Fundings and Exits

Otto, a fintech startup which aims to allow people to tap into their vehicle’s equity for access to credit, has raised $4.5 million in a seed round of funding. The Dallas-based company is building a mobile platform that will essentially let people borrow against their vehicles at the same interest rate as standard credit cards.

Getsafe has extended its Series B round that it previously announced in December 2020. In addition to its original Series B round of $30 million, the company is adding another $63 million in fresh capital. Overall, Getsafe has raised a $93 million Series B round. Investors in today’s funding round include unnamed family offices as

Founded in 2019, Singapore-based Greywing was created to help ship operators and other members of the maritime industry make critical decisions. It includes tools for crew change management, predictive reporting of potential risks like piracy and pandemic-related travel restriction updates. Today Greywing announced the launch of a new solution that will help vessel operators track

Regions once overlooked by the venture capital industry are racking up impressive investment totals in recent quarters. African startups, for example, were long ignored by the global VC scene, with totals for the continent’s upstart technology companies representing a fraction of a fraction of the funds made available to other regions’ next-generation companies. But in

The founders of Tazah Technologies, a B2B agriculture marketplace in Pakistan, met while serving leadership roles at Uber subsidiary Careem. Abrar Bajwa and Mohsin Zaka bonded during long working hours as the platform dealt with COVID-19’s impact. Eventually, the two started talking about creating their own startup. When asked how they got from ride-hailing to

Byteboard, a service designed to replace the pre-onsite technical interview part of a company’s hiring process with a web-based alternative, will be spinning out of Google, TechCrunch learned and Google confirmed. The product was originally incubated as part of the company’s internal R&D lab known as Area 120, where it’s been led by CEO Sargun

Appsmith, which provides open source software that helps companies quickly build internal applications, announced an $8 million Series A round of funding this morning. Unlike some upstart tech companies that we have seen in the internal application market, Appsmith doesn’t sport a no- or low-code approach. Instead, Appsmith targets traditional developers with its service, which

Founders seeking to raise their first round of capital may feel overwhelmed by the prospect. There is definitely plenty of capital out there, but there are also a lot of startups clamoring for it. To help new entrepreneurs figure out this dilemma, we invited three investors to speak at a panel titled, “How to Raise

Informatica filed to go public late last week, some six years after it was taken private by two private equity teams for $5.3 billion. The data-focused company used its passage through the private markets to execute a move to the cloud, work that came to a head in early 2021, when Informatica announced its dive

Stable, an insurtech aiming to help minimize a businesses’ risk due to volatile commodity prices, today announced it has raised $46.5 million in a Series A round of funding led by Greycroft. Notion Capital, Anthemis, Continental Grain and existing backers Syngenta and Ascot also participated in the financing, which brings the Chicago-based startup’s total raised

The Philippines is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, with geography that makes it vulnerable to typhoons, floods, volcanos, earthquakes and droughts. While working in IT, Felix Ayque began compiling cyclone reports and sending them as email alerts to communities. His work evolved into environmental intelligence platform Komunidad, which collects data from

This morning LeadIQ, a startup working in the sales software market, announced that it has closed a $30 million Series B led by Cathay Innovation. Other investors in the transaction include Fresco Capital, Strong Ventures, and Eight Road Ventures. LeadIQ frames its product from the perspective of missed revenue targets at companies, which it claims

Hello friends and welcome to bonus Equity, the sort of podcast episode where you get even more chat for the same low price of zilch. We are here to ensure a high ROI for your podcasting dollar! To cap the week off, Danny and Alex and Chris got together live on Twitter to chat through the

The pandemic ushered in the popularity of shared workspaces, known as cloud kitchens or ghost kitchens, for restaurants to cook meals exclusively for delivery. But for small, independent restaurants that couldn’t afford the upfront costs for expansion, Uber Eats alums Ken Chong and Matt Sawchuk came up with another approach. They founded All Day Kitchens

Vareto, a startup aiming to help companies conduct more forward-looking financial planning and analysis, is coming out of stealth today with $24 million in total funding. GV (formerly Google Ventures) led its $20 million Series A this year, and Menlo Ventures led its $4.2 million seed financing in the summer of 2020. Menlo also put

The capital market for startups has perhaps never been more attractive than it is today. Not only are venture capitalists raising more capital than ever, but new methods of financing startup activity are maturing. The result is a capital market that is increasingly competitive for startup attention, and business, which may lead to better prices

Oyo is ready to explore the public markets. The eight-year-old Indian budget hotel giant has filed the paperworks with the local market regulator for an initial public offering, in which it is seeking to raise about $1.16 billion. The Gurgaon-headquartered startup — which offers an operating system of sorts to help hoteliers accept digital bookings, payments,

Blockchain cybersecurity startup OpenZeppelin this morning announced a $23 million investment in Forta, a security service aimed at smart contracts. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, which OpenZeppelin CEO and co-founder Demian Brener described as 3x oversubscribed. The investment also attracted capital from Coinbase Ventures, True Ventures and Blockchain Capital, among others. Per Brener, OpenZeppelin will

Ola Electric announced this morning that it closed a $200 million round at a $3 billion valuation. The EV company’s parent, Ola, is best known as an Indian ride-hailing platform. Ola itself has raised more than $4.5 billion to date, per Crunchbase data, while Ola Electric is now over the $500 million fundraising mark, if

Heyflow, a Hamburg, Germany-based startup touting ‘no code’ tools for easily building interactive “clickflows” to boost customer conversions, has bagged a $6 million seed. The round was led by Project A Ventures, with participation from Atlantic Labs and several unnamed angel investors. Heyflow competes with a growing number of no code/low code tools which aim

Another day, another direct listing. The once-exotic method of going public is increasingly popular with venture-backed companies as they look to list without running head-first into the IPO pricing issues that have bedeviled a number of high-profile public offerings in the last year. Precisely who is underpricing whom in those situations is a fun, if

Joyned, formerly known as Gamitee, announced Wednesday that it raised $4 million in seed funding to continue developing its e-commerce platform that puts merchants in the driver’s seat of social engagement. CEO Jonathan Abraham explained that Gamitee means “joined” in Hebrew, but the Jerusalem-based SaaS company decided to spell it “joy” because it aims to

A screenshot from Night School Studio game “Oxenfree” Night School Studio, the independent game developer known for narrative-driven titles like “Oxenfree,” announced today it has been acquired by Netflix. This makes it the first games studio the streaming giant has purchased. In Netflix’s announcement, Mike Verdu, vice president of game development, wrote Night School’s “commitment

Sisu Data, which aims to help businesses make better decisions, announced today it has raised $62 million in a Series C round of funding led by Green Bay Ventures. Existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and NEA also put money in the round, along with new investor Geodesic Ventures. The financing brings San Francisco-based Sisu’s total

French startup Qovery has raised a $4 million seed funding round. The company integrates directly with your git repository and lets you deploy your code to a public cloud without having to manage the infrastructure yourself. Qovery isn’t a hosting platform. It’s a service that deploys your application to Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean or Scaleway.

For many financial institutions in Southeast Asia, verifying new customers takes a week or two, said the founders of Verihubs. The startup cuts that time down to as little as five seconds, using AI-based identity authentication technology and APIs that let companies continue verifying returning customers through SMS, WhatsApp or flash calls. Verihubs announced it

Investor and entrepreneur Anshu Sharma — formerly Storm Ventures, now CEO of privacy-focused SkyFlow — asked on Twitter today about the connection between interest rates and technology valuations: Ignore the compliments; Sharma was merely trying to bait Jeff and me into engaging with his question. Which worked, as you can tell. Sharma is someone with

Regional seed and early-stage venture capital firm, Flat6Labs, has finished raising $10 million for its seed fund targeted at Tunisian startups, according to a statement released by the company. The seed fund, called Anava Seed Fund (ASF), at first sought a close of $3 million but instead closed 3.3x of the initial figure. The fund

After working as an investment banker in Canada for a decade, Halima Iqbal moved back to Pakistan in 2017 and quickly realized how difficult it is for women to access financial services. “I had a really hard time opening up a basic bank account. It took me about three and a half months,” Iqbal told

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly been devastating on many levels. But if there’s any silver lining in the global crisis, it could be that it’s less taboo to talk about feeling anxious, depressed or burnt out. Because chances are, the person you’re talking to is feeling one of those things too. So it’s no surprise