Sometimes when there is smoke, there is actually fire. Such was the case with the rumors of Broadcom’s interest in VMware this past weekend. It turns out that fire was burning hot, and today, Broadcom announced it is acquiring VMware in a massive $61 billion deal. The deal is a combination of cash and stock,
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While the likes of Pipe are reaching multi-billion valuations, European revenue-based financing is experiencing as much of a boom as it is in the US. UK-based startup platform Bloom has now secured a £300m / $377m financing round led by Credo Capital and Fortress Investment Group LLC (NYSE:FIG), making it one of the better-funded revenue-based
Substack, the five-year-old newsletter platform that has aggressively positioned itself as a disruptive force in media, has abandoned efforts to raise a Series C round, the New York Times is reporting today. According to its sources, Substack held discussions with potential investors in recent months about raising $75 million to $100 million at a valuation
In every startup cycle, there are attempts to get consumers goods faster than ever before, the hope being that technology has improved to the point that such deliveries are financially possible. Infamous dot-com-era flameouts are now ancient history, but they do indicate just how long founders and their backing investors have been working on the
After buying Bungie earlier this year, Sony is moving fast to integrate the company’s expertise into its broader vision. In an investor presentation Thursday, Sony Interactive Entertainment CEO Jim Ryan outlined a near future for the company that focuses heavily on continually updated online games inspired by Destiny, Bungie’s long-running hit. Sony expects to spend
Humble Bee Bio is on a mission to create a biodegradable alternative to plastics by synthesizing the biology of bees. While the New Zealand-based company is still at an early stage — it’s about halfway through its proof of concept — if Humble Bee is successful, its bioplastics are likely to make it into the
Over the last decade, the rate at which organizations create data has accelerated as it becomes cheaper to store, access and process data. But as data continues to grow in scale and complexity, it’s becoming scattered across apps and platforms — often leading to problems where it concerns data quality. According to a 2020 O’Reilly
Fintech startup and alternative credit asset manager Viola Credit has closed its latest $700 million fund, which provides asset-based lending capital to fintech, proptech and insurtech startups. If this fintech play reminds you of Silicon Valley Bank, think again. The latter provides corporate lending, also known as venture lending. Instead, Viola provides lending capital to fintech
Longtime engineer and product designer Michael Sayman has been building apps since he was a kid, landing him roles at Facebook, Google, Roblox, and most recently Twitter, where he’s often been tasked with developing products aimed at a teenage audience. Sayman was only 17 when he joined Facebook, but had already built several apps —
Todd Olson Contributor Todd Olson is the co-founder and CEO of Pendo, a software platform that helps product teams and application owners improve their users’ experience. More posts by this contributor How startups outside the Bay Area can fundraise in a big way In today’s digital economy, you can tell a lot about a company
In Novembar last year, Frederic wrote about Lumigo‘s $29 million Series A round led by Redline Capital. The company makes a cloud-native application monitoring and debugging platform and has raised a total of $38 million since its launch in 2019. In the most recent installment of my Pitch Deck Teardown series, I am beyond excited
If you’re having problems accessing Instagram today, you’re not alone. The social media giant is currently experiencing some problems, according to reports on third-party web monitoring service Downdetector. The website indicates that issues began at around 12:30 PM ET. NetBlocks, which tracks global internet usage and disruptions, has also noted that Instagram is facing intermittent
Planet FWD, a carbon-assessment startup founded by Zume Pizza co-founder Julia Collins, grabbed another cash infusion in the way of 10 million Series A dollars to continue developing technology so that the $1.5 trillion consumer products industry can more accurately measure and reduce their carbon footprint. We profiled Collins’ journey from pizza to climate-friendly food
Assembled, which bills itself as a workforce management platform for customer support teams, today announced that it raised $51 million in a Series B funding round led by New Enterprise Associates, with participation from Emergence Capital and Basis Set Ventures. CEO Ryan Wang says the new capital will be put toward product development, including schedule
The U.K.’s competition watchdog has just announced another investigation into Google over potential antitrust abuses around adtech. This is the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) second probe of Google’s adtech practices — after it said it would investigate an ad deal between Google and Facebook referred to internally as ‘Jedi Blue’, back in March. (That
Joby Aviation — the publicly-traded electric air vehicle company with a current market cap of $3.1 billion — has received the necessary certification from the Federal Aviation Administration to begin on-demand commercial air taxi operations, the company said on Thursday. While it’s a significant milestone that puts Joby closer to its stated goal of launching
As members of the Terra community try to pick up the pieces from its currently defunct economy, Polygon is beckoning to the dozens of developers who had projects built on the inoperative blockchain. Polygon, a layer-2 blockchain built on Ethereum, has launched a “relatively uncapped multimillion dollar fund” so Terra-built projects can move to its
Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s time at the company has come to an end. Dorsey stepped down from Twitter’s board of directors Wednesday, a change that’s effective as of the company’s shareholders meeting. Dorsey had already begun to distance himself from the social media platform he co-founded, leaving Twitter’s chief executive role late last year
As the demand for AI-powered apps grows, startups developing dedicated chips to accelerate AI workloads on-premises are reaping the benefits. A recent ZDNet piece reaffirms that the AI edge chip market is booming, fueled by “staggering” venture capital financing in the hundreds of millions of dollars. EdgeQ, Kneron and Hailo are among the dozens of
Between one-to-one therapy and free online forums, people search for a range of solutions to mental health therapy online. Especially since the pandemic increased anxiety and depression rose by 25% globally (according to WHO) and also deepened an epidemic of loneliness. Among players in the online group emotional support space there is Pace (which raised
Republican lawmakers are facing growing anger over the deadliest mass shooting at an American school in nearly a decade yesterday, with many of their constituents expressing frustration over their repeated votes against even modest gun control reforms. Social media can’t solve the problem. Indigov, a three-year-old, 70-person New York-based startup, can’t solve it either, but
Synthesis Capital, the one-year-old London-based food technology and alternative protein investor, closed its first fund with over $300 million in capital commitments. The firm is led by former CPT Capital investors Costa Yiannoulis and Rosie Wardle, who have invested in the sector since its nascency in 2014, and biologist David Welch, and supports startups leveraging
Shares of Twitter are sharply higher in after-hours trading in the wake of a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing detailing changes to how Elon Musk is approaching buying the company. In short, Musk initially indicated that he would execute a margin loan of $12.5 billion against other holdings to help finance his
Hey, it wasn’t that long ago that Box was lost in single-digit growth doldrums being dogged by activist investors. But today, the company announced its earnings, and revenue was up 18% over the prior year to $238.4 million, easily beating consensus estimates of $235 million, according to the company. This marks the fifth consecutive quarter
It’s crunch time in the world of instant grocery delivery, with the latest turn representing a big blow specifically in Europe. Berlin-based Gorillas, which raised nearly $1 billion dollars at around a $3 billion post-money valuation only seven months ago — today announced that it would be laying off some 300 employees and exiting four
Bearish markets and high interest rates often cause private investors to turn away from anything resembling a risky investment. Yet, now is a very apt time to take another look at the cannabis opportunity in the U.S. Quite a lot has changed since our previous U.S. cannabis survey from 2020. Recreational cannabis is now legal
a16z stands behind its words with fresh $4.5B crypto fund Alex Wilhelm 9 hours Be greedy when others are fearful, and fearful when others are greedy. Consensus is expensive. There are cliches aplenty when it comes to making money, and many investing koans deal with doing the opposite of what the masses are up to
Only a handful of “whales,” or big spenders, still own the majority of NFTs. While the digital assets have piqued widespread consumer interest, the user experience associated with actually minting or purchasing an NFT is still complex and oftentimes intimidating. DJ Gabeau, one of Snapchat Stories’ earliest engineers and founder of web3 social network Primitives,
The pandemic forced businesses to accelerate their digital transformations, which, in turn, sped adoption of the cloud. According to a 2021 survey by O’Reilly, cloud adoption is rising steadily across industries — 90% of organizations now use cloud computing, up from 88% in 2020. At its best, the cloud, nebulous though the term might be,
It continues to be a very rough week for e-commerce companies in Europe. In the latest development, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Getir — the $12 billion quick commerce upstart that provides grocery essentials and sundries and promises delivery of them in minutes — is cutting 14% of its staff globally. It’s been estimated that