Another week in quarantine. As the world adjusts to working from home under mandatory stay-at-home orders, hackers are keeping busy. Microsoft said this week that coronavirus-related attacks are on the rise but still make up just a fraction of the overall malicious activity. Cybersecurity companies seem to be faring mostly well — in part thanks […]

A startup that’s hoping to be a contender in the very large and fragmented market of human resources software has captured the eye of a big investor out of the US and become its first investment in Spain. Barcelona-based Factorial, which is building an all-in-one HR automation platform aimed at small and medium businesses that manages […]

While human travel has become severely restricted in recent months, the movement of goods has remained a constant priority — and in some cases, has become even more urgent. Today, a startup out of Switzerland that builds hardware and operates a logistics network designed to transport one item in particular — pharmaceuticals — is announcing […]

As coronavirus-hit financial markets continue to flip-flop in the wake of bad news followed by pockets of hope, a startup that aims to introduce ordinary consumers to investing has raised a big round of funding. New York-based Stash, which provides a mobile-first route to managing money through investment — as well as retirement, custodial and […]

With unemployment growing at a worrying rate, we’re seeing a lot more people finding themselves in hot water when it comes to their finances. Today a startup that’s built a platform to help identify and help those users when they find themselves unable to make payments is announcing a very large growth round of funding […]

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]

Contrary to some fears, equity calls on the London market have been relatively orderly

Mobile app market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, which provides data-driven insights about the app economy, has raised $45 million in new funding from Riverwood Capital. This is the first significant investment the now-profitable company has seen since its $1 million seed round in 2013. The investment speaks to the growing demand for data about the […]

Autotech Ventures popped on the scene three years ago with a $120 million debut fund and a plan to invest in early-stage ground transportation startups. Now, with investments in 26 startups and a handful of exits, including Xnor.ai, DeepScale and Frontier Car Group, the venture firm is back with a new, bigger fund and the […]

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]

The internet has, for better or worse, become the default platform for people seeking information, and today one of the companies leveraging that to deliver educational content has raised some funding to fuel its next stage of growth. Udemy, which provides a marketplace offering some 150,000 different online learning courses from business analytics to ukulele […]

European Union lawmakers have set out a first bundle of proposals for a new digital strategy for the bloc, one that’s intended to drive digitalization across all industries and sectors — and enable what Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has described as ‘A Europe fit for the Digital Age‘. It could also be summed […]

Deep Render, a London startup and spin-out of Imperial College that is applying machine learning to image compression, has raised £1.6 million in seed funding. Leading the round is Pentech, with participation from Speedinvest. Founded in mid-2017 by Arsalan Zafar and Chri Besenbruch, who met while studying Computer Science at Imperial College London, Deep Render […]

If you find voice assistants frustratingly dumb, you’re hardly alone. The much-hyped promise of AI-driven vocal convenience very quickly falls through the cracks of robotic pedantry. A smart AI that has to come back again (and sometimes again) to ask for extra input to execute your request can seem especially dumb — when, for example, […]

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

Orca Security, an Israeli cloud security firm that focuses on giving enterprises better visibility into their multi-cloud deployments on AWS, Azure and GCP, today announced that it has raised a $20 million Series A round led by GGV Capital. YL Ventures and Silicon Valley CISO Investments also participated in this round. Together with its seed […]

Sleuth, an early stage startup from three former Atlassian employees, wants to bring some much-needed order to the continuous delivery process. Today, the company announced it has raised a $3 million seed round. ​CRV led the round with participation from angel investors from New Relic, Atlassian and LaunchDarkly. “Sleuth is a deployment tracker built to […]

A lot of enterprise cybersecurity efforts focus on malicious hackers that work on behalf of larger organizations, be they criminal groups or state actors — and for good reason, since the majority of incidents these days come from phishing and other malicious techniques that originate outside the enterprise itself. But there has also been a […]

After years of working in mobile advertising, founder Niles Lichtenstein discovered a box of records from his late father. That compelled him to start putting together memories and online histories earlier, by documenting his mother’s life history and how he first met his wife. That developed into an interactive timeline where he collected songs from […]

One of the most sought-after, but never quite dominated, frontiers in online media and marketplaces has been centered on local communities. Hoodline, a San Francisco-based startup, is trying to tackle this with a unique focus on news about neighborhood retail corridors. The startup has built up a network of news on about two-dozen neighborhoods across San Francisco as a sort of Trojan horse into a larger platform of hyperlocal listings and markets.

Even though Rohit Prakash was a dual MD and PhD researching optogenetics at Stanford University, his entrepreneurial itch kept returning him to his family’s small business roots. He and his co-founder Nipul Patel began researching the travails of small business owners, interviewing countless entrepreneurs, trying to figure out what their risks were or what caused […]

AngelList, the online platform that had made itself indispensable to early-stage startups for fundraising and recruiting, said it closed out last year having raised $163 million online on behalf of 441 companies. That’s about 56 percent higher than the year before in 2014. About 40 percent of the deals were private rounds and institutional funds were in about 40 […]

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 […]

Locatee, a Swiss startup that uses existing sensors and IT infrastructures to provide employers and commercial real estate owners with detailed data about how their spaces are utilized, today announced that it has raised a $4 million Series A funding round led by San Francisco-based FYRFLY Venture Partners and Zurich-based Tomahawk VC. “We started the […]

Deskless workers make up 80% of the global workforce, but to Desmond Lim, that job title is his entire world. Lim grew up in Singapore and saw his father wake up every morning, six days a week, at 5 a.m. to start his job as a driver. Lim and his mom, who worked as a […]

Imagine a model of collaborative research and development among hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, universities and other research institutions where no one shared any actual data. That’s the dream of the new New York-based startup Owkin, which has raised $25 million in fresh financing from investors, including Bpifrance Large Venture, Cathay Innovation and MACSF (the French Pension […]

Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the […]

Early-stage companies often have trouble dealing with the amount of data that can run through the organization, especially as it grows. Large sums are spent on data software, dislocated data, dealing with data pipelines. All of which involve data warehousing, cleaning tools and a visualization platform. Count is a startup that is an attempt to […]

In the time many of us live in now, we all know our online media consumption is — to state the obvious — going through the roof. Subsequently, the amount of data pertaining to online marketing is, equally, reaching stratospheric heights and in recent years tech companies like Datorama and Funnel.io, SuperMetrics and Adverity have appeared to […]

Back in 2018 Templafy — which had come up with a way for enterprises to more easily make templates out of standard documents (yes, it’s a thing) — raised an additional $15 million from existing investors as an extension of its earlier Series B round taking it to $40.2 million raised. The company integrates with enterprise infrastructure to […]

Just as challenger banks have appeared in the B2C space, so to have B2B startup banks aimed at small businesses, among them startups like Qonto (Fr), Tide (UK), Penta (GER) and CountingUp (UK). Today another such firm, Finom, has closed a €6.5m ($7M) seed funding round led by Target Global, with participation from General Catalyst. […]

It was only the other week that Andreesen Horowitz announced their second blockchain-focused fund of $515 million. In the announcement, they said: “We are still early in this Web 3 build-out. High-performance programmable blockchains will make decentralized network development much more accessible. After years of R&D, we are excited that a number of next-gen programmable […]

There are some startups that behave like sprinters, and others that run a marathon. I came across Instabug when I was in Cairo in 2013. Born during the chaotic era of the Arab Spring, this plucky startup managed to make it to TechCrunch Disrupt, then Y Combinator in 2016, then a $1.7 million in seed […]

The Midwest may not be known as the fashion capital of the world (or even the U.S.), but its place in the consumer retail firmament is secure through L Brands and its Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works subsidiaries. Now, venture investors are investing $17.3 million to establish another tent-pole clothing brand in the […]

US private equity firm plans further share in group shaken by fallout from Luckin Coffee scandal

German conglomerate hopes to offload lossmaking division to focus on steel

What if it was easier to eat salad than junk food? Most diet routines take a ton of time, whether you’re cooking from scratch, making a meal kit or seeking a nutritious restaurant. But on-demand prepared food delivery companies like Sprig that tried to eliminate that work have gone bankrupt from poor unit economics. Thistle […]

Electriphi, a provider of charging management and fleet monitoring software for electric vehicles, has joined the scrum of startups looking to provide services to the growing number of electric vehicle fleets in the U.S. The San Francisco-based company has just raised $3.5 million in seed funding from investors, including Wireframe Ventures, the Urban Innovation Fund […]

Vericool, a Livermore, Calif.-based startup that’s replacing plastic coolers and packaging with plant-based products, has raised $19.1 million in a new round of financing. The company’s stated goal is to replace traditional packaging materials like polystyrene with plant-based insulating packaging materials. Its technology uses 100% recycled paper fibers and other plant-based materials, according to the […]

“If your kids aren’t sleeping, you aren’t sleeping,” says Moshi founder and CEO Ian Chambers. As mindfulness apps grow increasingly popular among adults, Moshi is looking to bring mindfulness and meditative techniques to children. The app today announced the close of a $12 million Series B financing led by Accel, with participation from Latitude Ventures […]

Material Bank, a logistics platform for the architectural and design industry, has announced the close of a $28 million Series B financing today, led by Bain Capital Ventures. Bain’s Merritt Hummer led the round on behalf of the firm and will join the board of directors at Material Bank, along with Jeff Sine, cofounder and […]

Figma, the design platform that lets folks work collaboratively and in the cloud, has today announced the close of a $50 million Series D financing. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with partner Peter Levine and cofounding partner Marc Andreessen managing the deal for the firm. New angel investors, including Henry Ellenbogen from Durable […]

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 […]

Eight glasses of water a day. That’s the old recommendation you and I have heard growing up. And while we all know the importance of hydration to our health, some methods of hydration are more efficient than others. At least, that’s the premise that Hydrant was built on. The company, a wellness brand that launched […]

Early Stage SF is around the corner, on April 28 in San Francisco, and we are more than excited for this brand new event. The intimate gathering of founders, VCs, operators and tech industry experts is all about giving founders the tools they need to find success, no matter the challenge ahead of them. Struggling […]

The worlds of virtual and augmented reality have yet to land on the applications and hardware to truly spark mass-market, consumer interest in the space, but in the meantime, a startup building mixed reality services for business users has raised a round of funding, underscoring the opportunity in enterprise. Spatial, which has developed a “holographic” […]

TC Early Stage SF goes down on April 28, and we are getting pretty damn excited about it! The show will bring together 50+ experts across startup core competencies, such as fundraising, operations and marketing. We’ll hear from VCs on how to create the perfect pitch deck and how to identify the right investors for […]