Fundings and Exits

Earlier today, DigitalOcean announced that it raised $50 million more from prior investors Access Industries and Andreessen Horowitz. The capital comes after the SMB and developer-focused cloud infrastructure company raised nine-figures worth of debt back in February. DigitalOcean is a large private company that generated revenue at a run rate of around $250 million towards

GoodWork, a Philippines-based booking platform for home services, has raised a $1.6 million seed round it will use to expand into new Southeast Asian markets. The funding was led by Chaac Ventures, a firm that backs Princeton alumni (GoodWork co-founder and CEO Andrew Koger earned his bachelor of arts at the university), and includes participation

Anyfin, the Stockholm-based startup that enables consumers to refinance their existing loans, has raised $30 million in funding. Leading the Series B round is EQT Ventures, with participation from existing investors Accel, Northzone and Rocket Internet’s Global Founders Capital (GFC). Anyfin says it will use the investment to “drive product innovation”, launch additional offerings and

Over the last few weeks all eyes in the crypto world have been glued to the halvening, a nigh-religious moment in the blockchain realm. Every once in a while, the amount of new bitcoin mined — distributed to miners, the folks with fleets of computers powering bitcoin’s database, or blockchain — is cut in half.

Rakuten, often referred to as the “Amazon of Japan” with extensive holdings in e-commerce and streaming media, has made an acquisition that will help it build up and flex a newer arm of its business: communications services. Today, the company announced that it is buying Innoeye, an engineering company based out of Herndon, VA, with

Construyo, a Berlin-based startup that offers a “holistic” project management service that connects the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, has raised €2 million in seed funding. The round is led by Talis Capital, and follows €300,000 of previous backing from Florian Swoboda, founder of Liberty Ventures; Florian Leibert, founder of D2iQ, and Jan Kanieß,

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. If you just read the headlines, you’d be excused for thinking that venture capital investment into financial-technology companies is at an all-time high. Big deals this year like Plaid’s $5.3 billion dollar exit to Visa,

The retirement wars are heating up. As millions of baby boomers leave their jobs in the coming years and transition into retirement, there is a huge competition for who will manage their savings. On one hand are traditional wealth managers, firms like Edward Jones, who either employ full-time human financial advisors or empower independent contractors

Small- to medium-sized businesses are one of the most important parts of Southeast Asia’s economy, but many have trouble securing growth capital from traditional financial institutions. Validus wants to fix the financing gap with its peer-to-peer lending platform, which connects accredited lenders with SMEs. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised $20 million

Consumer fintech startups were massively successful in 2019, attracting millions of new users and disrupting traditional retail banks and financial services with mobile-first, consumer-oriented products. Despite the economic downturn in public markets and the massive wave of cuts at public and private companies in recent weeks, fintech startups have been raising a ton of money.

Vochi, a startup operating out of Belarus that’s created a “computer vision”-based video editing and effects app for mobile phones, has raised $1.5 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Ukraine-based Genesis Investments (backer of BetterMe and Jiji). It follows pre-seed funding in April 2019 from Bulba Ventures, where Vochi founder and CEO Ilya

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. As the economy has worsened, the market for many goods and services has slowed. Some SaaS products have found themselves immune, or even boosted by recently changes in consumer and business consumption patterns and travel

Today at 10am PDT, two-thirds of the Equity crew are sitting down with Hunter Walk, a venture capitalist with Homebrew and well-known seed-stage investor. Continuing TechCrunch’s running series of Extra Crunch Live discussions with prominent people in the tech industry, bringing Walk in for a discussion is fitting. Our recent chat with Sequoia Roelof Botha’s

Lime has announced that it has raised a $170 million funding round. Uber is the leading investor with existing investors Alphabet, Bain Capital Ventures, GV and others also participating. The Information first reported on the new funding round, before the official announcement. As part of the deal, Lime is also acquiring Uber’s micromobility subsidiary Jump.

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. This week shares of SaaS and cloud companies reached new record highs as investors bid their equities higher following an earnings cycle that came in better than some expected. SaaS stocks, as measured by the

Target, which already owns on-demand delivery service Shipt, is in talks to buy assets from Deliv, NBC News first reported. “Deliv is in the process of completing a deal to sell technology assets to Target and Deliv’s CEO along with a subset of the team will be moving over to Target,” a Deliv spokesperson told

Founders hunting down capital in the middle of this pandemic may feel like they’re on a fool’s errand, but some investors are still offering financing, even if the terms might not be as good as they once were. One avenue that appears to remain open: corporate venture capital. The corporate route offers its own set

Stilt, a Y Combinator alum that provides financial services for immigrants without Social Security numbers or credit reports, announced today that it has closed a $7.5 million seed round. It also launched FDIC-insured pre-approved global bank accounts today. The startup has raised equity from investors including Liron Petrushka; Hillsven Capital; Streamlined Ventures; Gokul Rajaram; Bragiel

Countingup, the business current account that “automates” your accounting, has raised £4 million in self-described bridge funding. Leading the round is ING Ventures, with co-investment from Triple Point, CVentures, and BiG Start Ventures. Founded by Tim Fouracre, who previously founded cloud accounting software Clear Books, and now boasting 20,000 business customers, Countingup’s long term vision

A new data set from Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) details how startups are reacting to the post-unicorn era as COVID-19-related disruptions upset the global economy and remake the risk tolerance of private investors. What SVB’s new report shows is unsurprising: venture capital deal volumes are falling, startups are tapping existing debt capacities to add cash

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. Today we’re taking stock of what’s happening to a number of unicorns, both public and private. This is the third time we’ve sat down to document what feels like a wave of unicorn cuts, capped

AskRobin, an Estonia-founded fintech that operates a financial services marketplace for “underbanked” customers in Latin America, has picked up $1.7 million in funding. The seed round is backed by VC funds Change Ventures, Vereeni Early Stage Fund, BENE Asia Capital, and Lemonade Stand. In addition, a number of tech entrepreneurs from Estonia participated, such as

This afternoon Airbnb, a well-known private company that connects travelers with places to stay, announced that it was laying off around a quarter of its workforce. The company cited revenue declines and a need to curtail costs in a memo that TechCrunch viewed. In the note, written by Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky, the

Treasury Prime, a startup that built software tooling to help banks automate and accelerate routine tasks, announced today that it has closed a $9 million Series A. The new capital was sourced from Amias Gerety of QED, Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, and Hans Morris of NYCA Partners. The capital event is yet another funding round

Fintech startup N26 now has a proper funding war chest to face the economic downturn. The Berlin-based startup has extended its Series D round with another $100 million of funding at the same valuation of $3.5 billion. In total, N26 has raised $570 million as part of its Series D round. N26’s Series D seems

API-powered startups are having a good year, with Plaid’s mega-exit to Visa still fresh in mind. And digital video-powered startups are also having a good year, as the world stays home more than before and work shifts to a more remote-friendly landscape. What about a company that does both? Well, they’d probably raise money and

Good morning and welcome back to TechCrunch’s Equity Monday, a jumpstart for your week. Equity had a busy last few days, so to help you catch up: Friday’s episode was a lot of fun (Duolingo, Figma, OMERS, and aquafaba), and we also dropped an Equity Shot on Saturday, digging into the first major technology earnings week.

Mark Cuban isn’t impressed that you’ve raised money. “If you think the accomplishment is raising money first, we’re probably not gonna get along,” said Cuban in an Extra Crunch Live interview. “If your orientation is ‘I got to raise the money first,’ you don’t really have a company yet, and you really haven’t accomplished anything

Hello and welcome back to our regular morning look at private companies, public markets and the gray space in between. What a week it’s been. I’m exhausted. Not only are we another cycle deeper into the COVID-19 quarantine, but there seems to be more news than ever to sift through. I’ve fallen behind. So, today,

Prague based Resistant AI has nabbed a $2.75M seed round. The security startup’s machine learning technology is designed to be deployed on top of AI systems used for financial decision making to protect customers in markets such as financial services and ecommerce from attacks such as targeted manipulation, adversarial machine learning and advanced fraud. The