If you live outside of China, it can be easy to forget that Alibaba’s business aspirations go far beyond e-commerce and into many aspects of daily life. This week, the company took another step toward building its health business by making an investment worth RMB 225 million (about $35 million) in a medical imaging company called Wanliyun Medical Information Technology. Read More
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Foxconn’s proposed acquisition of Sharp, a deal that was sensationally put on hold last month after Sharp had announced it, has been completed today after both companies confirmed the agreement. Read More
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India’s e-commerce space might be about to get a shake-up after the government appeared to open the door to overseas companies owning majority stakes in domestic internet sales companies. Read More
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Planday, the Danish startup that offers a cloud-based “shift planning” solution for various types of businesses that employ a flexible workforce, such as restaurants, hotels, stores, call centers and gyms, has scored $14 million in Series B funding. Read More
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On-demand streaming music is inevitable, so Spotify is taking whatever fuel it can get to win the race against Apple. Whoever can sign up customers faster to consume their data and network effect could earn money off them for a long, long time. So it makes sense that Spotify would be willing to raise money at ugly, exploitative terms now for a better chance at earning those riches later.… Read More
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Ebay announced this afternoon that it’s acquiring an auto industry technology company known as Cargigi, a large provider of advertising and marketing services on a number of popular free classified websites, like Craigslist and others. Deal terms were not revealed, though eBay described the acquisition as “small.” Cargigi’s team of 30 will join eBay as a result, and… Read More
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Hopper, the makers of a handy travel application that tells you the best time to fly in order to find the best deals, has now raised additional capital to continue to grow its business. It has also scored a partnership with American Airlines which allows it to sell AA’s tickets through its app. In terms of the new investment, the company announced $16 million in a growth funding… Read More
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It didn’t quite add up when Fortune broke the news last week that Snapchat would spend a $100 million to acquire Bitstrips, the maker of personalized avatar stickers called Bitmoji. Snapchat didn’t have anywhere to put them. But today, Snapchat launched “Chat 2.0”, a huge product update that includes the ability to send over 200 stickers to friends. Now it’s… Read More
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Dating app Tinder is acquiring Humin the San Francisco startup which took a high-wire approach to contact management, trying to merge lots of disparate information into one contact app. Terms were undisclosed by TechCrunch understands from multiple sources that this roughly equates to an acqui-hire scenario.
Tinder says it is acquiring Humin’s technology and IP, while the founders and… Read More
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Online interior design platform Havenly has raised $5.8 million, bringing its total Series A round of funding to $13.3 million. The round was led by Binary Capital with participation from Foundry Group and Chicago Ventures. Havenly plans to use the funding for growing the staff by 25%, further develop the technical operations on the back-end and marketing. Typically, hiring an interior… Read More
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