Fundings and Exits

SoftBank is gaga for startups in Latin America. Since first announcing it was planting a stake in the ground in the region in early 2019, the Japanese conglomerate has plugged more than $5 billion into the region, and it expects that number to top $8 billion by year’s end. Its capital contributions are meaningful to

Just two months after securing $2 million in pre-seed funding, plant-based pudding startup Noops is announcing an additional $2 million round led by Lerer Hippeau. The Long Island-based company was founded in 2019 by Hungryroot co-founder Gregory Harry Struck after he adopted a plant-based diet while battling cancer. “It was born out of a need

The boom in venture capital fundraising that the technology startup market has enjoyed since the back half of 2020 has been eye-popping. Record sums have been disbursed around the world as more firms entered the fray to invest in startups, and the late-stage capital flowed like water. But while the venture capital game seemed to

Earning passive income as an investor in single-family rental homes is a dream for many, but also something that can be intimidating to break into. Awning is a startup that aims to make the process less intimidating through a platform designed to allow individuals to invest in single-family rental homes not just in the cities

If you’ve ever had to take out a loan, you know just how many documents are involved in the approval process. It’s a lot. The process is tedious and time-consuming, and in many more cases than you’d expect — still manual. Ocrolus is a startup that is hoping to change that with an automation platform

Fintech startups are having one hell of a week. On the heels of Boston-based software-and-payments company Toast’s strong IPO pricing, Remitly priced shares in its own debut above its proposed range yesterday evening. The Seattle-based fintech company sold 12,162,777 shares (7,000,000 primary) at $43 apiece. The company had previously targeted a $42 per-share max price

Flieber wants to help e-commerce retailers get back to what they do best: selling. The New York-based company announced Wednesday $12 million in Series A financing to continue developing its inventory optimization platform that uses analytics and machine learning to give multi-channel brands a leg up when it comes to determining what the ideal stock

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today we got the gang together — Natasha and Danny and Alex — to chat about the most recent IPOs in tech-land, namely debuts from Freshworks and Toast. TechCrunch has covered their pair of firms somewhat closely during their IPO run, as

News that Klarna is waiting for more favorable market conditions before going public felt a little odd yesterday. Today, hesitation to go public feels downright strange. New pricing information from U.S. tech unicorn Toast and Indian tech unicorn Freshworks indicate that the IPO market is more than welcoming. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money.

Kavak, a Mexico City-based startup that operates a pre-owned car marketplace in Latin America, announced today that it has raised a massive $700 million in a Series E round that more than doubles the company’s valuation to $8.7 billion. This news is notable for a few reasons. For one, it’s a staggering sum for any

Evermos’ founding team (l to r): Arip Tirta, Ghufron Mustaqim, Iqbal Muslimin and Ilham Taufiq. Image Credits: Evermos Evermos is an Indonesian social commerce startup with two goals: to let people earn extra income by opening online stores without spending capital and to help small brands grow into household names. The company, which focuses on

Just Insure, a pay-per-mile insurance technology company, has raised $8 million in a funding round.  CrossCut Ventures, ManchesterStory and Western Technology Investments co-led the investment, which brings its total raised to $15.3 million since its January 2019 inception. Los Angeles-based Just says it uses telematics “to reward safe drivers and reduce insurer bias” by looking

U.S. technology unicorn Toast filed a new S-1 document this morning detailing a higher IPO price range for its shares. The more expensive range indicates that Toast may be worth more in its debut than it initially expected, a bullish sign for technology companies more broadly. Toast’s rising valuation may provide a boon to two

Earlier today, TechCrunch examined the new IPO price range for Toast. The U.S. software-and-fintech company moved its valuation materially higher in anticipation of pricing tomorrow after the bell and trading on Wednesday. It was not alone in doing so. Freshworks is also targeting a higher IPO price range, it disclosed today in a fresh SEC

Picking up where we left off Friday, let’s spend some more time in the GitLab IPO filing. It’s going to be an IPO week, mind; Toast and Freshworks are set to price Tuesday after the close of trading and begin to float on Wednesday. Expect final notes on the value of each and reports on

Meet Xata, a startup with a new take on managed databases. The company runs your database for you and turns it into an API so that you can query and update it from your serverless app. Xata has raised a $5 million funding round. Its product is not yet ready for prime time but the

Byju’s said on Thursday it has acquired California-headquartered Tynker, a leading coding platform for K-12 students, the latest in a series of major purchases as the Indian edtech giant attempts to aggressively expand to international markets. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal, but a person familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that

Concreit, a company that wants to open real estate investing to a broader group of people, announced today that it has closed $6 million in a seed funding round led by Matrix Partners.  Hyphen Capital also participated in the round, in addition to individual investors such as Betterment founder and CEO Jon Stein; Andy Liu,

Self Financial, a fintech company that aims to help consumers build credit and savings at the same time, announced today it has raised $50 million in Series E funding. Altos Ventures led the financing, which also included participation from Meritech Capital and Conductive Ventures and brings the Austin-based startup’s total raised to $127 million since

Mynd, a company that aims to make it easier for people to buy and manage single-family rental properties, announced today it has raised $57.3 million in funding from QED Investors. The financing values the Oakland, California-based company at $807 million, and brings the company’s total raised to $174.9 million since its 2016 inception. Invesco Real

Startups are raising record sums around the world, thanks to several contributing factors. As The Exchange explored yesterday, historically low interest rates have helped venture capitalists raise more capital than ever, to pick an example. Low rates have helped startups in another manner: As yields fell for certain assets, investors chased returns by betting on

While the technology and business world worked towards the weekend, developer operations (DevOps) firm GitLab filed to go public. Before we get into our time off, we need to pause, digest the company’s S-1 filing, and come to some early conclusions. GitLab competes with GitHub, which Microsoft purchased for $7.5 billion back in 2018. The

Natasha and Mary Ann and Alex were all aboard this week under the guidance of Chris and Grace, which meant we had the full team. And speaking of teams, Mary Ann is joining the Friday show on a weekly basis now. She’s been a friend for years, and a colleague now twice-over for Natasha and Alex and we could not be more

Avalanche, a relatively new blockchain with a focus on speed and low transactions costs, has completed a $230 million private sale of AVAX tokens to some well known crypto funds. Polychain and Three Arrows Capital are leading the investment. The Avalanche Foundation completed the private sale back in June 2021 and is disclosing it today.

We’ve spent so long staring at record venture capital results around the world from Q2 that it’s nearly Q3. We’ve seen record results from cities, countries, and regions. There’s so much money sloshing around the venture capital and startup worlds that it’s hard to recall what they were like in leaner times. We’ve been in

During the darkest hours of the pandemic, millions upon millions of people turned to online gaming as a way to pass time in lockdown and connect with friends they couldn’t see in person. But a social, cooperative, fun and cross-platform gaming experience is remarkably hard to find — and Elodie Games is here to change

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.

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

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

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 —