Online lending company Affirm has announced it is acquiring Sweep, an app-based personal finance tool. The move comes just two weeks after Affirm raised a $100M Series D round, which was partially raised to help the company expand into new product categories outside of lending. Specifically, Max Levchin, co-founder and CEO of Affirm, acknowledged that users will most likely never be… Read More
from TechCrunch
The Indian government has taken several steps to make filing taxes online easier, but the process can still be, well, taxing. ClearTax wants to make it easier. The startup, a Y Combinator alum, just raised angel funding of $1.3 million. Investors include Max Levchin (this is the PayPal co-founder’s first investment in India), Scott Banister, Neeraj Arora, Naval Ravikant, and Ruchi Sanghvi. Read More
from TechCrunch
eBay surpassed first quarter earnings expectations when it reported after the bell on Tuesday. Shares ticked up 5% following the announcement. The e-commerce giant brought in $2.1 billion in revenue, when analysts were expecting $2.08 billion. The company also posted an adjusted 47 cents per share, when Wall Street was forecasting 45 cents. eBay also reported quarterly gross merchandise… Read More
from TechCrunch
Have you ever tried to capture close-up video of yourself or others with a traditional drone? It’s nearly impossible. To solve this problem China-based Zero Zero Robotics has raised $25M to build Hover, a small self-flying drone. The funding is comprised mainly of a $23M Series A round from IDG, and China-focused firms GSR Ventures, ZhenFund, ZUIG. While this is the first… Read More
from TechCrunch
With the recent announcement of Expa Labs, New York-based Expa has also appointed a new General Manager for the incubator in the form of Eric Friedman. Friedman has been an entrepreneur in residence at Expa Labs since July of last year. Previously, he held BisDev positions at Foursquare and also worked as an analyst at Union Square Ventures. Expa Labs is the newly launched incubator arm of… Read More
from TechCrunch
Insurance isn’t necessarily an inviting word, especially for millennials. Not only do young people have less items to insure, but the process of getting insurance for those items is entirely foreign to folks who order their cars, food, cleaning services and more from an iPhone app. That’s where Trov comes in. Trov is an on-demand insurance platform that lets users buy insurance… Read More
from TechCrunch
Why wait for the bus when you can hail a cab? That’s the idea behind a new commercial spaceflight startup founded by SpaceX founding team members Jim Cantrell and John Garvey. Vector Space Systems wants to shake up to the commercial space market by providing not tens, but hundreds of launches per year. Read More
from TechCrunch
Munich-based Tado, maker of smart thermostat and AC control products, has raised another $23 million for further international expansion. The new investment is led by Inven Capital, the venture capital arm of the Čez Group, a multinational energy conglomerate based in the Czech Republic. It’s the startup’s third funding round and brings the total raised to $57 million since… Read More
from TechCrunch
Nokia’s history as the world’s biggest mobile phone maker is becoming a distant memory, but it’s not out of the gadget business just yet. To build out its health technology business, the company today announced that it has acquired Withings, makers of smart scales, activity trackers, and other health gadgets. Withings is based out of France, and with Nokia in Finland,… Read More
from TechCrunch
Ant Financial, the Alibaba affiliate that runs Alipay and other financial services, has announced a truly huge round of funding today. The company said it has completed its Series B, which weighs in at a staggering $4.5 billion. Read More
from TechCrunch