Contentsquare, the cloud-based platform that helps businesses understand how and why users are interacting with their app, mobile and web sites, has closed $190 million in Series D funding. The round is led by BlackRock’s Private Equity Partners team, with participation from previous investors. In addition, as part of this round, Sapiance Capital Limited is […]
So much for Walmart’s big and expensive effort to take on Amazon with a digitally-native brand. Amid the coronavirus crisis and its impact on the retail industry, today the retail giant announced in its quarterly report that it would be discontinuing Jet.com, the online-only marketplace that it acquired for $3 billion (plus $300 million in earn-outs […]
The acute pain of California’s housing crisis can be measured in the human toll it takes on the increasing numbers of families made homeless by rising rents and the billions of dollars the state loses to the high cost of living. After wrestling with recalcitrant homeowners, husbanding their parcels of land to keep their property […]
As the coronavirus pandemic continues, throwing countries into lockdown and recession, two of the hardest-hit sectors have been travel and events. And startups operating in the space that have recently raised significant funding aren’t immune to the crisis. Pollen, the U.K.-based influencer marketplace for travel and events that closed $60 million in funding in October, […]
More than two-thirds of startups in India need to secure additional capital in the coming weeks to steer through the coronavirus pandemic, according to an industry report. 70% of startups in India, home to one of the world’s largest startup ecosystems, have less than three months of cash runway in the bank, and another 22% […]
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has added Lingxi, a Beijing-based startup that applies machine intelligence to financial services such as debt collection and insurance sales, to its ever-expanding portfolio of investments. The AI startup has raised a $6.2 million Series A round co-led by ByteDance and Rocket Internet, the German accelerator that has incubated e-commerce giants […]
Entrepreneur First (EF), the London-headquartered “talent investor” that backs individuals pre-team and pre-idea to enable them to found startups, has appointed former Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans as a Venture Partner. A well-respected analyst with a background in the tech and media industries, Evans will be tasked with providing “analysis, insight and recommendations” for new […]
Arculus, the Ingolstadt, Germany-based startup that has developed a “modular production platform” to bring assembly lines into the 21st century, has raised €16 million in Series A investment. Leading the round is European venture firm Atomico, with participation from Visionaries Club and previous investor La Famiglia. Arculus says it will use the injection of capital […]
Meet Pennylane, a new French startup that is a building a full-stack service to deal with your financial data. With Pennylane, you get a real-time view of your financial data and you don’t have to work with an accounting company — the startup hires accountants for you. The startup just raised a $4.3 million (€4 […]
SoftBank Group Corp. is currently seeking buyers for about $20 billion of its shares in T-Mobile US, according to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. If the proposed sale goes through, its proceeds could help offset SoftBank’s heavy investment losses over the past year. According to its first-quarter earnings report yesterday, SoftBank’s Vision […]
Bilibili, a Chinese video streaming website that was once regarded as a haven for youth subculture, has been steadily making its way into the mainstream as users age up and content diversifies. The NASDAQ-traded company recorded a 70% year-over-year growth to reach 172 million monthly active users by the first quarter, placing it in the […]
Last week, U.S. unemployment claims hit 36 million over a two-month period. The results of pandemic-led closures have been devastating to innumerable industries, as the timeline to reopen remains uncertain in many areas. Indeed noted in a recent report that hirings have slowed significantly versus this time last year. No surprise, really, for those who […]
Kevin Mayer, head of The Walt Disney Company’s direct-to-consumer and international business, is departing to become CEO of TikTok, as well as COO of the popular video app’s parent company ByteDance. Founder Yiming Zhang will continue to serve as ByteDance CEO, while TikTok President Alex Zhu (formerly the co-founder of the predecessor app Musical.ly) becomes […]
Amidst the blitz of SoftBank earnings news today comes the financials for all of SoftBank’s subsidiaries, which includes Arm Holdings, the most important chip design and research company in the world that SoftBank bought for $32 billion back in 2016. Arm produces almost all of the key designs for the chips that run today’s smartphones, […]
Last week, Mount Sinai showcased how it’s started using Nest devices to monitor patients remotely. Today, Google’s showing off how the Nest Hub Max is helping retirement home residents feel a little less isolated amid the COVID-19 lockdown. To help matters along, the company is currently testing a simplified interface to make the smart screen […]
When Verizon (which owns this publication) announced it was buying video conferencing company BlueJeans for around $500 million last month, you probably thought it was going take awhile to bake, but the companies announced today that they has closed the deal. While it’s crystal clear that video conferencing is a hot item during the pandemic, […]
A famous investor published notes today concerning its startup investments, detailing where they excelled and where they struggled. To understand why we care about this particular investor’s results, a little context helps. The investor in question is Japanese telecom giant and startup benefactor SoftBank, which reported its fiscal year results this morning. SoftBank’s investments are […]
It would be one of the greatest startup investments of all time. Masayoshi Son, riding high in the klieg lights of the 1990s dot-com bubble, invested $20 million dollars into a fledgling Hong Kong-based startup called Alibaba. That $20 million investment into the Chinese e-commerce business would go on to be worth about $120 billion […]
