Meet the five startup Battlefield finalists at Disrupt 2020

TechCrunch hosted an unusual Startup Battlefield this week — the founders, judges, audience and moderator (me) were all in different locations, doing our best to interact over WebEx. But the 20 startups still demonstrated their products and explained their visions, then were grilled by expert judges. And those judges helped the TechCrunch team select our five finalists. Those finalists will be presenting tomorrow at 10:40 a.m.

Importance Of Using Data Analytics To Optimize Lead Pipelines

Big data is utilized in many facets of business. One of the most important benefits of data analytics with lead generation and optimization. Many experts agree that big data is reinventing the art of lead generation. There are a number of benefits of integrating data analytics into the lead pipeline. You need to know how to leverage your data resources to your full advantage.

Cloudera adds data engineering, visualization to its Data Platform

Cloudera announces the addition of new data engineering and data visualization "experiences" to the Cloudera Data Platform, complementing its equally new analytical database offering.

Predictive Analytics: 4 Primary Aspects of Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics, sometimes referred to as big data analytics, relies on aspects of data mining as well as algorithms to develop predictive models. These predictive models can be used by enterprise marketers to more effectively develop predictions of future user behaviors based on the sourced historical data. These statistical models are growing as a result of the wide swaths of available current data as well as the advent of capable artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Stock market blizzard: Snowflake set for £33bn IPO as valuation bubble keeps on expanding

The price? 'ridiculous for a company that is still loss-making' - analyst Cloud data warehouse slinger Snowflake has set an IPO price valuing the company at $33bn, making it nominally worth more than US retailer Best Buy or UK supermarket chain Tesco.…

Pure Storage acquires data service platform Portworx for $370M

Pure Storage, the public enterprise data storage company, today announced that it has acquired Portworx, a well-funded startup that provides a cloud-native storage and data-management platform based on Kubernetes, for $370 million in cash. This marks Pure Storage’s largest acquisition to date and shows how important this market for multi-cloud data services has become. Current Portworx enterprise customers include the likes of Carrefour, Comcast, GE Digital, Kroger, Lufthansa, and T-Mobile.

Data.world secures $26 million funding, exemplifies the use of semantics and knowledge graphs for metadata management

Data.world wants to eliminate data silos to answer business questions. Their bet to do this is to provide data catalogs powered by knowledge graphs and semantics. The choice of technology seems to hit the mark, but intangibles matter, too.

Data virtualization service Varada raises $12M

Varada, a Tel Aviv-based startup that focuses on making it easier for businesses to query data across services, today announced that it has raised a $12 million Series A round led by Israeli early-stage fund MizMaa Ventures, with participation by Gefen Capital. “If you look at the storage aspect for big data, there’s always innovation, but we can put a lot of data in one place,” Varada CEO and co-founder Eran Vanounou told me.

Spotawheel raises €10M debt and equity for its ‘end-to-end’ used car buying platform

Spotawheel, the “end-to-end” digital platform for buying a used car in Poland and Greece, has raised €10 million in debt and equity funding, as it sees a bounce-back from the slowdown witnessed as the coronavirus crisis took hold. Once again the new investment was led by VentureFriends, with participation from existing investor Velocity Partners, along with U.S.-based FJ Labs and unnamed strategic investors.

Matidor is building an all-in-one geospatial project collaboration platform

It’s a big world out there, but the software that allows professionals to take a closer look at geospatial data hasn’t made the same leaps that consumer-focused platforms have. Matidor, a Vancouver-based geospatial visualization and collaboration startup, is building a project platform for consultants and engineers in the energy sector to keep track of projects in a single, far-reaching dashboard. Co-founders Vincent Lam and Sean Huang are relaunching Matidor on our virtual stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2020.