Alexander Kremer Contributor More than 10 companies currently compete across Europe with an instant grocery delivery business model. Half of them were established in 2020, the year of the pandemic. These companies have raised more than $2 billion to date. Existing and well-funded online food-delivery service players like Delivery Hero are also joining the race
Kanye (or “Ye,” as it were) is going all out in the promotion of his upcoming tenth studio album, “Donda” (named for his late-mother, Donda West). In July, there was a massive listening party at New Orleans’ Mercedes-Benz Stadium (where he also took up residence in a locker room). For an upcoming listening party in
A London-headquartered startup called LOVE, valued at $17 million following its pre-seed funding, aims to redefine how people stay in touch with close family and friends. The company is launching a messaging app that offers a combination of video calling as well as asynchronous video and audio messaging, in an ad-free, privacy-focused experience with a
Flink, a Mexico City-based neobroker, has raised $57 million in a Series B round of funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The financing comes just over six months after Flink raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Accel. Existing backers Accel, ALLVP, Clocktower and new investor Mantis Venture Capital (founded by The
Estonia-based Membo — which is backed by Y Combinator and will be presenting at the incubator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day next week — is aiming to take a slice of the premium end of grocery shopping in Europe and a bite out of supermarket giants’ continued dominance of the traditional weekly food shop. On-demand food
Bright, a live video platform that lets fans Zoom with their favorite creators and celebs, has raised $15 million in new funding, the company announced today. The round was co-led by co-founder and talent manager Guy Oseary’s Sound Ventures, the fund he founded with Ashton Kutcher. RIT Capital and Regah Ventures also co-led. Other investors
At a time when remote work, cybersecurity attacks and increased privacy and compliance requirements threaten a company’s data, more companies are collecting and storing their observability data, but are being locked in with vendors or have difficulty accessing the data. Enter Cribl. The San Francisco-based company is developing an “open ecosystem of data” for enterprises
Last month, MaxAB, the Egyptian B2B e-commerce platform that serves food and grocery retailers, raised one of the largest Series A on the continent, to the tune of $40 million. Today, it has raised a $15 million extension from existing investors — RMBV, IFC, Flourish Ventures, Crystal Stream Capital, Rise Capital, Endeavour Catalyst, Beco Capital
The global startup community is currently enjoying a period of fundraising success that may be unprecedented in the history of technology and venture capital. While this is happening around the world, few startup hubs in the world are reveling in a greater boost to their ability to attract capital than Boston. The well-known U.S. city
TikTok is moving into e-commerce. The company announced this morning an expanded partnership with e-commerce platform Shopify, as well as a pilot test of TikTok Shopping among select Shopify merchants across the U.S., U.K. and Canada in the weeks to come. The social video platform first announced its plans to partner with Shopify last October,
New York City based startup NS1 got its start providing organizations with managed DNS services to help accelerate application delivery and reliability. With its new NetBox Cloud service that is being announced in preview today, NS1 is expanding its services into a new area beyond DNS. It can often be a challenging task for a
It was once common practice for doctors to visit sick patients in their homes: In 1930, 40% of all consultations were house calls. By 1980, that figure was less than 1%. Today, urgent care centers occupy Main Street storefronts and 33% of all medical expenditures occur in hospitals. It’s clear that the additional overhead is
Developing new packaged foods and consumer goods can take a couple years as companies research, prototype and test products. In a society that runs on social media, however, people expect to see trends land on store shelves much more quickly. Founded in 2018, Ai Palette uses machine learning to help companies spot trends in real
Subscription newsletter platform kingpin Substack shared today that they’ve acqui-hired the team behind Cocoon, a subscription social media app built for close friends. We covered the Y Combinator-backed startup’s initial $3 million seed raise led by Lerer Hippeau back in November 2019, shortly before the pandemic dramatically reconfigured how people used social media to communicate
A quick survey of many of the most highly valued electric vertical take-off and landing companies shows one thing in common: All of them are developing aircraft powered by batteries. But a growing suite of aviation companies, turned off by what they see as the energy density limitations of lithium-ion batteries, are turning instead to
Earlier today, spend management startup Ramp said it has raised a $300 million Series C that valued it at $3.9 billion. It also said it was acquiring Buyer, a “negotiation-as-a-service” platform that it believes will help customers save money on purchases and SaaS products. The round and deal were announced just a week after competitor
Sara Mauskopf Contributor Sara Mauskopf is the CEO and co-founder of Winnie, a child care and education marketplace helping millions of parents across the United States. More posts by this contributor The inevitable takedown of the female CEO Elana Berkowitz Contributor Elana Berkowitz is a founding partner of Springbank Collective, which invests in early stage
HR automation software startup Sora announced this morning that it closed a $14 million Series A round of funding. Two Sigma Ventures led the financing event, putting in $10 million, with prior investors completing the round. The round comes after Sora raised a $5.3 million seed round in July 2020. First Round and Elad Gil
Greenfly’s latest funding round has a new face: Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul joined as a strategic investor and partner in the company, which developed digital media flow management software. Paul’s investment is part of an $8.4 million strategic growth round that also includes Verance Capital, Higher Ground Labs, DD Venture Capital, SW19 Ventures,
Creating single-family homes for the homeless using 3D printing robotics. Developing construction systems to create infrastructure and habitats on the moon, and eventually Mars, with NASA. Delivering what is believed to be the largest 3D-printed structure in North America — a barracks for Texas Military Department. These are just some of the things that Austin,
Ken Babcock and his co-founders, Dan Giovacchini and Brian Shultz, were in the midst of Harvard Business School in March 2020 when they felt the call to start Tango, a Chrome extension that auto-captures workflow best practices so that teams can learn from their top performers. “This window of opportunity was driven by the pandemic
London based Plentific, which operates a marketplace SaaS platform targeting the property management space, has closed a $100 million Series C. The funding round is led by new investors Highland Europe and Brookfield Technology Partners — the VC arm of the eponymous real estate giant — along with Mubadala Investment Company and RXR Digital Ventures,
Aug.18 — Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shares his predictions for Ethereum and Bitcoin, and says he is skeptical about Jack Dorsey’s plans in decentralized finance and Mark Zuckberberg’s ambition to turn Facebook into a “metaverse company.” He talks to Emily Chang on Bloomberg Studio 1.0
With COVID-19 disrupting the entire manufacturing supply chain including semiconductor shortages, companies across multiple industries have been struggling to seek a procurement solution that can rebalance the gap between supply and demand. CADDi, a Tokyo-based B2B ordering and supply platform in the manufacturing and procurement industry, helps both procurement (demand side) and manufacturing facilities (supply
A few months ago, brothers Hai Nam Bui and Hai Long Bui were developing a bookkeeping app for small retailers in Vietnam. Called SoBanHang (or “sales book”), it would help businesses that usually rely on paper ledgers digitize their operations, similar to Khatabook in India and BukuKas and BukuWarung in Indonesia. Then a new COVID-19
Figuring out size and cut of clothes through a website can suck the fun out of shopping online, but Revery.ai is developing a tool that leverages computer vision and artificial intelligence to create a better online dressing room experience. Under the tutelage of University of Illinois Center for Computer Science advisrr David Forsyth, a team
Sumi Das Contributor Sumi Das is a partner at CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, where he leads healthcare tech and consumer fintech investments. Prior investments include Robinhood, Stripe, Convoy, Albert, Aye Finance, Next Insurance and Strive Health. Nina Gerson Contributor Nina Gerson is a vice president at CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, where she co-leads
Inflation may or may not prove transitory when it comes to consumer prices, but startup valuations are definitely rising — and noticeably so — in recent quarters. That’s the obvious takeaway from a recent PitchBook report digging into valuation data from a host of startup funding events in the United States. While the data covers
Instagram is ditching the “swipe-up” link in Instagram Stories starting on August 30. The popular feature has historically allowed businesses and high-profile creators a way to direct their Story’s viewers to a website where they could learn more about a product, read an article, sign up for a service or do anything else the creator
Enterprise startups have several viable exit strategies: Some will go public, but most successful outcomes will be via acquisition, often by one of the highly acquisitive large competitors like Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, SAP, Adobe or Cisco. From rivals to “spin-ins,” Cisco has a particularly rich history of buying its way to global success. It