Credit score business Equifax revealed Thursday that 143 million people were compromised in a cyber attack. Social security numbers and other personally identifying information were accessed. And guess what, the stock market didn’t like it! The company lost about $2 billion in market cap Friday after tumbling nearly 14%. Apparently, the company has known about the hack since July 29,… Read More
After a pivot and months of speculation about the future of car valet and concierge startup Luxe, the company has finally found a home. Today, automaker Volvo Cars announced that it is acquiring the startup’s platform, technology, key staff and other assets, which it will use to put some fuel into its own digital services strategy. The terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but… Read More
UrWork, the unicorn that is competing with WeWork in China, is following its American rival’s lead by extending its reach in Southeast Asia after it took part in a $3 million funding round for Indonesia-based ReWork. The round, which is described as pre-Series A, was led by China-U.S. firm ATM Capital and Indonesia’s Convergence Ventures. UrWork was a participant alongside U.S.… Read More
Teralytics’s big data analytics platform is targeting government agencies and transport companies wanting to understand complex problems relating to human mobility — from how to relieve transport pressure points to monitoring urban air quality without the need for CO2 sensors. Just plug in telecos’ data to play… Read More
India-based OYO, a startup that pioneered and popularized the concept of budget hotel networks, has closed $250 million in new funding led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund. The startup was founded in 2013 by Thiel Fellow Ritesh Agarwal, now aged 24, and the concept centers around standardizing the quality of India’s wildly differentiated affordable hotels, and providing some structure… Read More
Innoviz, a company making LiDAR sensors to support the development and deployment of autonomous driving, has raised a new $65 million in Series B funding, from strategic partners and leading auto industry suppliers Delphi Automotive and Magna International, along with other investors. The vote of confidence from Magna and Delphi is especially noteworthy, however, because both stand ready to… Read More
A lot of money is being poured into genomics lately, including the genomic information company WuXi NextCODE (WXNC), which just announced it has closed on $240 million in Series B financing, led by Sequoia.
We tend to hear very little about this company in the tech industry but Chinese tech billionaire Jack Ma is one of its many backers and WXNC is counted among the largest genetic database… Read More
VizEat, the European “social eating platform” that connects travellers and local hosts around authentic food experiences — such as dining in a local’s home, cooking classes, and food tours — has acquired EatWith, a similar startup headquartered in San Francisco. Read More
Five months after abandoning its proposed purchase of Monsanto’s precision planting subsidiary due to anti-trust concerns, agricultural equipment giant Deere and Company announced that it will spend $305 million to acquire ag-tech startup Blue River Technology. Founded in 2011 and based in Sunnyvale, Blue River develops machine learning technology for precision farming and counts… Read More
Fanatics, the 17-year-old, Jacksonville, Fla.-based sports e-commerce company that helps leagues and teams sell their licensed apparel and fan gear directly to customers, has closed on $1 billion in funding led by SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund. Read More
Following up on the news of 23andMe’s huge upcoming financing round, TechCrunch has learned that the company is raising the new financing at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. This compares to a $1 billion valuation in its last private round. Dan Primack over at Axios reported the same thing this morning, but we’ve heard from our sources the number is indeed accurate.… Read More
Ed tech startup Labster whose software platform enables virtual simulations of laboratories for teaching life science to students, has closed a $10 million Series A round of funding led by early stage European VC firm Balderton Capital. Read More
Axonius wants to help enterprises manage their fast-growing number of mobile, compute and IoT devices that now use their networks and in the cloud. The idea here is to provide these companies with a single platform that allows them to see which devices are active on their networks and control them. This, in turn, enables enterprises to plug potential security holes. Read More
Snowflake, makers of a cloud data warehouse service, announced a new virtual private product that should appeal to highly regulated companies like financial services and healthcare. In fact, the company also announced that one of the product’s earliest customers, Capital One, will be investing $5 million in Snowflake as a strategic investor as a result of this new approach. Most… Read More
Dataiku, a French startup that helps data analysts communicate with data scientists to build more meaningful data applications, announced a significant funding round today. The company scored a $28 million Series B investment led by Battery Ventures with help from FirstMark, Serena Capital and Alven. Today’s money brings the total raised to almost $45 million. Its most recent prior round… Read More
Turo has a new strategic partner in automaker Daimler, with ties solidified through both an investment by Daimler in the car-sharing startup and through the acquisition by Turo of Croove, Daimler’s own Turo-like subsidiary. The funding is part of a new $92 million Series D round raised by Turo, which was also led by South Korean giant SK Holdings, in addition to Daimler, and which… Read More
Chew.tv, a video streaming service for DJs to show off their mixing skills, has been acquired by BandLab Technologies, the Singapore-based ‘social’ music-making platform. Terms of the deal are undisclosed, though it was widely known that Chew.tv, which has been described as ‘Twitch for DJs,’ had been struggling financially over the last six months. Read More
23andMe, the Mountain View-based genetic testing and analysis company, is raising close to $200 million in a funding round led by Sequoia Capital, multiple sources tell us. Sources say that Fidelity is also looking to participate. We’re now hearing that this round is being done at a $1.5 billion pre-money valuation. This is about 50% higher than the roughly $1 billion valuation from the… Read More
For someone getting major dental work or reconstructive surgery, it can be hard to visualize what they’ll look like afterwards. You can do casts and make wax molds, but that’s a bit… 19th century, isn’t it? A Swiss startup brings the, in retrospect, obvious solution of augmented reality to the problem, giving patients a virtual view of the smile they could soon have. Read More
Betterview, a 2.5-year-old, San Francisco-based company whose software can analyze detailed aerial footage captured by drones to help insurers better understand a property’s condition, has raised $2 million in funding from a long list of investors. Read More
