TechCrunch Startup News
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Womens leadership network Chief surges to unicorn status
As Ariana Grande would say, god is a woman. So it should come as no surprise that Chief, the network designed to develop the leadership skills of women, has hit a $1.1 billion valuation in a matter of three years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Quantum Machines acquires QDevil to build out its full-stack quantum orchestration platform
Quantum Machines, the well-funded Israeli startup that specializes in building control systems for quantum computers, today announced that it has acquired QDevil, a well-known Danish company that specializes in building control hardware for quantum systems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flux Marine revs up its electric outboard business with $15M A round
The race is certainly on in the electrification of boating… even if everyone is jockeying for position before the market materializes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wing Security launches its end-to-end SaaS security platform, raises $26M
As businesses increasingly rely on an ever-growing number of SaaS products, it has become imperative for security teams to get a better understanding of which applications a company’s employees are actually using and the risks associated with those. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cyberpion raises $27M Series A for its external attack surface management platform
It’s no secret that digital supply chains are increasingly under attack as hackers look to use this vector to get access to company networks and confidential information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Smart electric panel company Span gets a $90M jolt of cash
The lowly breaker panel has been around for a century without getting much love, and along comes Span. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Singapore-based esports startup Ampverse lands $12M
Singapore-headquartered esports startup Ampverse has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Falcon Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Australian fintech Zepto raises $25M Series A to enhance payment infrastructure
Zepto, an Australian real-time account-to-account (A2A) merchant payments platform, said Monday it has raised a $25 million Series A co-led by AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Freelancer marketplace Malt acquires consulting marketplace Comatch
It’s consolidation time in the freelancer marketplace industry. French startup Malt is acquiring Comatch, a competing marketplace focused on consultants and industry experts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oslo-based Unleash nabs $14M Series A to build open source feature management tool
As developers build new features into software, they have to be sure that the new functionality doesn’t break what’s already there. So they often will roll it out slowly and see what happens using a technique of placing feature flags in the code. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rental car delivery startup Kyte is growing its fleet to 10,000 vehicles
Kyte, the startup that delivers rental cars to customers’ doors, has raised $200 million in asset-backed credit financing from Goldman Sachs and Ares Global Management, money the company will use to pay for new vehicles that will fuel its expansion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rugged’s construction layout robots land $9.4M
It’s been a little less than a year since we first noted Rugged Robotics. The Houston-based startup developed a robot that prints building layouts on the floor of construction sites, so workers know where — and where not — to build. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Skyline scores $6.5M to wash windows with robot arms
I would put window washing fairly high (so to speak) on the list of jobs it makes sense to automate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ShopThing raises $10M to scale its live video shopping marketplace
ShopThing, a live shopping marketplace focused on luxury brands, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Origin Ventures, with participation from Pritzker Group and Interplay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Datagen raises $50 million Series B to empower computer vision teams
With its self-serve platform, Datagen now has a much more scalable way to help clients themselves generate the visual data that they need to train their computer vision applications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Wealth poised to make estate planning accessible to all
Wealth gives you a one-stop shop where your entire financial portfolio can live and accumulate in real-time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
With $9.3M in fresh funding, Zestworld plans a newsletter service for creator-owned comics
The comics world has seemingly been waiting for a digital revolution since the birth of the internet. Launched in 2007, ComiXology has come the closest to delivering such a play to the medium, so naturally, Amazon went and purchased the service and messed it up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kenya-based agritech Apollo raises $40 million in Softbank-led round, joined by Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, CDC
Kenya-based agritech Apollo Agriculture, which helps farmers access high-quality farm inputs, financing and markets, plans to double the number of farmers it is serving by the end 2022 and to introduce other products that deliver more value per acre of land. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Upstash snags $1.9M seed to build serverless data platform for Redis and Kafka
When it comes to data-intensive applications, setting up the infrastructure is expensive and time-consuming. You’re often paying for resources you aren’t using, even in the cloud. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Expert jumps into home goods e-commerce
The Expert, which provides video consultations with top designers, expands into e-commerce to become what co-founder Leo Seigal referred to as “Farfetch for home.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hence secures $1.8M seed to grow its legal services sourcing technology
Hence Technologies, a Kigali and London based startup that uses data and AI technologies to match companies with external legal service providers is set to scale its precision matching engine after raising $1.8million in seed funding from various institutions and angel investors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SentinelOne scoops up Attivo Networks for $617M
Security companies typically start by focusing on one particular problem, but the biggest ones like Palo Alto Networks, FireEye and Symantec have shifted to a horizontal approach typically gaining functionality over time through acquisition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Arcol aims to do for building design what Figma did for UI design
The company is building web-based tools that can turn a 2D sketch into a 3D representation so that someone can design anything from a small building to a skyscraper. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TruEra raises $35M for its AI analytics and monitoring platform
TruEra, a startup that offers an AI quality management solution to optimize, explain and monitor machine learning models, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B round led by Menlo Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Plantish fishes for restaurant partners to try plant-based salmon filets
Plantish aims to get its salmon product into the first five restaurants by December 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Motto to launch a new electric bike subscription service in Paris
Meet Motto, a new French startup that plans to offer electric bikes in Paris. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
inFeedo gets $12M to help employers find out how their workforce really feels
Employee sentiment can be hard to gauge, even at smaller businesses. This can lead to burnout and attrition, when managers least expect it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pareto thinks it shouldn’t be so hard to collect lead-generation data
Pareto’s team of data experts offer actionable insights on everything from TikTok influencers to qualifying B2B sales leads. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fleet thinks companies should rent laptops instead of buying them
French startup Fleet wants to become your IT department’s best friend by managing hardware as a service. Fleet clients can rent computers and smartphones for a flat monthly fee. If there’s a hardware issue, the startup handles returns and repairs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Zeta Surgical comes out of stealth with a $5.2M raise for image-guided surgery
Boston-based Zeta Surgical comes out of stealth this week, with the announcement of a $5.2 million seed round. The funding, led by Innospark Ventures, follows a $250,000 pre-seed featuring Y Combinator and Plug and Play Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Stilt secures $114M in debt & equity to help fintechs and neobanks launch credit offerings with its API
Stilt, which started its life as a provider of financial services for immigrants, has raised $14 million in Series A funding led by Link Ventures as it expands its focus to include a B2B offering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Zaya Care partners with payers to bring the European model of maternal care to the States
Despite the fact that we spend more on healthcare per capita, the U.S. leads the wealthy world in maternal mortality. And health inequity plays a big part. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Blink looks to simplify cloud operations management with $26M investment
Blink’s co-founders have been working in security and automation for a number of years, and they observed that there was a strong overlap between developer operations (DevOps) and security operations (SecOps) when it came to managing cloud infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kodiak Robotics is moving autonomous freight for Ceva Logistics
Autonomous trucking startup Kodiak Robotics has partnered with Ceva Logistics to deliver freight autonomously between Dallas-Forth Worth and Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth and Oklahoma City, the company said on Wednesday, marking its first publicly announced customer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sneaker e-commerce platform Kicks Crew raises $6M Series A
The global thirst for an up-charged pair of Yeezy’s or limited edition Jordan’s combined with a growth in a digital ecosystem is creating new opportunities, particularly in the sneaker resale market, for companies like Kicks Crew, a Los Angeles- and Hong Kong-based sneaker and apparel platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fundrise invests $128M into expansion of Saltbox’s warehouse, co-working spaces for entrepreneurs
Fundrise will acquire warehouses ranging in size from 50,000 to 150,000 square feet that will house the new Saltbox locations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Better.com plans to lay off about 4,000 people this week, sources say
Online mortgage lender Better.com is poised to lay off roughly 50% of its staff of about 8,000 this week, according to sources familiar with internal happenings at the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Infrastructure is broken, Gecko is using robotics to help fix it
Gecko Robotics’ mission statement is “To protect today’s critical infrastructure, and give form to tomorrow’s.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Environmental, social and governance tracking gets easier with ESGgo
You can’t swing an ethically sourced, locally produced, sustainably raised dead fish these days without hitting a set of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals in a company’s board meetings or annual reports. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Volocopter raises $170M, now valued at $1.87B, to fuel the first commercial launches of its flying taxi fleet
Volocopter, the startup out of southern Germany (Bruchsal) that has been developing electric VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) aircraft and a business model for operating them in taxi-style fleets in urban areas, has picked up another big round of funding as it inches closer to its first commercial launches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YC-backed Blocknom wants to become the “Coinbase Earn of Southeast Asia”
Blocknom, a crypto-earning platform in Y Combinator’s current batch, has aspirations to become the “Coinbase Earn for Southeast Asia.” Today the company announced it has raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding from Y Combinator, Number Capital and Magic Fund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Shares raises $40 million for its social investment app
Shares has closed a $40 million Series A funding round led by Valar Ventures. The company has been working on a mobile app that lets you easily buy and sell shares, but with a social twist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft partners with VCs, accelerators to back 10,000 startups in Africa
Microsoft has today announced plans to support 10,000 startups in Africa over the next five years through a series of initiatives including partnerships with accelerators and incubators across the continent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
After raising $4 million, Emtech supports central banks across Africa, the Caribbean to deploy regulatory sandboxes
For fintechs to thrive in such a way that they remain meaningful to economies, a synergy between them and regulatory bodies is inevitable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Enterpret launches with $4.4M, NLP technology to decipher customer feedback
Enterpret is building and deploying customer-specific models, based on customer feedback, for product development teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Live near an ocean? Kin Insurance’s data aims to more accurately predict home risk
By using data and technology to accurately price the risk, Kin Insurance is able to remove some of the costs of traditional insurance firms, like agents. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Payhawk becomes a unicorn as it extends its Series B
European spend management startup Payhawk has added $100 million to its Series B round that I already covered back in November. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flashfood raises $12.3M to scale its grocery app that helps tackle retail food waste
Toronto-based Flashfood, a mobile marketplace that provides customers with access to discounted food nearing its best-by date, has raised $12.3 million in Series A funding led by S2G Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Better Dairy slices into new funding for animal-free cheeses
Better Dairy is using precision fermentation to produce cheeses that are molecularly identical to traditional dairy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Singapore-based micromobility startup Beam secures $93M Series B, enters new markets
Beam, a Singaporean shared micromobility operator, announced today that it has raised $93 million in a Series B round to accelerate growth into new countries in Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices