It’s starting to happen like clockwork. Firms are closing new funds almost exactly 24 months to the date from their last fund closing. The newest example? Bain Capital Ventures (BCV), which this morning announced a new, $600 million fund. It last closed two funds — a $650 million early-stage vehicle, and a $200 million co-investment fund to back maturing BCV investments —… Read More
from TechCrunch
DIY Co., the education tech startup led by Vimeo designer and co-founder Zach Klein, has launched a new online learning platform for kids called JAM.com. The company also quietly closed a $4 million round of venture funding led by Learn Capital, and joined by Spark Capital, at the end of 2015 to support the development of JAM, Klein told TechCrunch. Courses on DIY’s new site JAM… Read More
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Here’s an interesting twist in one of the bigger enterprise acquisition stories of 2016. After Mitel earlier this year announced that it would acquire Polycom for $1.96 billion and consolidate the two companies’ enterprise communication businesses, today private equity firm Siris Capital has come in with a higher offer: it has agreed to acquire Polycom for $2 billion in cash and… Read More
from TechCrunch
Fintech companies are continuing to draw interest from investors in Asia. The latest company to pull in financing is Airwallex, a China-Australia startup that specializes in cross-border transactions. Read More
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Two weeks ago, we reported that Uber was in talks to raise $1-2 billion in leveraged loans. The Wall Street Journal is circulating new information that the company has closed a $1.15 billion leveraged loan, with a 5 percent yield. This number comes in on the low side of our previous estimates. Last month, sources confirmed to TechCrunch that Uber had plans to raise $1-2 billion in… Read More
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Earlier this year, Phil Libin, the former CEO of Evernote who is now a venture capitalist at General Catalyst, laid out plans to fund and support (and maybe even build?) his own startups in the burgeoning world of bots — services that use conversational interfaces and varying degrees of artificial intelligence to provide users with information, products and more. Now those… Read More
from TechCrunch
Google is getting deeper into the tech side of the video and broadcasting business. The company today announced that it has acquired Anvato, a platform for encoding, editing, publishing and distribution video across platforms. The company says Anvato will join its Cloud Platform team and that Anvato’s technology will complement its efforts “to enable scalable media processing… Read More
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The mobile phone has transformed quite a bit in the last ten years, but the heart of it — the address book — hasn’t changed much. Drupe, with brand new funding, is looking to accelerate the evolution of the Phone Book. The company today announced $3 million in new funding from Canaan Partners Israel and Sweet Capital, a fund that was spun up by the founders of Candy Crush… Read More
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Security giant Avast has announced it intends to acquire fellow Czech-based antivirus software maker AVG for a purchase price of $25.00 per share in cash — resulting in a transaction that will total around $1.3 billion. Read More
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Being first to market with complex technology doesn’t usually make for a simple sales proposition. Nor does trying to pioneer an alternative approach as a small security startup vs established industry practices. Read More
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