Spinal surgery is not for the faint of heart at the best of times, but Intelligent Implants raised €7.5 million ($8.7 million) to make spinal surgery less of a pain in the backside. The company’s smart implants’ first application is in spinal fusion surgery — where two or more vertebrae are permanently connected to improve
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Apple today introduced a new set of App Store Guidelines which include three key changes. One of the changes is the result of a previously announced settlement agreement with a class of U.S. app developers. It clarifies that developers are allowed to communicate with their customers about other payment methods available outside their app. Related
Yousuf Khan Contributor Yousuf Khan is a partner at Ridge Ventures. Prior to joining Ridge, he was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere, CIO and vice president of Customer Success at cloud-based AI platform Moveworks, as well as CIO of Pure Storage, Qualys and Hult International Business School. More posts by this contributor Develop a
Foodology has been whipping up its restaurant brands in cloud and virtual kitchens in Colombia and Mexico since 2019, and with a new infusion of capital, hopes to scale that across Latin America. The Bogotá-based company closed on $15 million in Series A funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz and Base Partners. Existing
In an earnings call Thursday, Snap said that it failed to meet revenue expectations for its third quarter. Snap reported $1.07 billion in Q3 revenue, missing Wall Street’s hopes that the company would bring in $1.1 billion. The company notched 306 million daily active users, up from the 293 million it reported in Q2. That
Via Separations is a startup from a couple of MIT material science engineers who figured out a way to reduce the amount of energy required in a manufacturing process, resulting in lower carbon creation, lower energy usage and lower costs. Today, the company announced a $38 million Series B. The round was led by NGP
Klarna, the global retail bank, payments and shopping service, can now add “travel agent” to that list. The company announced Friday that it acquired Inspirock, an online trip planner using artificial intelligence and local expertise to enable Klarna’s 90 million users to quickly and easily explore a destination’s offerings and create personalized itineraries. Financial terms
With the Climate Crisis looming, lots of companies want to do their part. But asking customers to “offset the CO2 emission of this delivery” is usually a hammer to crack a nut. There is very little transparency around carbon offsets. Plus, smaller companies want to access high-quality carbon credits, but calculate their impact at a
Citcon, a mobile wallet payment provider, has closed on $30 million in funding in a Series C round co-led by Norwest Venture Partners and Cota Capital. Sierra Ventures and Sonae IM also joined the financing, which brings San Jose-based Citcon’s total raised since its 2015 inception to nearly $50 million. Citcon’s mission is straightforward: to
Fast-growing fintech Brex has raised $300 million in funding that propels it to decacorn status, just six months after it was valued at $7.4 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. The sources, who wished to remain anonymous since the deal is not yet public (although a term sheet has been signed), said corporate
XanPool, a payment infrastructure provider that facilitates faster crypto and fiat settlements, announced today it has raised a $27 million Series A led by Valar Ventures. The round included participation from CMT Digital, Wise founder and chairman Taavet Hinrikus and existing investors Gumi Gryptos and Antler. The funding brings XanPool’s total raised since it was
Google has held discussions to invest over $50 million in Indian social commerce startup Meesho, which recently secured $570 million in a financing round, according to a source familiar with the matter. The Android-maker, which has backed over half a dozen startups in India, has yet to make the investment in Meesho, according to another
Eric Kosmowski Contributor Brett Hauser Contributor The climate measures in the budget reconciliation package now before the U.S. Congress could unlock an investment boom in clean energy, zero-carbon transportation and efficient manufacturing that would allow us, as a nation, to reverse the course of rising greenhouse gas emissions that threaten our future. Simultaneously, these investments
Android 12 is now officially available for Google’s Pixel phones and will slowly roll out to others in the coming months. Chances are, you think of Android as a consumer product, but over the course of the last few years, Google has put a lot of work into making it an enterprise tool, too. It’s
European Union lawmakers are mobilizing support for a ban on tracking-based advertising to be added to a new set of Internet rules for the bloc — which were proposed at the back end of last year but are now entering the last stretch of negotiations ahead of becoming pan-EU law. If they succeed it could have
Google is lowering commissions on all subscription-based businesses on the Google Play Store, the company announced today. Previously, the company had followed Apple’s move by reducing commissions from 30% to 15% on the first $1 million of developer earnings. Now, it will lower the fees specifically for app makers who generate revenue through recurring subscriptions.
Jul.23 — The U.S. Department of Justice said its antitrust division will look at concerns that consumers, businesses and entrepreneurs have expressed about search, social media, and online retail, according to a statement Tuesday. Lerer Hippeau Ventures Managing Director Eric Hippeau and Center for Democracy and Technology Vice President of Policy Chris Calabrese discuss the
So Plaid now calls itself a payments company. It was only a matter of time, really. Earlier today, the data and connectivity startup announced a new payments partner ecosystem that will extend its existing payments infrastructure and make ACH bank transfers a more attractive alternative to credit card transactions. But the big winners here are
Mahendra Ramsinghani Contributor Mahendra Ramsinghani is the founder of Secure Octane Investments, investing in cloud infrastructure and security startups. When he is not investing, he is busy writing blogs and books. His third book “The Resilient Founder” will be released in 2022. More posts by this contributor Pandemic reset leads investors to focus on resilience,
After steadily expanding access over the course of the year, Twitter announced today its audio chatroom feature known as Twitter Spaces is now open to anyone who wants to host a Space across iOS and Android. Earlier this year, the company had limited access to hosting Spaces to accounts with at least 600 followers, saying
Derek Zaba Contributor Derek Zaba is a partner at Sidley Austin’s Palo Alto office and co-chairs the firm’s Shareholder Activism practice. He counsels companies on a variety of matters, including activism defense/proxy contests, activism preparedness, takeover defenses, shareholder engagement and corporate governance. Sharon R. Flanagan Contributor Sharon R. Flanagan is the managing partner of Sidley
IBM has been in the midst of a strategy shift with a focus on hybrid cloud and AI since Arvind Krishna was promoted to CEO in last year. Red Hat, the software company it purchased for $34 billion in 2018 has been at the center of it all. With the company reporting earnings yesterday, the
Facebook has reached a multi-year agreement to pay French publishers for resharing their content on its platforms, it announced today. The social media giant said the licensing agreement with the Alliance of national and regional newspapers “means that people on Facebook will be able to continue uploading and sharing news stories freely amongst their communities,
If challenging the status quo was easy, we’d see a lot more of it. In the world of smartphones, this means daring to think outside the rectangle, a form factor that has been the default for more than a decade and a half. Slowly but surely amid stagnant smartphone sales, companies have been testing the
Running out of inventory not only means you are missing out on sales of popular items, but you may also have to wait awhile to get those items back in stock. New York-based Toolio has built cloud-based merchandising and inventory planning software to enable retailers to optimize their merchandise planning and make better and faster
Three months after announcing a $4 million seed round, Venezuelan delivery super app Yummy is back with an $18 million Series A round that will accelerate the company’s proposed expansion throughout Latin America. Anthos Capital led the latest round, with additional participation from JAM Fund, whose founder Justin Mateen was an investor in the seed
Indian hyperlocal social media platform Lokal has raised $12 million in a new round of financing led by Chinese internet conglomerate Tencent, according to a source familiar with the matter. Existing investors 3one4 Capital, Y Combinator, and India Quotient have also participated in the Bangalore-based startup’s Series A, the source said, requesting anonymity as the
Ishveen Anand grew up in England playing sports all of her life, including during her time at Oxford. She wanted to do something sporty for a career and “fell in love” with sponsorship marketing. However, what she found was that the process was inefficient — the sports world was slow-moving in terms of brands getting
A large number of UK tech ‘unicorns’ have been in complex markets where policy and regulation really matters. But regulated markets (fintech, healthtech etc), or markets where regulation is still emerging (e.g. lab-grown meat) are, well, HARD. Founders have to navigate policy-makers, regulators and even politicians. To it’s interesting that today a new VC is
Spotify has already invested around $1 billion in podcasting between its acquisitions, exclusive deals, and other partnerships. Now, it wants people to do more than just listen — it wants them to watch, too. The company announced today it’s opening up access to a new tool for creators that will allow them to begin publishing