Tile, the maker of Bluetooth-powered lost item finder beacons and, more recently, a staunch Apple critic, announced today it has raised $40 million in non-dilutive debt financing from Capital IP. The funding will be put towards investment in Tile’s finding technologies, ahead of the company’s plan to unveil a new slate of products and features
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CoderSchool, a Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam-based online coding school startup, announced today $2.6 million in pre-Series A funding to scale up its online coding school platform. This round was led by Monk’s Hill Ventures, with participation from returning seed investors Iterative, XA Network and iSeed Ventures. CoderSchool raised a seed round led by TRIVE
Delegate Connect founders Jordan Walsh and Jacob Thomas Delegate Connect is the latest virtual/hybrid events platform to land funding. The Melbourne-based startup announced today it has raised $10 million AUD (about $7.3 million USD) in seed funding led by AirTree Ventures, which wrote Delegate Connect the biggest seed check in the fund’s history so far.
It’s back to school season and on TikTok, that means students are inexplicably stealing everything that isn’t bolted down. The latest TikTok trend to generally wreak social havoc sees students pulling off “devious licks” — small-scale heists of everything from soap dispensers, Covid test kits and hand sanitizer to high value items like classroom tech.
Relyance AI, an early-stage startup that is helping companies stay in compliance with privacy laws at the code level, announced a $25 million Series A today. At the same time, they revealed a previously unannounced $5 million seed round. Menlo Ventures and Unusual Ventures led the A round, while Unusual was sole lead on the
French startup Skello has raised a $47.3 million funding round (€40 million). The company has been working on a software-as-a-service tool that lets you manage the work schedule of your company. What makes it special is that Skello automatically takes into account local labor laws and collective agreements. Partech is leading today’s funding round. Existing
Ash Fontana Contributor Ash Fontana, a managing director at Zetta Ventures, is the author of “The AI-First Company: How to Compete and Win with Artificial Intelligence.” More posts by this contributor Growing up in the intelligence era Investors in AI-first technology companies serving the defense industry, such as Palantir, Primer and Anduril, are doing well.
As Warby Parker, Freshworks, Amplitude and Toast look to list in the coming weeks, we shouldn’t forget the SPAC boom. This week, for example, Forge Global (Forge), a technology startup that operates a market for secondary transactions in private companies, announced that it would go public via a blank-check combination. And while we’re not unpacking every
Clubhouse has hired a veteran editor from NPR to lead news publishing for the app. Nina Gregory will serve as Clubhouse’s Head of News and Media Publishers, working as a liaison between news publishers and the Clubhouse’s ecosystem of audio-based communities. Gregory led NPR’s Arts Desk for the last seven years, shaping the news outlet’s
Customer communication platform Front is holding an event today to introduce three new features. These new features focus on showing you more information about your customers right from Front’s user interface. If you’re not familiar with Front, the company started as a shared email inbox product so that you can interact with incoming emails as
Businesses and the tech companies that serve them are run on data. At best, it can be used to help with decision-making, to understand how well or badly an organization is doing, and to build new systems to run the next generation of services. At its most challenging, though, data can represent a real headache:
Xiaomi is challenging Facebook in the wearables arena by launching its own smart glasses. The device won’t only be capable of taking photos, but also of displaying messages and notifications, making calls, providing navigation and translating text right in real time in front of your eyes. Like Facebook, Xiaomi is also putting emphasis on the
SmartNews, a Tokyo-headquartered news aggregation website and app that’s grown in popularity despite hefty competition from built-in aggregators like Apple News, today announced it has closed on $230 million in Series F funding. The round brings SmartNews’ total raise to date to over $400 million and values the business at $2 billion — or as
Airbase, a corporate spend management startup, announced this morning that it now supports subsidiaries in different countries for U.S.-based businesses. As more companies lean into remote work, and a great many startups are founding themselves on multiple continents, the new capability could boost Airbase’s effective total addressable market. The product news is interesting, but more
Building credit history can be difficult if you are a consumer that is having trouble getting access to credit in the first place. Enter TomoCredit, which has developed a credit card focused on building credit history for first-time borrowers. The San Francisco-based startup is announcing today that it has raised $10 million in a Series
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC) has yet another ‘Big Tech’ GDPR probe to add to its pile: The regulator said yesterday it has opened two investigations into video sharing platform TikTok. The first covers how TikTok handles children’s data, and whether it complies with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation. The DPC also said it will examine
In order to support a buildout of renewable energy, which tends to over-generate electricity at certain times of day and under-generate at others, the grid is going to need a lot of batteries. While lithium-ion works fine for consumer electronics and even electric vehicles, battery startup EnerVenue says it developed a breakthrough technology to revolutionize
Ascend on Wednesday announced a $5.5 million seed round to further its insurance payments platform that combines financing, collections and payables. First Round Capital led the round and was joined by Susa Ventures, FirstMark Capital, Box Group and a group of angel investors, including Coalition CEO Joshua Motta, Newfront Insurance executives Spike Lipkin and Gordon
The ability to offer stock options is utterly essential to startups. They convince talented people to join when the startup is unlikely to be capable of matching the high salaries that larger, established tech firms can offer. However, it’s a complex business developing a competitive stock option plan. Luckily, London-based VC Index Ventures today launches both a
Apple is launching a new iPad model. This is the most affordable iPad model in the lineup, it’s cheaper than the iPad Air and iPad Pro. Today’s new iPad replaces the existing $329 iPad in the lineup. It features Apple’s A13 chip. Apple originally unveiled the A13 for the iPhone 11. As a reminder, the
Casey Saran Contributor An ad tech veteran who has logged time at Google and The Rubicon Project (now Magnite), Casey Saran is co-founder and CEO of Spaceback. 2021 has been a good year to be an adtech investor. Valuations are surging, Wall Street is happy and exits are frequent and satisfying. It’s the perfect time to
When Kleiner Perkins led Stord’s $12.4 million Series A in 2019, its founders were in their early 20s and so passionate about their startup that they each dropped out of their respective schools to focus on growing the business. Fast-forward two years and Stord — an Atlanta-based company that has developed a cloud supply chain —
TikTok announced this morning that it is implementing new tactics to educate its users about the negative mental health impacts of social media. As part of these changes, TikTok is rolling out a “well-being guide” in its Safety Center, a brief primer on eating disorders, expanded search interventions, and opt-in viewing screens on potentially triggering
While LinkedIn doubles down on creators to bring a more human, less manicured element to its networking platform for professionals, a company that has built a reputation for publishing primarily the more messy and human impressions of work life has made an acquisition that might help it compete better with LinkedIn. Glassdoor, the platform that
Supply chains can be a complex logistical challenge. But they pose an even greater environmental challenge. And it’s that latter problem — global supply-chain sustainability — where UK startup Sourceful is fully focused, although it argues its approach can boost efficiency as well as shrink environmental impact. So it’s a win-win, per the pitch. Early
Apple has announced its new lineup of phones at its virtual conference. In addition to the regular iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 mini, the company has two Pro models with some premium features that you won’t find in the regular iPhone 13. Of course, the Pro models are also more expensive. For reference, the iPhone
The rumors were right. The centerpiece of today’s big Apple event is the latest iPhone. The latest device lands less than a year after its predecessor, now that things have settled down somewhat on the supply chain side for Apple. Last year’s iPhone 12 was a massive seller, bucking the trend of stagnating smartphones sales,
Canva is now valued at $40 billion following a fresh capital injection of $200 million (USD) in a round led by T. Rowe Price. New and existing investors participated in the round, including Franklin Templeton, Sequoia Capital Global Equities, Bessemer Venture Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Dragoneer Investments, Blackbird, Felicis and AirTree Ventures. This round solidifies Canva
Mailchimp is selling itself to Intuit in a transaction valued at $12 billion. The deal is a coup not only for companies that eschew venture capital backing — Mailchimp is famous for its bootstrapping history — but also for the city of its founding, Atlanta. Mailchimp’s mega-exit comes in the same year that fellow Atlanta-based
Eric Schwartzman Contributor A U.S. federal judge last week struck down Apple rules restricting app developers from selling directly to customers outside the App Store. Apple’s stock fell 3% on the news, which is being regarded as a win for small and midsize app developers because they’ll be able to build direct billing relationships with