Paidy, a Japanese financial tech startup that provides instant credit to consumers in Japan, announced today that it has raised a total of $143 million in new financing. This includes a $83 million Series C extension from investors including PayPal Ventures and debt financing of $60 million. The funding will be used to advance Paidy’s
Fundings and Exits
Freetrade, the U.K. challenger stockbroker that offers commission-free investing, has closed $15 million in Series A funding. The round includes a $7.5 million investment from Draper Esprit, the U.K. publicly-listed venture capital firm, along with previously announced equity crowdfunding via Crowdcube. The funding will be used by Freetrade for further growth and product development, including
Workiz, a startup whose software helps field service professionals manage their work, said today it has raised $5 million in Series A funding. The funding was led by Magenta Venture Partners, with participation from returning investor Aleph. The company announced the launch of Workiz Voice, an Amazon Alexa-powered feature that allows the app to be
Digital media startup Brut is announcing that it has raised $40 million in Series B funding. The money will be used, in part, to finance its launch in the United States. CEO Guillaume Lacroix said that that he and his co-founders all come from the French TV industry, where they were all “frustrated not to
ShareGrid, the U.S.-based marketplace for sharing, buying and selling film and photography equipment, has acquired the U.K’s BorrowFox as part of its international expansion plans. BorrowFox operates a “peer-to-peer” film and camera rental community that lets people rent out their under-utilised gear. ShareGrid says it expects to launch in the U.K. in 2020 (where it
Become, the Israeli startup that operates a business lending marketplace to give SMBs more funding options, has closed $10 million in Series A investment. In addition, the company — formerly known has Lending Express — has raised $2.5 million in venture debt. The round is led by Benson Oak Ventures and Magenta Venture, with participation
Milieu Insight, a Singapore-based market research and data platform, announced today that it has raised $2.4 million in pre-A funding. The round, led by MassMutual Ventures Southeast Asia, will be used on product development and to launch in four new Southeast Asian countries, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The startup’s platform, called Milieu Surveys,
French startup Welcome to the Jungle has raised a new $22.3 million funding round (€20 million). The startup is both a media company and a tech startup that wants to empower tech companies when it comes to recruitment. It doesn’t find the right candidate for you, it helps you get exposure, track application and facilitate
Fabric, the startup that wants to make automated logistics available to retailers of all sizes, announced today it has raised $110 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Corner Ventures, with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek. This brings the total
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here. 1. WeWork confirms an up to $8 billion lifeline from SoftBank Group; names new executive chairman Confirming earlier reports, The We Company
Tines, a Dublin-based startup that lets companies automate aspects of their cybersecurity, has raised $4.1 million in Series A funding. Leading the round is Blossom Capital, the venture capital firm co-founded by ex-Index Ventures and LocalGlobe VC Ophelia Brown. Founded in February 2018 by ex-eBay, PayPal and DocuSign security engineer Eoin Hinchy, who was subsequently
Amazon has acquired Health Navigator, a startup that develops APIs for online health services. According to CNBC, which first reported the deal, Health Navigator will become part of Amazon Care, its pilot healthcare service program for employees. This is the second health startup acquired by Amazon. The first was online pharmacy PillPack, purchased by the
Personal finance startup Truebill announced today that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding. The new funding was led by Eldridge Industries, with participation from Evolution VC previous investors including Cota Capital, Lucas Venture Group and YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim. When the Y Combinator-backed startup raised seed funding back in 2016, it was focused
Raydiant, a startup promising to turn TVs into interactive digital signs, is making several announcements today — a new company name, a new CEO, new partners and $7 million in new funding. Until today, the company was known as Mira, and it was founded by Tuan Ho (who previously founded internet TV company Philo), along
Over the past year or two, Squarespace has been expanding beyond website-building with new products like email marketing and its first acquisition (of an online scheduling tool) . Today, it’s announcing a move into social media content creation with the acquisition of Unfold, which offers templates for creating stories on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat — you
Startup founders have a million things to worry about every day. Finding product-market fit, great talent and and a sustainable plan for constant growth are top of mind, but perhaps most importantly, they need to keep the lights on, whether it’s by raising venture capital or managing cash flows while bootstrapping. The flip side to
Media monitoring — where news sources and other public information outlets are scanned regularly for mentions of specific organizations — is a well established service used by companies for market intelligence and to measure sentiment around their businesses. Today, London-based Signal AI, which has built a substantial operation in the area, has raised $25 million funding
The Australian scene industry has, in the last few years, started to generate a swathe of startups that have broken through internationally. Prior to this current era, Australia was scene has very much a local market in tech terms, with only occasional breakouts, like Atlassian . In fact, it’s now gaining a reputation as a
Earlier this month at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, we sat down with Box’s Aaron Levie and PagerDuty’s Jennifer Tejada to discuss their respective companies’ paths to an IPO, the general IPO landscape and the pros and cons of going public. With a lot of recent IPOs faltering and increased pressure on startup valuations, now is
Healx, a Cambridge, U.K.-based startup using AI to help discover new treatments for rare diseases, has raised $56 million in Series B funding. Leading the round is London-base VC firm Atomico, with participation by Intel Capital, Global Brain and btov Partners. All previous investors, including Balderton Capital, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Jonathan Milner have also
Airbnb may be another overvalued “unicorn,” but it’s no WeWork. The Information this morning reported new Airbnb financials — indicating a massive increase in operating losses — that immediately call Airbnb’s future into question. Precisely, Airbnb lost $306 million on operations on $839 million in revenue, namely as a result of marketing spend, in the
Winnow, the U.K. startup that has developed smart kitchen tech to help commercial kitchens reduce food waste, is disclosing $12 million in Series B funding. Backing the round is Ingka Group (a strategic partner to the IKEA franchisee system), Mustard Seed, Circularity Capital, D: Ax and The Ingenious Group. It follows a recent $8 million
TruTag Technologies, a company that creates microscopic, edible barcodes to authenticate medications, food, vaping pods and other products, has raised a $7.5 million Series C. The funding, led by Pangaea Ventures and Happiness Capital, will be used to further commercialize its technology and develop new solutions. Along with earlier rounds, this brings TruTag’s total funding
Pensando, an edge computing startup founded by former Cisco engineers, came out of stealth mode today with an announcement that it has raised a $145 million Series C. The company’s software and hardware technology, created to give data centers more of the flexibility of cloud computing servers, is being positioned as a competitor to Amazon
One of the major challenges facing engineers as they develop more agile robots is helping them move through space while avoiding collisions, especially in a dynamic environment. RealTime Robotics, a Boston-based startup announced an $11.7 million Series A investment to help solve this problem. SPARX Asset Management led the round with participation from some strategic
Booqed, a Hong Kong-based platform for booking short-term work spaces, announced today that it has raised $1.675 million in seed funding. Participants included Colliers International, the commercial real-estate management company, Techstars and Lazard Korea. The company participated in Proptech Accelerator, the Toronto-based accelerator program for property and real estate startups run by Colliers and Techstars,
Thimble, which offers flexible, short-term insurance to small businesses and freelancers, is announcing that it has raised $22 million in a Series A funding round led by IAC. Until today, the startup was known as Verifly, a name tied to the company’s initial aim of providing insurance to drone pilots. However, founder and CEO Jay
French startup Strapi has raised a $4 million seed round led by Accel and Stride.vc. The company has been working on an open-source Node.js headless content management system. That’s a lot of technical words in a row, but it’s not that hard to understand what Strapi is. Content management systems, or CMS, are web applications
Elastic acquired Endgame Security in June for $234 million, and as a result of that deal, today the company announced Elastic Endpoint security to help customers secure laptops and servers. It also announced the acquisition has officially closed. Elastic CEO and co-founder Shay Banon says that the company has already been helping threat hunters inside
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a state-run firm that offers train ticketing and catering services in India, more than doubled on its first day of trading in what was the best public debut for a local firm in two years. The firm, the fourth public company to come out of Indian Railways, sold