Technology

Klarna is quietly becoming a fintech giant. Following its latest founding round, the company is now valued at $5.5 billion. Thatwhy I&m excited to announce that Klarna co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski will join us at TechCrunch Disrupt Berlin.

If you live in Europe and regularly purchase stuff online, chances are you&ve used Klarna already. The company offers a simple way to pay for e-commerce purchases over multiple installments.

And itbeen massively successful in Europe. You could think as Klarna as a sort of credit card-alternative payment method. Even if you don&t have a credit card, you can choose to purchase something right now, pay after 30 days or pay over 3 or 4 installments without any interest.

This way, expensive payments become slightly easier for customers. And if therea problem with your purchase, Klarna ensures that you don&t have to pay or get your money back — your money never left your bank account in the first place.

Just like using a PayPal account, if you pay on another site that uses Klarna, you don&t have to enter your payment information again. Merchants that leverage Klarna gets paid instantly after a purchase, even if clients choose to pay later.

Klarna is also building a marketplace of stores. You can download the mobile app and search for products across multiple stores. This could become a great alternative to e-commerce giants like Amazon.

Up next, Klarna wants to grow its presence in the U.S. While it already has millions of customers and thousands of merchants, the company thinks therestill a ton of potential in the U.S.

If you want to know how a Swedish startup plans to disrupt the credit card industry in the U.S., buy your ticket to Disrupt Berlin to listen to this discussion — and many others. The conference will take place December 11-12.

In addition to panels and fireside chats, like this one, new startups will participate in the Startup Battlefield to compete for the highly coveted Battlefield Cup.

In 2005, Sebastian Siemiatkowski co-founded Klarna in order to provide safe and smooth online payments. He currently serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Over the past decade, he has overseen the companyrapid growth across Europe and more recently into North America. Klarna is a now fully licensed bank with 60mn consumer and 170,000 merchant user base.

Sebastian has received multiple awards for his leadership, including runner up in the 2015 global EY Entrepreneur of the Year award, Leader of the Year by Adecco, and European Entrepreneur of the Year Award by TechTour. He holds a masterdegree from the Stockholm School of Economics.

The founder of African investigative digital media site Sahara Reporters Omoyele Sowore remains detained in Nigeria on charges including treason, his wife Opeyemi Sowore told TechCrunch.

Her husband founded Sahara Reporters to create and aggregate news content, social media tips, and self-digital reporting toward exposing corruption in Africa and his home country of Nigeria.

After being jailed and beaten several times for his journalistic work in Nigeria, Sowore re-located to New York City and formed Sahara Reporters in Manhattan in 2006 to report under U.S. legal protections.

Several outlets, including Reuters, reported his arrest in August 2019. According to Opeyemi Sowore — who lives in New Jersey — her husband was detained in Lagos on August 4th while at a protest. He was then transferred to Nigeriacapital, Abuja.

Per social media and press reporting, Omoyele Sowore (who goes by Sowore), was participating in #RevolutionNow movement of peaceful demonstration against bad governance in Nigeria.

After several hearings, he is still being held in Abuja, his wife said.

According to a copy of his court charging document obtained by TechCrunch, Sowore is charged with two counts of conspiring to stage a revolution and to remove Nigeriapresident, Muhammadu Buhari, from office &otherwise than by constitutional means.&

Sowore is also charged with cybercrimes for &knowingly send[ing] messages by means of a press interview granted on Arise Television…for the purpose of causing insult…and ill-will on the…President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria& and for money laundering based on a transfer of $19,975 from a Nigerian bank account to a Sahara Reporters held account in New York.

Sowore pleaded not guilty to the charges and rejected an offer of bail for roughly $800,000, according to press reports and his wife.

As for the veracity of the charges, Soworewife Opeyemi believes they are a cover to go after her husband for his activism and work with Sahara Reporters.

Sowore has never been an advocate of violence or insurrection, according to his wife.

&If you look at his history he is the most peaceful person. He does what he does so Nigeria can work for all Nigerians…be inclusive of all ethnic groups, all socio-economic backgrounds, and religions,& Opeyemi Sowore said.

&I think the charges are about silencing a critical voice thatshining light on corruption,& she added.

Not everyone is a fan of Sowore and Sahara Reporters& work, particularly in Nigeria. The country has has made strides in improving infrastructure and governance and has one of Africastrongest economies and tech scenes.

But Nigeria is still plagued by corruption, particularly around its oil-resources, and has a steady-stream of multi-billion dollar scandals — yes billions — in state related funds being stolen or simply going missing.

Sahara Reporters has made a practice of reporting on such corruption. The site, which has a tips line and small TV station, has exposed improprieties of many public officials and forced a number of resignations in Nigeriagovernment.

In the previous administration of President Goodluck Jonathan, Sahara Reporters played a role in exposing the theft of an estimated $20 billion in public funds by Petroleum Minister, Diezani Allison-Madueke, who was forced to resign and eventually arrested.

The internet, mobile, and digital media play a central role in the work of Sahara Reporters. In an interview in 2014, Sowore explained to me how these mediums often do much of the investigative work.

&In many cases, thereless investigation to breaking these stories than you&d think. The corruption and whoperpetrating it is generally well-known and the evidence easy to distribute through social media and devices. We just need a safe place to report it from, and the rest often takes care of itself,& Sowore said.

Ironically, Sowreown thesis of using digital and social media for advocacy may be tested on his getting out of jail.

Soworewife is working on a campaign of global supporters — including Amnesty International — to shine a light on her husbandcharges, innocence, and press for his release.

Away from the activism and politics, &I want Yele to come home safely. I&m worried about his safety and we have two small children and they miss their father dearly,& Opeyemi Sowore said.

The trial for her husband Omoyele Sowore is scheduled for early November.

Affordable and readily available, Red Heart is the yarn brand that many knitters, including me, used the first time we picked up a pair of needles. I was surprised to see a pitch from them land in my inbox, since hand-knitting yarn is usually something I don&t get to cover for TechCrunch. But the brand recently released a new line of yarn called Heat Wave, which uses proprietary technology to create acrylic yarn that generates heat when exposed to sunlight.

Like Red Heartclassic Super Saver yarn, Heat Wave is completely acrylic, but becomes up to 12°F warmer when exposed to the sun, even on overcast days. I learned how to knit on Super Saver and still keep a few skeins in my stash. When I opened the box of Heat Wave samples Red Heart sent me, I was surprised to see that the yarns felt nearly indistinguishable. I took my skeins of yarn outdoors on a sunny day with an infrared thermometer and found that Heat Wave did indeed measure up to the companyclaims, emitting more heat than either Super Saver or a ball of 100% wool yarn in similar colors.

Amy Olsen, the product development lead of Red Heart, tells me that the company worked with a supplier (Red Heart prefers to keep their name under wraps) that developed microscopic acrylic fibers with heat-generating properties in the core. Since it is part of the structure of the fiber, it won&t wash out the way a spray-on application would. The fiber is then spun into aran-weight yarn at Red Heartmill in Albany, Georgia.

There are other heat-generating textiles used in commercial products, like UniqloHeattech line of clothing, but many of them work by retaining heat generated by the body. Since Red Heart Heat Wave absorbs solar energy, it has the benefit of extra warmth when you are outdoors, but returns to the same temperature as other acrylic garments when you go back inside.

As an obsessed knitter and tech reporter, I always get a thrill when these two parts of my life connect. For example, researchers are exploring how to use knitted fabrics in soft robotics, while Georgia Institute Technology mathematician, physicist and hand-knitter Elisabetta Matsumoto is currently conducting a five-year research project to create models that can predict how different types of knitted fabric will behave. On the machine-knitting front, a team of MIT researchers have developed AI-based software that enables people without knitting or design experience to create their own clothes.

Red HeartHeat Wave is interesting because it is one of the first times I can recall new textile tech being centered as a selling point for a hand-knitting yarn and hopefully it will encourage more people to explore the intersection between STEM and fiber crafts. Olsen says that the yarn will become a regular part of Red Heartproduct line, with plans to release more colors in the future.