We tend to think of venture capital in tens or hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars, so it’s refreshing to find Evening Fund, a new $2 million micro fund that focuses on small investments between $50,000 and $100,000 as it seeks to help young startups with early funding. The new fund was launched by […]
What if you could Zoom with your favorite creator and ask them questions? That’s the promise of Bright, the new live video platform launching today from co-founders Guy Oseary and early YouTube product manager Michael Powers. The service, built on top of Zoom, allows fans to engage in live, face-to-face video sessions with creators, ask […]
Instagram is making its video Stories and Reels more accessible with the launch of a new “captions sticker” that will allow users to watch without having the sound on. The addition will not only make it easier for users who are hard of hearing or deaf to engage with video content, it also offers a […]
New numbers from research firm Canalys point to continued growth for PCs in 2020/21, as the pandemic has forced many to rethink how — and where — they work. PC shipments have grown for four straight quarters. All told, the numbers (within which the firm lumps tablets, incidentally) grew 53% year over year. Chromebooks were […]
Mental health, and how it is getting addressed, has been one of the major leitmotifs of the past year of pandemic living. COVID-19 not only has led to a lot of people getting ill or worse; it has increased isolation, economic uncertainty and led to a lot of other kinds of disappointments, and that all […]
Personalized nutrition startup Zoe — named not for a person but after the Greek word for ‘life’ — has topped up its Series B round with $20M, bringing the total raised to $53M. The latest close of the B round was led by Ahren Innovation Capital, which the startup notes counts two Nobel laureates as […]
Their investors call them disruptive innovators and detractors. Some call them “dirty scammers.” But the Leda Health co-founders think of themselves as advocates for sexual assault survivors.
HoneyBook, which has built out a client experience and financial management platform for service-based small businesses and freelancers, announced today that it has raised $155 million in a Series D round led by Durable Capital Partners LP. Tiger Global Management, Battery Ventures, Zeev Ventures, 01 Advisors as well as existing backers Norwest Venture Partners and […]
Firefly Aerospace has raised a total of $175 million, across a $75 million Series A round that valued the company north of $1 billion, and a $100 million secondary transaction which consisted of the sale of holdings held by primary Firefly investor Noosphere Ventures. The launch startup also announced that it intends to raise another […]
When Elon Musk stood onstage at Tesla’s Battery Day in September and promised to cut lithium-ion battery prices in half, he claimed some of the savings would come from reinventing the dirty and complex process of making their nickel metal cathodes. “It’s insanely complicated, like digging a ditch, filling it in and digging the ditch […]
Twitter this morning announced it’s acquiring Scroll, a subscription service that offers readers a better way to read through long-form content on the web, by removing ads and other website clutter that can slow down the experience. The service will become a part of Twitter’s larger plans to invest in subscriptions, the company says, and […]
An Indian startup that began its life after the global pandemic broke last year said on Tuesday it has concluded its third financing round as it enables hundreds of thousands of teachers in the world’s second largest internet market run classes online and serve their students. Bangalore-based Teachmint said today it has raised $16.5 million […]
The identity verification space has been heating up for a while and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated demand with more people transacting online. Persona, a startup focused on creating a personalized identity verification experience “for any use case,” aims to differentiate itself in an increasingly crowded space. And investors are banking on the San […]
Activist investor Starboard Value is clearly fed up with Box and it let the cloud content management know it in no uncertain terms in a letter published yesterday. The firm, which bought a 7.7% stake in Box two years ago claims the company is underperforming, executing poorly and making bad business decisions — and it […]
As cybersecurity continues to grow in profile amid an increasingly complex and dangerous landscape of malicious activity, a cyber security vendor that specializes in “all-in-one” services covering the many aspects of security IT has closed a big round of funding to grow. Acronis has raised $250 million in equity, and co-founder and CEO Serguei Beloussov […]
Indian telecom ministry on Tuesday said it has granted several telecom service providers permission to conduct a six-month trial for the use and application of 5G technology in the country. New Delhi has granted approval to over a dozen firm spanning multiple nationalities — excluding China. Among the telecom operators that have received the grant include […]
It looks like everyone and their mother is trying to reinvent the Brazilian banking system. Earlier this year we wrote about Nubank’s $400 million Series G, last month there was the PicPay IPO filing and today, alt.bank, a Brazilian neobank, announced a $5.5 million Series A led by Union Square Ventures (USV). It’s no secret that […]
Africa is the last frontier for basically anything. Mobile gaming is no exception. For a continent that is home to more than 1 billion millennials and Gen Zers, mobile gaming has never really picked up, despite the continent witnessing rapid economic growth and smartphone adoption. Two issues have proved detrimental to this growth: distribution and […]
This morning WorkBoard, a software startup that sells software designed to help other companies plan, announced that it has raised a $75 million Series D. Softbank Group led the investment, which saw participation from prior investors including Microsoft’s M12 venture capital arm, a16z, GGV and Workday Ventures. Per the company, three new investors also took […]
