To wrap up our series of looks into the IPOs of tech’s Big 5, we turn to Apple. Being the first of five to go public, what can we learn from Cupertino’s debut? Heading back in time as we are, we lack readily accessible S-1 documents that the younger entrants to the group have posted. So what was Apple’s story as it raced to the public markets? Read More
Remember Angry Birds? Apparently enough people are still playing it to justify an IPO. Rovio Entertainment, the Finnish parent of the popular smartphone game, is getting ready to go public on the Helsinki Nasdaq in two weeks. Read More
Spotify has long been linked with going public in the U.S. — it is speculated to be preparing for an IPO-less listing next year — but it has emerged that the company rebuffed the opportunity to sell to a major tech name earlier this year: Tencent, the Chinese internet giant valued at $380 billion. Tencent is said to have approached Spotify with a view to acquiring the company to… Read More
Data scientist Michael Roytman and his statistician friend Jesse Berns were working on a project together for the United Nations in Iraq that required a lot of the data to be in a central place and analyzed on the fly. But like a lot of countries in the developing world, Wi-Fi was spotty and they didn’t have a lot of the tech available to make that possible. Many of these operations rely… Read More
In an era where art is shared and streamed for free, Patreon offers new hope for turning content creation into a career. Illustrators, comedians, game makers, and musicians use Patreon to let fans pay a monthly subscription fee for special access to their work. In exchange, Patreon takes only a tiny 5% cut. With 50,000 creators and 1 million subscribers on board paying an average of $12 per… Read More
Over $10 billion is wasted every year due to fraudulent e-commerce charges and that number is growing. This is not only costly and time-consuming for the businesses, but also the credit card companies and customers. But now there are several startups including Signifyd that believe they can use technology to cut down on some of this fraud before it occurs. Another is CashShield, which has… Read More
Silicon Valley venture firm Social Capital just completed the first step in its mission to take startups public without an IPO. The team has listed something called a special purchase acquisition company, known as a SPAC. More common outside of the tech industry, these blank-check companies are specifically designed to buy private companies and bring them public without going through the… Read More
Costanoa Ventures has raised a $175 million fund, the third fund for the Palo Alto-based venture firm. With a focus on enterprise technology, Costanoa Ventures typically invests at seed stage and Series A. The new fund brings the total capital for the five-year-old firm to $500 million under management. Read More
We stopped by HAX’s demo day at the San Francisco Mint to check out all the hardware startups in the accelerator’s 10th batch. Many of the startups showcased creative combinations of hardware and software, particularly machine learning, to improve upon legacy services and outdated business models. HAX is known for its expertise in prototyping and manufacturing in China. The… Read More
The cannabis industry has lit up in the last year, including weed delivery startup Eaze, which just raised $27 million in Series B financing and claims a 300 percent year-over-year increase in gross sales. But the weed delivery startup has come under scrutiny recently for burning through at least $1 million in cash per month. In contrast, other software-based pot delivery startups like Meadow… Read More
As we continue to see a proliferation of wireless connected devices make their way into the mainstream consumer electronics market, there has been growing attention on a key issue that will be central to making all these devices work: efficient power supplies, and specifically practical battery systems. Today, one of the startups that’s hoping to lead the conversation on how this will… Read More
Not to be outpaced in the connected car market by other tech giants, today the world’s largest smartphone maker, Samsung, announced two major pieces of news to take its automotive strategy up a gear. It has launched the Samsung Automotive Innovation Fund, a $300 million fund to back startups and other interesting bets in the automotive market. And as a first investment out of that… Read More
Investors may not be done shoveling money into Magic Leap’s augmented reality ambitions quite yet. The Plantation, Florida-based startup is reportedly in talks with Singapore-based Temasek Holdings to raise upwards of $500 million, valuing the AR company at around $6 billion. Read More
Japan’s SoftBank Group, U.S. investment group Dragoneer and Chinese rideshare giant Didi Chuxing are close to finalizing their investment in Uber via a joint venture, sources tell TechCrunch. The tender offer is on track to launch by the end of the month and includes a direct investment in the company, as well as the purchase of shares from employees and early investors. Read More
Going beyond the bounds of our planet is the future. That explains why Infostellar, a platform that enables antenna sharing to enable better communication for satellites and spacecrafts, exists — and also why it has raised $7.3 million to build out its business. Infostellar, in the most basic terms, is Airbnb for satellite antennas. Read More
Apttus, the unicorn quote-to-cash vendor built on the Salesforce platform, announced a $55 million round, which is likely its final private investment on the way to an IPO. While CEO Kirk Krappe wouldn’t definitively confirm the company was going public, he did say that today’s round was about gaining the confidence of future investors. “We decided we needed a certain amount… Read More
While Tampa Bay residents are beginning the process of removing the sandbags from their homes and getting back to the business of daily living in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, the city’s multi-millionaire real estate developer, Jeff Vinik, is busy with plans of his own. Last year, Vinik and Bill Gates’ Cascadia fund jointly acquired a swath of waterfront property in Tampa… Read More
Heptio, the startup founded by Kubernetes co-founders Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda, today announced that it has raised a $25 million Series B funding round led by Madrona Venture partners. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Accel Partners also joined in this round, which comes less than a year after the company’s $8.5 million Series A round. Read More
More details about former Sequoia venture partner Yinglan Tan’s new fund have emerged after an SEC filing confirmed that it has raised $25 million for its maiden fund, and it made its first investment.
Tan, who was with Sequoia’s Singapore office for five years before leaving this summer, is thought to be starting Insignia Venture Partners to focus on Southeast Asia’s… Read More
Zomato, the global restaurant guide and food on-demand service, has made an acquisition to shore up its delivery business on home turf after it completed a deal for Runnr. The acquisition has been rumored since May and is much-anticipated, as Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal himself acknowledged in an announcement. The all-stock deal was previously pegged at $40 million by Indian media, but… Read More
