TechCrunch Startup News
3,808 episodes — Page 51 of 77
Spend management startup Ramp confirms $115M raise at a $1.6B valuation
This morning, Ramp, which provides corporate cards and spend management software, announced that it has closed $115 million across two investments, the latter of which valued the company at $1.6 billion. The Information first reported that Ramp was raising new capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Authentic Artists is building virtual, AI-powered musicians
Chris McGarry, who previously led music integration at Facebook’s Oculus, is taking a new approach to bringing music into the virtual world with his startup Authentic Artists. McGarry pointed to virtual celebrities like Lil Miquela and virtual concerts like Travis Scott’s giant event in Fortnite as setting the stage for Authentic Artists. In a sense, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Plaid raises $425M Series D from Altimeter as it charts a post-Visa future
Plaid, a unicorn that helps connect consumers’ bank accounts to financial applications, has raised a $425 million Series D, it announced this morning. TechCrunch understands that the new capital infusion, led by Altimeter Capital, values the company at around $13.4 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aporia raises $5M for its AI observability platform
Machine learning (ML) models are only as good as the data you feed them. That’s true during training, but also once a model is put in production. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hipmunk’s founders launch Flight Penguin to bring back Hipmunk-style flight search
Hipmunk’s founders are building a successor to their now-defunct flight search service. The startup was acquired by SAP-owned travel and expense platform Concur in 2016, and its CEO Adam Goldstein departed in 2018. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ConductorOne raises $5M in seed round led by Accel to automate your access requests
Over the course of their careers, Alex Bovee and Paul Querna realized that while the use of SaaS apps and cloud infrastructure was exploding, the process to give employees permission to use them was not keeping up. The pair led Zero Trust strategies and products at Okta, and could see the problem firsthand. For the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Want to take a road trip with Kevin Costner? Investors are betting you might
Woody Sears has long been interested in storytelling. After spending several years in sales after nabbing an MBA from Pepperdine — and following the debut in 2007 of the first iPhone — he founded a storytelling app called Zuuka that built up a library of narrated and illustrated kids’ books for the iPhone and iPad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Uruguayan payments startup dLocal quadruples valuation to $5B with $150M raise
Cross-border payments startup dLocal has raised $150 million at a $5 billion valuation, less than seven months after securing $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. This means that the five-year-old Uruguayan company has effectively quadrupled its valuation in a matter of months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Compass CEO hails IPO as a fundraising event amid ‘challenging’ market
While several tech companies are opting to delay their IPOs in the face of less-than-enthusiastic market demand for their shares, real estate tech company Compass forged ahead and went public today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
mmhmm introduces usage-based enterprise accounts and a beta for Windows
mmhmm, the software that allows folks to personalize their appearance on video chat, has today announced that its introducing usage-based enterprise accounts. In a conversation with TechCrunch, founder and CEO Phil Libin said this is a natural evolution, remarking that mmhmm has had hundreds of registrations from users all at the same company. “It was […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Leeway is a contract workflow service for your legal team
Meet Leeway, a French startup that is building an end-to-end software-as-a-service solution for your contracts. Leeway lets you centralize all your contracts in a single repository, go through multiple negotiation steps and trigger a DocuSign event for the signature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hex lands $5.5M seed to help data scientists share data across the company
As companies embrace the use of data, hiring more data scientists, a roadblock persists around sharing that data. It requires too much copying and pasting and manual work. Hex, a new startup, wants to change that by providing a way to dispense data across the company in a streamlined and elegant way. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Otrium raises $120 million for its end-of-season fashion marketplace
Otrium has raised a $120 million round just a year after raising its $26 million Series B round. BOND and returning investor Index Ventures are leading the round. Existing investor Eight Roads Ventures is also participating. The concept behind Otrium is quite simple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jeff Bezos’ investment fund is backing a startup hoping to be the AWS for SMB accounting
One of the biggest pain points for startups and small businesses is keeping up with back office tasks such as bookkeeping and managing taxes. QuickBooks, it seems, just doesn’t always cut it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Knock is the latest proptech said to be eyeing the public markets
Another proptech is considering raising capital through the public arena. Knock confirmed Monday that it is considering going public, although CEO Sean Black did not specify whether the company would do so via a traditional IPO, SPAC merger or direct listing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bunch adds $1M to its seed round to flesh out its leadership learning app
This morning Bunch announced that it has closed a total of $4.4 million in seed capital, including a new $1 million infusion this week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Singular is a new Paris-based VC firm with $265 million
Meet Singular, a new VC firm based in Paris that just finished raising its initial fund. The firm was founded by two former Alven partners — Raffi Kamber and Jérémy Uzan. They have some ambitious goals and an interesting investment model that could help them remain involved even during late-stage rounds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Headless commerce startup Swell raises $3.4M
While new headless commerce platforms are emerging all the time, Swell CEO Eric Ingram told me that it remains “really hard to do something new in e-commerce.” Specifically, he told me that most headless platforms (which offer back-end infrastructure separate from the front-end shopping experience) allow businesses to build a faster shopping experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
R/GA Ventures announces its new Coalition Venture Studios to support Black founders
Design and marketing consultancy R/GA is expanding its Venture Studios program with the launch of a new Coalition Venture Studio focused specifically on supporting Black-led and Black-owned startups. The initiative is led by R/GA Entrepreneur in Residence Davyeon Ross, a Black entrepreneur who founded sports analytics company ShotTracker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
CoScreen launches its screen-sharing product, announces $4.6M in fundraising
This morning CoScreen, a startup that helps teams share screens and collaborate in real-time, formally launched its product to market. It also disclosed that it has raised $4.6 million to date. Unusual Ventures led its Seed round. Till Pieper, CoScreen’s co-founder and CEO told TechCrunch in an interview that it raised the bulk of its […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pie Insurance raises $118M for data-driven workers’ comp coverage
Pie Insurance, a startup offering workers’ compensation insurance to small businesses, announced this morning that it has closed on $118 million in a Series C round of funding. Allianz X — investment arm of German financial services giant Allianz — and Acrew Capital co-led the round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bevy raises $40M Series C with 20% coming from Black investors
You might expect that a startup that makes community building software would be thriving during a pandemic when it’s so difficult for us to be together. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Neighbor raises $53M for self-storage marketplace after 5x YoY revenue growth
Neighbor, which operates a self-storage marketplace, announced Wednesday that it has raised $53 million in a Series B round of funding. Fifth Wall led the financing, which notably also included participation from returning backer Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and new investors DoorDash CEO Tony Xu and StockX CEO Scott Cutler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Y Combinator’s new batch features its largest group of Indian startups
Y Combinator’s latest batch — W21 — features 350 startups from 41 nations. 50% of the firms, the highest percentage to date, in the new batch are based outside of the United States. India is the second largest demographic represented in the new batch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Social shopping-focused Chums announces $3.5M raise ahead of YC Demo Day
With Y Combinator Demo Day kicking off tomorrow morning, startups in the current batch are hurrying to make a little news before they show off their recent growth to investors. The list includes Runway, Mono, Pangea and Flux. Add Chums to the mix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Do we need so many virtual HQ platforms?
Teamflow, founded by ex-Uber manager Flo Crivello, has raised an $11 million Series A just three months after raising a $3.9 million seed for its virtual HQ platform. The latest round in the startup was led by Battery Ventures, with Menlo Ventures leading its previous financing event. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Camunda snares $98M Series B as process automation continues to flourish
It’s clear that automated workflow tooling has become increasingly important for companies. Perhaps that explains why Camunda, a Berlin startup that makes open source process automation software, announced an €82 million Series B today. That translates into approximately $98 million U.S. Insight Partners led the round with help from A round investor Highland Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Vega raises $5M to give anyone the ability to launch a derivatives market
Vega, a startup that is building a decentralized protocol for creating and trading on derivatives markets, has raised $5 million in funding. Arrington Capital and Cumberland DRW co-led the round, which also included participation from Coinbase Ventures, ParaFi Capital, Signum Capital, CMT Digital, CMS Holdings, Three Commas and a slew of others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Backed by YC, Vendease is building Amazon Prime for restaurants in Africa
For small and mid-sized restaurants in Nigeria and most of Africa, food procurement can be a complex process to manage. The system is such that a business can easily run out of money or have considerable savings. Most restaurants don’t have access to deal directly with farms to get better deals because they lack the […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cohere raises $3.1 million for its remote control solution for web apps
Existing remote desktop solutions like LogMeIn and TeamViewer can be complicated to set up and use, and can feel dated. A new startup called Cohere, now backed by $3.1 million in seed funding, aims to improve on the remote desktop and screen-sharing experience. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This new startup is weeding out the weed-out classes, instead of students
Five years ago, entrepreneur Dan Sommer bet big on the adult learning space when he was building out Trilogy Education, an online and in-person bootcamp in collaboration with universities to train workforces on the latest tech skills. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Oso announces $8.2M Series A to simplify authorization for developers
When we think about getting access to an application, we tend to focus on the authentication side — granting or denying people (or devices) entry. But there is another piece to this, and that’s authorization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Docker nabs $23M Series B as as new developer focus takes shape
It was easy to wonder what would become of Docker after it sold its enterprise business in 2019, but it regrouped last year as a cloud native container company focused on developers, and the new approach appears to be bearing fruit. Today, the company announced a $23 million Series B investment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Noogata raises $12M seed round for its no-code enterprise AI platform
Noogata, a startup that offers a no-code AI solution for enterprises, today announced that it has raised a $12 million seed round led by Team8, with participation from Skylake Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mexican challenger bank Fondeadora adds $14 million to its Series B
Fondeadora, a fintech startup based in Mexico City and building a challenger bank, has extended its Series A funding round. I covered the company’s original round back in August 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Swell launches its app for asynchronous voice conversations
You might think that Clubhouse is the final word on audio-centric social networks, but a San Francisco startup called Swell is launching its own iOS and Android app focused on voice conversations. The big difference: While conversations on Clubhouse all happen in real-time — meaning that you’ve got to listen live or miss it all […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Disruptel raises $1.1M to make smart TVs smarter
St. Louis-based voice assistant startup Disruptel is announcing that it has raised $1.1 million in seed funding. The money comes from an impressive group of investors who seem well-aligned with what the startup is aiming to do — namely, build a voice assistant that can provide detailed information about what’s happening on your TV screen. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Arist adds $2M to its seed round to grow its SMS-based training service
This morning Arist, a startup that sells software allowing other organizations to offer SMS-based training to staff, announced that it has extended its seed round to $3.9 million after adding $2 million to its prior raise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Regenerative agriculture is the next great ally in fight against climate change
Backed by innovations in science, big data, financing and farmer networking, investing in regenerative agriculture promises to slash farming’s carbon footprint while rewarding farmers for their stewardship. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tackle nabs $35M Series B to help companies navigate cloud marketplaces
Each of the big three cloud vendors — Amazon, Microsoft and Google — has a marketplace where software vendors can sell their wares. It seems like an easy enough proposition to throw your software up there and be done with it, but it turns out that it’s not quite that simple. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
M1 Finance raises another rapid-fire round after scaling its AUM to more than $3.5B
Months after raising a Series C worth $45 million, Chicago-based M1 Finance announced a new round of capital today. A Series D, the new $75 million investment was led by Coatue, with two prior investors — Left Lane Capital and Clocktower Technology Ventures — also taking part. The new financing comes after M1 raised twice […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chatbot startup Heyday raises $5.1M
Montreal-based Heyday announced today that it has raised $6.5 million Canadian ($5.1 million in US dollars) in additional seed funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fleex lets you allocate a monthly budget for work from home equipment
Meet Fleex, a French startup that was formally named Flexlab. The company wants to make it easier to give some cash to your employees so that they can spend it on a desk, an external monitor, some computer peripherals, a nice chair, etc. Essentially, Fleex wants to make it easier to turn remote work into […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cube raises $10M more to help companies plan their financial future
This morning Cube, a startup that builds FP&A software for the mid-market, announced that it has raised a $10 million Series A. The company previously raised a $5 million seed round that TechCrunch covered last August. Mayfield led its Series A, which saw participation from Operator Collective and Bonfire Ventures. FP&A is probably not an […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eye surgery robotics startup ForSight raises $10M
Israel-based ForSight Robotics announced today that it has raised $10 million for what it has deemed a “mega-seed round.” Led by Eclipse Ventures and Mithril Capital, the round will go toward expanding the company’s headcount and global reach, as it looks to bring its offerings to international markets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Vendr raises huge $60M Series A as its SaaS-purchasing service scales
This morning Vendr announced a $60 million Series A round, a huge funding event led by Tiger Global, with participation from Y Combinator, Sound Ventures, Craft Ventures, F-Prime Capital, and Garage Capital. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Swiss maker of meat alternatives Planted will expand and diversify with $18M Series A
Planted, a startup pursuing a unique method of creating a vegetarian chicken alternative, has raised an $18M (CHF 17M) Series A to expand its product offerings and international footprint. With new kebabs and pulled-style faux meats available and steak-like cuts in the (literal) pipeline, Planted has begun to set its sights outside central Europe. The […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dan Siroker’s new startup Scribe automates Zoom note-taking
Optimizely co-founder Dan Siroker said the idea for his new startup Scribe goes back to a couple of personal experiences — and although Scribe’s first product is focused on Zoom, those experiences weren’t Zoom-related at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Revolut lets customers switch to Revolut Bank in 10 additional countries
Fintech startup Revolut has its own banking license in the European Union since late 2018. It lets the company offer some additional financial services without partnering with third-party companies. And the company is going to let customers switch to Revolut Bank in 10 additional countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Deliverr scores $170M to bring fast delivery to every e-commerce vendor
At a time when e-commerce is exploding due in large part to the pandemic, a business that helps any online merchant ship goods to a consumer in one or two days is going to be in demand. Deliverr is a startup that fits that bill, and today the company announced a $170 million financing round. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices