One step at a time, Square is creating a new bank from scratch. Today, the company is launching a new product called Square Banking that combines a checking account, savings accounts, debit cards and loans. With Square Banking, the company wants to convince small businesses that it’s just easier to manage all their money needs […]
Almost overnight, platforms that offer non-dilutive capital for recurring revenue businesses have become white-hot. It was only in March that Pipe — which aims to be the “Nasdaq for revenue” — raised $150 million, but two months later had raised $250 million at a $2 billion valuation. This fever is now reaching Europe, where today […]
Sundae, a residential real estate marketplace that pairs sellers of dated or damaged property with potential buyers, has raised $80 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Fifth Wall and General Global Capital. QED Investors, Wellington Management, Susa Ventures, Founders Fund, First American Financial, Prudence Holdings, Crossover VC, Intersect Capital, Gaingels and Oberndorf […]
Hyper is a $60M early-stage fund co-founded by Josh Buckley, Product Hunt’s CEO along with writer, founder and designer Dustin Curtis. Two ex-Sequoia operators are part of the team at launch as well. Malika Cantor as Partner and GM and Ashton Brown as Head of Program. The fund launches today and is self-described as ‘inspired […]
Four months after announcing its last round, Employment Hero has closed another $140 million AUD (about $103 million USD) in funding. The Series E was led by Insight Partners, the venture capital firm known for its ScaleUp program to help tech companies accelerate their growth. Employment Hero is an automated human resources, payroll and benefits […]
This morning Mural, a startup that builds digital collaboration software with a focus on visual presentation, announced that it has closed a $50 million Series C. The new capital, co-led by prior investors Insight Partners and Tiger Global, values the startup at more than $2 billion. Previously, Mural was valued at around $500 million when […]
People shopping around for a fitness app already have a plethora to pick from: MyFitnessPal, Noom and Lifesum, to name a few. Founded in India, HealthifyMe is betting that users around the world will prefer its range of customizable health programs. The Bangalore-based company announced today it has closed a $75 million Series C from […]
It’s been a wild 2021 for NFT auction marketplace OpenSea. The startup was exceedingly well-positioned in a niche space when NFTs exploded earlier this year seemingly out of nowhere. Since then, the startup has found its user base expanding, the total volume of sales skyrocketing and more investor dollars being thrown at them. The startup […]
Pan-European early-stage VC Speedinvest has reached the final close for its second fund aimed at specialist marketplaces and consumer startups. Aside from institutional LPs, the €60m / $70.8M fund was also backed by marketplace founders and executives including those from Ankorstore, Vinted, TradingView, Planetly, and others. Jörg Gerbig, COO of JustEatTakeAway and co-founder of Lieferando, […]
The “subscribe to your car” movement has been taking off in recent years, with the appearance of Fleks in the UK (Europe), Cazoo (after its acquisition of Drover), Care by Volvo Hertz, to name just a few. Into this space has appeared imove out of Norway, with what appears, at least, to be a new […]
The global Covid-19 pandemic had a chilling effect on a number of industries and their workforces, resulting in mass furloughs and layoffs. But now, with countries now taking steps back to “normal”, that has been leading, in many cases, back to a hiring surge. Today, SmartRecruiters, one of the companies that has built software to […]
In the modern world, we tend to like to know where our food comes from and this has massively influenced professional kitchens. For decades, food suppliers have sat on one side and distribution channels (restaurants and the like) on the other. But large wholesalers in the middle have traditionally crushed producers on prices and late […]
Following our report yesterday of an impending sale of LiveU — one of the big developers of live streaming hardware and software, used by some 3,000 major media organizations — today the company and its buyer Carlyle confirmed the deal. The seller is Francisco Partners, another PE firm that acquired LiveU just two years ago […]
It took SoftBank several years, but the Japanese investment giant is now ready to bet on India’s food delivery market. Swiggy said on Tuesday it has closed a $1.25 billion financing round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Prosus Ventures. The new financing round, a Series J, includes the $800 million investment the Bangalore-based […]
YouTube has acquired social commerce startup Simsim, the Google-owned firm said on Tuesday. Neither of the firms disclosed the terms of the deal, but two people with knowledge of the matter told TechCrunch the Indian startup was valued at over $70 million. Two-year-old Simsim had raised about $17 million prior to today’s announcement and was […]
GM will add a full-size electric pickup truck to its GMC lineup, the latest in a string of EV product announcements by the automaker in the past year as it pushes to deliver more than 1 million electric vehicles globally by 2025. The EV pickup was shared in a slide deck during the media presentation […]
Over the weekend, an international consortium of news outlets reported that several authoritarian governments — including Mexico, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates — used spyware developed by NSO Group to hack into the phones of thousands of their most vocal critics, including journalists, activists, politicians and business executives. A leaked list of 50,000 phone […]
