Month: January 2022

What a roller coaster day for China’s tech industry. TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has dissolved its strategic investment team, sending worrying messages to other internet giants that have expanded aggressively by investing in other companies. At the beginning of this year, ByteDance reviewed its “businesses’ needs” and decided to “reduce investments in areas that are
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Even though consumer gaming constitutes a small fraction of its overall business, Microsoft’s announcement yesterday of its all-cash $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard proves that the technology corporation takes the sector plenty seriously. It is easy to think that Microsoft should have invested the money into other, perhaps more lucrative businesses in its
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Carry1st, a South African publisher of social games and interactive content across Africa, has raised a $20 million Series A extension led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). This is a16z’s first investment in an Africa-headquartered company (the firm has previously invested in Branch and Zipline, companies with some operations in Africa but headquartered in the U.S).
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Wrangle raised $2 million in an oversubscribed pre-seed funding to advance its technology that automates workflows, approvals and tickets so that a company can track work and provide call-to-action tasks within chat platforms like Slack. Bloomberg Beta and Eniac Ventures co-led the investment, with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, Hustle Fund, TDF Ventures and more
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Pyxis One, now Pixis, closed on $100 million in Series C funding to continue developing what it touts as “the world’s only contextual codeless AI infrastructure for complete marketing optimization.” SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round and was joined by new investor General Atlantic, and existing investors Celesta Capital, Premji Invest and Chiratae Ventures.
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The first electric bus by Swedish-Kenyan EV startup, Opibus, has hit Kenya’s roads marking the beginning of the company’s venture into the mass transit industry. Opibus first announced plans to roll out electric public transport buses last year when it raised $7.5 million in a pre-Series A round. The startup is now running a pilot
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The UK’s ad-fuelled boom in crypto trading looks to be headed for major speed restrictions: The country’s financial watchdog said it will beef up rules around marketing of crypto assets and could even put limits on who can invest, following government confirmation yesterday that it will extend the regulator’s remit to cover crypto. In recent
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Fintech startup Revolut is rolling out stock trading in its app in the U.S. The company already lets you buy and sell shares if you’re a British user. And now, Revolut has received approval to become a licensed U.S. broker-dealer in the U.S. Revolut users will be able to trade 1,100 securities, such as shares
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Maria Lepskaya Contributor Maria Lepskaya is a senior associate at Runa Capital, leading investments in different branches of quantum technologies and advanced materials. Market trends are the best indicators we have to judge the maturity of the quantum industry. While they don’t perfectly reflect technological progress, they showcase investors’ willingness to write checks for the
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