorn&#8221; building an SaaS platform for hotel management, has raised a fresh $75 million. The funding is coming at a crossroads in the travel industry. From one direction, the positive signals: Analysts at [&hellip;]</p>

<p>While Venmo or Splitwise are effectively &#8220;debt collector&#8221; tools, which require one person to pay a full bill and then request funds from others, neither have cracked bill-splitting at the moment of payment. European startup Cino, which has come up with just such a product, has now raised €3.5 million in a seed-funding round led [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively &#8220;Uberizing&#8221; how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Think DoorDash but for parcels, not food. This is what the founders of Europe’s Relay realized and decided to bring to the region &#8212; [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Commercetools &#8212; a “headless commerce&#8221; platform that provides APIs to companies building online storefronts &#8212; saw a major boost in its business just a few years ago, raising money at a whopping $1.9 billion valuation as the world went shopping online in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and businesses rushed to improve their e-commerce [&hellip;]</p>

<p>The boom in e-commerce post-pandemic meant shops moved online. However, some merchants ended up with dozens of separate app providers to accommodate everything from supply chains, to inventory, to marketing. The founders of Shop Circle realized this and either built or bought many such apps. The company has now raised $60 million in a Series [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amazon is not giving up on making its Alexa a virtual shopping assistant. On Wednesday, the company announced that Alexa+, its revamped Alexa experience, will be able to help consumers grocery shop from home using more natural conversations and requests. The feature will work with Amazon Fresh or any other grocery partner working with Amazon, [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Since its launch in 2018 as a ride-hailing service in Togo, Gozem has steadily expanded across French-speaking West Africa, integrating a wide range of services as it sought to become a super app. The company now offers ride-hailing, commerce, vehicle financing, and digital banking across Togo, Benin, Gabon, and Cameroon. Now, in a bid to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>We&#8217;ve all been there. A favorite item is suddenly unavailable for purchase. Couldn&#8217;t the manufacturer have given you advance warning? Whether owing to low sales, changing habits, production costs, or even because something is a little wrong with your favorite product (shh), discontinued items are part of life. In a weekend piece, The New York [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Gig marketplace Fiverr wants to let freelancers train AI on their bodies of work and use it to automate future jobs. At an event on Tuesday, Fiverr announced the launch of several new efforts aimed at attracting gig workers to its platform and equipping them with generative AI tools. Perhaps the most ambitious is a [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Amazon is shutting down “Inspire,” its TikTok-like, short-form video and photo feed that was previously available in its mobile app. The feed allowed users to discover products and shop from content created by influencers, brands, and other customers. A company spokesperson confirmed the move to TechCrunch, saying, “We regularly evaluate various features to better align [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Garner, North Carolina voted against unionizing in election results announced today. According to Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE), the worker group seeking to form the union, 3,276 ballots were cast in the election, with 25.3% of votes in favor of unionizing and 74.7% against. The results [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Staying on the right side of the European Union&#8217;s online rulebook when it comes to the slippery topic of disinformation is set to get easier for platforms that commit to the bloc&#8217;s long-standing Code of Practice on Disinformation. You know, the voluntary Code that Elon Musk pulled X (formerly Twitter) out of back in 2023. [&hellip;]</p>

<p>E-commerce startups built around food continue to gobble up funding as investors look for sticky consumer concepts that can scale without breaking the bank. On Wednesday, Germany’s Lanch — which taps social media and influencers to develop popular food brands alongside retail networks for distributing them — closed funding of €26 million ($27 million) to [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Shopify took down Kanye West&#8217;s online store after the musician sold T-shirts with the swastika symbol. West, who also goes by Ye, advertised his online store in a Super Bowl commercial on Sunday, directing viewers to his website, where the only item listed was the swastika T-shirt. Though Shopify removed a policy banning sellers from [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Remember that Christmas movie &#8220;Miracle on 34th Street,&#8221; where Macy&#8217;s in-store Santa, Kris Kringle, sends a frazzled shopper to a competitor&#8217;s store to find the Christmas present her son wanted because Macy&#8217;s was out of stock? Now Amazon is doing the same thing online. The retailer announced on Tuesday the test of a new Amazon [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Construction procurement is highly fragmented, manual, and opaque, forcing contractors to juggle multiple suppliers, endure lengthy negotiations, and deal with delayed payments. In Saudi Arabia, where trillion-dollar infrastructure and real estate projects are underway, these inefficiencies are even more pronounced. To address this, BRKZ, a Riyadh-based construction tech startup, offers a tech-enabled managed marketplace that [&hellip;]</p>

<p>On the same day that President Donald Trump delayed ending a trade exemption targeting certain Chinese imports, e-commerce company Shopify published a blog post making its stance on U.S. trade policy clear. In the post, Shopify endorsed &#8220;open trade,&#8221; calling for regulators to give online merchants the &#8220;freedom to expand without constraints imposed by geopolitical [&hellip;]</p>

<p>Indian food delivery company Swiggy&#8217;s stock fell below both its IPO price and its last private valuation as mounting losses and a wavering market position in quick commerce pressured its margins in the last quarter. On Thursday, the food delivery company&#8217;s stock fell as low as ₹374.80 ($4.29) below its November IPO price of ₹390, [&hellip;]</p>