Facebook has long been working on raising WhatsApp’s profile as a channel for businesses to interact with (and sell to) their customers. Today, a startup that has built a suite of tools for retailers and others to build and run those services over WhatsApp and other messaging platforms is announcing growth funding to address that […]
India has asked social media firms to provide an update on whether they have complied with its new IT rules “as soon as possible” and “preferably today” even as the new regulations are being legally challenged by WhatsApp. In a letter to “significant social media intermediaries” — which New Delhi defines as social media firms with […]
Along with the stock market, cryptocurrency is also seeing an uptick among retail investors in Indonesia. Pintu, a platform focused on first-time cryptocurrency buyers, announced today it has raised a $6 million Series A, led by Pantera Capital, Intudo Ventures and Coinbase Ventures. Other participants in the round included Blockchain.com Ventures, Castle Island Ventures and […]
The handling of user data in China has become a delicate matter for foreign tech companies operating in the country. Apple’s move to store the data of its Chinese customers in servers managed by a Chinese state-owned cloud service has stoked controversy in the West over the years. A recent New York Times investigation found […]
With more people than ever before going online to pay for things and pay each other, startups that are building the infrastructure that enables these actions continue to get a lot of attention. In the latest development, Paysend, a fintech that has built a mobile-based payments platform — which currently offers international money transfers, global […]
As of now, one fo the UK’s biggest and most active tech VCs has a new partner. Principal Colin Hanna has spearheaded several of Balderton’s deals in the past couple of years, and has now been appointed a Partner. But there’s a twist to this plot. He will be officially based in Berlin (where he’s […]
French startup Matera has announced that is has raised a new $43 million (€35 million) Series B funding round led by Mubadala Capital. Bpifrance, Burda Principal Investments as well as existing investors Index Ventures and Samaipata are also participating. The company is building a vertical SaaS for residential property management. In France, co-owners of the […]
WhatsApp has sued the Indian government challenging the second largest internet market’s new regulations that could allow authorities to make people’s private messages “traceable,” and conduct mass surveillance. The Facebook-owned instant messaging service, which identifies India as its biggest market by users, said it filed the lawsuit in the High Court of Delhi on Wednesday. […]
Xiaomi, one of China’s high-profile tech firms that fell in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, has been removed from a U.S. government blacklist that designated it as a Communist Chinese Military Company. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has vacated the Department of Defence’s designation of Xiaomi as a CCMC in […]
Investors are backing Koo, an Indian alternative to Twitter, with large size checks at a time when tension is brewing between the American social network and New Delhi. The Indian startup said on Wednesday it has raised $30 million in a financing round led by Tiger Global Management. Mirae Asset, IIFL’s venture capital fund and […]
Smart Eye, the publicly traded Swedish company that supplies driver monitoring systems for a dozen automakers, has acquired emotion-detection software startup Affectiva for $73.5 million in a cash-and-stock deal. Affectiva, which spun out of the MIT Media Lab in 2009, has developed software that can detect and understand human emotion, which Smart Eye is keen […]
The social video tool Promo.com just raised $16 million in a Series B round led by Getty Images, the company synonymous with stock imagery. Brands, creators or whoever else might need some quick and dirty video content can search Promo.com for what they need, just like they would use a stock photography service. Getty offers […]
Tesla Model Y and Model 3 vehicles bound for North American customers are being built without radar, fulfilling a desire by CEO Elon Musk to only use cameras combined with machine learning to support its advanced driver assistance system and other active safety features. Like many of Tesla’s moves, the decision to stop using the […]
We can introduce rules and regulations to ensure the wise use of powerful technologies. We’ve done it before, with cars, radiography and nuclear energy. What’s different about social media?
In all likelihood, you do not currently associate Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, essayist and cultural critic, with entrepreneurship. Serial entrepreneurs Brad Feld and Dave Jilk — whose friendship dates back to their college days at MIT — think that you should. Indeed, in the foreword of their new book, “The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche: A […]
Despite the company's putative performance not being very good thus far today, I can't really find much bad about the company's valuation and implied multiples.
Earlier this year, Turntable.fm’s founder Billy Chasen dusted off the old site and resurrected it for the pandemic age. I know I wasn’t the only one feeling a wistful pang of nostalgia for the service during the long, dull days of sheltering in place. And while March 2020 would have been the best time for […]
What’s it like raising a round in 2021? How has it changed over the last few months, as some glimmer of normalcy seems, at least, within reach? What do early-stage founders (and investors!) need to know about the current state of the industry? Few are in a better place to outline this than Avlok Kohli, […]
